Tag Archives: Bad restoration

F. P. 1 Doesn’t Answer (Kino)

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Automated Spot Removal

Watch the spot remover make the plane disappear. IN THE VERY FIRST SHOT.

Clipped directly from the BD.

The damage done, let’s look closer at the retouching:

Watch pieces and small details of the plane disappear:

Clipped directly from the BD.

Disappearing porthole:

Disappearing wall fixture:

Disappearing wall decor on upper right:

Freezing

By far, the worst repair is freeze-framing the ends of shots. It’s hard to watch when the video keeps freezing. I consider it unwatchable. The bulk of it occurs during the first half, but never completely goes away. Check out the lousy spot removal here, too.

Frozen Temporal Cloning

Interpolation

Interpolation here is often combined with spot repair. It’s not the worst, but grain still freezes, dissolves, becomes magnetic; damage sticks to surfaces, and there’s ghosting. Click to see them full screen.

Maybe you think the previous three don’t look visible in motion:

Clipped directly from the BD.

But notice how parts of the picture slow down, as if they got stuck in the mud. Without knowing anything, it’s easy to dismiss it as poor encoding or a streaming hiccup. However, these are intentionally introduced errors.

Clipped directly from the BD.

There’s some microlooping, but surprisingly sparsely used.

Additionally, the subtitles have major timing issues.

The English version looks much better, even though it suffers from aggressive spot removal, some dodgy stabilization, and wobbly masking. However, there wasn’t anything that made me turn off the movie or pause it to take notes.

The Blue Angel (Eureka)

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The English version of The Blue Angel (1930) looks wonderful and far better than the German version. It has natural looking grain and no restoration processing artifacts—a benefit of being the neglected version.

English version. Clipped directly from the BD.
German version. Clipped directly from the BD.

Grain on the German version looks blurry. Look closely at the second duck and you can see restoration artifacting.

However, the biggest problem with the German version is that the technicians tried to remove every cement splice, creating lots of interpolated and frozen errors. These are just two random ones I found. Pretty much every splice is like these:

Splices are visible in the English version, but they don’t detract at all.

Extras are all SD, and the ones from archival video sources are converted to 24fps instead of left at 50i/60i. Blech.

I’m surprised the English version is so ignored. Most of the movie is still in German and tacks closely to the German version. It works really well. Why read a movie when you don’t have to? English speakers should default to the English version, especially given the superior presentation.

The Hands of Orlac (Eureka)

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Eureka’s BD of The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände, 1924) has one of the most aggressive and inept restorations I’ve seen. Nearly every shot has restoration artifacts.

Be sure to click on the GIFs to see them full size.

Interpolation

The first and last frames of most shots are interpolated. Sometimes it looks like a duplicate pulldown frame. Other times, it introduces some serious distortions. Nearly every example in this section has frames that are completely computer-generated. Faked.

Conrad Veidt’s head stretches, Alexandra Sorina’s fingers split, grain and background warp, plus frozen temporal cloning at the top edge:

The pen is broken up and the rest of the frame is nearly frozen:

Stuck grain and warping throughout:

Hideous computer-generated teeth:

Not a freeze-frame, but interpolation:

Interpolation makes scratches stick to the image:

Here, interpolation is combined with spot removal. At first glance, it’s impressive. Look closer, and you can see that it leaves smudges in place of damage AND it leaves remnants behind:

Notice how the sheets of paper distort:

Here it’s combined with frame blending and frozen temporal cloning:

Interpolation utterly fails when it’s called upon to generate background, such as behind Veidt’s head. And check out his smashed head and hand:

Veidt’s hand becomes putty and merges with the sleeve. The sofa pulsates:

You can see magnetic scratches on the wall behind the now-breathing sofa:

I admit that it’s not always immediately apparent recognizing restoration artifacts on a small screen, but look how obvious it is here when displayed at a fraction of its full size! The man gets smashed. And that background…

Interpolation is combined with temporal cloning on the ceiling lamp and chairs on the left. They now bob up and down:

His body compresses and arm stretches, creating a second wrist. Yikes!

Veidt’s head smashes into an invisible curved ceiling:

Our villain’s fingertips disappear. The disembodied hand on the left is completely frozen:

Interpolation destroys the head:

An example of interpolation that is nearly a freeze-frame, plus some negligible spot removal:

The foot disappears:

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Playtime (Criterion)

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As part of the celebration of the reopening of the Egyptian Theatre here in Hollywood, the American Cinematheque ran a 70mm print of the 2002 restoration of Playtime (1967). Since Criterion released it twice on BD, each with radically different color timing, I took note of the color. A simple test: does it look gray, like metal, or brown?

Criterion’s first BD is close to the color you’d see if you went to a 70mm screening:

Notice how gray everything is. That’s the point. Paris’ colorful life obliterated by cold, drab, and homogenous modernism.

The 2002 version does have some computer repairs that I’d probably complain about if I got a chance to look closely, but I have yet to notice them during a screening, and I go nearly every time it plays in Los Angeles.

The 2013 version:

It now has L’Immagine Ritrovata’s characteristic urine-soaked color timing.

While the new version is sharper, less grainy, more stable, it’s ruined by the ugly color. Additionally, it’s riddled with interpolation that also freezes grain. It fakes frames that are intact in the previous version.

I first saw Playtime when the 70mm prints were still new, at least as late as 2004. It was stunning. Even with 20 years of wear, the print I just saw was still beautiful. All they needed to do was scan this negative, nothing more, and the BD would have looked wonderful.

Ultra Q (Mill Creek)

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Good: Grain. Few obvious restoration artifacts. Customer service. Two of my discs were bad and Mill Creek sent replacements.

Bad: No original mono. The sweetened stereo remix is jarring, even when listening on headphones with a stereo-to-mono adapter.

The series is over-subtitled. Every word is subtitled, every time, including names. The first few times are ok, but it quickly gets annoying to see repeated things like names repeatedly pop up. “Jun-chan,” “Yuri-chan,” etc., over and over. I’m undecided about the use of honorifics, but if subtitles merely copy what’s being said, then they cease to be translation and instead turn into closed captioning.

The subtitles reach ridiculous lows near the end of the series. Episode 23 features characters speaking an obviously gibberish language. One of the characters is a translator. We’re clearly not supposed to understand the words.

Episode 27 features extended portions in English…which are subtitled:

Excessive subtitling robs us of the joy of viewing without words marring the picture and that we can understand the words being spoken. Subtitles are impossible to ignore and become a crutch. We look down and still read them, even when we can understand what’s spoken.

I didn’t really notice restoration artifacts overall. The transfer is clear, clean, and some damage remains throughout, which is ok. It looks nice and natural. Not suspiciously “pristine.”

However, episode 27 has a horrible stretch of frozen cloning and scratch removal. In the sample below, the first shot is splotchy, and then turns into a still. The left side of the following shots freeze up. The scratch removal left a smear. Play it at .25x and see how much you can spot:

I am not opposed to damage repair, but if attempted, it needs to be flawless. If it results in portions of the image freezing and smearing, then leave it alone. The watery scratch removal still left a scratch.

After that horrid repair, I was on high alert.

Interpolation:

How did I catch it? I wasn’t frame-stepping as if I was neurotic. I simply noticed that the picture seemed to freeze: