Darby O'Gill and the Little People DVD Press Release

[MickeyMouseboy]

deathie mouse can you make me a anamorphic 1.75:1 darby o gil DVD ?

[joplin4]

Gurgi: OOOH!! Gurgi want!! Gurgi want!!
Arthur: Heh heh. Me too.
Roo: Me too.
Wendy: We all do.
Ursula: You got it sweetcakes.

joplin: I want it too. I want this DVD!! *points above* I just couldn't help myself. People tell me I have this talent for quoting Disney characters and making a funny convo to fit almost any situation. So, if any of my *friends* show up, just smile and nod. I'm not that crazy.

Mrs. Potts. Yes you are.
Aladdin: He's a little crazy.

[disneyunlimited]

deathie mouse can you make me a anamorphic 1.75:1 darby o gil DVD ?

Well, technically it is possible to re-encode the information from the higher resolution PAL version into an anamorphic 1.75:1 NTSC version. You could then watch the movie on your 4:3 monitor or TV in original (cinema) aspect ratio with those "lovely" black bars at the top and bottom!

I might even have a go at doing this myself... (I love a challenge...)

[Loomis]

In the words of MMP/Keanu "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"

I think we are forgetting the most important part of Luke's review here:

"Disney has included a one-sided color insert with a note ".

Isn't that the most important thing after all?

[disneyunlimited]

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm there, Loomis?

The R2 PAL doesn't include an insert, by the way...

[MickeyMouseboy]

wow my very own double sided colour insert!

[Loomis]

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm there, Loomis?

Sarcasm, that's awesome!

What, from me? Never!

[Luke]

The screencaps from the review may have looked okay in 1.75:1 (or 1.70:1 as chosen), but just from browsing through the first 10 minutes, take a look at how a couple of scenes would look in 1.75:1 versus the way they are:

<img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg1.jpg"> <img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg2.jpg">

<img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg3.jpg"> <img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg4.jpg">

<img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg5.jpg"> <img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg6.jpg">

<img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg7.jpg"> <img src="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dg8.jpg">

[Loomis]

The screencaps from the review may have looked okay in 1.75:1 (or 1.70:1 as chosen), but just from browsing through the first 10 minutes, take a look at how a couple of scenes would look in 1.75:1 versus the way they are

Yes, there seems to be a systematic bias against hats.

I will proudly buy the one version that has hats. Hats! Viva la Hats!

[Luke]

Yes, there seems to be a systematic bias against hats.

I will proudly buy the one version that has hats. Hats! Viva la Hats!

[MickeyMouseboy]

lol i want the Widescreen version, i dont care about missing hats.

[deathie mouse]

First I wanna say that nothing of what follows really matters,it's just me being my dethicrazy self, since the DVD is not cropping anything (the 6 pixels it is cropping from the 720 x 486 master are inconsequential, a 1% crop) so everybody can have his cake and eat it too! (or is it hats? ). Well, probably MickeyMouseBoy (and I) still want it to be 16:9 coded, but if you really desire that extra 16:9 resolution, get the PAL, MickeyMouseBoy, that way you'll have the equivalent to the 2 disc edition you asked for with one disc open matte and another with the resolution of a 16:9 Widescreen one, as Disneyunlimited tells me it's just GBP$5.99 and he even has a PowerDVD setting to make it look as good and clear (if not even better) as the NTSC disc.


So first, the numerical part


Part 1- splitting hairs

First.
The new captures are 300 x 225, no? (i measured just one of them but asume all three are the same)

300/225 = 1.333333

But

720x480 mpeg2 video is not 1.333333

because
NTSC Digital Video is 720 x 486.
And in NTSC Digital Video, 710.85 x 486 = 1.33333.
Therefore, 720 x 486 = 1.3504958
Therefore, NTSC DV video and NTSC mpeg2 DVD 720 x 480 video is 1.3673769
NTSC Digital Video Equipment including Sony $45,000 Professional Broadcast Monitors used in mastering houses follow the NTSC standard.
Therefore the 300 x 171 crop on the captures is not 1.75, it is 1.7991801 (1.80)

For it to be 1.75 the capture would have to be 300 x 176

Second.

