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DVD reviewing...we NEW category for "Picture and Sound" quality... (1 Viewer)

Jeff Kohn

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That's because you're talking about the overall-objective "absolute" criteria...that's the "WOW" criteria.

I agreed that a 16mm print should NOT get a 5 out of 5 on that scale.

It should *only* get a 5 of 5 on the *relative* scale.

I understand what you're saying that given an overall rating of 4 out of 5 you can then read the fine-print in the review to see *why* that's the case...and a good reviewer will have qualified that with the theatrical presentation etc. HOWEVER...given that being true-to-the-source is the most important goal that a DVD should be mastered to deliver...why then is only the "absolute" quality rating listed? It reinforces the agenda that is becoming dangerous that a "good" DVD is a "WOW" DVD and a "Bad" DVD is one that has stuff like grain or other "film" artifacts that may very-well be director-approved.
I guess my point is that you don't need a separate score for the "fidelity" of the transfer, because trying to accurately access it is going to be difficult or possible in many cases.
 

Damin J Toell

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Part of it for me, though, is that I think the top score in a particular rating system should be something that rarely gets awarded, only for those truly stand-out DVD's that make you go "WOW" when watching. So an accurate reproduction of a 16mm presentation wouldn't get a 5 on my scale (maybe a 4 or 4 1/2).
Here's the way I look at it: someone interested in a given 16mm film with a mono soundtrack finds out that a new DVD of that film is going to be released and wants to find out what the quality of that disc will be, so he looks for early reviews. This person is used to crappy releases of this film on video over the last 20 years and really hopes that this DVD will finally get it right. He doesn't care whether the disc happened to make a certain reviewer go "WOW" like with, say, The Scorpion King. He just wants to know whether the DVD of this film is the best that it can probably be, not whether it is able to compete with recent theatrical releases with multichannel sound. And, in fact, the new DVD features a pristine transfer from a newly-struck interpositive and a beautifully cleaned up PCM mono soundtrack. If the fan of this film watched the DVD, he would indeed say "WOW," as he is so used to terrible video releases of it. He looks at a review of the DVD, however, and sees that it only got a 4 out of 5 in A/V quality, and is disappointed, believing now that there is room for improvement with regard to this film. This seems absurd to me.

If there are no apparent defects on a given DVD of a film, and there is therefore no apparent room for improvement for a future DVD of that film, how can that DVD score less than whatever the highest rating is? If "WOW" is a factor, it should be with regard to the film itself, not with regard to the latest random high-budget blockbuster with multichannel sound. Those interested in reading DVD reviews for the A/V quality of Birth of a Nation, it seems to me, aren't in the slightest interested in a scale that compares it to Pearl Harbor: Vista Series or The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. It therefore seems to me that a disservice is done to those fans by making the scale work in that way.

Now, I appreciate Ron's point of view very much, and honest reviewers who can only report what they see should be commended for the jobs that they do. As I said earlier, I think the task of comparing a DVD to the film's own subjective fidelity-to-source quality is a very difficult one. However, if a given reviewer actually does know that a given DVD is the best that it can probably ever be and still decides that the DVD isn't worth the highest rating, that seems quite problematic to me.

DJ
 

Colin Jacobson

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I agree that the theatrical presentation should be taken into account, but in reality that's much harder to do than you might think.
Damn straight! So many flicks look terrible in theaters that it's very hard to know exactly how it's "supposed" to look. A lot of people take the theatrical experience as absolute gospel and state that a DVD's good because it looks just the way the film appeared on the big screen. Since most movies I see theatrically look like death, that's not a good thing - even at the better theaters around here on opening night, the prints ALREADY have various defects! (I still recall an ill-fated experience when a girlfriend and I tried to see Psycho '98 - on three different screens at the same brand-new multiplex, all of the prints were so terrible we abandoned attempts to watch the movie. Made me believe in God - SOME higher power must have saved me from watching that abomination!)

The best a reviewer realistically can do is judge a DVD on some vaguely objective standards and explain his rationale - that's it. If the reviewer in question happens to possess particular insight about a specific title, that's gravy, but since some of us write literally hundreds of reviews a year, it's not realistic to expect us to be experts about every flick. All we can do is a) try to be consistent and b) try to be honest...
 

