*** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[Simon Howson]

Fair go, it was just a joke!

 

[Colin McGuigan]

There's a review of Doc Savage up at dvddrive-in.

 

[CineKarine]

Standard DVD / small display review....you have been warned.

I thought that Room for One More looked absolutely pristine. As happy as I am about the quality of the others I have watched so far, this is decidedly the best-looking. And, may I add, a beautiful, heartfelt, touching story too that actually stays short of maudlin.

 

[wesaussie]

Has anyone had any trouble with their copy of BIG CIRCUS. I played my copy through my Yamaha 6.1 equipment and although the archive trailer plays OK when the movie begins all of the soundtrack comes into the surround speakers instead of the front speakers. Thus the movie sounds awful. The DVD shows two track stereo so I cannot understand why this should happen. As I am in Australia and went to a great deal of trouble and expense to get this DVD through a US address as Warners don't have international shipping I'm not to keen to return it if all copies are the same. All of the other DVD's in my order work perfectly. Thoughts are welcome

 

[cajunhillbilly]

I finally watched The Adventures of Huck Finn starring Mickey Rooney. The audio/picture quality was quite good. There was an occasional spec in the picture and an occasional hiss in the sound, but otherwise very good quality. I am thinking about getting Capt Sinbad soon.

 

[GregoryMesh]

Gary posted my review for I Was a Communist for the FBI. Pretty decent quality.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

Use a different setting, perhaps without Dolby Pro-Logic or not on the surround setting because it is not decoding properly. There is surely a setting on the receiver that will fix this and just give you the audio in the two front channels.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

SPITFIRE looks pretty terrible, as does MANNEQUIN. These are definitely old video masters that were perhaps used for the video releases in the early 90s. The image is quite high in contrast, the print waves and fluctuates abnormally, and there is a fuzziness to the appearance that I NEVER see on vintage DVD releases from major companies.

PAINTING THE CLOUDS WITH SUNSHINE has some scenes with very nice color, and print appears to be in great shape. The encoding shows its shortcomings in some quite noticeable macroblocking in some of the brightly lit dance scenes. It also appeared to have some color fringing from where the 3 strips of film did not perfectly match up in several reels, but it wasn't as bad as I've seen on many other Technicolor films from this period. Stupid movie though - just stupid.

 

[Simon Howson]

I assume the dancing scene features a lot of movement? Is it a fast or slow dance?

I just hate hearing this sort of thing, I don't mean the mentioning of it, I mean the fact errors of this sort are occurring. There is absolutely no justifiable reason why an 87 minute film should show any macroblocking whatsoever, even on a single layer disc. This suggests either 1) it has been encoded on a very old encoder 2) the encoding features an arbitrary bitrate limit that is far too low.

Either way these are more signs that whoever is encoding these DVDs doesn't know what the hell they are doing. If I was in the U.S. I would demand a replacement, or an exchange for a different film.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

The macroblocking is evident with or without the heavy movement. It is most noticeable in solid blocks of color.

The encoding is just another example of the poor compression done on the initial slate of titles. The print and transfer are perfectly fine, sometimes even quite good, but the engineering behind the disc lets things down. It is FAR from unwatchable, but it is less than I would've expected.

If anyone is interested, I posted 2 highlights from PAINTING THE CLOUDS... As you can see the color is quite nice. As it is further compressed by YouTube, you can't judge the compression on the DVD from what I posted. These two scenes were ALL that I found in any way enjoyable - such a silly plot.... Remember to select the HQ option in the bottom right of the video window!

 

[Chuck Pennington]

LOL - ALL of the discs are rather poorly compressed, so that wouldn't help much. Some transfers take to the poor compression better than others from what I've seen, to be sure.

The next few batches of titles have surely already been authored, but here's hoping things change around soon so they are compressed and encoded at a higher standard, not necessarily bit-rate.

