tenia wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2024 6:14 pm
Oh and don't hesitate to make the article go round a bit. I've already discussed with both labs, they know what my methodology anyway so I don't think I have anything to lose for it being out there as much as possible.
And if somebody is able to get this to slow down or even better stop by making this article visible to someone with such reach, then it won't have been for nothing.
I couldn’t be happier if the article achieved just that but I’m feeling a little pessimistic in that regard after having attempted something in that vein myself (albeit on a smaller scale) by pointing out all the flaws in the worst UHD: Kino Lorber’s encodes of Fear and Desire and the Kubrick shorts in 4k by making caps and BDInfo graphs for all of them with comparisons to their old 2012 BD. Not to go too much off-topic, hence only a brief quote from what I wrote to Geoff D on the other forum, but neglect is probably the most likely outcome for now - but still, if we don’t speak up in these matters, absolutely nothing happens in the slightest as others certainly won’t.
“I decided to copy-paste my post [about the Fear and Desire UHD] into the KL main thread and, naively, I thought that I *might* catch our friendly Kino Lorber Insider’s attention as what they released here is beyond anything remotely acceptable even for the lowest of standards they set for themselves. Verbally, I couldn’t possibly match his disrespectful, passive-aggressive tone, hence all the evidence with caps and charts beyond my usual talk. I expected and got a modest blast of animosity from a few die-hard Kino Cult members but then, genuinely surprising to me… an endless void of pure ignorance and silence. As soon as the regular posters in this thread (their key buyer group anyway) started breaking down their studio deals again as if nothing happened, I knew that’d be the end of that story and nothing will change to the better, not even an inch.
Examples like Fear and Desire are even more sad as they reveal how much better physical media could be if the people in charge only cared a little more beyond their immediate 9-to-5 job compensation, rank, industry contacts,… and build a legacy of contributing something meaningful to this niche.”
These labs go the easiest route as well, following their boss’s guidelines even though the colorists probably know that they’re not doing the right thing for the films and that they could do better if they only got the chance. Many authoring houses also could do better, I’m sure of that, but if their cheap, half-a**ed encodes are approved anyways, why bother wasting more time, rendering power, personnel etc. It’s funny that both of these parties often go hand-in-hand. Badly graded Ritrovata masters are often a pain to encode because of a lighter grain structure, crushed highlights due to the grade (which invites encoders to throttle the bitrate there) and yellow is trickier as a color anyway. That’s why Criterion BDs of Ritrovata and Éclair masters are generally unwatchable among a sea of macroblocking.