Jeff Kohn

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If the fan of this film watched the DVD, he would indeed say "WOW," as he is so used to terrible video releases of it. He looks at a review of the DVD, however, and sees that it only got a 4 out of 5 in A/V quality, and is disappointed, believing now that there is room for improvement with regard to this film. This seems absurd to me.
4 out of 5 isn't exactly bad, I'm not sure that would be anything to get disappointed about. If anything, your example just points out that a score in an of itself doesn't provide much useful information; rather, you should actually read what the reviewer has to say about the picture quality. The simple fact is, scoring is subjective. Different reviewers are going to do it in different ways. What really matters is whether the review helps you make an informed decision about the purchase.
 

Damin J Toell

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What really matters is whether the review helps you make an informed decision about the purchase.
And I don't think that automatically discounting a DVD in a review because its source film is inherently of lower quality than a modern big-budget blockbuster achieves that. Instead, the information given is skewed in that is put on a scale that compares it to irrelevant films. When such a fundamentally flawed comparison is made, I don't think readers are actually given accurate information such that they can make an informed choice. Stating at the outset that the best possible presentation of a 16mm film can never achieve the highest score in a review (which you've done) seems to me to be a prejudicial bias that reduces the utility of those reviews to readers.

DJ
 

Colin Jacobson

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Stating at the outset that the best possible presentation of a 16mm film can never achieve the highest score in a review (which you've done) seems to me to be a prejudicial bias that reduces the utility of those reviews to readers.
No, it just means that the score - or grade - has to be taken with some qualifiers. It's not a perfect system, and no perfect system can exist. Some folks want to base ratings solely on transfer quality - which is EXTREMELY difficult to judge since it's so tough to know how a movie is really "supposed" to look - or the actual appearance.

I use some caveats in my picture and sound grades, but I still think "A"-level marks should be reserved for stuff that looks/sounds great objectively. Obviously some agree with this method and some disagree. I don't think this will ever change - we can debate these issues endlessly (as we have) and the two sides remain apart. Guess we'll just have to live with that...
 

Damin J Toell

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I disagree. A four out of five simply gives the reader something to expect. If I give a perfectly-transferred 8mm flick an "A+", that sets up a certain expectation level that the image won't match...
Really? To me, an A+ video rating for a transfer of an 8mm film means that I will see an image that is a perfect transfer of that film with no visible digital artifacts. I wouldn't expect to see picture quality rivaling a 35mm-sourced disc. As a reader of such a review, A+ would mean "the best this film could be on DVD," not "video as cool-looking as The Mummy Returns.

DJ
 

Robert Harris

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I'd like to make several points if I may.

First and foremost, while it is relatively easy to give a rating to a new production which has a "known" look, it is extremely difficult to accomplish (at least for me) with a film from the 1960s or before.

There have been a number of instances in which titles have come to light on this group and I've attempted to answer certain questions about the "look" of a film.

In some instances, I simply know the look of the film, the way that Joe Caps may know the sound of a certain film and the orientation of the tracks, and I can give a bit of authoratative advise.

There have been other instances for which I've had to find or somehow pull in an original 35mm print and check that look.

But even that doens't often answer the question at hand, and I'll give you a perfect example.

I had a conversation earlier this week with a studio archivist who has been working extremely diligently on the restoration of a major early '60s film.

There has been great damage to the original negative, with massive sections of dupes being cut in. But to make matters worse, the film has been printed in a number of different ways, possibly by different labs over the years, and a search is under way in an attempt to locate one of the earliest examples of the film as printed for its premiere.

Short of finding one of these prints, the precise contrast and exposure levels of some scenes cannot be discovered. Understand that we are not speaking in terms of something looking good, but rather looking right.

What was the proper contrast level on the Eisenstein films?

One would have to find an original Russian nitrate print to ascertain this.

What should the color sequence in Ivan 2 look like?

Since it was (I believe) shot on captured German stock, which has certainly faded over the years, and we are now dealing with dupes of dupes, who is to say...

even if we can locate an original nitrate print.

Since we don't know the precise fading characteristics of that film.

