Criterion and UHD

News on Criterion and Janus Films.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Lowry_Sam
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: Criterion and UHD

#176 Post by Lowry_Sam » Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:56 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:29 pm
What I could see them doing is releasing select titles in UHD, like they did for 3D with the special edition of Pina
So Flesh For Frankenstein/3D & The Last Emperor/3D UHD upgrades?

User avatar
andyli
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:46 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#177 Post by andyli » Tue Jun 18, 2019 6:08 am

There is no 3D in UHD. What's the use of The Last Emperor in 3D anyway?

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Criterion and UHD

#178 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jun 18, 2019 10:18 am

Just checking that you’re aware that such a thing actually exists.

User avatar
andyli
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:46 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#179 Post by andyli » Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:41 pm

Yeah, I even owned the Italian BD, back when it was the only option to view the film in that 4K restoration. But Diskino has since rectified the situation by putting out the restoration in 2D.

User avatar
movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Criterion and UHD

#180 Post by movielocke » Wed Jul 17, 2019 1:55 am

Uhd discs and hdr were discussed extensively in the podcast. They’ve done a handful of titles in hdr, including several for hdr broadcast and dcps and future proofing, but nothing has been released to the public. Internal discussions of uhd have been going on for quite a while and it seems either a title is imminent / possible and they sound determined to at least try a release if the right combination of things come together for a title.

(All of which made me think Roma, for some reason)

Blood simple, rumble fish and sex lies and video tape were all mentioned and the directors responses to it: the coens responded with a verbal “okay “ and nothing else, Coppola was just excited about the new tech (which led to an aside that the not criterion apocalypse now hdr Coppola subsequently embarked on is pretty stunning) and soderbergh was “I just want to make a few things pop...” and made no changes for long stretches before breaking in with comments like “increase that light 150 to 200 nits” because soderbergh is super technical and uses it very subtly.

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#181 Post by tenia » Wed Jul 17, 2019 2:15 am

IIRC correctly, HDR restorations have started to be performed years ago, well before any public release of them. I'm quite certain many movies released by Criterion fall into this category.

User avatar
FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
Location: Greenwich Village

Re: Criterion and UHD

#182 Post by FrauBlucher » Wed Jul 17, 2019 5:54 am

Anyone interested in this format should definitely take a listen to the podcast. Kline said he would like to see Criterion release UHD, but also said depending on what size TV you're watching it on there will be no difference between UHD and Bluray HD.

User avatar
EddieLarkin
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#183 Post by EddieLarkin » Wed Jul 17, 2019 8:31 am

It's a shame to hear that canard repeated. Resolution wise yes but HDR is not screen size dependent, and anyone who has actually sat and compared Blu-ray and UHD will come away thinking that it's HDR where the actual superiority of the format lies.

Indeed, even on a huge screen resolution benefits are not going to be anything like DVD to Blu-ray, as returns diminish with every doubling of resolution. That's before we even get to the fact most UHDs are 2K upscales (of which there is nothing to complain about, as again, HDR is what is important).

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#184 Post by tenia » Wed Jul 17, 2019 9:20 am

The issue, in any case, isn't the screen size but the viewing distance. Too many people are already sitting too far away from their HD TV, it's even worse with UHD.
EddieLarkin wrote:
Wed Jul 17, 2019 8:31 am
That's before we even get to the fact most UHDs are 2K upscales
99% 4K DIs are part 2K upscales anyway (since the utmost majority of VFX are still today output at 2K).

User avatar
Luke M
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:21 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#185 Post by Luke M » Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:13 am

I listened to the podcast and came away even less optimistic about 4K discs.

User avatar
mfunk9786
Under Chris' Protection
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: Criterion and UHD

#186 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:26 am

FrauBlucher wrote:
Wed Jul 17, 2019 5:54 am
Anyone interested in this format should definitely take a listen to the podcast. Kline said he would like to see Criterion release UHD, but also said depending on what size TV you're watching it on there will be no difference between UHD and Bluray HD.
I wish this canard would go away, people were saying the same sort of thing when HD-DVD and Blu-ray came around. Ultimately improved resolution is improved resolution - is it going to pop out of your screen and wallop you in the face? No, but it's going to be a cleaner, more colorful, more crisp image regardless of whether the difference is "perceivable" from a mere resolution standpoint. Sure, Blu-ray looks good, but it's not just a placebo effect that makes UHD look better, just like it wasn't when the jump from 480p to 1080p happened.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Criterion and UHD

#187 Post by swo17 » Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:38 am

Question because I don't know: Is HDR something that helps to better replicate the look of film?