 

[Simon Howson]

Why wouldn't complaining help? Not complaining certainly won't help, because WHV would be able to pretend that everything is fine regarding disc quality, and will just charge ahead with new releases, instead of fixing the transfers of what is already available.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

What I meant was I would just be exchanging one poorly compressed/encoded disc for another one with similar deficiencies. I hope they take the comments from the survey and on this website to heart as constructive criticism to improve the quality of the discs. I have a strong feeling the powers that be were unaware of the poor compression/encoding. So odd no one at the studio actually checked the discs on decent equipment (I'm assuming) as I would think traditional studio product has such a QC process.

I don't see them going back and re-authoring 165 titles based on what is probably a small number of people voicing complaints, but I don't know. I can see them making improvements for the future, and I hope this is the case.

I must remark again how surprised I was at the lack of quality on SPITFIRE and MANNEQUIN. These are quite old video masters indeed. I'd wager that most of the other titles I viewed were from newer masters, but definitely not these two. Of course, it's not like they are great films anyway - SPITFIRE really makes me laugh in a "bad movie" kind of way though.

 

[Simon Howson]

All the more reason for people to complain!

 

[wesaussie]

Thanks for the reply Chuck. Yes I know I can readjust the equipment to make it play correctly. What I was trying to point out and ask, has anybody else had this problem with this title as obviously if the WB archive trailer preceding the movie plays OK and all of the other archive movies I purchased play OK as well then there is something wrong with the way the movie BIG CIRCUS has been made on this DVD. I should not have to adjust my equipment just so I can watch one DVD It should be made correctly in the first place and I was trying to establish if any other purchaser of this title had the same problem before I return the movie to WB as being faulty.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

But you must remember it is a 2-channel stereo title. Many receivers are set to use Dolby Pro-Logic processing on those soundtracks and that could cause a phasing problem where audio is sent to the rear channels that does not belong there. There are 2-channel stereo titles that DO decode properly with Dolby Pro-Logic to bring in a center channel and mono surround, but with the 50s stereo titles one must be careful when playing them back.

If the movie plays correctly in the front two channels when your receiver is set to that type of playback, I don't think there is a problem. I understand that the Warner promo beforehand sounded fine, but I believe it is also mono, as I'm sure most of the other Warner Archive titles are as well.

It's possible the soundtrack was incorrectly flagged as surround encoded and that is why your amp defaulted to Pro-Logic processing for it, causing the phasing issues you described. Are you using the digital input on the receiver, either coaxial or optical? If so, then that may be what caused the problem: the ac3 sound file being flagged as Dolby Surround encoded when it wasn't, and then your receiver defaulting to that mode when it isn't the proper way to present the soundtrack.

If this is the case, a replacement disc will have exactly the same issue as they are all copies from the same encoded master.

 

[Matt Hough]

I watched POSSESSED (1931) last night. It's obviously been taken from a videotape master as the image is quite soft, but I did note fewer instances of dirt, scratches, and debris than in other Archive titles from this same period.

The sound mix could have used some attention as it's very noisy, full of hiss and crackle, sometimes distractingly so.

 

[ahollis]

Just finished The Mad Miss Manton and I am extremely disappointed in the transfer. To start off with, from the RKO logo until about two minutes into the film the are numerous vertical scratches on the left side. You almost would believe that they ran the print at a local theatre through a platter system before the transfer.

I used to have the Laserdisc of this enjoyable film, but I do not remember the poor print condition. Can anyone confirm the laser had the same problem?

I guess after purchasing several titles, this was bound to happen, but I am not sour on the WA program, just a little hesitant.

 

[wesaussie]

Thanks once again Chuck for your reply. You have also solved my problem for me as all of the other two track stereo DVD's I purchased in my order including Quentin Durward and Bhowani Junction and the fact that the Warner Archive trailer are all in the same format and play on my system without a problem (all in the front two channels) then the BIG CIRCUS obviously has a manufacturing problem with the sound the way it is. This also means as you said that all copies will be the same indicating therefore that they were not mastered correctly in the first place. I have now contacted WB and asked them to check this out. Hopefully a new remastered version that fixes the sound problem on this title will be made.

 

[Matt Hough]

Tonight I watched PAYMENT ON DEMAND. Apart from a few stray white specks and one or two light scratches, the video quality was very strong: sharp, excellent contrast with pleasing grayscale.

The volume level of the audio was set very high, but apart from one audio dropout, the audio was also very good.