"Hunchback of Notre Dame" review (1 Viewer)

[LukeB]

Disney is phasing out the "Gold Collection" name. Hunchback is for all intents and purposes, a "Gold Collection DVD"...it's just not called that. And there are no plans to revisit it any time soon.

 

[Robert Cook]

Mark Zimmer wrote:

Have they fixed that, or do I need to shut it off before that comes up?

They have no inclination or funding to "fix" this scene, nor should they tamper with the film, in principle.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I'm pretty sure the crowd sequence I'm thinking of is rotoscoped, not CGI. The movement seems to be identical to just tracing actual human figures.

 

[Robert Cook]

Mark Zimmer wrote:

I'm pretty sure the crowd sequence I'm thinking of is rotoscoped, not CGI. The movement seems to be identical to just tracing actual human figures.

Although I've seen this film numerous times, I've never paid particular attention to the crowd at the end, so I watched it very closely this time. There are moments when all or some of the moving characters were obviously animated by hand, and others when their CGI crowd animation system was clearly being used. I did not see a single character that looked rotoscoped in that scene, in the manner that you would see in Titan A.E., for example. The CGI crowd might have been rotoscoped on computers, but they're still CGI, and have the same type of awkwardness you'll find in most, if not all, CGI human characters in other films (even when using motion capture).

 

[Ed St. Clair]

It's meaningless to compare them to the other transfers, because they're not the same thing.

They are not the same, is the point.

They should have been!

 

[Ed St. Clair]

LukeB,

Is it good enough for you?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Regarding the anomoly during the "hell fire" scene in the fireplace...

This is not a flaw in the DVD mastering. The image was animated to "waver" to simulate the effect of the heat of the fire and how it would distort perception (like heat rising off of hot pavement).

Sheesh!

The DVD image is very high-resolution and the film-grain is very fine. A first-rate DVD transfer, IMO.

 

[Bjoern Roy]

I just posted my in-depth review of the R1 and R2 DVD of Hunchback in the DVD Video Analysis section on my website (link in my signature).

 

[DaViD Boulet]

as usual Bjoern, simply an AMAZING review. I always feel educated as well as entertained by visiting your site!!!

BTW, isn't it odd then, since the R2 disc has *more* detail and less grain??? What do you suppose happened? Do you think both transfers are struck from the same print? The images look so close in all other regards that it's hard to believe they're from different transfers.

thoughts?

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

So much of this has to do with the limits of data storage of DVD. The DTS laserdisc stores the DTS track on one of the PCM digital tracks, part of the amended LD specification, so there is no need to compress the audio.

Just to be technical and picky, the DTS audio is encoded into both of the PCM channels. That is why you get blasts of static if you accidentally select your analog outputs on a DTS laserdisc or CD. The 5.1 "20-bit" DTS channels are compressed and encoded into the equivalent of a 2 channel 16 bit PCM 44.1 KHz bitstream.
As David already mentioned, it is not "uncompressed" simply "less" compressed.
Regards,

 

[Lyle_JP]

Regarding the anomoly during the "hell fire" scene in the fireplace...
This is not a flaw in the DVD mastering. The image was animated to "waver" to simulate the effect of the heat of the fire and how it would distort perception (like heat rising off of hot pavement).
Sheesh!

This is not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing the picture actualy freeze for about 12 frames on my progressive scan player, an artefact I'm not seeing on my interlaced one. I have seen this with discs encoded with bad frames from Anchor Bay before. The errors will not show up on many players but will be very noticeable on others.
-Lyle J.P.