New Mary Poppins Aspect Ratio (1 Viewer)

[ScottR]

No, Disney has a worse track record with the theme of this thread....OAR.....Not including the P&S titles, they screwed up Sleeping Beauty and overcropped the image. And now I question Mary Poppins' forthcoming ratio.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

I thought the overcropping of Sleeping Beauty was a false alarm.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Wasn't this one just a port of the recent Anchor Bay DVD transfer anyway?

 

[Brandon Conway]

And you would be correct.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Would he? I thought we had frames posted that showed thecropping. Can you point me to somewhere where the issue was resolved?

 

[Dan Rudolph]

THe frames posted were of the entire background, not an actual frame. Backgrounds were alrger than the frame because the camera moved around in them.

 

[TedD]

Yes, it was. And the Anchor Bay DVD was close to reference quality, while the Disney version was garbage quality.

One of the differences was that the AB release was a 2 sided disc with the movie split at the intermission, and the Disney version was a single sided dual layer disc with the entire movie crammed onto one side, which required a considerably higher compression level which in turn forced the compressionist to apply a low pass filter to fit the movie on the disc.

Here are screen caps from the RAH post illustrating the problem:

First, for reference purposes, the Anchor Bay transfer at 2x scaling with Lanczos 4 with luma sharpening set to .5:

http://webpages.charter.net/tvdias/AB_2X_scale.jpg

Next, the Disney transfer using the same scaling and sharpening parameters:

http://webpages.charter.net/tvdias/WD_2X_scale.jpg

Now, the Disney transfer rendered at the native 480 x 720 resolution:

http://webpages.charter.net/tvdias/WD_no_scale.jpg

Note that upon first glance it looks better than the scaled version, but if you save it to your PC and zoom in on it to give the same size image as the scaled images above, you will see it's pretty poor as well.

On all the captures taken from the Disney DVD, notice the three distinct lines at the top of the image just below the letterbox bars. On a transfer with no Edge Enhancement, Ringing, Halos, or whatever you choose to call the effect the letterbox bars will have a clean edge with no additional lines.

Here's another example of the EE that seems to defy all attempts at identification and resolution and that plagues many DVD's:

http://webpages.charter.net/tvdias/WD_lookatthebox.jpg

This capture was also taken at native DVD resolution, so you may want to save this one as well and zoom in on the box. Pay particular attention to the cover of the box which has at leat 4 distinct lines that don't belong there, possibly created by filtering somewhere in the signal path between the film element and the final product.

One last capture, I apologise for the incorrect AR of the capture.

http://webpages.charter.net/tvdias/AB_lookatthebox.jpg

Check out the same box in the AB transfer.

(End of imported RAH post)

This is a prime example of how a badly authored DVD can totally destroy the quality of a high quality master. In addition to the poor quality video, the audio on the Disney DVD has a very muffled audio track in comparison to the AB release.

Ted

 

[Colin Jacobson]

You sure about that? I only found two reviews for it, and both said it's NOT 16X9. I also discovered only one review for the old AB version, and that writer wasn't impressed - he certainly didn't think of it as "reference quality". Not that this "proves" anything, but it does offer a contrasting viewpoint...

 

[LukeB]

Disney's release of The Happiest Millionaire is certainly not 16x9-enhanced.

 

[TedD]

Sorry, my bad. You are correct. :b

In my system, AR's and anamorphic / non-anamorphic are handled automatically, so I don't normally pay any attention to the source DVD being 16x9 or not.

My original post has been modified from it's original format. It has been edited to remove the paragraph in question.

Ted

 

[ScottR]

According to Robert Harris, the Sleeping Beauty dvd was in fact overcropped.

 

[Ernest Rister]

I own the Anchor Bay Happiest Millionaire and it has brought me many smiles. Still, the last thing I would call it is "reference quality".

And if we're going to go as far back in time as the DVD release of Hunchback in order to prosecute the nefarious, evil Disney corporation for the crime against humanity that is edge enhancement...it should only be fair to look at the solid-to-spectacular DVDs released in the same time frame.

