Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

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tenia
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#26 Post by tenia » Thu May 30, 2019 6:10 am

domino harvey wrote:
Wed May 29, 2019 5:01 pm
Several sycophantic members are now arguing that checking the new transfer against an older copy (DVD, etc) constitutes unrealistic quality check expectations
Latest suggestion from a member :
"What reasonable check do you suggest they might have done to pick that up? Only hire QC staff who have perfect pitch and have encyclopaedic knowledge of actors voices?" and that "people should get a life".
That'll definitely teach labels and studios to own their mistakes up and offer corrected discs.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#27 Post by nitin » Thu May 30, 2019 8:36 am

That person agreed with my post that The Interpreter defect should have been picked up in QC and Kino should have acknowledged and replaced that disc. However,when the same user who brought this issue to light previously brought Up The Interpreter’s issues to light, he was criticised by the same mob who accepted Kino’s “this is the master we were given” BS.

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MichaelB
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Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#28 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 30, 2019 10:23 am

Comparison with at least one other release (if one exists) is standard QC practice as far as I’m concerned, if only for reassurance that perceived problems are inherent in the source.

Right now, Anchor Bay’s old Norman J Warren DVD set is on more or less constant playback in my office, as there are lots of tiny differences between those transfers and the new restorations and we need to be certain that the latter aren’t inadvertently inferior in any way.

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domino harvey
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#29 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 30, 2019 10:28 am

The best part of KLI’s rant was when he revealed that there are at least four people at the label responsible for quality checks and none of them caught the error. This was supposed to be a “So there” to belittle the noticeability of the problem, but all I could think was “Uh, maybe that means you need a new staff...”

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#30 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 30, 2019 10:35 am

Also, for context, this is but the latest error among recent releases, as Link, which by all accounts looks better than ever, only includes a Mono mix, even though all previous DVD releases were in Stereo and the packaging indicated Stereo sound. Kino Lorber’s official stance is that since that’s what StudioCanal sent them, there’s nothing they can do about it, ie:

Image

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tenia
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#31 Post by tenia » Thu May 30, 2019 11:32 am

And The Interpreter.
But yes, their answer about having 4 QC staff missing the issue was sadly ridiculous, though not as much as some members' adding that they're 4 but probably split amongst multiple releases, so they don't only need colder-blooded representatives and new staff but they also are understaffed.
Quite a neat defense really.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#32 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 30, 2019 11:39 am

Not to belabor the point that the Blu-Ray forum is full of lickspittles hoping Kino Lorber will ask them out on a date, but the last few posts in that thread are from a member who claims other labels don’t have better quality checks, they just got lucky and their releases turned out okay by accident

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#33 Post by tenia » Thu May 30, 2019 11:52 am

Kino are releasing so many stuff with those stretched 4 QCs people, we can just bow down to their abnegation to do it despite being bound statistically to get bad stuff and not being able to QC it properly !

Side note and joke aside : I had at least on 2 different releases Carlotta asking me to check concurrent releases because they had doubts about what they were given. And we all know the lengths Eureka went to ensure they had the proper soundtracks on their Fortune Star titles. So when labels want to do things correctly, they know where to look at.

EDIT : I'm just realising : following the sme rationale, does that mean that all the Kino releases with no issues are down to dumb luck too ?

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#34 Post by movielocke » Thu May 30, 2019 1:21 pm

tenia wrote:
EDIT : I'm just realising : following the sme rationale, does that mean that all the Kino releases with no issues are down to dumb luck too ?
Yes.

Kino can only put out so many titles by taking the tape or file masters they license and dumping them as directly to disc as possible. The TLC that might uncover a pitch shift is unlikely to occur.

I wouldn’t blame the QC people, I wouldn’t discover the difference myself, and I’ve done QC for TV many years ago.

The blame would derive where in the chain of custody the error was introduced.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#35 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Thu May 30, 2019 1:26 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Wed May 29, 2019 5:17 pm
He went Joan Crawford on their ass.
Critics of Kino QC:

Image


Actually, perhaps "wire hanger users" is a reference to low-budget, improvised rabbit ears used for reception on old television sets. As in, "You guys know nothing about technology."

Just trying to work with Kino Insider on this one. Either way, I think we can all agree it's a devastating putdown.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#36 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 30, 2019 1:43 pm

movielocke wrote:
Thu May 30, 2019 1:21 pm
The TLC that might uncover a pitch shift is unlikely to occur.

