A Few Words About A few words about...™ Howards End -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Roger_R]

I've ordered HE as well together with some other Criterions that are going OOP. I'm interested in seeing how it looks now.


I have a plasma as well, the Panasonic 50" TX-P50V10.

 

[24fpssean]

Okay, so I blew up Howards End.


Let me clarify that: I thought I'd look at it again, just to grind my teeth down another layer, and it suddenly occurred to me to zoom in on the image with my television. A curious thing happened. I zoomed the 2.35:1 image to the full 1.78:1 of the monitor and detail was of course mind blowing, but the "grain" that some reviewer are calling film grain was clearly not that. I could actually see the mess of digital information marching around the screen, putting itself together. The white grid so evident when the film is in its proper aspect ratio of 2.35 is almost invisible, probably because it isn't as concentrated.


Howards End was shot Super 35mm and framed not only for 2.35 Scope but also for 2.20 70mm blow ups and 4.3 Standard Def television. So Tony Pierce-Roberts, while shooting the film (he operates his own camera) had to keep all three aspect ratios in mind. This is why most of the action (if there is any action in Howards End...) is lumped in the middle of the frame, as a happy medium. The Remains of the Day, a year later, was shot the same way only this time Pierce-Roberts was more experienced with the process and was able to choreograph the image to look like it was shot 2.35 and only 2.35 (the 4.3 Standard Def of Remains doesn't satisfy at all!).


I mention this because during my 1.78 blow up experiment, I was able to watch Howards End BIG in on my monitor while losing very, very little action to the left and right. But it also proved to me once and for all that this is not film grain but an awful mechanical digital storm, as if the film were being broadcast over the airwaves. It looks like film grain was scrubbed out. A Room With a View, shot by the same DP and released through BBC blu ray, has had some film grain scrubbing but lightly, so the image is extraordinarily beautiful (though miserably cropped from 1.66:1 to 1.78 - why do DP's allow this??).


Anyway, it could be a player problem - though I've got a standard Sony blu ray player that millions must have. And if I've got a standard Sony blu ray player that millions must have, then Criterion must be aware of what the majority of their customers will be viewing their blu ray discs on.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Criterion has stated that they use, at minimum, the PS3 for playback tests on Blu-ray, and IIRC they may also use an Oppo BDP83. That explains why playback on those two players seems to be without issue. Perhaps someone should lend or donate them the model(s) of Sony players that problems seem to be limited to.

 

[24fpssean]

Yes, since Sony are what most consumers buy.

 

[24fpssean]

"We have been alerted to a manufacturing problem with our Walkabout Blu-ray edition that occurs on a limited number of players. The affected players are:

Sony BDP-350 and BDP-360
Pioneer BDP-05FD and BDP-120
Sharp BD-HP22U, BD-HP21U, and BD-HP20U
Memorex MVBD2520
Insignia NS-2BRDVD

The disc will not load in the Insignia and Memorex players, and with the others, about fifty minutes into the feature, the audio and video begin to skip and stutter. We are working with the pressing plant to resolve this issue as soon as possible. If you have our Walkabout Blu-ray disc and own one of these players, please e-mail Jon Mulvaney so that we can notify you as soon as replacement copies become available."

Days of Heaven required an update in order to play beyond the 47 minute mark, unbeknownst to many who returned their discs. A recall needs to be done on Howards End.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 24fpssean

Yes, since Sony are what most consumers buy.

Actually, we don't know that for sure. No one's broken out the breakdown of sales of manufacturers or models. All we know is that the PS3 is pretty popular.

 

[24fpssean]

All the other models (Insignia/Sharp/Memorex) probably outsell Sony and PS3 being inexpensive players.

 

[PattyFraser]

Well, if research is ever done on this, I'm letting it be known that I have a S550 that has been firmware updated, with all updates available thus far. The disc was unwatchable on this.


I love Howard's End, but I'll content myself with the upconverted DVD rather than put myself through any more research, cause I'm too lazy. But if the tetras-like white grid pattern I saw on this disc were to appear on LotRs I'd be camping out on Criterion's doorstep! So I really understand the need to get to the bottom of this.

 

[24fpssean]

Me, too, Patty. LOTRs theatrical release blu rays got wretched reviews, not because of firmware flaws, but because they just slapped them onto the format and the image was poor. Let's hope the extended editions are given the treatment they deserve.