If however, you take a film like The Big Country, and make a comparison of the dvd vs. an original dye transfer print derived from reduction matrices, you'll immediately be able to note that what we have on the dvd has very little relation to what's on the print.

Most dvd reviewers have not been film reviewers.

With several exceptions, and without naming any, you'll know who I'm talking about, most dvd reviewers have no idea what film looks like.

Some, like Ron, make no bones about this. But there is another side to the story. What Ron can and does tell you -- and he does it extremely well, is not whether a new release looks precisely as it did on film forty years ago, which to most people has absolutely no relevance anyway, but rather, if the dvd "works" as a video representation of the film, and if that film merits your attention because of the quality of its story and acting -- not its film grain.

And for his passion in doing this, Ron is one of the best reviewers of content on the web. He is totally unbiased by studio politics and gives you the information straight and correct.

So where has this taken us?

To a point at which while I must applaud David's concept and overall proposal, I believe that it would be extremely difficult to put into place in the real world.

And that world is the place where no one can tell you precisely what something is supposed to look like unless they have a reference.

Which is why on a number of occasions, I've come back to this group with an answer of "I don't know."

If you don't have direct reference, you cannot review a dvd perfectly.

Let's return to King Kong for a moment.

Most of the best representations of the film which we have come to know as King Kong today have been derived from an early 1940s nitrate print.

But it was, I believe, in 1942 that the film was re-timed and made to print darker overall.

I've never seen a 1933 print.

Gone With the Wind is another perfect example.

The current dvd looks absolutely nothing like a 1939 print.

But it looks terrific.

Few people have seen 1939 prints, and most who did early on don't remember what they look like.

If Warner was to issue a new dvd of GWTW the way that it looked in 1939, they would get nothing but complaints.

The film has very little actual color. What color it does have is neatly hidden behind a sepia overlay. It is extremely dark, flat as printed with its extra black and white record, and is generally not very pleasing to the modern eye.

But this is what it looked like.

In 1954, the film was retimed by David Selznick, the color brightened for the newer Technicolor process, but still with an overall light goldish to sepia look. There were no whites in the film.

If this was the modern representation on dvd, I'm certain that people would STILL complain.

So what we essentially have on dvd is a modern representation of GWTW. Daniel Selznick was involved in the latest incarnation-- and it works beautifully.

As another example, and I'm certain that Patrick McCart will jump in here, there are very, very few silent films which have survived via original negatives.

What we have left if we are lucky are fine grains or lavenders, or possibly dupe negatives. But these dupe negatives, produced from ill-produced fine grains do not represent the beauty of these films as they originally looked.

I recently did a survey of about fifty silent films from one studio. Of the entire list, there were no original negatives. About ten did not survive. Another twenty only survived as 16mm reduction prints.

So when Van Helsing makes its way to dvd sometime in the future, as shot by Allen Daviou, we'll know that it looks precisely as the filmmaker and DP intended.

But take vitually any older film and suddenly the Pandora's box has opened.

Dupes, contrast and saturation problems, color problems, focus and grain problems. On top of which we have the latest in technology to rob those films of their original grain, if that grain has survived and give wonderful electronic enhancement.

Can we come up with a totally subjective means of assessing dvds.

I don't think so.

RAH
 

Ronald Epstein

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What Ron can and does tell you -- and he does it extremely well, is not whether a new release looks precisely as it did on film forty years ago, which to most people has absolutely no relevance anyway, but rather, if the dvd "works" as a video representation of the film, and if that film merits your attention because of the quality of its story and acting -- not its film grain.
Coming from a person like yourself, this is one of
the nicest compliments I have ever received.

I think you nailed it on the head when you said that
the essence of a review should be whether a DVD
succeeds on the merits of its story and video
presentation. That is about the best I can offer
this forum, and to be honest, the best I can expect
out of any reviewer.

I am paranoid about every review I post. I write so
many reviews per week that it's becoming a sort of
assembly line process. I often make little mistakes
that turn out to be embarrassing -- such as the
misspelling of actor names that the spellchecker
misses or stating "An Affair To Remember" is a
Technicolor film.

There's also the continuing problem of trying to
find ways to describe how good the audio or video
presentation of a DVD is. Let's face it, most DVDs
look pretty darn good and with every review, I have
to find new words to describe the same transfer as
most other titles. I am well aware how repetitive
I have become in my descriptions, but how else can
you describe the same transfer time and time again?