I wouldn’t blame the QC people, I wouldn’t discover the difference myself, and I’ve done QC for TV many years ago.

The blame would derive where in the chain of custody the error was introduced.
I suspect pitch-shift issues are more commonly encountered on my side of the Atlantic, not least because when QCing dual-format releases I'm usually dealing with 0.7 semitones difference between the BD and PAL DVD, and if you turn to one immediately after the other it's pretty noticeable. And of course when checking a new BD against an old PAL DVD, the chances are that there'll be a pitch difference there too. (Ironically, it's when there isn't a pitch difference between the BD and PAL DVD that alarm bells should start ringing!)

But this will be much less commonly encountered by a US label, where pitches tend to remain the same regardless of medium, so I can see why they might be less inclined to specifically check such things.

(I'm racking my brains trying to think of a situation where I personally flagged up a pitch-shift problem, and the only one that springs to mind is Eureka's Kes, where the alternative mildly ADR-ed soundtrack was initially pitched differently from the main one. But any competent QC inspector should have spotted that, since all the necessary evidence was on the disc itself.)

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Roscoe
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#37 Post by Roscoe » Thu May 30, 2019 4:42 pm

Let's not forget that Kino messed up the Aspect Ratios on those Fritz Lang silents, refused to admit it, and then corrected the issue only for a large box set when they finally admitted that they'd made the mistake they'd denied for so long without ever offering an exchange program.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#38 Post by nitin » Thu May 30, 2019 6:39 pm

Domino, Link is not the only title with mono instead of stereo audio. Almost all of their Buena Vista releases are the same, and a number of their MGM 80s releases, despite even prior Mill Creek releases having the correct audio!

But file that under ‘get a life’ as KL’sresponse.

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tenia
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#39 Post by tenia » Fri May 31, 2019 4:20 am

Roscoe wrote:
Thu May 30, 2019 4:42 pm
Let's not forget that Kino messed up the Aspect Ratios on those Fritz Lang silents, refused to admit it, and then corrected the issue only for a large box set when they finally admitted that they'd made the mistake they'd denied for so long without ever offering an exchange program.
I think that's the final straw in this situation. Mistakes happen, even with very competent QC, that's just how things are, but there's a difference between mistakes happening, and denying they happened while basically insulting people pointing out factually the mistakes and asking for corrections.
None of this would have happened if Kino's representative just wrote "We've listened to the audio files, and there's indeed a tonal issue. We're looking at how to correct that." and leave it to that.
MichaelB wrote:
Thu May 30, 2019 1:43 pm
I suspect pitch-shift issues are more commonly encountered on my side of the Atlantic, not least because when QCing dual-format releases I'm usually dealing with 0.7 semitones difference between the BD and PAL DVD, and if you turn to one immediately after the other it's pretty noticeable. And of course when checking a new BD against an old PAL DVD, the chances are that there'll be a pitch difference there too. (Ironically, it's when there isn't a pitch difference between the BD and PAL DVD that alarm bells should start ringing!)
I would suspect it's more common to start the project with 25p psf masters in Europe than in the US, hence why pitch QC is more common too.
However, I wonder where this issue comes from, since it sounds much different than a simple PAL-speedup issue.

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domino harvey
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#40 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:53 pm

Kino is doubling down and claiming their pitch is correct... but here’s the kicker
Kino Lorber Insider wrote:I'm sorry, but most of these follow up posts to ours clearly show that you guys really don't know what you're talking about.

25fps is a PAL frame rate, all European HD masters are 25fps.

The pitch would've been lower, not higher, if we hadn't adjusted the audio when we performed the 24fps conversion as some have suggested.

We will have an final answer in a couple of days.

Please stop with these misinformed posts and speculations.
James Luckard wrote:25fps is the framerate for PAL, that's correct.

But feature films like BITTER MOON are shot at 24fps, not 25fps. Only European TV programs are filmed natively at 25fps.

A feature film like BITTER MOON, run at 25fps, will run 4% faster than normal, thus the pitch will be 4% higher than normal.

A slowed-down 24fps version of BITTER MOON, created from a 25fps master, would now be running at the correct speed, with the correct pitch.