Criterion's black and white releases have been just sublime - just watched Yojimbo/Sanjuro on a lazy Saturday and was really impressed. I know some complained about the grain, but the way to figure out if it's film grain or digital noise is simply to pause the disc on the offending image. What I saw on Yojimbo and Sanjuro was film grain. The Seventh Seal is Criterion's best b/w so far (though for some reason Det - 'The' - is missing from the title...) almost outdone by M.


Once I got it to play, Days of Heaven has been very satisfying color blu ray from Criterion. I'm a little worried Black Narcissus and The River will suffer from their bad QC departments.

 

[Adam_S]

Sean, I'm also in post, as an assistant editor though, so I understand where you're coming from at being dissatisfied with a mediocre/terrible digital image that others think looks terrific.

I was at the academy last summer for their 'film formats through the ages' night which showed a ton of clips from a variety of films, mostly in large format. Some were digitally restored presentations of 70mm films, most were 70mm film. One in particular looked horrid blown up on that wonderful Samuel Goldwyn screen (and I've seen it in 70mm and know what its grain looks like, it wasn't grainy it was noisy and digital). There were a handful of DPs as part of a panel afterwards, and one made an aside comment that one clip looked particularly atrocious tonight, and shouldn't because the people who were so proud of their image hadn't properly harvested it to begin with, they had got an image that they thought represented film grain but was actually like a pulsing parameceum of digital noise. He went on that so many people today don't know what film grain looks like (I think this was John Bailey, but I'm not certain it was a year ago!) His first job had been printing and running dailies before sending the dailies back to the set and he watched film dailies 12 hours a day for a year and or two, he knows what film grain looks like. And he then said there were certain image harvest machines he simply wouldn't use because they'd produce an image that looked to most people like a beautiful 2k harvest, but when he looked at it all he saw was a "digital floor," not film grain at all, a digital floor.


I think that's either his own term, or the in house term he's familiar with. I've never run across it before or since. But I'm going to hypothesize that a digital floor would describe what you're seeing. This was the result of an inadequate image harvest. The image was pulled, they looked at it, thought they were seeing film grain and didn't look closer, they didn't get that though and since their harvest was calibrated to the digital noise rather than to the grain of the film, everything after that would be off in small but to some people significant ways. So since film grain is already hard to encode think how much harder it is to encode unfocused film grain that looks like a watery layer of digital noise interfering with the grain. The codec has issues with such a complex random structure, and compensates by introducing additional artifacting. I'd hypothesize again that the playback stage introduces another layer of potential problems perhaps some players hardware simply smooth complex transfers out before sending the video output signal to the monitor. And other hardware might more faithfully represent the image encoded or the tape master the encode was produced from. It's not hard for me to imagine that this could be the source of what you and others are seeing. Particularly telling--to me--is that it becomes more clear when you blow up the image.

This isn't an issue of monitor sensitivity, though it partially has an element here, it's more an issue of eye-sensitivity/knowledge. And sometimes even experts will not notice things they're trained to look for (I watched down a show today five times during various outputs and it wasn't until the last output that we noticed a cameraman on the edge of picture. Then we had the joy of insert editing on the other masters.)

I also think this could explain why the DVD looks acceptable, because of the different way it is encoded, much lower bitrate, and the way it resolves detail differently the DVD simply doesn't have the resolution to be bothered by an image harvest whose flaws are only exposed in high definition. A 2k harvest that looks great on DVD could very well be exposed to be as bad as you describe on DVD particularly if people mistook digital noise in the harvest for film grain and passed the harvest through QC.

 

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by Adam_S

Sean, I'm also in post, as an assistant editor though, so I understand where you're coming from at being dissatisfied with a mediocre/terrible digital image that others think looks terrific.

I was at the academy last summer for their 'film formats through the ages' night which showed a ton of clips from a variety of films, mostly in large format. Some were digitally restored presentations of 70mm films, most were 70mm film. One in particular looked horrid blown up on that wonderful Samuel Goldwyn screen (and I've seen it in 70mm and know what its grain looks like, it wasn't grainy it was noisy and digital). There were a handful of DPs as part of a panel afterwards, and one made an aside comment that one clip looked particularly atrocious tonight, and shouldn't because the people who were so proud of their image hadn't properly harvested it to begin with, they had got an image that they thought represented film grain but was actually like a pulsing parameceum of digital noise. He went on that so many people today don't know what film grain looks like (I think this was John Bailey, but I'm not certain it was a year ago!) His first job had been printing and running dailies before sending the dailies back to the set and he watched film dailies 12 hours a day for a year and or two, he knows what film grain looks like. And he then said there were certain image harvest machines he simply wouldn't use because they'd produce an image that looked to most people like a beautiful 2k harvest, but when he looked at it all he saw was a "digital floor," not film grain at all, a digital floor.