A partial list would include:

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: SE
Alice in Wonderland: ME (Robert Harris praised it)
Atlantis The Lost Empire: CE
The Love Bug: SE
The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh
The Reluctant Dragon (Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio - WDT Wave 2)
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pollyanna: Vault Disney
The Three Lives of Thomasina
Tomorrowland (WDT Wave 3)
Treasure Island (again, Robert Harris was impressed)
Treasure Planet
Tron: 20th Anniversary Edition
Victory Through Air Power (Disney on the Front Lines - WDT Wave 3)

This doesn't include DVDs that, while not especially remarkable, are certainly not terrible, and they look better than any previous home video release. There are many many many of these. I don't especially like Oliver and Co., but the film has never looked better than the last go-round on DVD. Ditto Robin Hood, Pete's Dragon, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Escape to Witch Mountain, and on and on it goes.

Sure there are poor entries - Journey of Natty Gann is a glaring mistake, the Limited Issue DVDs of 1999 gave Disney a black eye, cramming three versions of Beauty and the Beast onto one disc was not a smart move, the hiccup in the not-so-seamless branching of The Lion King is irritating, etc etc etc...but what major studio hasn't had screw-ups and what company hasn't been guilty of treating their commercial and critical flops with poor respect on DVD?

 

[ArthurMy]

I agree with the above, and would add The Parent Trap to my list of beloved Disney DVDs that look swell.

 

[DeeF]

A question just occurred to me: if the new Mary Poppins is 1.66:1, will it be anamorphic? This particular ratio causes trouble.

 

[Ernest Rister]

It will be anamoprhic, just like Those Calloways.

 

[TedD]

It is pretty well acknowledged that different systems tend to affect the perception of image quality.

Care to share your viewing environment?

On my system, it rates up in the top 5% or so of my collection (over a thousand DVD's) in detail, color, freedom from EE as the screen captures above show.

On my system, with FFDShow doing the scaling and processing, non-anamorphic DVD's of 1.75 or lower AR suffer very little, the amount of filtering applied in the transfer has a much larger impact on image quality.

As I recall, both "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and
"Pirates of the Caribbean" have a very visible amount of EE or ringing on my system, while the Fox "Moulin Rouge" has virtually none.

These observations would be with a 5' high x AR wide screen viewed from 15' away.

Ted

 

[Ernest Rister]

It is pretty well acknowledged that different systems tend to affect the perception of image quality.

That may be true, but I've never seen a system yet that removed dirt and positive and negative density artifacts from a print. We clearly have different ideas about the meaning of the phrase "reference quality".

Care to share your viewing environment?

Yes, for image I'm using a ViewMaster Hulk Projector Flashlight, powered by a hamster running in a wheel connected to a pair of Radio Shack resistors by some rubber bands I stole from an old game of Mouse Trap. For sound, I'm using a telephone speaker I pulled from an old Speak 'N Spell. For most films, the audio suffices, although occasionally the speaker reverts to its old ways and interjects a "The Cow Says...Mooooo" over the audio.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Regards,

 

[TedD]

We sure do! To me, a reference quality DVD duplicates the presentation that one might see from projecting a print of the same film.

Since "dirt and positive and negative density artifacts" are part of just about every film presentation you may attend once the original negative has been developed and manipulated to create the final product, I don't consider them to be factors in how well a given title survives the transition to DVD.

It would be wonderful if a pristine interpositive existed of every film ever made, but the real world doesn't work that way. Heck, considering the instability of certain Eastmancolor stocks, it's amazing that some titles look as good as they do.

As for your viewing environment, I will refrain from the obvious comment (and any further responses to your posts).

Ted

 

[Ernest Rister]

"We sure do! To me, a reference quality DVD duplicates the presentation that one might see from projecting a print of the same film."

To me, a reference disc means exactly that -- a disc so good in every department -- IP quality, transfer quality, audio quality -- you use it as a reference point to measure the quality of other DVDs.

If a good DVD is one that duplicates the presentation of a print, it should be stated that Mary Poppins was not presented in 1.66:1 when I saw it in 1999 at the El Capitan Disney film festival. The top and bottom of the frame was cropped similar to the Gold Collection DVD release. 20,000 Leagues was cropped at the sides.