Tag Archives: Eureka

Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA (Eureka)

Processing on Eolomea (1972) was so bad that it deserved its own post. See here.

The Silent Star (1960)

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.

Clipped directly from the BD.

Signals (1970)

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:

In the Dust of the Stars (1976)

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:

Love 2002 (1972)

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.

Clipped directly from the BD.

The Robot (1968)

The best looking film in the set.

Clipped directly from the BD.

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?

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:

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:

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.

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…