Category Archives: Mastering Errors

The Time Bending Mysteries of Shahram Mokri (Deaf Crocodile)

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Click here for the first movie in the set.

Fish & Cat (2013)

For a 2013 movie, I expected this to look better. My guess is an inadequate camera. Look at that aliasing!

Clipped directly from the BD.

The running time is 141 minutes, not the 134 stated on the box.

Invasion (2017)

The first movie in the set that looks good.

Clipped directly from the BD.

However, the subtitles are horrible. There are typos throughout the set, but those for Invasion are the worst.

Later spelled “Daniel.”
Plus inconsistent placement of quotation marks.

Careless Crime (2020)

Another nice transfer.

Clipped directly from the BD.

These are probably fascinating in Farsi, but I was bored, and not having any of it by the time I got to Careless Crime. All the walking, monotonous dialog, and reading was just too taxing. I would be very interested to see Invasion, maybe even Fish & Cat, dubbed in English.

Abraham Lincoln (1930, Kino)

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Overall, very nice picture quality. Good grain, looks natural.

Clipped directly from the BD.

However, the 2.0 LPCM sound decodes as surround, not mono. It’s easy to fix, but something that should’ve been caught before the disc was released.

The restoration was also pretty good. I wasn’t noticing any obvious processing artifacts, until, at 1h24m:

Clipped directly from the BD.

Sloppy, 3-frame, quick-reversed, misaligned changeover cue removal (but only one of them). I don’t get the hatred for changeover cues. You’d see them if you went to a screening of a print. They are authentic and accurate. If all that exists has cues, then that’s okay. Leave them alone, especially when the retouching isn’t flawless and invisible.

This was the only restoration artifact I noticed. I’m sure there were more, but they didn’t stick out like this one.

The improper surround sound, though, was a serious error.

Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories (Deaf Crocodile)

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[Ashkan] was shot on video at 25 frames per second. [This version was converted to 24fps] by removing 1 frame per second from the movie.

I initially misread that as “one frame per shot,” which would have been no big deal. So, to see such choppiness really caught me off guard:

Clipped directly from the BD.

It’s really noticeable and distracting throughout the movie, though the hand-held shaky cam helped hide some of it.

If this is the best version, I have some questions. Why couldn’t the 25fps original be used? Does it still exist? The video that remains is basically slowed down; slowing the original down to 24fps would be effectively the same. Why couldn’t it be a 25fps->1080i60 conversion? What about the sound? Is it slowed or pitch-corrected?

I’m not thrilled with the video compression, but it could be worse:

Clipped directly from the BD.

A poor presentation. Whatever the price is for this four-disc set, it’s 25% too much.

Filibus (Milestone)

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Overall, Milestone’s presentation of Filibus (1915) on BD is very nice and free from restoration processing artifacts. However, it has some editing and mastering errors.

During the feature, there are three instances where a blank green image flashes on screen, as if the video tracks used for tinting the titles got misaligned. They occur at 21:57, 25:38, and 25:48, shown below:

I appreciate the new English intertitles and the attempt to emulate the look of film, complete with grain and cement splice jumps.

An easy-to-miss error happens at the very end. The last frame is mistakenly placed at the beginning of the final shot (frame numbers in yellow):

The bonus films included on the BD are hard subbed. Hard subs are always disappointing, but if you’re going to use them, the safe area still matters:

Hard subtitles from the “Filibus” BD as seen on a Sony 34XBR960.

I watched it with the fine Mont Alto score, but I recommend listening to Donald Sosin’s with Joanna Seaton’s vocals first. Sosin wrote a delightful theme song that fits the pulpy and slightly goofy film wonderfully.

Filibus is transferred at 18 fps and encoded at 24 fps. Its intertitles run at 24 fps.