Okay... today is "Mastering and Restoration Day" here at
The Bits. The reason will become obvious in a few minutes...
First up today, there's been a small degree of panic in some quarters online in the last couple days about director James Cameron's recent comments on the remastered
Aliens transfer. Cameron was video interviewed
over at Coming Soon.net about
Avatar, and about 5:30 into the clip he talks about the new
Aliens HD master for the upcoming Blu-ray. To quote:
"It's spectacular. We went in and completely de-noised it, de-grained it, up-rezzed, color-corrected every frame, and it looks amazing. It looks better that it looked in the theaters originally. Because it was shot on a high-speed negative that was a new negative that didn't pan out too well and got replaced the following year. So it's pretty grainy. We got rid of all the grain. It's sharper and clearer and more beautiful than it's ever looked. And we did that to the long version, to the 'director's cut' or the extended play."
As you might expect, all that talk of de-noising and de-graining has some fans freaked out that the release is going to suffer the same excessively DNR-ed fate as Fox's recent
Predator: Ultimate Hunter Blu-ray. Here's the deal: Everyone we trust who was involved, and/or has actually SEEN the new
Aliens HD master for Blu-ray, reports to us that the film looks terrific. To the degree that DNR was used, it was applied carefully and with a light hand, with an eye toward striking the proper balance between maintaining the detail and integrity of the image and the desire to reduce grain and address the deficiencies of the stock used at the time. There is apparently STILL grain left in the image, it's just no longer excessive or distracting. Plus, Cameron is no slouch when it comes to the presentation quality of his films on disc, and he approved this transfer and master. Look, there's a VERY big difference in digital mastering when the filmmakers are directly involved in the process, as opposed to when they're not. So we're told the disc looks great, we trust that it looks great and I'll personally work to directly confirm that. My own feeling is that
Predator was probably an aberration. Fox has generally been doing very good mastering work for Blu-ray in the last year or so, and I suspect this is going to be a non-issue when we all get our hands on the
Aliens disc. 'Nuff said for now. By the way, it's a good
interview at Coming Soon, so do check it out.
Next stop on the restoration express today: Universal. Last Friday morning, I had the chance to personally visit with the catalog and mastering team at Universal Studios Home Entertainment to talk about the quality issues with some of their recent catalog Blu-ray titles. Specifically, many enthusiasts have been disappointed by the HD video quality on such titles as
Spartacus,
Out of Africa and
Flash Gordon. When I contacted the studio about this a month ago, they were kind enough to invite me up to meet with their technical team to discuss the subject. Among them were their VP of Operations, VP of Technical Services, VP of TV & Catalog Brand Marketing and SrVP of Communications & Publicity. So on Friday morning, we all gathered in one of Universal's in-house QC Rooms - one calibrated and maintained by home theater industry legend Joe Kane specifically for the purpose of checking the A/V quality of all the studio's HD masters, as well as final DVD and Blu-ray product. The system included about a 100" Stewart front projection screen illuminated by a Samsung SP-A800B 1080p DLP projector. We looked at actual Blu-ray check discs and final product, played into the system on a Sony PS3.
After all the introductions, I began by telling them about some of your concerns with specific Uni catalog BD titles - as relayed to me in MANY reader e-mails over the last few months - and they were very receptive to my input and comments. It's absolutely clear to me that they care about these issues as much as we all do. The Uni team took me though their telecine and mastering process, and we looked at the specific titles I'd listed to them as problematic -
Spartacus,
Out of Africa and
Flash Gordon. I explained what I felt the issues were with each, and they were very open about discussing them. With
Flash Gordon, I mentioned the slightly-too-excessive use of DNR - they understood my perspective and noted that their intent had been to reduce the coarse grain resulting from the optical printing process used in the film. They also admitted that it's a fine line they have to walk - some BD consumers hate seeing grain and are very vocal about it. But I noted that given current sales numbers for the format (and its premium price), the reality is that market for most of these titles - especially catalog BD titles like
Flash Gordon - is really driven by enthusiasts, many of whom know the film better than all of us (in the room) and probably already own multiple copies on DVD and even laserdisc. Enthusiasts are willing to buy the film again on Blu-ray, but if they're going to pay $29.99 or $39.99, they demand the highest possible A/V quality - meaning one that's true to the original film presentation - and they at least want all of the previous DVD extras to carry over. So the transfer and mastering work really needs to be done with these enthusiasts in mind. And for those newcomers to Blu-ray who may not understand film grain and like issues, it's really a matter of educating them - just as was (and continues to be) the case with complaints about "those damn black bars". The fact is, DNR is going to get used on HD masters - it's just another part of the digital mastering process. But the key is to find the right balance in preserving the integrity of the original film image and also updating it for HD presentation on Blu-ray. The folks at Universal clearly understood this. They seem to me to be very aware of it, and are working hard to find that right balance.
With regard to
Spartacus and
Out of Africa - not to mention the original
Gladiator Blu-ray (the master and elements for which were supplied to Paramount by Universal) - what I learned is that these titles were all mastered from recent transfers, but from native 1080p transfers only. And it quickly became clear to me that - 9 times out of 10 - native 1080p transfers just don't work for Blu-ray. That to me really seems to be the whole crux of the problem. If you really want to maximize the level of fine detail and image quality on Blu-ray, you have to go to higher resolution scans. The difference in quality from this resolution difference alone is, I think, huge. And again, I think Universal is well aware of this and is working to improve. All in all, I'm pleased to report that it was a very good meeting. The big takeaways should be: 1) These guys really do care about the quality of their BD product, 2) They're working harder to make sure their catalog BD quality is what enthusiasts expect it to be, and 3) I think the result of those efforts is just starting to show up in actual streeting product. For example, their new
Breakfast Club BD looks great.
More importantly, some of you will be relieved to hear that, while visiting the studio, I had the chance to personally preview the HD quality of the upcoming Blu-ray releases of both
Psycho and
Back to the Future. And both look absolutely terrific. Yes, there's light film grain - just as there should be. But the textures, contrast, color (in the case of
BTTF) and overall image detail are just wonderful. Bob Gale was personally involved in the work on the
Back to the Future films, and I'm told he's very happy with the results. He certainly has every reason to be. I think fans and enthusiasts are going to be very pleased with these releases too. And if they're representative of what we can expect from Universal going forward, and I suspect they are, the studio's BD catalog quality is definitely on the upswing. My personal thanks to the folks at Universal for their hospitality, for their willingness to engage with us on these issues (both now and going forward), and for all their efforts in general. I certainly appreciate it, and I think readers of
The Bits do as well.