User avatar
mfunk9786
Under Chris' Protection
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: Criterion and UHD

#188 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:46 am

If deployed correctly (and a film wasn't made with HDR in mind - the reason you see a lot of neon in blockbusters these days is because it looks so good with HDR on), it basically does a better job of replicating a film print that is projected with a properly bright bulb. It allows for richer contrast between light and dark, so if an old film has, say, a scene that takes place in a cave and someone lights a torch - the HDR transfer would do a better job of providing a contrast between how dark the cave is and how bright the fire is that would be less grey and muddy than an image without it. But it's not, unless someone really mucked the process up, some kind of enhancement that gets the image further away from how it was intended to look.

It's pretty striking, actually, to watch a cinemascope or academy ratio film in HDR and see the film capable of becoming just as dark as the black bars on the screen - the contrast, especially between pixels that are butted right up against each other and might traditionally blur or create an unsightly halo effect, especially on something like a DVD, is far improved.

User avatar
movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#189 Post by movielocke » Wed Jul 17, 2019 1:16 pm

swo17 wrote:
Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:38 am
Question because I don't know: Is HDR something that helps to better replicate the look of film?
I'd say yes, it can be, because film has a lot of latitude and really smooth natural gradations on contrast and color.

Some of the biggest limitations of video color standards (NTSC, rec709) have been in how they do 'the mathematical bare minimum' to get an image on video, so you don't include "waste" excess color because 'the human eye can't perceive it' you don't allow for more contrast because 'the human eye can't percieve it'. or 72dpi is fine for all video monitors forever because 'the human eye can't perceive it'

The simplest way to understand the above is to simply look at the color triangle comparisons of NTSC rec709 and rec2020 on wikipedia. every time the engineers have assured us that we couldn't get any benefit from exceeding their triangles. But the limitations in the rec709 cyans, for example, is partly why there have been historical bias towards redder video transfers, whether or not there was too much red in the image, the baseline problem is there weren't enough cyan colors and too many reds in the color space relative to each other.

The above could be a particular problem, as red biased filmstocks, like Kodak, were the template for the creation of the NTSC and rec709 color space standards, so the biases, limitations and problems of that kind of filmstock got baked into the technical specifications for video and became the default assumption. A wider color gamut is not situated so completely on the specific Kodak characteristics, and so can much better represent the color attributes of other film stocks like Fuji, Agfa etc.

But for sixty years, people have complained about how video doesn't look nearly as good as film, in spite of assurances that people couldn't see the difference. we definitely saw this same complaint at the advent of HD, but there was definitely a lot less pushback when 2K DCPs superceded HD mainly because their DC3 color space became available.

But HDR also doesn't necessarily replicate the look of film, because film was NEVER photographying insane high dynamic range. Under perfect lighting conditions with perfect film stock, you could at most get seven stops of exposure onto your negative. Most of the time five stops was the realistic maximum, and most films had no more than four stops of exposure.

Now, what I don't know is how printing negative to release prints might be able to give you additional latitude, such that you might be shooting four stops of exposure, but in setting the printing contrast of the exposure you'd create an answer print that had the illusion of more stops.

So again it comes back to gradation, HDR is going to represent fine gradations much better than previous color spaces, as well as having more colors available to accurately represent an image, without trying to fit a red peg in a cyan hole

nissling
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2012 2:19 pm
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: Criterion and UHD

#190 Post by nissling » Wed Jul 17, 2019 1:48 pm

One thing that's very important to realize with the advent of HDR and its usage for catalog titles is that it's not only capable of delivering a much higher dynamic range than the old BT.709 standard. It's also the first time that we can more or less let go of the old CRT EOTF formula that we've been bound to since CIE1931. To explain...