I think that's either his own term, or the in house term he's familiar with. I've never run across it before or since. But I'm going to hypothesize that a digital floor would describe what you're seeing. This was the result of an inadequate image harvest. The image was pulled, they looked at it, thought they were seeing film grain and didn't look closer, they didn't get that though and since their harvest was calibrated to the digital noise rather than to the grain of the film, everything after that would be off in small but to some people significant ways. So since film grain is already hard to encode think how much harder it is to encode unfocused film grain that looks like a watery layer of digital noise interfering with the grain. The codec has issues with such a complex random structure, and compensates by introducing additional artifacting. I'd hypothesize again that the playback stage introduces another layer of potential problems perhaps some players hardware simply smooth complex transfers out before sending the video output signal to the monitor. And other hardware might more faithfully represent the image encoded or the tape master the encode was produced from. It's not hard for me to imagine that this could be the source of what you and others are seeing. Particularly telling--to me--is that it becomes more clear when you blow up the image.

This isn't an issue of monitor sensitivity, though it partially has an element here, it's more an issue of eye-sensitivity/knowledge. And sometimes even experts will not notice things they're trained to look for (I watched down a show today five times during various outputs and it wasn't until the last output that we noticed a cameraman on the edge of picture. Then we had the joy of insert editing on the other masters.)

I also think this could explain why the DVD looks acceptable, because of the different way it is encoded, much lower bitrate, and the way it resolves detail differently the DVD simply doesn't have the resolution to be bothered by an image harvest whose flaws are only exposed in high definition. A 2k harvest that looks great on DVD could very well be exposed to be as bad as you describe on DVD particularly if people mistook digital noise in the harvest for film grain and passed the harvest through QC.

Adam,


Great post!


Which sounds wholly accurate to occasional problems which plague the industry today. The information that I received re: HE was that the harvest was performed on the equipment (a C-Reality) available at the location in the UK. And yes, something is there other than the film grain in certain scenes, which appears to be digital noise.


This appears to be a similar situation that occurred with Spartacus in which the entire image harvest was invested with digital noise.


A top facility generally has no problem with a harvest, which needs to be viewed on a very large screen as a test before the entire production goes through the system. Performed properly, by people who know what the final result should look like, is no longer a smoke and mirror situation, and is now routine -- as long as both the hardware, software and human interface all are of sufficient quality.


RAH

 

[24fpssean]

Adam, I can't thank you enough. This is a bloody good post! Very succinct. Thank you for hitting the nail on the head. Yes, I think that's it - "digital floor" sounds correct for the image on the blu ray looks as if Criterion had done all they could to work with it but that there just wasn't enough to work with. I didn't realize film grain was so difficult for digital to reproduce.


I was an assistant editor on The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood that John Bailey shot and he was fantastic to work with, he really knows his stuff!


Sean

Originally Posted by Adam_S

Sean, I'm also in post, as an assistant editor though, so I understand where you're coming from at being dissatisfied with a mediocre/terrible digital image that others think looks terrific.

I was at the academy last summer for their 'film formats through the ages' night which showed a ton of clips from a variety of films, mostly in large format. Some were digitally restored presentations of 70mm films, most were 70mm film. One in particular looked horrid blown up on that wonderful Samuel Goldwyn screen (and I've seen it in 70mm and know what its grain looks like, it wasn't grainy it was noisy and digital). There were a handful of DPs as part of a panel afterwards, and one made an aside comment that one clip looked particularly atrocious tonight, and shouldn't because the people who were so proud of their image hadn't properly harvested it to begin with, they had got an image that they thought represented film grain but was actually like a pulsing parameceum of digital noise. He went on that so many people today don't know what film grain looks like (I think this was John Bailey, but I'm not certain it was a year ago!) His first job had been printing and running dailies before sending the dailies back to the set and he watched film dailies 12 hours a day for a year and or two, he knows what film grain looks like. And he then said there were certain image harvest machines he simply wouldn't use because they'd produce an image that looked to most people like a beautiful 2k harvest, but when he looked at it all he saw was a "digital floor," not film grain at all, a digital floor.


