A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Great Race -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Peter Apruzzese]

The "Overture" card is not part of the actual movie, so I'm sure it was done in SD video 10 or more years ago.

 

[john a hunter]

So am I the only one that sees 'issues' with this disc?
On the opening Overture card, the white filigree border design looks low res digital (harsh pixel aliasing). The word Overture OTOH looks smooth and solid, so it's odd that the detail in the edges looks so much lower res. Once we get into the film proper, the second shot with Curtis in front of the ballon basket shows some noticeable shimmering on the basket weaves as the basket moves back and forth.

I stepped through a bit more of it and didn't notice any more glaring flaws, but the overall impression I had was "don't look too close at this one, it just won't hold up to even causal scrutiny".

This is on a Pioneer FPJ1 feed by an Oppo 103 and shooting on a 9' wide screen. Viewing distance is about 1.25 screen widths. Given how lauded the Oppos scaling is, I doubt what I'm seeing are errors introduced by that piece of gear.

You have checked your sharpness setting Paul?
I have the 105 and when the BD arrives hopefully Monday, I will check it out.
As for those wretched title cards, may I suggest you use the pure direct button to blank them out so you can see The Great Race as it was intended.
These ruin the opening of many a roadshow film but thanks to Oppo you can negate this nonsense.

 

[haineshisway]

Um, the opening overture card was not part of the film's release, so your point about it is, well, not relevant. Based on two shots, one of which isn't even in the film, you're ready to say it won't even hold up to casual scrutiny? Really? Sure held up for me and everyone else in this thread so to thine own set-up look. There are a huge number of opticals in this film - can't remember if the shot with Mr. Curtis that you are referencing is one of them and I'm actually not that interested to find out.

EDIT: Well, thanks, I just wasted five minutes and looked at it. a) there is NOTHING wrong with the created title card for the overture, although, even if there was, it was never part of the film. b) the shot you're referencing is indeed an optical as I suspected (the gleam coming off Curtis's teeth should clue you in). There is, however, no shimmering whatsoever on the basket - what there IS is a moving shadow from the netting against the canvas.

Hope that helps.

 

[Conrad_SSS]

Um, the opening overture card was not part of the film's release, so your point about it is, well, not relevant. Based on two shots, one of which isn't even in the film, you're ready to say it won't even hold up to casual scrutiny? Really? Sure held up for me and everyone else in this thread so to thine own set-up look. There are a huge number of opticals in this film - can't remember if the shot with Mr. Curtis that you are referencing is one of them and I'm actually not that interested to find out. EDIT: Well, thanks, I just wasted five minutes and looked at it. a) there is NOTHING wrong with the created title card for the overture, although, even if there was, it was never part of the film. b) the shot you're referencing is indeed an optical as I suspected (the gleam coming off Curtis's teeth should clue you in). There is, however, no shimmering whatsoever on the basket - what there IS is a moving shadow from the netting against the canvas. Hope that helps.

I heartily concur. This disc looks and sounds wonderful. I've already screened it twice on both my home theater projection system and on a 65" plasma in another room, and each time I was enthralled by the quality of both the disc AND (of course) the film itself. What a treasure.

 

[Paul Scott]

Um, the opening overture card was not part of the film's release, so your point about it is, well, not relevant. Based on two shots, one of which isn't even in the film, you're ready to say it won't even hold up to casual scrutiny? Really? Sure held up for me and everyone else in this thread so to thine own set-up look. There are a huge number of opticals in this film - can't remember if the shot with Mr. Curtis that you are referencing is one of them and I'm actually not that interested to find out.

EDIT: Well, thanks, I just wasted five minutes and looked at it. a) there is NOTHING wrong with the created title card for the overture, although, even if there was, it was never part of the film. b) the shot you're referencing is indeed an optical as I suspected (the gleam coming off Curtis's teeth should clue you in). There is, however, no shimmering whatsoever on the basket - what there IS is a moving shadow from the netting against the canvas.

Hope that helps.

Good to know about the title card. I suspected it might be something as simple as the card being created in a lower res for a video release. I was thrown though by how smooth the actual word looked. I would have expected aliasing to be consistent across the entire image.

As for the basket shimmering- I was referring to the second cut (not the first with the optical gleam).
We see the announcer, then cut to curtis (optical with tooth glint), cut back to the announcer, and then cut back to Curtis. It's this last shot (which I would assume is now a non-optical), where the basket is moving quite a bit and -on my set up at least- the video struggles to resolve the fine weaving in the basket as it bounces around.

checked all the settings on the Oppo and nothing seems amiss. And the video feed is straight to the pj, not going through a reciever or processor. I'll give 1080i a shot tonight and see if that affects anything.

