A Few Words About A few words about...™ Warlock & Bandolero! -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Robin9]

And to get back on topic, I need to order both of these films. I've never seen Warlock and it's been awhile for Bandelero! Disappointed to hear that DVDBeaver may be putting out pictures that don't reflect how they actually look.

Disappointed yes, but were you surprised?

 

[Robert Crawford]

I spent an hour looking at the TT and German Blu-rays of "Warlock" and the TT disc colors don't look muted to me when I played those specific film sequences captured on screen shots. Furthermore, the TT disc looks much better PQ-wise than the German disc due to film grain. No question each disc is derived from different transfers as the German BD looks like it came from an older transfer.

 

[Joseph Goodman]

I wonder how much of the "teal" look in all these scans of 50's Fox titles (I think most of these are being done by Cineric, I know at least Bigger Than Life, Bus Stop, and the Cinemascope 55 titles were done by them) is actually a conscious decision, or more a case of the cyan dye layer in these old Eastman negatives being too faded to have more saturated reds in the final image?

 

[RolandL]

Man, do I disagree with that review about the Twilight Time's colors being passive and muted and I'm questioning the accuracy of his screen shots.

What is does show is the color fringing is gone, and more picture info on the left, bottom and a little bit on the right sides.

 

[Jordan Krug]

Overall the new transfer is quite nice (sharp, nice grain, uncropped), but it does have a bluish/greenish "cast" to it. I tried adjusting the color on my projector to offset it, but it didn't really work. Surprised they could not compensate for some of the turned color on the negative with digital grading but I guess once it's gone it's gone. Still, quite happy to see this western gem released by TT and overall it's very watchable.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Overall the new transfer is quite nice (sharp, nice grain, uncropped), but it does have a bluish/greenish "cast" to it. I tried adjusting the color on my projector to offset it, but it didn't really work. Surprised they could not compensate for some of the turned color on the negative with digital grading but I guess once it's gone it's gone. Still, quite happy to see this western gem released by TT and overall it's very watchable.

Is that a new term for the previous "teal" comments about Fox titles?

 

[Jordan Krug]

Is that a new term for the previous "teal" comments about Fox titles?

Well, I feel like a teal color correction is a choice...you're right about it being semantics.. but to me this is less a deliberate color correction..that's why I chose to call it a "cast". I think Mr. Harris is on the money about the negative having color loss.

 

[Danny_N]

I wonder how much of the "teal" look in all these scans of 50's Fox titles (I think most of these are being done by Cineric, I know at least Bigger Than Life, Bus Stop, and the Cinemascope 55 titles were done by them) is actually a conscious decision, or more a case of the cyan dye layer in these old Eastman negatives being too faded to have more saturated reds in the final image?

Years ago I posted comparison caps between 4 CinemaScope movies from the fifties from three different studios (Fox, Columbia, Warner). To my eyes they all looked more or less the same with regard to colour. Fox "tealing" their scans of 50's CinemaScope movies is nothing more than a myth in my opinion. I think we're finally seeing these movies as they're supposed to look.

Overall the new transfer is quite nice (sharp, nice grain, uncropped), but it does have a bluish/greenish "cast" to it.

I don't have the TT Warlock yet but on the screencaps from DVDBeaver I don't see a bluish/greenish cast. I suppose if you compare it to the old German BD it may appear to be like that but the German BD has pumped up contrast and is too blue. The TT Warlock looks spot on to me albeit slightly faded.

 

[Danny_N]

Watched the TT Warlock disc tonight and I think there's a problem with it. The video seems to be encoded at RGB PC levels instead of YCbCr. As a result the picture will look washed out/faded. I changed the HDMI output of my Oppo to RGB PC and everything looked alright with proper black level but this is not as it should be.

 

[Worth]

...The video seems to be encoded at RGB PC levels instead of YCbCr. As a result the picture will look washed out/faded...

This happens way more often than it should.

 

[Danny_N]

This happens way more often than it should.

I can remember a few older Arrow releases having the problem but other than that not many. It is an error that should be caught by QC.

Anyway, I contacted Twilight Time and they responded that they were sorry to hear about my complaint about the transfer and that I was the only one who had complained so far and that the transfer got only positive reviews etc. etc. In short, nothing wrong.
But I think they do not have a clue what I'm talking about as my complaint was not about the transfer (it is excellent) but about how the video was encoded. It is simply wrong.

 

[Danny_N]

Seems I'm not the only one who noticed something wrong with TT's disc. Glenn Erickson's review of Warlock: https://trailersfromhell.com/warlock-1959/

He notices: ""The negative for this show may have faded. The image is sharp and stable, but colors are not ideal and the contrast is consistently milky, with no good blacks. Colorists these days can get better results from almost anything, so perhaps this is an older transfer?”

It's not the transfer though, it's the encoding. Hope the Germans get it right when they release this restoration later this year.

 

[Danny_N]

I have to say I'm impressed by TT's dedication to customer satisfaction. They checked my complaint with their authoring facility. It seems I was wrong in assuming the authoring facility made a mistake with the video encode. The authoring facility affirmed that the video was encoded in YCbCr 4:4:4 and not in RGB PC as I assumed (in fact their video encoders do not allow RGB PC encoding).

However, they (that is the authoring facility) do admit that "the picture content contained on Fox’s master may not have been taking full advantage of the color space available in this video format, or perhaps it was transferred during an intermediate stage prior to creating the HDCamSR we received and the black levels were altered from the original transfer".

Twilight Time put on disc what they got from Fox but, whatever the reason and whoever is to blame, I stand by my observation that something is wrong with the picture on TT's Warlock. Somewhere along the line I believe a mistake was made.

 

[benbess]

Just watched my new TT blu-ray of Warlock and I was on the edge of my seat much of the time. What a cast! This has just become one of my favorite Westerns of the 1950s. Very good picture and sound quality. And, as always, an excellent and perceptive essay by Julie Kirgo.