I think that's either his own term, or the in house term he's familiar with. I've never run across it before or since. But I'm going to hypothesize that a digital floor would describe what you're seeing. This was the result of an inadequate image harvest. The image was pulled, they looked at it, thought they were seeing film grain and didn't look closer, they didn't get that though and since their harvest was calibrated to the digital noise rather than to the grain of the film, everything after that would be off in small but to some people significant ways. So since film grain is already hard to encode think how much harder it is to encode unfocused film grain that looks like a watery layer of digital noise interfering with the grain. The codec has issues with such a complex random structure, and compensates by introducing additional artifacting. I'd hypothesize again that the playback stage introduces another layer of potential problems perhaps some players hardware simply smooth complex transfers out before sending the video output signal to the monitor. And other hardware might more faithfully represent the image encoded or the tape master the encode was produced from. It's not hard for me to imagine that this could be the source of what you and others are seeing. Particularly telling--to me--is that it becomes more clear when you blow up the image.

This isn't an issue of monitor sensitivity, though it partially has an element here, it's more an issue of eye-sensitivity/knowledge. And sometimes even experts will not notice things they're trained to look for (I watched down a show today five times during various outputs and it wasn't until the last output that we noticed a cameraman on the edge of picture. Then we had the joy of insert editing on the other masters.)

I also think this could explain why the DVD looks acceptable, because of the different way it is encoded, much lower bitrate, and the way it resolves detail differently the DVD simply doesn't have the resolution to be bothered by an image harvest whose flaws are only exposed in high definition. A 2k harvest that looks great on DVD could very well be exposed to be as bad as you describe on DVD particularly if people mistook digital noise in the harvest for film grain and passed the harvest through QC.

 

[Vincent_P]

Agree with RAH and Sean, GREAT post Adam! I wonder if the problems with some scanners that Bailey talked about might explain the problems some folks have with the recent Blue Underground BDs of DJANGO and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD? There's quite a debate going on about the appearance of the grain on those titles, I wonder if the original image harvesting equipment is to blame.


Vincent

 

[24fpssean]

Possibly, I've not seen those two, Vincent. I've got Blue Underground's BD of My Brilliant Career and it's absolutely goregous, plenty of original film grain, it's like having the film projected in your living room. Interesting that DVDBeaver thought the grain was artificial and had been added later, whereas DVDBeaver thought that the digital mess of Howards End was film grain. Such is the age we live in now...


I'm sure playback systems can be part of the problem, but I've felt all along that the information on Criterion's original master, used for the 2005 DVD release as well as for this BD and the 2010 DVD corresponding release, just isn't good enough.

 

[Virgoan]

I cannot be anything but bemused by anyone having troubles with the Blu-ray of "Howard's End." It is one of the most extraordinary Blu-rays in my collection. The image is brilliant, the sound beyond reproach, and it plays like a dream.


I have a Sony Blu-ray (1350) and a Panasonic Viera plasma screen.

It's right up there with the Fox "The Robe" and Warner "How the West Was Won" in how Blu-ray releases SHOULD be done!

 

[24fpssean]

Lucky you. Lucky, lucky you.

 

[TonyD]

Originally Posted by Virgoan

I cannot be anything but bemused by anyone having troubles with the Blu-ray of "Howard's End." It is one of the most extraordinary Blu-rays in my collection. The image is brilliant, the sound beyond reproach, and it plays like a dream.


I have a Sony Blu-ray (1350) and a Panasonic Viera plasma screen.

It's right up there with the Fox "The Robe" and Warner "How the West Was Won" in how Blu-ray releases SHOULD be done!

Not even close, while I had no issue with the disc as Sean did, End is not any where near the pq that HTWWW has.

 

[24fpssean]

For the record, How the West was Won is absolutely staggering on my Viera, actually the best looking color BD I own. Howards End looks like the pixelated mess described innumerable times above.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Thanks for the excellent, informative post, Adam.


I finally got around to giving this disc a brief look -- still haven't been able to give it a good sitdown yet -- but that description of "a pulsing parameceum of digital noise" comes very close to what I saw in a few scenes, especially in red areas.