As far as the causal scrutiny comment- My looking at this disc bookended a viewing of Agony & The Ecstacy which looked truly spectacular. TGR, even in it's non optical shots, just did not impress me as looking all that special for a film of this era as the comments and reviews have suggested. (and yes, I realize apples & oranges...but the hyperbole is the same)

 

[lukejosephchung]

Good to know about the title card. I suspected it might be something as simple as the card being created in a lower res for a video release. I was thrown though by how smooth the actual word looked. I would have expected aliasing to be consistent across the entire image.

As for the basket shimmering- I was referring to the second cut (not the first with the optical gleam).
We see the announcer, then cut to curtis (optical with tooth glint), cut back to the announcer, and then cut back to Curtis. It's this last shot (which I would assume is now a non-optical), where the basket is moving quite a bit and -on my set up at least- the video struggles to resolve the fine weaving in the basket as it bounces around.

checked all the settings on the Oppo and nothing seems amiss. And the video feed is straight to the pj, not going through a reciever or processor. I'll give 1080i a shot tonight and see if that affects anything.

As far as the causal scrutiny comment- My looking at this disc bookended a viewing of Agony & The Ecstacy which looked truly spectacular. TGR, even in it's non optical shots, just did not impress me as looking all that special for a film of this era as the comments and reviews have suggested. (and yes, I realize apples & oranges...but the hyperbole is the same)

"The Agony & The Ecstacy" was a Todd-AO 65mm production, "The Great Race" 35mm Panavision...naturally the former's going to be way sharper!!!

 

[haineshisway]

"The Agony & The Ecstacy" was a Todd-AO 65mm production, "The Great Race" 35mm Panavision...naturally the former's going to be way sharper!!!

Thank you for stating the obvious.

 

[Paul Scott]

...hence "apples & oranges". but if I 'm the only one that is seeing this image struggle with fine detail during movement, than it must be somewhere in my set up. I'll look again tonight.

 

[OliverK]

"The Agony & The Ecstacy" was a Todd-AO 65mm production, "The Great Race" 35mm Panavision...naturally the former's going to be way sharper!!!

Thanks again to the studios for "finding out" that it is enough to blow up 35mm to 70mm for release prints because nobody will notice the difference between movies shot in 35 and 70mm...

 

[schan1269]

So am I the only one that sees 'issues' with this disc?On the opening Overture card, the white filigree border design looks low res digital (harsh pixel aliasing). The word Overture OTOH looks smooth and solid, so it's odd that the detail in the edges looks so much lower res. Once we get into the film proper, the second shot with Curtis in front of the ballon basket shows some noticeable shimmering on the basket weaves as the basket moves back and forth.I stepped through a bit more of it and didn't notice any more glaring flaws, but the overall impression I had was "don't look too close at this one, it just won't hold up to even causal scrutiny".This is on a Pioneer FPJ1 feed by an Oppo 103 and shooting on a 9' wide screen. Viewing distance is about 1.25 screen widths. Given how lauded the Oppos scaling is, I doubt what I'm seeing are errors introduced by that piece of gear.

What does Oppo's scaling...and being lauded, have to do with a1080P source and projector?

 

[Paul Scott]

correct. I misspoke. It shouldn't have anything to do with this.
Which is why I'm even more at a loss as to explain why I'm repeatably seeing instability in a segment of the image that others apparently are not.

 

[bigshot]

I have an Oppo 103 and an Epson 7500UB on a ten foot screen. I looked at both of those scenes this afternoon and they looked fine. Do you have the sharpness on your projector cranked?

 

[DP 70]

When I saw a screening of a 70mm print projected on the Cinerama screen using an original D-150 lens at thePictureville Cinema in Bradford a few years ago it looked as good as a 65mm production.I should have my copy this week.

 

[Paul Scott]

I have an Oppo 103 and an Epson 7500UB on a ten foot screen. I looked at both of those scenes this afternoon and they looked fine. Do you have the sharpness on your projector cranked?

Nope. No sharpening controls crakend on the pj. I do have a Darbee, but it's set to under 25.

I looked at the scene again last night. Initially I had the picture zoomed in for a 16:9 AR, so the image from this disc was now letterboxed and smaller than last night. I was about 78" wide IIRC. The shimmering or aliasing was still there, though not nearly as apparent as with the larger image. It's most noticeable when Wynn is securing the straps around Curtis's feet. It's possible it could just be a quirk with the way this pj is handling motion and fine detail. But the thing is, I ended up watching the whole movie last night, and this kind of hiccup wasn't repeated anywhere else- despite all the fine, tight detail on display in clothes and props/sets. Even the texture on the announcers straw hat during that sequence- which is just as fine as the braiding of the basket, doesn't cause a problem.
It's not a huge deal, and to be honest that ended up being the only 'issue' I ended up having with the entire disc.
My initial negative impression was based on seeing that in the opening minutes, along with the aliased detail in the initial title card. Chapter skipping also ended up dropping me off frequently at the tail end of a cross-dissolve. I had assumed I was coming in on a hard cut so the slight loss of res seemed to be another example of the effect of a lower bit rate or not especially keen compression.
Viewing the whole disc though, I was wrong on that count. Any quirks seemed to be inherent in a source that is filled with opticals. I see now where the unanimous accolades were coming from.

