Tag Archives: Freezing

Le Beau Mec (Altered Innocence)

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.

Clipped directly from the BD.

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:

Frame number in yellow.

Instead of freezing, I’d much prefer to edit the sound, see black frames inserted, or, best, see the original damaged frames.

I Was Born, But… (Criterion)

Dammit, another upscale from Criterion! They are inconsistent in publishing bonus features and alternate versions in HD, and they never state on the box when they upscale. I even checked Blu-ray.com and DVDBeaver before buying (both said 1080p).

Screenshots make it look ok, but in motion, the aliased deinterlacing and DVD-era artifacting is obvious:

Clipped directly from the BD. Also contains microloop.
Clipped directly from the BD.

The movie is encoded at 24fps, but transferred slightly slower, resulting in random whiplash-inducing stuttering.

A Straightforward Boy

Clipped directly from the BD.

Restoration work is horrible:

Frame numbers in yellow.

Frozen temporal cloning looks terrible in motion. The pause in this video clip is due to the broken pulldown, not an error on my end:

Eolomea (Eureka)

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.

Cat City (Deaf Crocodile)

There’s typical frozen temporal cloning. The bigger problem is that there are about 100 freeze frames. Some have negligible clone repairs, but usually the picture simply freezes.

Frozen picture. Yellow number indicates frame number.
Picture is mostly frozen, with some misaligned cloning.

The shorts got worse processing, especially at splices.

Let Us Get a Dog (1974)

Freeze frame:

Interpolation:

Frozen cloning, screen tearing, misalignment:

Can you spot it?

Where is the Limit? (1975)

Frozen cloning:

Screen tearing:

Interpolation:

This interpolated frame includes a microloop.

Restoration processing by Hungary National Film Institute Filmlab.

Samm Deighan’s irritating uptalk-filled commentary approaches the movie with the assumption that animation is for children. It sounds like a dry book-report academic lecture, instead of someone who is an expert in Hungarian cinema. Skip it.