I didn't see quite all the same issues that Sean and a few others saw on my Samsung LED DLP w/ Panny BD60 for playback, but did see what looks like "a pulsing parameceum of digital noise" that occasionally started to vaguely resemble the tetris-like grid that Sean mentioned w/out being quite that pronounced. I should note though that how bad it looked depended a fair bit on how close I got to the screen. From my normal viewing distance (of ~9ft from the 61" display), the problem was not as pronounced, but still quite noticeable. At maybe 6-7ft, it definitely look very bad. Also, I should note that I do not have the latest firmware update for my BD60 though it's probably not *that* old since the player itself is only ~6 months old.


Since I haven't actually tried to watch the film as I normally would (rather than look for issues), I'm not sure how much it'll actually bother me and whether it will end up being unwatchable to me. I get the feeling I'll notice the flickering/swarming characteristic of the noise/artifacts from time to time, particularly in reds (as I often do w/ OTA HD broadcasts, especially during the earlier days of OTA HD, though those tended to be much worse IIRC). Also, I think I've seen something like this before probably in some other Criterion BD, but can't remember for sure offhand. Think I'll check my other Criterion BDs to see.


_Man_

Originally Posted by Adam_S

Sean, I'm also in post, as an assistant editor though, so I understand where you're coming from at being dissatisfied with a mediocre/terrible digital image that others think looks terrific.

I was at the academy last summer for their 'film formats through the ages' night which showed a ton of clips from a variety of films, mostly in large format. Some were digitally restored presentations of 70mm films, most were 70mm film. One in particular looked horrid blown up on that wonderful Samuel Goldwyn screen (and I've seen it in 70mm and know what its grain looks like, it wasn't grainy it was noisy and digital). There were a handful of DPs as part of a panel afterwards, and one made an aside comment that one clip looked particularly atrocious tonight, and shouldn't because the people who were so proud of their image hadn't properly harvested it to begin with, they had got an image that they thought represented film grain but was actually like a pulsing parameceum of digital noise. He went on that so many people today don't know what film grain looks like (I think this was John Bailey, but I'm not certain it was a year ago!) His first job had been printing and running dailies before sending the dailies back to the set and he watched film dailies 12 hours a day for a year and or two, he knows what film grain looks like. And he then said there were certain image harvest machines he simply wouldn't use because they'd produce an image that looked to most people like a beautiful 2k harvest, but when he looked at it all he saw was a "digital floor," not film grain at all, a digital floor.


I think that's either his own term, or the in house term he's familiar with. I've never run across it before or since. But I'm going to hypothesize that a digital floor would describe what you're seeing. This was the result of an inadequate image harvest. The image was pulled, they looked at it, thought they were seeing film grain and didn't look closer, they didn't get that though and since their harvest was calibrated to the digital noise rather than to the grain of the film, everything after that would be off in small but to some people significant ways. So since film grain is already hard to encode think how much harder it is to encode unfocused film grain that looks like a watery layer of digital noise interfering with the grain. The codec has issues with such a complex random structure, and compensates by introducing additional artifacting. I'd hypothesize again that the playback stage introduces another layer of potential problems perhaps some players hardware simply smooth complex transfers out before sending the video output signal to the monitor. And other hardware might more faithfully represent the image encoded or the tape master the encode was produced from. It's not hard for me to imagine that this could be the source of what you and others are seeing. Particularly telling--to me--is that it becomes more clear when you blow up the image.

This isn't an issue of monitor sensitivity, though it partially has an element here, it's more an issue of eye-sensitivity/knowledge. And sometimes even experts will not notice things they're trained to look for (I watched down a show today five times during various outputs and it wasn't until the last output that we noticed a cameraman on the edge of picture. Then we had the joy of insert editing on the other masters.)

I also think this could explain why the DVD looks acceptable, because of the different way it is encoded, much lower bitrate, and the way it resolves detail differently the DVD simply doesn't have the resolution to be bothered by an image harvest whose flaws are only exposed in high definition. A 2k harvest that looks great on DVD could very well be exposed to be as bad as you describe on DVD particularly if people mistook digital noise in the harvest for film grain and passed the harvest through QC.

 

[Virgoan]

Goodness, but you folks got the truly fuzzy end of the lollipop.


My Criterion "Howard's End" Blu-ray disk looks and sounds FANTASTIC. Sorry yours don't, but that does not mean mine doesn't. There's not an iota of similarity between the perfection of the image I see and the horrors described above.