HTF REIVEW: Mary Poppins 40th Anniversary SE - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! (2 Viewers)

[Doug Bull]

ArthurMy,
I was the one who did the early review of the Australian Region 4 DVD on this site.
After reading your posts, you had me worried that maybe somehow I may have imagined it.
BUT, I just did a re-check and WALLA! it most certainly is there.

Disc One:
Track 1 = 5.1 Dolby Digital.
Track 2 = 5.1 New Disney Home Theatre Mix.
3 + 4 Foreign Languages
5. Commentary.

As I said on my earlier postings the original 5:1 Dolby Digital track is fabulous.

I went to the DVD player's Sound Menu to check it out, but it should be the default soundtrack anyway.
Both my Audio Receiver and 2 different DVD Players confirmed it is 5.1 and your speakers and ears will tell you anyway.

Have you got the official Australian Grey colored front Cover R4 set?
Does it have the Australian Buena Vista credit on the bottom of the back of the jacket?

Let's hope you find it and confirm that I was right all along.

ps. And my original mini review and comments from a previous thread was very clearly defined as coming from actually viewing the discs and not at anytime depending on packaging credits, which we all know is very dangerous ground.

 

[ArthurMy]

Yes, I have the gray-colored 40th Anniversary set. If it's the default I'll just play it that way and see. And I'll double check the setup menu, but my memory is it had the 5.1 Enhanced mix and the 2.0 Theatrical mix. I'll report back, and I hope you're right.

 

[ArthurMy]

Well, Doug is correct, and I offer my apologies. The default soundtrack is 5.1 - when you choose the other soundtrack in setup it's only labeled as "English", with 5.1 being designated of the Enhanced mix. I assumed it was the same 2.0 mix because a) I didn't listen to that much of it and b) there isn't a lot of rear channel activity going on in the section I listened to. But a simple look at my receiver told the tale. Now I'll watch the movie!

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Ken - that frame I posted was from a release print of the film and is hard-matted to 1.75. A theatre would either show it in 1.75 (Disney's aspect ratio) or the standard 1.85 widescreen ratio. Theatres would not have shown it in 1.66, since you don't create a theatrical 1.66 presentation by masking the sides. The common theatrical ratios - 1.37, 1.66, 1.85, 2.35 - have the sides of the image at the same spot. The 1.66 ratio on this DVD is incorrect.

 

[DeeF]

Is that really true, Peter, that in all those ratios, the sides are in the same spot? That doesn't really make sense to me. That would mean that a 1.37 picture would be a lot bigger than a 2.35 picture. It seems like the sides would change -- that curtains would be drawn in, for narrower ARs.

I've never been a projectionist, and truthfully, I never paid attention to ARs until the advent of DVDs, but there it is.

It does seem to be more correct for the top and bottom to remain constant in all these ARs, and the sides to vary according to the wideness of the picture.

I could be wrong, but please show me.

 

[Steve Christou]

I have the Region 4 Mary Poppins too, and according to my dvd player it has two English 5.1 tracks, the only 2.0 track is the commentary. Haven't watched the film yet but I sampled both 5.1 tracks, the 1st was great, the 2nd sounded like one of those awful pseudo stereo soundtracks that Fox Video used to have on their films.



Depends on your point of view, to me Peter's frame makes it clear that this new dvd doesn't excessively crop the image, so I'm pretty relieved about that.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

It's actually just the opposite, the theatre uses different sized lenses to fit the image to the screen.

(For the sake of this discussion, let's assume the theatre uses "common height" for their presentations - the height stays the same but the screen image gets wider depending on how wide the image is).

Remember that when Cinemascope came in, the screens got wider (In CinemaScope, Panavision, et al, the image on the film is squeezed during photography and unsqueezed during projection to give the wider image). When the studios wanted to come up with a cheaper way to offer widescreen (without paying a license to Fox and renting special lenses for filming), they came up with the idea of cropping the top and bottom of the image during projection and filming to accomodate (each studio had their own ratio - 1.66, 1.75, 1.85). The theatre then uses a different (shorter) focal length lens than their 1.37 lens, this enlarges the picture wider than the old ratio. The aperture plate in the projector masks the top and bottom of the image. A theatre that runs common height needs four different lenses - for 1.37, 1.66, 1.85, and the anamorphic lens for 'scope films.

If you have a widescreen TV, put in a DVD with a 4x3 image. Obviously, it fills only tyhe center portion of your screen. Now, hit the "Zoom" button (or whatever enlarges the image without squeezing it), the picture gets bigger - now reaching the edges of your monitor - and the top and bottom get cropped off. This is exactly how a 1.66/1.85 theatrical presentation works.

 

[DeeF]

I see what you're saying Peter, about 1.66 and 1.85. But still, it doesn't make sense that 2.35 and 1.37 would have the sides in exactly the same spot. If they did, they'd have to crop too much off of the top/bottom of the 1.37.

My impression of Cinemascope, is that it was meant to be both wider and taller than the old academy ratio.