As a bonus I can honestly say I enjoyed it a lot more on this second viewing than I did on the first (the dvd release 10+ yrs ago).

 

[bigshot]

Sometimes Darbee will grab onto stuff weird. Last night I watched Herzog's Nosferatu and there was a scene with the vampyre's lit up face small in a black frame. It was probably shot on high speed film available light, so it had a lot of grain. The Darbee went to town on the shot and made the most interesting textures out of it. I actually kind of liked it. It was like bugs were crawling all over his face!

Most of the time, I can crank the Darbee up all the way and not see any artifacting, but occasionally there is some small detail where I notice it. Doesn't bother me though because it artifacts in a natural looking way.

 

[FoxyMulder]

Sometimes Darbee will grab onto stuff weird. Last night I watched Herzog's Nosferatu and there was a scene with the vampyre's lit up face small in a black frame. It was probably shot on high speed film available light, so it had a lot of grain. The Darbee went to town on the shot and made the most interesting textures out of it. I actually kind of liked it. It was like bugs were crawling all over his face!

Most of the time, I can crank the Darbee up all the way and not see any artifacting, but occasionally there is some small detail where I notice it. Doesn't bother me though because it artifacts in a natural looking way.

Anybody who wants accurate video doesn't use a Darbee, i know many people love this device but it achieves it's aim by altering contrast, i also wonder something, why did Paul originally zoom the image to 16/9, i don't understand that at all.

Do you have the UK edition of Nosferatu, i ask because the Shout edition has had de-graining applied to it.

 

[Mark-P]

How about watching the Blu-ray without the extra processing of DarbeeVision before making judgments about the quality of the disc?

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

Anybody who wants accurate video doesn't use a Darbee, i know many people love this device but it achieves it's aim by altering contrast.

Today digital image processors are in all displays, cameras and players which now incorporate some kind of image improvement processing. So you have to ask what is an objective view of "accurate video"? Technology has gone beyond the point where the number of pixels (i.e. image resolution) and color would determine what looks realistic.

 

[Paul Scott]

Anybody who wants accurate video doesn't use a Darbee, i know many people love this device but it achieves it's aim by altering contrast, i also wonder something, why did Paul originally zoom the image to 16/9, i don't understand that at all.

Do you have the UK edition of Nosferatu, i ask because the Shout edition has had de-graining applied to it.

I have a poor man's constant height/variable width set up. The first time I spun the disc it was zoomed out (the live image being ~44" high). After watching A&E and then putting TGR in again briefly, I zoomed it down to watch some 1.85 AR material. I checked TGR again at this size with the 44" inclusive of the letterbox bars. When I realized I was going to watch the whole movie, I zoomed it back out.

BTW I recently picked up the Shout disc of Nosferatu and already have the BFI. The elements for the German version of the film for some reason have issues don't show up on the English version. The two versions share some of the same non dialogue shots between them, and it's relatively easy to see a difference in the quality.
The English BFI looks beautiful from what I've seen (full disclosure: I've only spot checked it ) while the Shout's English version is overzealously scrubbed.
When it comes to the German version though, from what I've seen I think the Shout is more enjoyable to watch as the grain on the BFI is a little unruly. That , combined with the rougher appearence of that version in general , makes it a bit of an eye sore. I'm not a grain hater, but Shouts version manages it well to my eyes to a degree that doesn't look undue or unnatural- despite what screenshot comparisons may indicate.
This is just my observation on my set up. YMMV...and I'm sure it will.

Reading (and seeing the screenshots) about how Shout had bungled this release is what motivated me to buy a region free player a few months back. Now that I have the Shout release in hand, I can say I probably would have been quite satisfied with it (since the German was my go-to version)- but I don't regret having gone region free at all. Quite the opposite, so it all worked out in the end.

 

[Paul Scott]

How about watching the Blu-ray without the extra processing of DarbeeVision before making judgments about the quality of the disc?

What I am (still) seeing in that specific shot looks more like aliasing or errors related to scaling or possibly compression. None of which should be afftected by the darbee- especially when I have it dialed down relatively low.