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.
Some pretty ugly repairs-frozen cloning, interpolation, microloops-but they’re not pervasive. For the most part, though, it’s not excessively processed. Grain is intact and it looks ok. Given that the final result still has lots of damage, the repairs were a waste of effort.
Misaligned, frozen cloning:
Wall texture retouched to oblivion:
Nearly a freeze frame:
Interpolation and disappearing rope:
Madame Dubarry is transferred mostly at 20fps and encoded at 24fps.
The 2012 restoration of Wings (1927) is a mixed bag. The color work is beautiful. Ben Burtt’s sound effects really work. However, that all goes to waste due to the overprocessing.
This weekend, the Vista is running a 35mm print of this version. It uses the new sound track, but the print is three seconds out of sync. All the things that were gnawing at me when I first watched the BD are visible in 35mm: frozen cloning, interpolation, microloops. and terrible grain. Grain varies from shot to shot, but, for the most part, it’s smeary.
Clipped directly from the BD. Check out that magnetic grain!Clipped directly from the BD.Huge smeary retouching.
I still dislike the new arrangement of J. S. Zamecnik’s score. Too cheery, with excessive chimes. The recording lacks so much personality, that I thought it was mostly electronic. I was shocked when I saw the credits. This is perhaps the largest American recording of a score for a silent in over 20 years! If only the studios put in half as much effort into their silents as Paramount did for Wings.
Two main issues: broken pulldown and microloops. The source print is step-printed and the video was stretched further for the BD, resulting in a very clumpy pulldown. You can see the strobing at the climax is completely broken.
BD on left; corrected to 60fps on right.
The elements are there for a good presentation. Nice scan, nice encoding, no artifacting, but the technicians didn’t make the effort to fix the pulldown, even taking into consideration that they stretched to 24fps.
Microloops at
00;46;49;38
00;26;47;01
00;36;06;55
02;05;56;20
The source looks like a circulating repertory print with characteristic dirt buildup. I’m puzzled why Flicker Alley didn’t physically clean it before scanning.
Storm Over Asia runs at 6-24fps and is encoded at 24fps. The included Chess Fever is upscaled.
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.