There would be no reason to raise the pitch of such a version of the film. Doing so would, indeed, create an unnatural 4% pitch increase.

Please point out anything incorrect or misinformed in any of my posts, and I will gladly correct it.
The user later acknowledged that some films are shot in 25fps, but not Bitter Moon, so his point stands

KLInsider replies later to claims that anyone who knows what Grant sounds like can pick up on this :
Kino Lorber Insider wrote:He sounds like Hugh Grant and his voice gets higher when the character is excited and he's doing his regular Grant shtick.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#41 Post by Cremildo » Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:58 pm

I really wanted to buy this (and Far from Heaven) during their next sale, but the dubious quality and the attitude of the representative toward concerned customers are dampening my enthusiasm.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#42 Post by tenia » Tue Jun 04, 2019 5:25 pm

In some way, we're now used to attitude coming from whoever have been and are KL's representatives there, but my bigger issue is that they might just conclude in the end there's no problem and thus offer no replacemen. Hopefully, it won't be the case, but I'm not so sure about them admitting there's an issue.
domino harvey wrote:
Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:53 pm
Kino is doubling down and claiming their pitch is correct... but here’s the kicker
I don't think Kino realised they themselves pretty much explained they indeed pitch-corrected what they received, thus introducing this higher pitch.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#43 Post by Cremildo » Tue Jun 04, 2019 6:16 pm

People who bought the Blu-ray and noticed the pitch issue are flat-out being called "nut jobs" by the representative - that in response to a perfectly civil, placating post.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#44 Post by captveg » Tue Jun 04, 2019 6:26 pm

I don't understand how it's so hard for their reps to just be non-emotional in their responses. Even if they didn't feel there was an issue, it's not that hard to say "We investigated via x-y-z, and have come to the decision to not issue replacements because of x-y-z. We understand some may disagree with this decision, and while we have no current plans to issue a replacement for this specific title at this time, we hope you will enjoy many of our other releases. We reserve the option to reconsider this complaint at a future time even if we do not plan to do so at the moment."

It's really, really simple to be direct while also being baseline polite.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#45 Post by knives » Tue Jun 04, 2019 6:30 pm

Clearly we need to have edict classes make a comeback.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#46 Post by DeprongMori » Tue Jun 04, 2019 9:00 pm

Cremildo wrote:
Tue Jun 04, 2019 6:16 pm
People who bought the Blu-ray and noticed the pitch issue are flat-out being called "nut jobs" by the representative - that in response to a perfectly civil, placating post.
How in the world does someone not get fired for presenting the face of their company in that aggressive and hostile way. I am now even less inclined to buy KL releases than I already was. (In general I find the quality of their releases a bit lower than that of their UK counterparts, but now, even if on a level playing field, I’m tempted to go out of my way to avoid them.)

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#47 Post by tenia » Wed Jun 05, 2019 4:04 am

captveg wrote:
Tue Jun 04, 2019 6:26 pm
I don't understand how it's so hard for their reps to just be non-emotional in their responses. It's really, really simple to be direct while also being baseline polite.
This really is my main wonder too. This could have gone down in a really REALLY simple way, but now, it's likely that KL's representative will be a bigger repulsive than the release's flaw itself, and that's what some will remember. Mistakes happen, not being able to correct it too (for whatever reason), but being treated this way is plain professionnal non-sense. As DeprongMori wrote, the utmost majority of employees working at such a position and acting this way would be fired in a heartbeat. I've seen people being fired for way less than this.
This being written, he did apologize to everyone.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#48 Post by DeprongMori » Wed Jun 05, 2019 9:45 am

That’s one crappy non-apology “apology”. KL really need someone much more professional in that role as company representative, and it seems their hiring has been historically poor.

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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#49 Post by senseabove » Wed Jun 05, 2019 12:06 pm

It's not the first "apology" they've given, either. Not that I'm really counting, but I think this happens pretty much monthly...

Though in their defense, about 1/3 of the folks there are truly, thoroughly exasperating.

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tenia
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Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics: Bitter Moon

#50 Post by tenia » Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:59 pm

senseabove wrote:
Wed Jun 05, 2019 12:06 pm
Though in their defense, about 1/3 of the folks there are truly, thoroughly exasperating.
They do, and I understand the frustration, but in this case, James Luckard writes in a very diplomatic way about this, and even when KL answers to him, it's not very good looking.

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