There are various tone curves for HDR, and different types of HDR formats do have different advantages. But the one single thing they have in common is that the stored data is always refering to a specific light output value. In the grading suite, what you see as 100cd/m² is indeed 100cd/m², and what you see as 1cd/m² is also 1cd/m². With SDR you have always had to rely on the non-linear transfer that's been the nature of CRT monitors. On modern displays, it's being emulated and while the ITU-R standards do indeed demand a lot of precision to be properly followed, it will never be completely water-proof since we cannot rely on CRTs anymore (partly because those are not used nowadays obviously).

For HDR however, this issue is more or less entirely gone. And thanks to the dynamic metadata in Dolby Vision it's fully possible to utilize the entire bit depth while still not reach any light levels above 100cd/m². When used properly, there's no question HDR is the way to go even for catalog titles. Sure will we probably never get completely rid of SDR support (which I guess is a good thing still) but using these standards to create new, more effective workflows that allows far less inaccuracies in the entire chain - all the way from the production to the end user - is something I highly appreciate. When done right it can look fantastic. Sony did a magnificent job on The Natural which hit UHD-BD earlier this Summer for instance and utilized HDR10 in a very respectful way for example.

User avatar
EddieLarkin
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#191 Post by EddieLarkin » Wed Jul 17, 2019 1:52 pm

swo17 wrote:
Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:38 am
Question because I don't know: Is HDR something that helps to better replicate the look of film?
Yes.

When it came to detail level in film, each successive format got better and better at retaining that detail and reproducing grain in a realistic way, culminating in Blu-ray, which was the first format to imitate film and grain in a way that a "film" aficionado might find satisfactory.

As described earlier, UHD doesn't improve on this as hugely at normal seating distances, though it's certainly there if you look close enough. Try this for a good example, where grain can be reproduced to a really ultra fine and beautiful degree.

Dynamic range is simply another quality of film that gets impinged once you move to home video, except with HDR this is the first time TV technology has really made any major improvement. Even the most advanced Full HD 3D SMART TV had a very limited range compared to what a HDR TV can do.

One of the reasons it has been hard for both customers and industry types to really grasp what HDR is and what it does is because it is not possible to represent it in screencaps like we could with the old formats. Sites like caps-a-holic and DVDBeaver are simply showing you the HDR elements converted to normal SDR. The best way to actually demonstrate the differences is the way Geoff D does it at Blu-ray.com, simply by taking photos of his TV, once playing the Blu-ray and then playing the UHD. I've taken a few examples from his posts:

Blu-ray vs. UHD
Blu-ray vs UHD

Older TV tech (and thus video formats designed to playback on them) simply could not represent image highlights beyond a certain (comparatively low) value. So as can be seen in the Blu-ray caps the image simply gets washed out and adopts a blanket brightness level. The UHD tightens everything up and reproduces the image how it was intended to be seen.

It also helps resolve detail in bright scenes that was previously whited out:

Blu-ray vs UHD
Blu-ray vs UHD (note how invisible the clouds are in the Blu-ray cap)

Another major canard about HDR is that it would be used simply to make everything more vivid or neon looking, and thus that it would be incompatible with catalog titles. With releases so far this has been completely unfounded.
Last edited by EddieLarkin on Wed Jul 17, 2019 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Luke M
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:21 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#192 Post by Luke M » Wed Jul 17, 2019 3:11 pm

I have to admit this is the best selling point I've seen for 4K.

User avatar
dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#193 Post by dwk » Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:43 am

From The Digital Bits
Speaking of the Criterion Collection, we have reason to believe that the company will announce their first 4K Ultra HD title before the end of 2019 as well, based on information from our industry sources. But again, we’ll have to wait and see.

User avatar
movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#194 Post by movielocke » Thu Jul 25, 2019 1:46 pm

Roma novemba

User avatar
ShellOilJunior
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 7:17 am

Re: Criterion and UHD

#195 Post by ShellOilJunior » Wed Sep 11, 2019 1:22 pm

Easy Rider is going 4K UHD. (not on Criterion)

User avatar
TwoTecs
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2017 10:26 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#196 Post by TwoTecs » Wed Sep 11, 2019 4:21 pm

Got Song to Song on 4K UHD recently (OOP since Broadgreen went under) and it was great seeing a Malick in 4K even though the disc does not have HDR/wide color space. However, it got me thinking that the unofficial trilogy of To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song would be a great addition to Criterion, especially on UHD. 2/3 of these films are now out of print too because they were distributed by Broadgreen.

