Author Archives: Nick

Eolomea (Eureka)

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It’s a bad sign when I pop in a disc, just to see how it looks, and find obtrusive repairs less than a minute after hitting play.

Just about every splice is accompanied by interpolation and freezing.

Interpolation:

Freezing:

Yellow numbers indicate frame number.

People are poorly rotoscoped (often with interpolation) against a frozen background.

Can you spot the misaligned repair?

I don’t understand why Eureka’s upscaling and interlace handling is so poor:

Eolomea Trailer

Jana and the Little Star (1971)

Live-action portions have magnetic grain and major macroblocking in the darks. Grain in the animation also tends to have a halting, dissolving quality.

Clipped directly from the BD.

Heart of Stone (1950, Eureka)

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De-grained. There’s noise, but it doesn’t look natural.

Smeary. Dissolving damage. Frozen cloning. Screen tearing. Freeze-frames. Broken stabilization. Interpolation.

Clipped directly from the BD.

The broken stabilization is more apparent here:

Clipped directly from the BD.

And the shorts? All upscales.

Thumbelina’s Adventures (1958)

The Cardinal (1936, Olive)

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A nice example of how nice the picture can look when you don’t filter out all the grain and fine scratches. Yes, there’s a lot of damage, but it’s clear and sharp.

However, the technicians couldn’t resist repairing it. A light touch overall, but if you look closely, there’s frozen cloning, interpolation, and microloops throughout. Worst hit are the opening titles and the climactic confrontation.

Dissolving, interpolated damage moves at a slow frame rate:

Screen tearing:

Frankly, with all the age-related damage, most repairs are easy to miss. However, the following scene got the works, with a flurry of obtrusive repairs that made me “yuck” out loud. The full shots look terrible in motion.

Interpolation:

Almost a freeze frame:

Daimajin (Arrow)

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I initially thought that Arrow’s BDs of the amazing Daimajin trilogy looked great. However, when I went to grab a sample to post here, I found that the technicians tried to remove every cement splice, resulting in pervasive screen tearing. In comparison to most so-called restorations, though, it’s subtle and the repairs are generally aligned. Look closely at the very top and bottom edges, and you’ll see frozen temporal cloning, mismatched cloning, and interpolation.

Frozen rushing water.
Interpolation at bottom.
Top third of screen frozen. Yikes!

Mill Creek put out the trilogy years earlier. Apparently, the color isn’t as nice, but I wonder if it’s “unrestored” and how the audio compares. Leave a comment if you can fill me in.