Cleaning up grain is a big no no! HD should bring out the beautiful organic film grain that was visible in the theater.

Shhhh... I add fake film grain to almost all videos I do in digital HD to create the illusion of a more cinematic piece.

The Predator blu-ray that came out where they wiped it clean of film grain is laughed at. It's horrible!

I want to see all the crazy moody grain on the SOTT blu-ray that I remember from the theater. I'm glad to hear that this thing is grainy. Blurry is different from grainy. The more detail you get in a transfer hould also pick up on the detail of the film stock like the film grain. That is a good thing.

As a kid that started getting obsessed with movie like Star Wars, Close Encounters, Superman, Excalibur, etc, etc... I used to say that you had to go to the theaters to get the rumble (the subwoofers that were only at the theaters back then) and the grain. I loved film grain even in elementary school.

runphilrun said:

Well I got my copy today and I was expecting to be disappointed but I wasn't.

So you're disappointed 'cause it didn't disappoint you. I see

They say they enhanced the transfer, can anyone tell the differance to the Dvd?

Also a lot of it has a sort of green tint to it, maybe its just my Samsung screen.

I enjoy this bluray, but U Got the Look is my only real dissapointment.

AaronA said:

They say they enhanced the transfer, can anyone tell the differance to the Dvd?

Also a lot of it has a sort of green tint to it, maybe its just my Samsung screen.

I enjoy this bluray, but U Got the Look is my only real dissapointment.

It's definitely sharper then the DVD. I don't think we'll ever get a better transfer unless some one gets a master, scans it at 4k resolution, and removes the specks, dirt, etc.

No green tint on my screen and I have a samsung as well.

I remember U Got The Look looked just as horrible at the Theaters when it was intially released. When they show Sheena Easton during the end credits, the film quality looks fine, so they must have used another source.

I took some screen shots from the Blu-ray that I bought so you can see the quality. Some of the close ups are really very good. The shot of U Got the Look speaks for itself. You can see there are 3 sources of video in this movie. I think live in Holland, from the set in Paisley Park and from the U Got the Look shoot, which looks like it was shot on video camera rather than film.

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at124629AM.png[/img:$uid]

^notice the shadow of the camera crane on the wall...

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at123403AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at123800AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at123927AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at124104AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at124242AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at124400AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at122057AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at124510AM.png[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i841.photobucket.com/albums/zz339/funkylust/ScreenShot2012-05-22at10348AM.png[/img:$uid]

Damn, I can see that the HD presentation renders the U Got the Look sequence pretty much unwatchable. Almost makes me pine for the VHS days, when you couldn't tell the difference!

Thanks for the shots!

Can you post one of the screenshots in full resolution? 1920x1080 (or post a link to a full size one?)

I wanted to compare it to the same screenshot from the DVD because it was proposed earlier that this was just an upscaling of the DVD master.

how did you cap the shots you posted? do you have a bluray drive in your computer?

unique said:

how did you cap the shots you posted? do you have a bluray drive in your computer?

Yep ripped it to MKV and captured from my laptop just as a guide

funkylust said:

unique said:

how did you cap the shots you posted? do you have a bluray drive in your computer?

Yep ripped it to MKV and captured from my laptop just as a guide

ah, so the caps are from compressed rips?

could you use some software like handbrake to cap a few uncompressed images that haven't been changed from the source?

actually your bluray playback software should let you cap images. if not you could download a trial of powerdvd or something that works for 30 days that you could use. also VLC 2.0 has bluray playback and i think that let's you cap too

unique said:

actually your bluray playback software should let you cap images. if not you could download a trial of powerdvd or something that works for 30 days that you could use. also VLC 2.0 has bluray playback and i think that let's you cap too

I did use VLC playing the MKV. I am happy with the file I have now. Just sharing what I have. Not messing around with any other SW. I am using mac too.

