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*** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

#31
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3/27/09 at 4:02pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Some people are acting a bit spoiled regarding transfers. If they did every film's transfer to some people's standards, it would take them decades to get their thousands of films released.

I'm sure if some titles sell well enough they will do additional restoration and release them to retailers, but you can't honestly expect every classic title to look as good as Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz...
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#32
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3/27/09 at 4:05pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brandon Conway
Expecting these titles to be from HD masters is a bit too high of a standard, IMO. Investing the money into HD masters vs. the relatively inexpensive manner of this Warner Archive program are two things that just don't fit together.

Well, no, not really. ALL studio titles now are routinely granted HD transfers that are then downconverted for DVD. That's one reason why there was a huge jump in quality on many titles from 2004-ish and on. HD masters downconverted to SD look much better than native 480 transfers.

I wouldn't doubt these are from HD masters, it's just the encoding is all off. I'll bet Warner supplied the master tapes and left the authoring job to others - and it was bungled. Poor compression and encoding the titles as interlaced... Even the cheapest big studio releases don't tend to suffer in those areas.
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#33
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3/27/09 at 4:07pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by MLamarre
Some people are acting a bit spoiled regarding transfers. If they did every film's transfer to some people's standards, it would take them decades to get their thousands of films released.

I'm sure if some titles sell well enough they will do additional restoration and release them to retailers, but you can't honestly expect every classic title to look as good as Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz...


You're missing the point: it is the authoring job that most of us are concerned about. You can have a great print, great transfer, etc. But if the authoring is done poorly then you have a pixelated, interlaced mess. It doesn't appear that Warner's usual mastering standards are not in evidence on these releases, though some have terrific prints and transfers as their sources.

Warner: If someone is listening, PLEASE change whatever company is doing the encoding on these titles!
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#34
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3/27/09 at 4:10pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

It is going to be interesting to see which films, if any, emerge looking better than ever from the vaults. I bet some films were destined for "proper" dvd releases, but maybe due to the declining demand for DVDs have been shifted to Warner Archives for release instead.
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#35
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3/27/09 at 4:14pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Pennington
I think there is a clear difference between the people who are watching their discs on analog displays and interlaced vs those with HD displays and upscaling capability. Those older displays with composite video could cover a lot of the problems some of us are seeing. DREAM LOVER might look just fine using S-Video on a 27" analog TV (I doubt it would look THAT good though), but upscaled to 1080p on a 47" LCD, well... All of the shortcomings are loud and clear.

Chuck, I hear what you're saying, but almost any DVD player purchased today will include good deinterlacing circuitry which could help mediate the flaws you have observed.

My equipment currently consists of an Optoma HD-65 front projector and a Tosh XD-E500 upscaling player. I've decided to purchase "Sweet November" (I'm a *huge* Sandy Dennis fan!) just to see what it looks like with my configuration. Heck, I don't see how it could be any worse than the non-anamorphic release of the original Star Wars films!

Joseph
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#36
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3/27/09 at 4:29pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Bolus
Chuck, I hear what you're saying, but almost any DVD player purchased today will include good deinterlacing circuitry which could help mediate the flaws you have observed.

My equipment currently consists of an Optoma HD-65 front projector and a Tosh XD-E500 upscaling player. I've decided to purchase "Sweet November" (I'm a *huge* Sandy Dennis fan!) just to see what it looks like with my configuration. Heck, I don't see how it could be any worse than the non-anamorphic release of the original Star Wars films!

Yes, these transfers are easily deinterlaced with no problem, but the resultant quality still isn't as good as a progressive encode - a good one, anyway. The upscaling won't make the poor compression look any better.

SWEET NOVEMBER I finished watching a few hours ago. It's just okay - quite soft - with what looks like a bit of edge ringing in some scenes. The software they are using for the compression seems to have problems with the color red. Did you see the weird vertical color strobing in the DREAM LOVER captures? Check out the hanky in Newley's jacket pocket in the first capture. That isn't a JPG artifact from the capture - that's what the image ACTUALLY looks like!

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#37
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3/27/09 at 4:32pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Pennington
Yes, these transfers are easily deinterlaced with no problem, but the resultant quality still isn't as good as a progressive encode - a good one, anyway. The upscaling won't make the poor compression look any better.