225 vertical pixels in resized capture:

27 pixels of black bar
171 pixels of image
27 pixels of black bar

or

480 vertical pixels in original capture

57.6 pixels of black bar
364.8 pixels of image
57.6 pixels of black bar


Therefore, those captures are cropping simetrically a Full Frame image that ALREADY has 4 to 6 pixels cropped from the top (4 top, 2 bottom is the usual, but sometimes it's 6/0) (but NEVER 3/3, because that would change the interlace field order) when it was transfered from 720 x 486 Digital Video to 720 x 480 mpeg2 video.

So you have to re-center mattes on 480 images up by 4 pixels (in some cases 6) for them to fall in the center of the original Full Frame 486 image.

let's go with the usual 4/2 crop.

On the 300 x 225 size capture that translates that the center of the matte is 2 pixels too low.

So taking all the numbers into account, on the 300 x 225 image, the top matte is 4 pixels too low and the bottom matte is about 0.5 pixels too high

So the top matte line on the 300 x 171 image is actually at the 1.89 aspect ratio cropping mark, while the bottom matte line is at the 1.77 mark

But as I said that's splitting hairs, cus


Part 2- One word: psychovisuals

Even if my numbers were totally wrong, or if they're right, if you take the cropped images and blow them up so they fill the height of the screen, those images will look fine when seen in a large screen.

I'm pretty sure the head chopping thing is intentional because one of the tips they give you in film school is that it's better to frame a shot so that the top of someone's head is sliced off because the brain mentally fills in the rest of that image.

Now we go to the second phenomenon: Psychovisuals. When you look at something on a smaller TV at home, be it letterboxed or widescreened, the effect is very different than in the cinema, a 20 foot tall head that you have to look up and down or scan with your eyes becomes a 10" to 20" head you watch from a distance of 10 feet almost fixed on your vision, You are more aware of its borders or "limits" cus you can quickly flick your eyes around it and you're seeing it all at once, intead of being overpowered by it, and therefore observing it more analitycally than just being inmersed on the storyline and it's emotions (thats why mmm the video experience is sometimes so different than in the theater, thank God surround sound can be better and wider at home to compensate )

A shot that doesn't seem tight in a huge theater screen might look to be too tightly framed in the more compact TV (or Plasma) screen. (I think this phenomenon is what Disneykid was reffering too also)

Another part of this phychovisual impressions could happen when we watch an Open matte version first, or for a long time, then we see the letterboxed version> We know there's more image, we've SEEN this image, and now it's gone. So we might have gotten used to it and we might feel the widescreen is cutting something. (Well. it is! ) But apart from the transfer really being wrong, we might feel unconfortable for a while till we get reused to it being in the proper composition.

I'll tell you what I see when i see those shots on widescreen : A extreme close up of an old man looming gigantically in front of me, so big he's almost out of my field of view. A shot in which a little people king is dwarfed by the same old man so tall he's almost gonna get out of the top of the screen. And a threatening tall guy in a bar adressing a short guy.

I haven't seen the movie. Is this what's happening?
Cus if it is, that's the way to frame things to give those impressions.

but maybe I'm wrong since I have't seen the movie yet.

But again, I repeat! it doesnt matter cus we can watch it both ways! >In fact i'll say, that i have the 4:3 open matte version of Underworld in addition to the Special Extended S-35 Scope edition

[disneyunlimited]

As a 2-disc Special Edition/Vault Disney version of Darby is a long way away, deathie's suggestion makes perfect sense.

If your DVD player can handle PAL discs and can be set to R2 or R4 (the PAL disc is dual-encoded for UK & Oz), then here's one way you can make your own "anamorphic 16:9" quality edition.

1. Buy yourself a slimline double DVD case - wholesale they cost me 8p (15 cents) each, retail you might end up paying about a dollar.

2. Order the PAL version from either UK or Oz - the disc is the same - only the packaging differs slightly as shown below:



Personally, I'd go for the Oz cover as the red ribbon at the top is similar to the Vault Disney banner.

3. Presumably you already have the R1 DVD. If not, go out and buy that too!



4. Remove DVDs and put both discs in the double case.

5. Remove sleeves from the keep-cases. Choose your favourite sleeve image and put that on top of the other then insert them into your double DVD Amaray box.

6. Transfer over the colour insert from the R1 (the UK and Oz editions don't include an insert!)

You now have a 2-disc Darby O'Gill!

If you want to watch it in "anamorphic 16:9" quality then play the PAL disc on your widescreen TV in zoom mode. The resolution will be the same (near enough), if not better, than an NTSC anamorphic encoded 16:9.