[Edited 5/21/12 22:56pm]

funkylust said:

unique said:

actually your bluray playback software should let you cap images. if not you could download a trial of powerdvd or something that works for 30 days that you could use. also VLC 2.0 has bluray playback and i think that let's you cap too

I did use VLC playing the MKV. I am happy with the file I have now. Just sharing what I have. Not messing around with any other SW. I am using mac too.

[Edited 5/21/12 22:56pm]

i meant play the bluray disc with VLC and cap the results. as the mkv file is different from the source and presumably compressed, thus not giving a true representation of the image

i don't know of any other bluray software on osx as apple don't really support bluray. if you run windows on bootcamp you could use any other software

does the actual disc play on VLC2.0 on osx and let you cap it?

funkylust said:

I took some screen shots from the Blu-ray that I bought so you can see the quality. Some of the close ups are really very good. The shot of U Got the Look speaks for itself. You can see there are 3 sources of video in this movie. I think live in Holland, from the set in Paisley Park and from the U Got the Look shoot, which looks like it was shot on video camera rather than film.

HEY YO!

The screen caps are good but when you watch it on a 100 inch screen then the actual blu ray is very very poor. Chuck on Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins or Santana and the image is spot on at 100 inches. Inface its soo good you can see the sweat drops from stevies cheek lol

Conclusion Sign O The Times Blu Ray = EPIC FAIL

Pitty cos it is such a great concert.

daddymac said:

funkylust said:

I took some screen shots from the Blu-ray that I bought so you can see the quality. Some of the close ups are really very good. The shot of U Got the Look speaks for itself. You can see there are 3 sources of video in this movie. I think live in Holland, from the set in Paisley Park and from the U Got the Look shoot, which looks like it was shot on video camera rather than film.

HEY YO!

The screen caps are good but when you watch it on a 100 inch screen then the actual blu ray is very very poor. Chuck on Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins or Santana and the image is spot on at 100 inches. Inface its soo good you can see the sweat drops from stevies cheek lol

Conclusion Sign O The Times Blu Ray = EPIC FAIL

Pitty cos it is such a great concert.

can you tell if the bluray is in the original aspect ration - ie. proper widescreen and not cropped fom a 4:3 image?

do you have the vhs/lasterdisc and canadian dvd to compare? the canadian dvd is cropped from 4:3 to make a 16:9 image, losing picture at the top and bottom. i wonder if the dvd is the same or if it adds the missing picture at the sides that was cropped from the vhs

I will have another look at this tomrrow Uni. I do have some Mac Blu Ray SW, I will pop the disc in and see if I can capture a screenshot that way but its not going to be 1080p as I am on an 11" MacBook Air Not a fan of Windows, no need for it in my world. I am sure once its blown up onto a large screen it will suffer. My screen caps were just there to show the clarity and detail that is now showing up, its clearly better but its no Wizard of Oz or African Queen. But I can clearly see more detail in there than the DVD. I think the good outweights the bad.

funkylust said:

I will have another look at this tomrrow Uni. I do have some Mac Blu Ray SW, I will pop the disc in and see if I can capture a screenshot that way but its not going to be 1080p as I am on an 11" MacBook Air Not a fan of Windows, no need for it in my world. I am sure once its blown up onto a large screen it will suffer. My screen caps were just there to show the clarity and detail that is now showing up, its clearly better but its no Wizard of Oz or African Queen. But I can clearly see more detail in there than the DVD. I think the good outweights the bad.

brilliant, thanks

the caps should be the same as the source, regardless of the screen size you are viewing

btw the wizard of oz was shot using 3 rolls of film per scene as they didn't have colour film back then. technicolor filmed each colour seperately at the same time. so when they cleaned up/restored the image to bluray they could tell if a scratch or dust should be there or not by comparing the other 2 sources. it's the same with a lot of those early colour movies. there is a great documentary about it on the 3 disc boxset

one thing we are trying to figure out is if it's proper widescreen or not or cropped even further

funkylust said:

I will have another look at this tomrrow Uni. I do have some Mac Blu Ray SW, I will pop the disc in and see if I can capture a screenshot that way but its not going to be 1080p as I am on an 11" MacBook Air Not a fan of Windows, no need for it in my world. I am sure once its blown up onto a large screen it will suffer. My screen caps were just there to show the clarity and detail that is now showing up, its clearly better but its no Wizard of Oz or African Queen. But I can clearly see more detail in there than the DVD. I think the good outweights the bad.