SWEET NOVEMBER I finished watching a few hours ago. It's just okay with what looks like a bit of edge ringing.
It depends on your equipment and from pass experience, it has been hard for me to tell the difference with my video processor and display.

I'm reserving judgement until I see some of these discs with my own eyes and equipment.
G.W. McLintock: Camille, you're on your own.
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#38
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3/27/09 at 4:35pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

I'd love to chime in but the eighteen titles I ordered and which have said "shipped" since early Tuesday, have yet to arrive. Very annoying.
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#39
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3/27/09 at 4:43pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by BillyFeldman
I'd love to chime in but the eighteen titles I ordered and which have said "shipped" since early Tuesday, have yet to arrive. Very annoying.
I'm in the same boat, but you bring up an interesting point about reading more viewpoints except just a few about the quality of these discs. I hope these discs start shipping to people so a true consensus can take place about the PQ.





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#40
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3/27/09 at 5:40pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Epstein
I could say the same thing about Westbound which looked decent, but was plagued with very minor video shifting and some minor compressionartifacts.
I don't understand why / how a 72 minute film could exhibit compression artifacts.
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#41
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3/27/09 at 6:25pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Howson
I don't understand why / how a 72 minute film could exhibit compression artifacts.

A two-minute film could if it was poorly compressed. It isn't so much space that makes the difference - sometimes not even bit rate - but the software used for the process and the settings. I encode projects myself and have found there are many ways to foul things up at some stage in the game. No two encoders are exactly alike in dealing with the same source material.
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#42
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3/27/09 at 7:05pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Hearing that all these discs are all mastered wrong has really turned me off from purchasing any titles. I have noticed in the past from watching movies from the Harold Lloyd collection, that a movie not mastered properly can ruin the viewing experience. I have an older Sony DVD player that plays all the Lloyd films without any interlace problems. If I play the same disc in a DVD player using HDMI, then the problem is evident. I can't even change any settings to help this. I don't want to purchase a non-progressive DVD player once my Sony stops working, so what could I do to improve this one the other player?

I was thinking about using a s-video cable in addiction to the HDMI, so I play interlace DVD's. I don't know how this will effect the player. I know there is a setting that allows me to turn off HDMI. Can anyone suggest a way to improve interlace DVD's?
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#43
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3/27/09 at 7:46pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by silentman74
I have an older Sony DVD player that plays all the Lloyd films without any interlace problems. If I play the same disc in a DVD player using HDMI, then the problem is evident. I can't even change any settings to help this.

All upscaling DVD or Blu-ray players I know of have setting that can be changed. You'll have to reference your manual, but there is a setting deep within the menus concerning video presentation. There are often settings for "auto", where the player determines if the source needs to be deinterlaced or not, and then there are "film" and "video" settings. My Sony Blu-ray player handles most things quite well with the "auto" setting, but my other two regular DVD players need to be set to "video" to avoid combing.
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#44
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3/27/09 at 8:03pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Does anyone think the 'strobing' Chuck is describing could a CUE (chroma upsampling error). I don't hear much about this anymore, but I remember it was a problem with certain DVD players (or rather the settings on their processing chips/boards) about 5-6 years back. It looked similar to what you are describing. I also see something similar when I capture video from a dvd player via analog composite inputs to a Dazzle, and then output via firewire to imovie/quicktime. If that's the same kind of artifact, that is most definitely not cool.
Funny enough of the four titles I was interested in- all have been covered so far (Grasshopper, Sweet November, Doc Savage, Mating Game). Thanks to all, as you just saved me a gob of dough I can put to better use.
I'll try to return the favor if/when another studio implements a similar program
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#45
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3/27/09 at 8:13pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul_Scott
Does anyone think the 'strobing' Chuck is describing could a CUE (chroma upsampling error). I don't hear much about this anymore, but I remember it was a problem with certain DVD players (or rather the settings on their processing chips/boards) about 5-6 years back.

Yes, it looks exactly like that, but it is built into the video on the disc, not something due to the player. I've played the disc on 2 DVD players and a Blu-Ray as well as my DVD-ROM drive, and they all show that exact effect on these Warner Archive discs, though none as horrifically as on DREAM LOVER. I can't wait until someone else on here has some of these titles and confirm what I'm seeing and have posted screen captures of. DREAM LOVER should not have been released looking as it does (aside from the fact that the film is so disappointing) due to the faulty compression/encoding job done on it.