And when Vista Vision came along, it was supposed to be just as wide as Cinemascope, but actually taller.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Cinemascope could be both wider and taller, many theatres had to completely rebuild their proscenium area in 1953/54 to fit in the new screens.

It's the lens in the theatre that determines the ultimate size of the image (depending on the theatre's architecture) - 'scope lenses have two parts: the "anamorphic" element that performs the 2x unsqueeze and a standard lens behind it - if you alter the focal length of the standard lens, you can make the image larger or smaller to fit the screen. Remember that CinemaScope applies a 2x squeeze to the image during photography that is then unsqueezed in the projector - that is why the image is wider, no height is cropped off as it is for 1.85. I was mistaken before, actually the optical track CinemaScope frame is slightly larger than the Academy ratio - the 'scope frame is .839" x .715", the Academy frame is .825" x .600" (1.85 is .825" x .447", 1.66 is .825" x .497"). Dimensions are width x height.

 

[DeeF]

I finally understand the miscommunication. You're talking about the frame, and all these frames were essentially that same width, until Vista Vision and ultimately Todd-AO and other 65mm processes.

I thought you were talking about the projected image being the same width in all these cases. I misunderstood.

I get it now, thanks.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Ah - the beauty of internet communication!

If you are interested, I recommend spending a little time here: www.widescreenmuseum.com , more information than you could possibly need!

If you ever make it to one of my Big Screen Classics shows, I'll be happy to show you the booth and the associated gear up there.

 

[DeeF]

Oh, I'm very familiar with the Widescreen Museum -- I've practically memorized it.

My grandfather is mentioned there -- Harvey Fletcher, the original developer of multi-channel stereophonic sound, at Bell Laboratories. (It's in the sound processes section.)

Where in NJ? I'm from Summit, NJ, myself.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

In Suffern, New York (right over the NJ border), at the historic Lafayette Theatre. Here's the website - www.bigscreenclassics.com .

We have the Saturday morning series beginning again in March and the 3-Day Silent Film Festival in April, among other events. As well as first-run films every day.

 

[Carlo_M]

Wow, Peter, what an excellent use of the actual film to illustrate what the old and new DVDs capture. Since I too don't think the different framing is too egregious, I'll go ahead and pick this one up (I own the Gold DVD too) for the improved sound and picture restoration.

I do wonder though, who chooses how to frame the film for DVD, and what thought processes go into that decision...

 

[rich_d]

Peter,

I wondered about Steve's statement of the image not being "excessively" cropped so I took another look at the image you posted.

I measured the film image you posted (measured on my screen) at 145 mm by 83 mm or 1.747:1 which supports 1.75:1 being spot on. So for starters it appears that what I see for an image is the same aspect ratio as you see.

However, the red area of the image I measured at 134 mm by 78 mm which would make for an aspect ratio of approximately 1.72:1. I also measured my own DVD image and I got 1.71:1 ... obviously extremely close once again.

It would seem that the image on my DVD and the DVD image that you saw as well is not 1.66:1 but something wider (in comparison to height) than Disney has specified on the DVD specifications.

So, is my logic off or is Disney's DVD spec's wrong as well as being cropped?

Steve,

If a film is cropped slightly, it is not a big issue for me, but this new DVD appears to be a 13 percent reduction of the projected film image. Hardly small potatoes.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Disney's nominally 1.66:1 16:9 enhanced transfers are just about always a little wider than that in actuality.I would revise "hardly small potatoes" to "well within the margin of error for most theatrical presentations I will ever see", but YMMV.

Regards,

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Rich:

I originally hesitated in posting the film frame because of the very reason that Ken mentions - theatrical presentations *rarely* show every last bit of the film image. The projection angle in typical theatre might neccesitate trimming the sides by a couple of percent to present a geometrically correct image. While I think a 13% loss on a theatrical showing is a bit high (that would mean that a 20-foot high screen with a 1.85 film would only show a 32-foot wide picture instead of the correct 37-foot wide picture; 2.5 feet on each side is a lot of missing image, IMO), I do think it's *far* too much for a video transfer, since there is no reason for it.

 

[Rob W]

You should take this explanation even further, Peter.

One of the main reasons theatres seldom expose the full frame image to all sides is that they rarely receive a print that doesn't have some sort of printed-in defect that would show up if the full image edges were exposed. It's not uncommon to see flash marks from splices in the original negatives at the tops of frames, and slightly cropping the top of the frame will prevent these from hitting the screen . Sides will also often show jagged edges or misalignments from reel to reel if you don't crop them slightly as well.

 

[Doug Bull]

ArthurMy,
Apology accepted, but I must say you had me worried there for a while.

The first track is fabulous, while the Disney remix is just plain lousy.

Enjoy the DVD Mate.

PS. Just as a matter of interest are you able to view it in pure PAL or via NTSC conversion.
If the latter, what's the converted picture quality like?

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Correct. Slight variations can and do exist on different reels of a films, so projecting to the full edge is not usually recommended. Those dimensions I quoted earlier are the maximum, in practice you can count on 2 - 3% loss on all sides.

EDIT FOR CLARITY - The 2-3% figure I mentioned above would be the total reduction, not per side.