You don't need the whole frame, just part of it at full rez, then could find the same frame on the DVD and compare that exact same part of the image. Thanks!

unique said:

funkylust said:

Yep ripped it to MKV and captured from my laptop just as a guide

ah, so the caps are from compressed rips?

could you use some software like handbrake to cap a few uncompressed images that haven't been changed from the source?

MKV is just a movie container that can allow for uncompressed unaltered rip, but I think Handbrake does transcode it and recompresses the image.

"MakeMKV basically strips the copy protection from movies and then copies them into an MKV container. The result is a perfect copy of the movie, at its original frame size and data rate, which I was able to play on my Mac Pro using the free VLC media player. However, the file won’t play on any Apple device (even if you had room for it). Unlike HandBrake, MakeMKV doesn’t do any transcoding, so if you want to watch the movie on your iPhone or Apple TV, say, you’ll need to convert it with a separate app, such as the free VideoMonkey—which takes even longer than the original Blu-ray ripping process."

Check the bottom of this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HandBrake

[Edited 5/22/12 7:02am]

ufoclub said:

unique said:

ah, so the caps are from compressed rips?

could you use some software like handbrake to cap a few uncompressed images that haven't been changed from the source?

MKV is just a movie container that can allow for uncompressed unaltered rip, but I think Handbrake does transcode it and recompresses the image.

"MakeMKV basically strips the copy protection from movies and then copies them into an MKV container. The result is a perfect copy of the movie, at its original frame size and data rate, which I was able to play on my Mac Pro using the free VLC media player. However, the file won’t play on any Apple device (even if you had room for it). Unlike HandBrake, MakeMKV doesn’t do any transcoding, so if you want to watch the movie on your iPhone or Apple TV, say, you’ll need to convert it with a separate app, such as the free VideoMonkey—which takes even longer than the original Blu-ray ripping process."

Check the bottom of this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HandBrake

[Edited 5/22/12 7:02am]

that's true. but usually when someone speaks of mkv they will mean compressed files, the HD equivilent of a divx rip. usually people who use uncompressed files will rip to an iso which will usually be about 50gb for a full bluray disc, compared to around 4500gb-6500gb for a 720p rip or 8000gb to 20gb for a 1080p rip

funkylust said:

You can watch them on a Mac using Plex. I have all my Blu rays and DVDs ripped and use Plex to watch them all. MKV for Blu ray and TS Files or isos for DVD. I have no compression, all runs perfectly full res and multiple Audio tracks. Plus custom art.

how big is the end file for SOTT? and i presume you keep them on an external HDD and it's an external bluray drive as you have a mac air (do you have the SSD model?)

Do you guys know of anywhere I can post 1920 × 1080 resolution files? Photobucket doesn't like them... not sure where or how to post them full size so you can compare.. I have 3 1920 × 1080 screen grabs...

funkylust said:

Do you guys know of anywhere I can post 1920 × 1080 resolution files? Photobucket doesn't like them... not sure where or how to post them full size so you can compare.. I have 3 1920 × 1080 screen grabs...

maybe the easiest thing to do is zip em and upload them to rapidshare or something

then in the meantime i'll look for a photo hoster that lets you post them in big sizes

thanks for the grabs!

funkylust said:

You can watch them on a Mac using Plex. I have all my Blu rays and DVDs ripped and use Plex to watch them all. MKV for Blu ray and TS Files or isos for DVD. I have no compression, all runs perfectly full res and multiple Audio tracks. Plus custom art.

HEY YO!

Have you tried XBMC?