Occasional magnetic grain. For this sample, I had to convert from AVC to H265 to get a small file size, but it’s still visible. This was the most glaring bit of magnetic grain on the UHD.
Compression or bad restoration, it’s impossible to tell which. Still, watchable.
Most of the supplements, including Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) are 1080i upscales.
Opening titles are very blurry and smoothed, as if de-grained and filtered to death. However, the video soon clears up and is generally very nice all the way to the end.
The notes say that the primary source is the original reversal negative, which looks like it could benefit from more physical cleaning. I’m fine with dirt, but there comes a point when I’m sitting in a theater watching a fine but dirty print, and I want to yell to its owner, “Clean your print!”
I complain, but I still prefer to see dirt instead of artifact-inducing temporal cloning.
There weren’t any repairs that made me stop the disc, but I did catch this spot where a frame was held for the duration of three extra frames:
Instead of freezing, I’d much prefer to edit the sound, see black frames inserted, or, best, see the original damaged frames.
“Approx. 6 hours,” says the back of the BD cover. Given that it’s made for TV, I took that to mean three episodes slightly under two hours each. WRONG. Each episode was well over two hours, totaling 400 minutes. That’s WAY over six hours! Knowing the accurate running time in advance is very important! This is easy to get right.
As to this blog’s obsessions, quality of archival footage is all over the place, but generally very good. However, since the video runs at 24fps, much of it stutters. Full-frame interpolation is common, along with occasional blurry motion. Working in 60fps would have been much better.
Processing on Eolomea (1972) was so bad that it deserved its own post. See here.
I found a tiny bit of interpolated cloning while looking for a sample, but it’s minor. Looks good overall. The only feature in the set that didn’t have any jarring repairs.
Filtering leaves residue from previous frames:
Bad splice handling that uses Interpolation, microloops, and appalling pixelation. How is this better than visible cement splices (which are mostly masked out during film projection)?
General interpolation and misalignment:
There’s some weird masking and screen tearing going on, but I can’t tell if it’s original. Overall ok.
Edit: Turns out, some of the weirdness I was noticing is AI upscaling dreck. Lots of examples in this thread at Blu-ray.com. Deaf Crocodile’s disc apparently is better. Maybe I’ll get it. Still…
Sloppy repairs are few, but present:
Very rough, but natural.
Edit: Or is this also an AI upscale? I initially thought the source was 16mm, but those edges and the dull color is very suspicious.
The best looking film in the set.
Pleasingly, the features aren’t overly scrubbed, which makes the repairs all the more frustrating. There are enough remaining flaws that no one would have noticed their presence had they been allowed to remain.
And a pet peeve: these features don’t have end credits, but DEFA added new end screens immediately upon fadeout, destroying what I consider a cool effect, akin to seeing a play without a curtain call. How often do you see movies without end credits?
EDIT 11/17/25 – I just got the Deaf Crocodile release and did a quick spot check. Signals actually looks like 70mm this time, as opposed to Eureka’s grainy 2.35:1. In the Dust of the Stars is the same bad restoration. Grain is poor, looking like video noise. De-graining is frequent.
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.
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.