If you want to watch in open matte you can choose which version, PAL or NTSC, displays better and watch it on a 4:3 set or in 4:3 mode on a widescreen. The PAL disc has French and German soundtracks included - not sure if they're on the R1 as Amazon doesn't mention them. Luke?

If you want to watch the extras then you'll need the NTSC disc as there are NO EXTRAS (not even a trailer) on the single-layer barebones R2/R4 release.

Finally, and most importantly:

7. Impress your friends with your exclusive 2-disc "Vault Disney" equivalent of DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE complete with interchangable sleeves AND, most importantly (for Loomis at least!), double-sided colour card insert!!

Wow-ee!!!

[Poppins#1]

Luke, Regarding the hat-cropping in your screencaps; if you were inferring that these somehow looked wrong, I disagree. They looked balanced to me. There was a similar discussion about the slight head-cropping of the 16X9 widescreen version of Freaky Friday in this thread:

http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/vie ... sc&start=0

It would have been nice if Disney could have included both the full frame and 16X9 widescreen versions of Darby, but then there wouldn't have been room for all the fabulous extras on a single disc

[deathie mouse]

I agree that Disneyunlimited's double disc special edition case suggestion is the perfect, logical thing to do.

I should add a note, that since in the USA most TV's sold are 4:3 and they don't accept PAL, if that's your situation, you can only watch the PAL disc as a downconverted to NTSC version in open matte, defeating the whole exercise. The situation in Europe and most of the rest of the world is totally different since many TV sets sold there come multisystem capable and accept PAL/NTSC/SECAM color and 50/60Hz rates, . So if you want to see the extra resolution/widescreened zomm version be sure to watch on a Widescreen 16:9 display/TV set with PAL inputs (or maybe with RGB computer input that accepts at least 800 x 600 computer resolution if you use a software DVD player)

2nd point: the double DVD case could be transparent so you could still see the two covers back to back, one outside one inside!

I've done this myself with a few titles, creating custom made Special double or triple discs Editions. One example is with Roberto Benigni's Italian comedy "Il Monstruo" (The Monster/El Monstro/O Monstruo/Le Monsteur? tried to translate the title into as many languages as I could ) I have it in PAL 4:3 disc in 1.66 (the OAR) and in NTSC 4:3 open matte 1.375 and NTSC 16:9 1.85 USA slighly cropped widescreeen. This also makes me have it in various languages and subtitles too. (It was the last film I projected in public. So it's special to me *sniff )(Last one i projected, (for myself) was the Technicolor José Ferrer Moulin Rouge in full Academy )

The Il Monstruo print had the image in open matte aperture but of course it was projected in W i d e s c r e e n as it was meant to.

Happy Watching!

[Joe Carioca]

A warning to those who intend to get the PAL version: as far as I've read, the picture quality is not one of the best, so it might use a diferent master from the American version (which seems to be pretty good). I don't have either versions, but www.michaeldvd.com.au has a complete review of the R4 PAL release. So, it isn't of very use getting an international version for better resolution if picture quality is bad.

[disneyunlimited]

Yes, it's true that the PAL DVD looks a lot darker and washed out compared to the remastered R1. However, if you're watching it on your PC using PowerDVD, here are my custom settings that will provide a picture equivalent, or perhaps even better than the R1...

Launch PowerDVD.

Click the 'Configuration' button or use the shortcut 'CTRL' + C.

On the configuration window press 'Advanced...'

Click 'New...' so you can create a profile setting exclusive for this movie. Choose a name for it, e.g. Darby O'Gill

Now alter the 'Color Control' slider settings as follows:
Brightness +20
Color1 +20
Color2 -20
Contrast +30
Saturation +32

Click 'Save' to store your profile for future use...

You can now view the PAL DVD on your PC in the same pristine quality as the NTSC but with PAL's higher resolution!

[Poppins#1]

Sorry to bump up an old thread. But I finally got around to ordering my Darby O'Gill DVD from Amazon and mine didn't have the insert everyone was talking about that said 1.33:1 was the original aspect ratio. I wonder why mine didn't get an insert? I feel so cheated.

[ichabod]

Sorry to bump up an old thread. But I finally got around to ordering my Darby O'Gill DVD from Amazon and mine didn't have the insert everyone was talking about that said 1.33:1 was the original aspect ratio. I wonder why mine didn't get an insert? I feel so cheated.

Perhaps it's like the slipcovers! It's a special bonus insert that's only available with the first few orders!