Another great review that I have to sit down and read at leisure so much stuff!!
With Joe's review too, UD really is the best place for Disney DVD info.
Altho I still haven't got the disc, some dethi (techie) comments:
Luke wrote:Joe, your review of the picture/sound seemed to jive a lot more with what I was seeing than with the other reviews that have turned up. Maybe our discs are the same and everyone's elses are different!
I didn't even really notice the grain that you mentioned.
and then Joe said:
Really, I was surprised to hear the complaints about edge enhancement, since I virtually had no problems with it. I don't say it was non-existent, but I could only see edge enhancement in very few scenes (Mary sitting on the cloud, for example).
Maybe the other reviewers have their sharpness settings (or other controls) out of whack and you gentelmen have it set properly
Even from Luke's downrezed comparision capture it's easy to see that the new version has less grain than the previous dvd, and that's even on a process shot (Hollywooodspeak for a SFX shot
) which tend to be grainier.
The sitting on a cloud edge enhancement could be a byproduct due to the sfx matte lines? Before the digital age, process shots were done optically by duping film and making high contrast mattes etc so grain and contrast would add up after each optical copy. (That's why the effects for films like STAR WARS, Star Trek, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, etc were done on VistaVision/70mm film to prevent such losses)
About the soundtrack, was Poppins released originally in 70mm blow ups too? Cus otherwise i'd think the original theatrical soundtrack woulda been optical mono.
A stereo one (even if made from original dialogue/effects/music elements) would be kinda remixed one too
unless the film master was just a folddown of a stereo master but that was not done cus folding down to mono a stereo track looses or changes the balance so mono soundtracks were mixed to MONO.
(just like mono beatle albums and singles
)
And now to the aspect ratio:
First: mvealf mentioned on july 28 that "The image on the Japanese laserdisc is wider and shows more picture than the U.S. laserdisc or DVD."
Since he was refering to the earlier DVD, would be interesting to hear what he has to say about this release.
Since there seems to be an even wider image on the Japanese LD than the 1.85 DVD, we can't just asume the 1.85 DVD was showing any extra non essential image by reproducing the full camera aperture width (which is 5% wider than the correct Projector Aperture width).
The only way to be sure is to see a full scan (including the sprockets!
) and calculating from there. Otherwise one has to asume the widest image one has (in this case that would be mvealf's LD) is the camera aperture, or the Projector Aperture and take it from there.
Anyway
Asuming the Gold DVD was using the correct Projector Aperture width, the Gold DVD capture indeed measured 1.85 using NTSC standarts. The new DVD measured 1.70 using the same numbers. BUT is showing 3.225% more image vertically compared to the Gold (2.895% more bottom, 0.33% more top
). The new DVD transfer also made the image narrower (shrunk the width) by about 0.9727% compared to the Gold image. (I mean the image itself, not the visible width ) When one takes into account all these numbers, the new DVD therefore is cropping about 6% of the width of the image of the Gold DVD
So all those numbers would make the aspect ratio of the new DVD about 1.75 wide (measured from the same image height that was shown on the 1.85 Gold DVD)
Showing 3.2% more height than 1.85 actually makes the vertical height the equivalent of an 1.79 aspect ratio projection, but since it's cropping the sides by 6%, if the Gold DVD was showing a 1.85 Projector Aperture, the new DVD is showing a 1.79 Projector Aperture image cropped by 6% on it's width. (not exactly the same thing as a true 1.75 Projector Aperture
).
SMPTE projection tolerances allow for a maximum 5% crop on each direction, with 3% recommended. So it's kinda within the SMPTE allowance if you averaged both directions (4%) (1.79 vertically is 2% crop error from 1.75 ya know)
If this side crop was done so that the resulting image would end up slightly bigger, filling up the sides It would make sense, but same as Luke mentions, I see no point of shaving up the sides on a 16:9 DVD which still has room for it. Showing the full "1.85" width of the Gold (therfore the full 1.75 width and the full 1.66 width since they are exactly the same) would STILL not fill the DVD 720 pixel width. It would fill up about 21 pixels more on each side, still leaving 2 to 3 empty black pixels on each side of the image. (1 or 2 each side on Luke's downrezed capture).
Makes you wonder why Disney is doing this
Maybe with the Japanese Laserdisc one can get closer to the truth.
(I could push a couple of theories forward, but no I won't elaborate, it would mean more numbers
, going into PAL and HDTV land, corporate fear of aspect ratio numbers, and other crazi dethi speculations, and i'm lazy lately
)
(If indeed the new scans/transfers are cropping/blacking out a little of the sides, one technical advantage of doing this is 6% less bits to compress.
. A microimprovement of 1/4 of a dB in signal to noise ratio
)
Anyway
4% is not the end of the world (Sleeping Beauty has lotsa more
)
(As a purist i want 100.000000% tho
)
_________________
The Incredibles, starring
Violet
To include one digit that wasn't typed the first time (need to be accurate) and further fine tuning this was