I certainly don't want to keep anyone from buying fun titles like THE GRASSHOPPER and THE BABY MAKER. I just want to let people know what the discs are like. They are FAR from looking to be from VHS or some aged broadcast analog master tape, but they aren't exactly up to the standards of regular Warner catalog titles either. I'm glad I got all of my titles, save for DREAM LOVER. Just look at the capture below from that movie - what looks like bad JPEG compression is actually how the disc looks!

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#46
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3/27/09 at 10:18pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Pennington
A two-minute film could if it was poorly compressed. It isn't so much space that makes the difference - sometimes not even bit rate - but the software used for the process and the settings. I encode projects myself and have found there are many ways to foul things up at some stage in the game. No two encoders are exactly alike in dealing with the same source material.
Yeah, I would like to think the people making the DVD images know what they are doing. I regularly convert digital TV recordings to DVD images using Nero Vision, provided the content is under about 2 hours, I never get visible compression artifacts because I set the encoder to 2pass, and to use all of a single layer disc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by silentman74
I was thinking about using a s-video cable in addiction to the HDMI, so I play interlace DVD's. I don't know how this will effect the player. I know there is a setting that allows me to turn off HDMI. Can anyone suggest a way to improve interlace DVD's?
Can you change the output to 1080 interlaced, then let your display do the deinterlacing? Or does HDMI only output a 1080p signal?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul_Scott
Does anyone think the 'strobing' Chuck is describing could a CUE (chroma upsampling error).
I thought that was strictly a bug with MPEG2 decoder chips incorrectly decoding the stream? Or was it also related to buggy MPEG2 encoders?

I accept that the actual video master of these won't be up to the usual new film element + 2K (or higher resolution) scan + digital clean up + down conversion from a 1080p master that we expect from regular Warner DVDs.

What is unacceptable is the fact we are seeing compression artifacts because 120 minute films are being crammed into 4 GB (4.5 Mbps), or simply because the compression wasn't done carefully. Warner Archive should have a policy; any film over 110 minutes should be on a dual layer disc. The bitrate shouldn't average lower than 6 Mbps for the film itself. Sure this will increase their production costs for longer duration films, but hey, the discs are being sold at $20 each.

If all the films were encoded at 6 Mbps average, then they could have a system where customers could order any 2 films on 1 dual layer DVD, provided that the total duration didn't exceed about 190 minutes. This would be more that sufficient for a lot of the Allied Artists westerns, and many of the RKO film noir that we are told are on the way. This would save materials, packaging, and postage costs.
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#47
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3/27/09 at 11:18pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

So far, these caps and descriptions bring to mind the Legend Films dvds of the Paramount deal they got, ranging from really good to ...eh. Thanks for reviews thus far.
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#48
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3/28/09 at 11:57am
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Okay, I just cleaned this thread up a little because this thread existence is meant for people to post their reviews of various Warner Archive discs and not to debate the program itself or whether the dvds are too expensive. Therefore, let's restrict our comments to the dvd reviews as we have another thread available to discuss those other topics. Thank you.






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#49
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3/29/09 at 11:20am
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Way to quiet the room, Robert! Seriously, guys, give us some more reviews! I'm sure some of you must have watched some titles yesterday. Mine won't arrive until Tuesday at the earliest.
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#50
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3/29/09 at 3:07pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard M S
It is going to be interesting to see which films, if any, emerge looking better than ever from the vaults. I bet some films were destined for "proper" dvd releases, but maybe due to the declining demand for DVDs have been shifted to Warner Archives for release instead.

I guess it will depend on what has existing transfers and what do not.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when they start offering titles that have NEVER been aired or TCM/TNT and/or had a video release/television syndication anytime in the last 30 odd years!
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#51
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3/29/09 at 11:36pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

I think that HEART BEAT comes pretty close to the above scenario. Ditto BRAINSTORM, ANGEL BABY, and possibly MY BLOOD RUNS COLD.
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#52
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3/30/09 at 1:41am
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Howson
I accept that the actual video master of these won't be up to the usual new film element + 2K (or higher resolution) scan + digital clean up + down conversion from a 1080p master that we expect from regular Warner DVDs.

