Any "Midnight Cowboy" 16x9 remaster??? - Page 3

Sounds like it'll be a fantastic release, I can't wait!!

I would love that too but at least the transfer on the original DVD is more than adequate (unlike the other 70's classics that are getting reissued in Feb including Network, Dog Day Afternoon, All the Presidents Men and Midnight Cowboy).

Did any other MGM DVD feature the trailer for this film? Besides the original release of course. It ain't included on this new release.

Dave - I just watched the new 2 disc last night and I posted some of my " I'm no expert " thoughts on a seperate posting - somehow missed attaching it to this thread.

Dave,

I have this saved on my HD-DVR from HDnet's showing earlier in the month. I also have the new DVD. While they are two different resolutions, I'll try and do some A-B testing.

Very disappointed to see the combing. I bought this blind, because most of the recent MGM SE's have been very good. Well, at least I have the HD print-hopefully that won't have combing issues too.

Well Dave and all, I just watched this, and I have to say I was pretty impressed given the age of the film.

First off, I did not see ANY combing. And I know what it looks like, as I remember seeing it on some Babylon 5 stuff, The Meaning Of Life, and a couple of other things. I paid close attention to the scenes shown on DVDBeaver, and I didn't see it. I verified my setup was set to progressive, and plus I just had my set professionally re-calibrated a couple of weeks ago. I have a 57" Toshiba 16:9 set and a Pioneer DV-563A player.

The picture looked somewhat soft at times, but other parts looked really good. Funny thing is, compared to the HD print I had saved, the only major difference was the HD one had a little more detail, but also more visible grain.

I have not seen the original MGM flipper release, but I have to say, I thought this was a pretty nice presentation. I've never seen the film before, so I can't speak to what it should look like, but it looked natural and did not appear overly processed.

I'm not sure if DVDBeaver got an early screener copy that had problems, or their gear had isues, but again, I did not see combing.

And even though I'm not a big special features fan, I will most likely spin the second disc soon, as I really found the film interesting. Had to laugh at Bob Balaban's character-it didn't click with me until I saw his name in the credits.

So Dave, take a chance and hopefully you won't be disappointed either.

EDIT: I just re-read the DVDBeaver review, and it said "constant combing". Something hasd to be wrong with their review disc or a setting with their gear. I hope Gary gives the retail disc a spin.

Do you mean DVD Beaver? I saw that. Yikes. Non-progressively transferred and the combing in that screen-grab with lots of motion is about the worst I've seen. In that respect, it looks almost as bad as some of the R2/PAL Rohmer titles or the French "See the Sea/Regarde le mer" DVD. Ugh. And damn!

They do note that these types of artifacts aren't as noticeable on smaller tube TVs (is that really true?), so that might explain some of the differing opinions.

I just don't understand how something as basic as a progressive transfer can't be done on a movie as important as this. I know it requires transferring frame-by-frame, but that's routinely done these days (save for some of the smaller studio releases).

Maybe it's incorrectly flagged...and maybe the DVD beaver deinterlacing uses flags rather than 3-2 cadence (like Faroudja chips). That could make all the difference to whether or not combing is a problem.

Good point Dave. I'm not sure how my player handles deinterlacing, but I know I didn't see combing on my copy.

We had a big discussion of that when the 2-disc edition of Leon: The Professional came out (search for it in the Reviews Archive forum). Sounds like they may have repeated the mistake here. Players that check the cadence on the fly rather than reading the flags won't show the combing.

Based on the screencaps at DVDBeaver (I don't really trust screencaps to be accurate in general), the new release doesn't look less detailed than the first R1 edition. The earlier edition looks like it's been sharpened. (Look closely -- there is no picture info in the earlier edition caps that isn't also in the caps from the new edition. It just appears sharper.)

Aaron,

I was just reading the Leon thread (link here), and I see that you and I have the same player, assuming you still use the Pioneer DV-563A. I haven't watched the Leon Deluxe yet, but like you with Leon, I did not see any frame by frame issues with Midnight Cowboy. I have a Philips and Toshiba in the house that are also prog-enabled, and I will check it out on those players as well.

Yep, still using the DV-563A. I had to examine the Leon disc using computer tools to verify what people were seeing.

That player was a fantastic value. SACD *and* DVD-A for $150? Can't beat that with a stick! (Especially after paying $700 for the DV-05 that the DV-563A replaced!)

I love it too. I actually bought it because I read in various places that it handles red better and doesn't have the "chroma bug".

I really hope it stays healthy until I finally buy into HD disc next year. Even then, I would likely still use it for standard DVD.

I bought mine because Gregg Loewen came over to calibrate my new HD set and thought it would be a good time for me to upgrade to a progressive-capable player. We went to Best Buy, and he picked up the deck (I think it was the last one) and put it in my arms.

Just like when the doctor handed me my son in the delivery room!

It has to do with how the 24 fps source material is encoded for playback on a 30 fps TV set and which frames will get duplicated by the player. I read a *great* article on the subject online about a year ago, but I forget where it is. Maybe someone who knows where to find it can post a link (there might actually be a link in that old Leon thread, come to think of it, but I'm too lazy to dig around).

It's really a debate about semantics.

In essence, DVD can be both an interlaced or progressively-encoded format. However in both cases the video "packets" are stored as separated odd/even-line fields--which is why some people (erroneously IMO) argue that DVD is inherently "interlaced". This field-packing method makes the MPEG2 encoding easy for the MPEG decoder to output in traditional 480I form because the video can be decoded directly to 480I without much extra ado. That was the original idea...to make standard 480I DVD players affordable in 1997.

But IMO film based DVDs really can be thought of as "Progressive" for a few reasons:

* Even with this 'field' packing method, film-based DVDs don't employ the 3-2 repitition...they just store 48 fields per second (2 x 24 frames) and the MPEG decoder produces the 3-2 pulldown for 60 Hz playback.

* The DVD is *compressed* progressively to more efficiently use bit-space...compression is much easier on a progressive signal than on an interlaced one. After compression the frames are "split" into fields for packing on the DVD.



Now, as to this individual's comments...actually a film-based DVD flagged as "video" would NOT produce combing because the deinterlacing for video doesn't involve frame-pairing...just interpolating. So the artifact from a film based DVD marked as "video" would just be a slightly softer image (and this happens) for DVD players with 480P processing that uses flags.

The real problem with combing is:

A video DVD mis-marked as progressive so that the decoder tries to pair-up frames that don't form pairs

or

a film-based DVD that has the WRONG fields marked as progressive "pairs" so the wrong ones get paired up for progressive frame reconstruction.

That's a different article than the one I remember, but it looks like basically the same idea.

At any rate, Dave's got the answer.

Here's the real problem for flag-based deinterlacers:

Let's look at 5 imaginary frames of video...

If the film-based DVD originaly had frames 1-5 split into fields for storage on the disc, they should be in order like this (o for odd, e for even):

1o, 1e, 2o, 2e, 3o, 3e, 4o, 4e, 5o, 5e etc.

As long as both 1o and 1e are marked as a "pair" then the flag-based deinterlacer can grab them, zip them back into a "frame" and is good-to-go.

the problem is when the pairing is offset by one...so that it looks like 1e and 2o are a pair, 2e and 3o are a pair etc.

With still images everything would look ok...but any image movement or scene-changes and you'd see a combing/tearing effect since the offset fields would have odd/even scan-lines that would be off by 1/24th a second.

so there are dvnr artifacts with shimmering on shiny objects?