De-grained. There’s noise, but it doesn’t look natural.
Smeary. Dissolving damage. Frozen cloning. Screen tearing. Freeze-frames. Broken stabilization. Interpolation.
The broken stabilization is more apparent here:
And the shorts? All upscales.
A nice example of how nice the picture can look when you don’t filter out all the grain and fine scratches. Yes, there’s a lot of damage, but it’s clear and sharp.
However, the technicians couldn’t resist repairing it. A light touch overall, but if you look closely, there’s frozen cloning, interpolation, and microloops throughout. Worst hit are the opening titles and the climactic confrontation.
Dissolving, interpolated damage moves at a slow frame rate:
Screen tearing:
Frankly, with all the age-related damage, most repairs are easy to miss. However, the following scene got the works, with a flurry of obtrusive repairs that made me “yuck” out loud. The full shots look terrible in motion.
Interpolation:
Almost a freeze frame:
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.
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.
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.
The shorts got worse processing, especially at splices.
Let Us Get a Dog (1974)
Freeze frame:
Interpolation:
Frozen cloning, screen tearing, misalignment:
Where is the Limit? (1975)
Frozen cloning:
Screen tearing:
Interpolation:
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.