Finally, people like Peter Bracke over at DVDFILE
(if I may use him as comparison) know their film
history. I do not. DVD has become an educational
experience for me -- but a highly enjoyable one as
I am discovering some of the greatest classic film
I have never seen.
 

Robert Harris

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Ron wrote:

"DVD has become an educational experience for me -- but a highly enjoyable one as I am discovering some of the greatest classic film I have never seen."

Which is precisely why DVD and the release of classic films on DVD is the success story that it is.

There is a huge difference between going out and spending 12 or 15 dollars to purchase something that you've never seen before, but always wanted to see...

and the old days, in which we would take half a week's paycheck and purchase a 16mm print, splices and all to find the wonders of a tale or performance.

DVD has given the ability to witness film history to the masses.

RAH
 

Colin Jacobson

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Can we come up with a totally subjective means of assessing dvds.

I don't think so.
I think you meant "objective" - the current system's already pretty darned SUBjective!:) But I fully agree - even if we a) all knew EXACTLY how a movie should look/sound and b) agreed that we'd rate them the same way, we still have to deal with c) equipment differences!

Honestly, I think the current system's just fine, and not simply because I'm part of it. Sure, reviews differ somewhat, but that's why everyone should read multiple reviews of a title to get a consensus. Ron tells people not to accept his opinion and gospel, and I feel the same way - I honestly report what I heard/saw, but don't take that as "proof" that you'll feel the same way.

We all strive to do our best and are happy to "upgrade" the system if possible. But total objectivity and agreement won't ever occur, and disagreements such as this and the one about "reference quality" will continue to happen...
 

DaViD Boulet

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It may mean that to you, but if I slap an "A+" on such a transfer, it
will NOT mean that to the vast majority of viewers. Like I stated, this
argument will probably never reach a solution. Some folks advocate
rating the transfer and not the actual look/sound of the movie, while
others think the rating should depend totally on how the image/audio
work objectively compared to a modern standard.
Yet another perfect illustration of why one single rating is not adequate.

I'm well aware that the subjective nature of trying to compare a DVD against its film-original form is difficult and impossible to do perfectly. However, at the same time every reviewer who's told me how impossible it would be to do this in this thread has made many statements in various reviews such as "But this is the way the director intended it to look" or "But this grain was part of the source film elements and was an intended part of the look by the director". Why now is it suddenly so "impossible" to have a rating score that qualifies that so that the only qualified score won't be the "objective" overall-WOW rating?

I'm not talking about writing a thesis or spending weeks digging through film archives to do comparisons under labratory conditions...I'm just talking about acknowledging the "true to the source" element by legitimizing it in a rating category. Naturally it will be a subjective rating...but what else is new? We had review sites all over the web completely disagree about the picture quality of the Sound of Music DVD (some apparently blind to the heavy Edge-enhancement :) ) and the world didn't come to an end. I don't see any reviewers suggesting that they not rate the "overall" picture quality because of the subjective element of each reviewer having their own idea of what a "good" DVD looks like and the differences imparted by the various display systems used?

So if a reviewer knows enough to say "Amilie is a lovely transfer, but flesh-tones are unrealistic and yellow-toned due to the stylized color alterations done by the director" then why can't that reviewer give the transfer a "5 out of 5" for being faithful to that goal?

Not suggesting that we have perfection or nothing at all...I'm just pointing out that the current tradition of reviewing leaves out or undervalues the most important aspect of DVD mastering..."does the disc replicate the original film-experience as well as the DVD medium allows?"--the purpose of this thread is to try to get the reviewing community to start to focus on, and emphasize, this all-important aspect in their reviews rather than just making it a side-point or a caveat in their otherwise "WOW" oriented review. Doesn't mean it's not subjective...just that it needs some attention and deserves a bit of spot-lighting.

Talking about how amazing a transfer is to the source and then giving a title like Aliens a 4/5 due to the heavy-film-grain and dark imagry is a contradiction as the rating score doesn't support the most important values the movie-phile community should be concerned with. Having *two* ratings...one that speaks to overall "WOW" picture quality (4/5) and one that speaks to the DVD doing the best that it can to reflect the film original (5/5) seems to me to be an easy and relatively straight-foward way of accomplishing a win-win: not only giving lip-service to the importance of home-theater replicating film as accurately as possible, but letting the rating system reflect it.
 