Economically, it makes sense for the Studio to go from film to 1080p SR and 480p Digibeta at the same time rather than just going to digibeta. You can always come down from an SR master. That way they supposedly don't have to transfer it again if they ever want to go hi def. otoh, they've now found out that a film transferred at 4 or 6k looks a heck of a lot better downconverted to 1080p than a film transferred at 1080p (aka 2k), so maybe they will have to retransfer titles anyways in the future.
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#53
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3/30/09 at 4:18am
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

That red screenshot is completely unacceptable. Wow.
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#54
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3/30/09 at 4:27pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

I have received and viewed my initial order of five titles from WB Archives. I have a 65" DLP Hi-def TV and played the DVD-Rs upconverted from a Sony blu-ray player.
WESTBOUND, WICHITA, AL CAPONE, and THE GEORGE RAFT STORY were all widescreen; ALONG THE GREAT DIVIDE was not. WESTBOUND and WICHITA were in color. Picture Quality on all of them was very good---comparable to traditional DVD (pressed) releases for fifty year old films. Unless the studio undertakes expensive restoration efforts, as with films like GIGI and SOUTH PACIFIC which are appearing now on blu-ray, I cannot imagine we're going to see a better product. No doubt quality will vary throughout the catalog, but I'm certainly hooked.
I am concerned about durability of the medium; but that never stopped me from taking a plunge before---VHS, laserdisc, etc. Time will tell. Naturally, I wouldn't object to a lower price, but I'm not waiting around for one. When I ordered the blu-rays of GIGI and SOUTH PACIFIC, I could have passed and waited a year or two and picked them up at a lower price, used or discounted, but I want them NOW. Tomorrow is promised to no one.
WICHITA was quite a revelation. Aspect Ratio is 2.55x1. I taped it to VHS from TV many years ago, but the pan and scan was really only half a movie.
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#55
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3/30/09 at 4:47pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Its definitely going to look very interesting, I have a few oldie favourites from Warner, and been checking to see if those titles are going to be rereleased. A few of them will, a few probably won't for a while.
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#56
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3/30/09 at 9:43pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

DVD Drive-In posted their review of Hammer's Crescendo...
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#57
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3/30/09 at 9:47pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

...well, I just finished watching "3 Sailors and a Girl"...all I can say is that it does not look like a standard DVD...more like a VHS tape. The sound is good but the picture is not; one or so too many distractions (some flickering, some edge enhancement...).

I'm just sad that this type of presentation is how I am supposed to look forward to future films in this series. This film, for example, may not sell many copies but I feel it is a disservice to those who would want the best presentation possible.
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#58
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3/30/09 at 11:40pm
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Got my eighteen titles today. First off, thanks Robert for the Warners number, which I've made note of.

I've taken a quick gander at about twelve of the titles and they really run the gamut. The best of them so far is The Money Trap, which looks great in its anamorphic scope transfer. And Wichita looks equally good, which is a real treat. Sweet November looks ugly, smoggy, muddy, with no vibrance to its look at all. George Raft Story looks barely better than VHS. The Crowded Sky, ditto. The D.I. looks okay, as does Made In Paris. I'll report on others as I watch them.
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#59
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3/31/09 at 8:02am
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by BillyFeldman
Sweet November looks ugly, smoggy, muddy, with no vibrance to its look at all.

I didn't post much of a review for this one, but it did look quite soft and slightly fuzzy, like a dupe. Color was okay though, and the print seemed to be in good condition. I like that the original trailer was included. The compression and encoding didn't sport as many flaws as some of the other titles, but it was interlaced and lacked the fine definition of many other titles released to DVD from the same time period.

I enjoyed the movie! I had never seen it before.
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#60
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3/31/09 at 9:14am
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Re: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Pennington
I didn't post much of a review for this one, but it did look quite soft and slightly fuzzy, like a dupe. Color was okay though, and the print seemed to be in good condition. I like that the original trailer was included. The compression and encoding didn't sport as many flaws as some of the other titles, but it was interlaced and lacked the fine definition of many other titles released to DVD from the same time period.

I enjoyed the movie! I had never seen it before.

I ordered this Friday afternoon of last week and am eagerly awaiting its arrival. It's really *shocking* to me that it wasn't released to DVD around the time of the "Sweet November" remake in 2001. Sandy Dennis is well known for her role in "The Out of Towners" opposite Jack Lemmon, but I thought she did a much better job in this movie.

Joseph
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