USHE Press Release: JAWS (Blu-ray) (Plus restoration details) (1 Viewer)

[Lord Dalek]

Originally Posted by haineshisway /t/319941/ushe-press-release-jaws-blu-ray-plus-restoration-details/90#post_3916172
I agree with all of it. My point was that the film grain on a camera negative is not "thick" as the Beaver describes it. It would be fine grain, not popcorn-sized balls of grain, which is what the Beaver seems to enjoy.

Tooze did have a habit of mistakening macroblocking and other digitial artifacts for film grain back in the day. It was annoying then and makes a lot of his early reviews comically inaccurate.

Actually somebody should make a list of "Tooze-isms" (IE. Thick, HD Sourced, Tightness, etc.) that's he's casually dumped over the years. It may fill a rather large book.

 

[Spencer Draper]

This release will probably look great. But there should be a definite grain structure, and hopefully they haven't scrubbed out a 1975 produced image in favor of clean video. The Sugarland Express had tons of grain of the well preserved 35mm print I saw a year ago, and Jaws' OCN had tons of wear/tear just from the arduous production alone.
And as with every new restoration and release, why do I find myself wanting yet another Laserdisc? I've become addicted to collecting them.

 

[NY2LA]

Now boys, try not to be too hard on The Beaver...

 

I, for one, love The Beaver. I try to check it out as much as possible.

 

[ahollis]

I check out The Beaver everyday but I do so with skeptical eyes. There are just too many things that can go wrong with screen caps and how they are interpreted. That also goes for most sites with screen caps IMHO. If I am on the edge about a title, I listen to a handful of reviewers that have learned to trust and then make my decision. Because of them, I have purchased a very few of the Universal Blu-rays and they have saved me money that more or less would have gone out the window.

 

[Alan Tully]

I like to check out the Beaver & caps-a-holic & all the rest (even the Amazon customer reviews, the biggest source of disinformation on the net!), it's all part of the mix (& fun), & I don't take any of it as gospel. A couple of months ago I was transfering some very old 35mm nitrate to computer data, it was reversal & pre-WW1, & the grain was just so fine, it looked fantastic. The grain may be a bit thick on some prints, printed from dupes (that in turn have been made from prints, ect), but if you can get anywhere near the original, the stuff can look stonking.

 

[haineshisway]

I'm sure the Beaver is a very nice fellow and I've had very nice e-mail conversations with him. But he does no one a service with his misbegotten caps, which bear no relation to what's actually on the disc - who does that serve? What do people glean from caps that aren't accurate? Or his descriptions of the transfers, which border on parody?

 

[Lord Dalek]

Now boys, try not to be too hard on The Beaver...

Ward, I'm worried about the beaver.

 

[NY2LA]

Im afraid I'll have to come out and admit it... I'm really not into The Beaver. I gave it a couple glances, and it just didn't do anything for me. And I sense I'm not the only one here like that.
Jaws, however, looks pretty interesting.

 

[Jason_V]

For what it's worth, Home Media Magazine's article only mentions The Shark is Still Working as "feature-length." That can mean pretty much anything...

 

[Dave H]

Gran has to be managed because it doesn't always look like its supposed to when converted to digital, and down converted to HD. It can take on strange patterns or create effects like mosquitoing. Films often have to be "managed" so that they DO look on video like they did in the theater.
Doug

I totally agree with you. I really don't think a lot of people including many "DNR-haters" would like completely non-managed grain and just how messy and strange it would look.

 

[Dave H]

I'm not certain this is really the case as far as noise reduction is concerned. I can see a 4K scan having to be filtered ever so slightly in downconversion to avoid aliasing/stair stepping, but that's it. Mosqito noise would would occur because of certain DNR algorithms (or MPEG compression, mostly in the case of DVDs).
And as always in these discussions, there are lots of excuses for why Universal has to do these things, but no one seems to have an explanation for why Sony doesn't. I don't see any DNR artifacts, mosquito noise or edge enhancement on their discs. Taxi Driver, Kwai, The Deep, Close Encounters, Caine Mutiny, etc

Do we know for a fact Sony used ZERO tools of any sort to manage the grain? Sony definitely does a great job on most of their discs.

 

[Felix Martinez]

I think our scanning rates and workflow processes have somewhat ameliorated the issue of graininess. Having said that, though, we don't take the position that grain is an automatic "problem", and we usually just leave it alone. We are aware of all the tools for this and are open to testing them, but the use of such tools should be limited and spare. Ultimately, unless there is a really compelling reason to alter the grain (and I don't think just to aid compression is a compelling reason), we don't, and I can't really see that that decision has hurt us when it comes to reviews of our Blu-ray releases. Just the opposite, it seems. I think there are ways of mastering a film that enables you to make the best of what you have to work with and we follow that path. I really do not like the super clean, waxy look that is often the result of over-processing. It not only buries detail, but it gives the film an odd feel to it, an artificial feel, that I think detracts from the achievement of the filmmakers and is distracting to discerning viewers, all of which ultimately just cheats the audience. Most filmmakers know what they are doing with the resources at hand and our job, after all, is to replicate the vision of the filmmaker, not to impose our own aesthetic outlook on a film. People are entitled to their opinion on this subject, and lots of people have opinions on this, but we try to take a fairly authentic and neutral approach to every title - and they all differ in certain ways - so that each title looks, feels, sounds, like a product of its time and place, while trying to make them look their absolute best on Blu-ray. And, that's kind of what it's about, you know? I don't think Taxi Driver’s a particularly grainy film, so there was really nothing to do in that regard.

As far as Universal...I believe the work has been completed on Jaws and can only hope that they did the film justice on Blu-ray. Looking forward to this release and I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Why I would need to do that for a 2012 blu-ray release of a classic "crown-gem" of a film, over 5 years after the launch of the format, is another issue...

 

[Ronald Epstein]

New restoration clips:

 

[TravisR]

I'm not going to try to divine what quality the Blu-ray will be based on a You Tube clip but, man, those clips reminded how much I love this movie.

 

[oscar_merkx]

Saw Jaws in the cinema for the first time on monday.
Scared witless again after so many viewings either on video / dvd

 

[Stephen_J_H]

There's a part of me wondering aloud if Jaws was one of those films in the 70s that may have shipped out to select locations with 4-track magnetic audio? Does anyone know?

 

[Lord Dalek]

AFAIK 1941 is the ONLY Spielberg film to have been released in 4-Track.

 

[Vincent_P]

I believe CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was also 4-track. I recall mention of it having been released in 4-track mag stereo on the Criterion LaserDisc packaging.
Vincent

 

[NY2LA]

I believe CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was also 4-track. I recall mention of it having been released in 4-track mag stereo on the Criterion LaserDisc packaging.
Vincent

I can attest to CE3K having amazing stereophonic sound (including deep base that surpassed "sensurround") when it premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in NYC.