TheLongshot

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I don't know why some people here have such a hard on about "ratings". Since it is subjective anyways, I find ratings more than useless. I'd rather people describe what they see, and what kind of problems it has, if any.

With ratings, you get comparisons with apples and oranges that isn't helpful to anyone.

It is the reason why AnimeOnDVD no longer uses ratings anymore, since it was all subjective anyways.

So, let's get rid of all ratings. Just give us a summary at the end of the review whether or not the DVD is worth our while and why. That's all I care about.

Jason
 

Damin J Toell

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As I mentioned, people say "that's how it looked/sounded when I saw it in the theaters" and think that means gospel, but it doesn't; if that's the case, Psycho '98 should have big green scratches running through it, as all three prints at the local first-run, opening-weekend multiplex demonstrated that flaw.
I don't think anyone who says that a DVD shoud look "how it did in the theaters" actually means "how it looked at problematic screenings," just like someone who wants a book to be reprinted "as it was originally published" doesn't mean "as misprints during the original run were published." "How it looked in the theaters" is meant to convey the Platonic ideal of how it was supposed to have looked in theaters. Whether anyone can accurately assess this is another thing, to be sure, but no one actually wants presentations that are known to be erroneous.

DJ
 

Robert Harris

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I still find a great deal of humor in the fact that Wide Screen, a fine publication, obviously into modern audio techniques, cannot get past the concept of either "big, fat mono" or "undistinquished mono."

And these for recordings which were Academy Award winning state of the art...

at the time.

Which leads us back to what has now been voiced any number of times -- you can't / should not compare the silent Nosferatu to The Mummy Returns.

Other than that, I do agree that for any discussion of the "look" of something, any number of stars is an inadequeate representation, and words are necessary.

The problem is in translating what one sees or thinks one sees to the reality of the sitatuation, intermingled with one's expertise as to relates to the image.

I'd probably give this Pandora's Box... two stars.

RAH
 

Colin Jacobson

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Other than that, I do agree that for any discussion of the "look" of something, any number of stars is an inadequeate representation, and words are necessary.
Exactly! This entire thread has revolved around issues related to grades of some sort. Those exist as a convenience, but they don't explain the whole story and should be used as nothing more than a quick shorthand. I don't regard my grades capriciously - I try hard to be as fair with them as I can be. But we'll never have a perfect system and we'll never totally agree. I appreciate the viewpoints of folks like Damon, but I don't concur with them...
 

Robert Harris

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One additional point on this entire thread:

There a few sites to be found on the web, via which a number of people with disparate views, but with a single goal in common, can have a multi-page thread in which each and every viewpoint has something positive to be said for it, with no idiots in the pack of respondents, and no one finding it necessary to go on the attack.

For that we can blame Ron and Parker.

RAH
 

Lee_eel

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I believe a rating for picture quality should relate to the technical side (the transfer). The whole point of dvd reviews for me is to read about the picture and sound quality. Granted, a lot of movies have distorted or experimental looks but that should not affect the rating of a transfer. I can live with a film looking grainy or having muted colours as long as the original film elements looked the same. What i can't tolerate is shoddy transfers such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Castaway, Shawshank redemption and Grease (all region 2). Severe digital artefacts take me out of the movie experience. I can't say the same about film artefacts unless they are really severe.
 

Seth Paxton

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I will chime in with agreement on David's idea.

I think a Transfer Accuracy Video/Sound would be a great catagory.



And for what it's worth I think it's a terrible mistake to think that modern film technologies far surpass the ability of even nitrate film for capturing visual beauty/clarity. I think what happens 99% of the time is that people associate the deterioration with the original picture quality. But seeing even DVD level examples (like some of the Kino releases of early works) of films done at basically the same time but having various levels of surviving representation (like original negative vs some other dupe) tells me just how difficult it is to always appreciate the original quality of even the earliest of films. If only they had been taken care of properly.


And in regards to their usefulness, how do any of you feel about a pristine P&S transfer?
 

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