The films are probably coming at some point given the track record with Malick and I hope Criterion takes the opportunity to showcase Malick and Lubezki's work on the best format available.

User avatar
solaris72
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:03 pm
Location: Baltimore, MD

Re: Criterion and UHD

#197 Post by solaris72 » Sun Sep 15, 2019 6:23 am

TwoTecs wrote:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 4:21 pm
Got Song to Song on 4K UHD recently (OOP since Broadgreen went under) and it was great seeing a Malick in 4K even though the disc does not have HDR/wide color space. However, it got me thinking that the unofficial trilogy of To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song would be a great addition to Criterion, especially on UHD. 2/3 of these films are now out of print too because they were distributed by Broadgreen.

The films are probably coming at some point given the track record with Malick and I hope Criterion takes the opportunity to showcase Malick and Lubezki's work on the best format available.
A few years ago, the Malick-centered facebook page One Big Soul said a longer cut of To the Wonder would come from Criterion. Haven't heard anything since, but the person who runs it does have a connection to Malick and broke the news on The New World and The Tree of Life (including the longer cut).

User avatar
TwoTecs
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2017 10:26 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD

#198 Post by TwoTecs » Sun Sep 15, 2019 10:39 pm

solaris72 wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 6:23 am
TwoTecs wrote:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 4:21 pm
Got Song to Song on 4K UHD recently (OOP since Broadgreen went under) and it was great seeing a Malick in 4K even though the disc does not have HDR/wide color space. However, it got me thinking that the unofficial trilogy of To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song would be a great addition to Criterion, especially on UHD. 2/3 of these films are now out of print too because they were distributed by Broadgreen.

The films are probably coming at some point given the track record with Malick and I hope Criterion takes the opportunity to showcase Malick and Lubezki's work on the best format available.
A few years ago, the Malick-centered facebook page One Big Soul said a longer cut of To the Wonder would come from Criterion. Haven't heard anything since, but the person who runs it does have a connection to Malick and broke the news on The New World and The Tree of Life (including the longer cut).
Yeah seems like we will see longer cuts of all the film in the "trilogy"; especially if we go by Malick's comments about not wanting to play the same song the same way each night. I wonder if he is working on that right now or is solely focused on The Last Planet.

User avatar
schellenbergk
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2018 12:03 pm

Re: Criterion and UHD Blu-ray

#199 Post by schellenbergk » Thu Oct 03, 2019 5:35 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Thu Mar 08, 2018 1:00 pm
...more and more people are equipped to play them and may not even realize it yet. The moment those people buy a new TV (which will be 4K because almost all of them on the market are now), they'll be ready to roll.
I have to make a confession here. We renovated our basement last year and I bought a new TV and Blu-ray player. I knew the TV was 4K, but wasn't really paying attention on the Blu-ray! I purchased the 6-disc Apocalypse Now package, and accidentally inserted a UHD disc. The picture was phenomenal! I've had UHD for a year and didn't realize it! I started purchasing UHD discs , they all look great. But the lack of high-quality art films is a problem.

I sure hope you are right about Citizen Kane. I have it on DVD but never upgraded it to Blu-ray. I'm going to hold off to see if Criterion releases Kane in UHD

User avatar
Lowry_Sam
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: Criterion and UHD

#200 Post by Lowry_Sam » Thu Oct 03, 2019 6:33 pm

Was really expecting December would be the inaugural month as it’s usually a slow month & major releases are more frequent now. I would have thought that Criterion would start with UHD for new releases (Cold War), high profile 4K restorations (especially ones that had already been issued on blu-Ray, like All About Eve), & longer films that would benefit from the additional space (Until The End Of The World). At this point, people who are still buying discs either want something that they will want to keep for a long time (or they would just stream it) or they’d be just as happy with dvd as they would with a blu-ray.

Hopefully they do it before Roma is released.

Post Reply