A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Professionals -- in Blu-Ray (1 Viewer)

[PaulDA]

Not to ignite an acrimonious debate, but a quick perusal of reviews for this title has revealed to me a somewhat (though not perfect) inverse relationship to the reviews of Patton. Those who praise this film's transfer are generally quite negative towards Patton on BD and vice versa. The level of criticism of this film has not reached the intensity of those who dislike the Patton transfer, but the source of more to less critical reviews appears like a mirror image.

This suggests, to me anyway, that studios will hedge their bets (in the aggregate--there will certainly continue to be exceptions) in light of such a split opinion (especially if it continues) and "side" with the more "popular" opinion.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Michael, yes I was thinking about There Will Be Blood.

I'll concede that the sequences are different, but in terms of directorial confidence I believe my choice was still valid.

- Walter.

 

[Michael Reuben]

It's hard to understand what some reviewers are looking at. This is Joshua Zyber at HighDefDigest:

"Edge halo artifacts"? I must have missed that.

Zyber didn't review Patton; so I don't really see an inverse relationship, but if I were a studio, I'd just throw up my hands, stop reading internet reviews, hire the best film preservationists in the business and let them do their job.

M.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I believe that there was a minute amount of haloing on the top surface of the train against the sky in the early moments of the film, but this was the only sequence that called attention to itself (during my viewing.) I certainly did not see pervasive haloing throughout the runtime of the feature.

- Walter.

 

[Paul_Scott]

The only black stain on an otherwise fine release- but it's a big stain for me because I do have a 2.35 screen set-up. I haven't checked yet, but I don't remember having a problem with the subs on the first dvd release of this. If there isn't an issue there, I'll likely just go back to watching that from now on. Quite disappointing actually.(I don't know about previous Bd titles, but the ability to change size and position was an HD DVD feature on all the titles I have. Maybe someday Blu-ray can develop the same advanced technology. May need to add another profile first though)

 

[Paul Arnette]

I didn't realize that this feature was available on all HD DVD's with subtitles. I only recently noticed it on Studio Canal's UK Brotherhood of the Wolf HD DVD because there was a Subtitles tutorial. I wonder if there are some on BD releases that we're just not aware of because the feature has been poorly advertised?

 

[Robert Crawford]

I read that review yesterday and decided not to comment on it unless somebody else brought it up here. Of course, I disagree with Zyber's review and I'm very happy with this release. Furthermore, his review of the movie itself is lacking to me which isn't surprising since I think so highly of this film.






Crawdaddy

 

[Paul Arnette]

I don't recall many halos either, but again I wonder if this might not be a function me having a smaller display (50"). Perhaps these details are more obvious on larger displays or when projected onto a screen?

 

[Michael Reuben]

I have a 72" screen. RAH uses a front projection system. So I don't think that's the issue.

M.

 

[DonovanCampbell]

To be honest, I wouldn't think of Lumet at all in this case. How many films has he done that haven't been mostly dialogue based?? In the case of The Wiz, he shot a dance sequence from afar, and from behind. He's had some interesting, isolated, visuals occasionally, but not a full sequence.

On the other hand, and this is certainly debatable, one director immediately came to mind when you asked the question: Blake Edwards. He's certainly shown over many films that he's a master at physical comedy, and this requires a great visual sense of scene. I think he could have pulled it off.

 

[OliverK]

Bigger screens tend to magnify things - a very big screen and a close seating distance will make movies looks very bad that looked good on smaller displays.
During my time as a home theater enthusiast I have been going up in screen size and down in relative seating distance to the screen. This does help the cinematic experience as films now cover a bigger part of my field of view but a lot of transfers do not looks that good at these distances as they did before. So it could be a combination of both but as has been pointed out before RAH also has a pretty big screen and he also does sit quite close to it.

Regarding the nature of the halos:
Some halos can of course be an artefact of the original photography, so if the halos have diffuse edges and look more like a white glow around actors or objects they are probably in the film elements, too. But I have yet to see halos with sharp edges on film, so if there are some of those on the transfer they probably cannot be found on the elements used for the transfer.

 

[Cees Alons]

Absolutely true and often forgotten. Background projection and unsharp-masking techniques could have been the cause.

Halos can also be generated in the last stage of displaying the picture: the TV set or projector.

I often wonder if those reviewers actually calibrated their sets for HD use. Factory settings almost always have too much edge-enhancement, and even "proper" settings for SDVD could still be off for HD viewing.

