Tag Archives: Temporal cloning

Daimajin (Arrow)

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I initially thought that Arrow’s BDs of the amazing Daimajin trilogy looked great. However, when I went to grab a sample to post here, I found that the technicians tried to remove every cement splice, resulting in pervasive screen tearing. In comparison to most so-called restorations, though, it’s subtle and the repairs are generally aligned. Look closely at the very top and bottom edges, and you’ll see frozen temporal cloning, mismatched cloning, and interpolation.

Frozen rushing water.
Interpolation at bottom.
Top third of screen frozen. Yikes!

Mill Creek put out the trilogy years earlier. Apparently, the color isn’t as nice, but I wonder if it’s “unrestored” and how the audio compares. Leave a comment if you can fill me in.

Cat City (Deaf Crocodile)

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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.

Madame Dubarry (Kino)

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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.

Wings (1927)

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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.

Rabid Grannies (Vinegar Syndrome)

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The restoration isn’t heavily scrubbed, but the beginning has a flurry of interpolated repairs. You can see the picture slightly freeze in this brief clip (slow playback to .25x and it becomes obvious):

Clipped directly from the BD.
Fully interpolated frame.
Splotchy interpolated cloning.
Fully interpolated frame.
Interpolated screen tearing at top of frame to “repair” messy splice.

Interestingly, while the above splice got a sloppy repair, lots of messy original splices later in the movie were allowed to remain.