It's very tricky to determine if too much EE, if present, was applied in the transfer stages or not. Halos on the original elements are not easily removed. Having one's monitor at a "sharpness setting" that's too high, can relatively easily be healed.

Those cases where reviewers see halos that aren't seen by highly experienced movie enthusiasts, lead me to think it might be the latter in those cases.


Cees

 

[OliverK]

I would not expect RAH to mention halos that were caused by principal photography as in that case there is nothing wrong with what is on screen.

To be fair to Joshua Zyber: If he does mention halos this also means that he does not see them with other movies so I would be surprised if this was caused by an excessive sharpening of the picture.

 

[Cees Alons]

Excessive halos caused by TV settings would only been seen in almost every picture if it was really an excessive setting.

I won't deny that, under a more moderate setting, it would only be visible in some problematic parts. But even if they were "problematic" in this respect, that doesn't mean the TV (or projector) setting isn't to blame.


Cees

 

[OliverK]

You are right that sharpening does show artefacts only in certain scenens but from what I read Joshua whom I mentioned is aware of this and does not use it, dunno about others of course.

In any case I would be surprised to find reviewers that both mention Halos as objectionable artefacts AND use so much sharpening that they cause the problem for themselves, people who notice halos usually also know how to operate the sharpness settings in their systems.

Hopefully I will soon be able to see for myself - The Professionals are on their way together with The Sand Pebbles and A Bridge Too Far

 

[BrettB]

Doesn't state screen size but here is his eqp.

Joshua Zyber
- BenQ W10000 1080p DLP projector
- Panamorph UH380 anamorphic lens
- DVDO iScan VP50Pro video scaler
- Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player (via HDMI)
- Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD player (via HDMI)
- Denon AVR-3808CI receiver
- Cambridge Soundworks (CSW) Newton MC600HD left/right main speakers
- CSW Newton MC300 center speaker
- CSW Newton S305 left/right rear speakers
- CSW Newton MC200 center rear speakers (2)
- CSW Basscube 8 powered subwoofer

Any clues there?

 

[Michael Reuben]

I did say "maybe", and I mentioned Lumet only because he just made a movie that exhibited some of the "old school" values on display in The Professionals -- namely, trusting in the script and the actors to keep the audience interested without resorting to frantic cutting or look-at-me camera moves. I happen to think that Lumet's visual skill has been grossly underrated, but that's a subject for another thread.

M.

 

[Cees Alons]

That's a potential problem, of course, because it's in the picture projection path and adds a deliberate distortion.
I know some guys use it to achieve a form of same height images (which is fine if you dig that). If you like it, it's great while enjoying a movie, but personally I consider it plainly wrong if you try to judge the full quality of the disc image with all that extra glass in between. Of course we also cannot know how the projector was calibrated (just like you do not know that about mine ).

But really, I don't think we should concentrate on one reviewer in this discussion. I'm sure he saw what he saw.


Cees

 

[Paul_Scott]

Ok- this subtitle problem has really ticked me off.
When I read the first review on this that mention the placement of the subs, I had to scratch my head and try to remember where in this movie there was subs, and how often these occurred.
I hadn't seen the movie in a few years and I honestly couldn't remember. I just pulled out my original disc of this and now I know why- THERE WEREN'T ANY!
Now, I missed seeing this in the theater, but watching the film, the scenes I watched, play properly without them. In the ambush at the train, Lee Marvin's character basically interprets what is being yelled by the banditos which makes the subs entirely redundant. No question to me, the scene plays so much better without seeing them on screen. Ifyou don't know Spanish, the effect is more tense and more chaotic. And if you do, then again the subs are redundant. They effectively dumb down the sequence.
Now this wouldn't be a problem if you could just shut them off- but you can't! Some knucklehead at Sony forced subs on this...and ugly, large computer generated ones at that. UGH.
the level of frustration with Bd's has just started to get to be too much for me. I'm really losing a lot of enthusiasm I had and it just doesn't feel worth it. For the paltry # of releases per month, all these issues are ridiculous. I'm paying a premium price to in most cases double or even triple dip, and the releases are still ending up compromised in one way or another.
This is a real drag.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Paul,
As someone that plays my discs with the subs on all the time, I'm sorry this problem bothers you, but I hardly pay attention to the placement of them as I'm into the film itself too much to allow that to bother me. What I do like about this disc is that it interprets the spanish speaking dialogue.





Crawdaddy