French DVDs and Blu-Rays of Asian Movies

Knetan · Post by **Knetan** » 05 May 2006, 15:59

hey,

any friendly disclaimer before the feature about the condition of the source material? Remember they put something like that ahead of Butterfly Murders.

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 05 May 2006, 16:31

hey,

I'll tell you tomorrow.

EDIT: I keep hearing that the picture is cropped.
Did TF1 use the same master as the japanese disc ?

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 05 May 2006, 21:14

OK... Forget about the french disc.

It's the international cut (made by Wong Kar-Wai himself, but still... :x ).

The picture is a big improvement over Mei Ah, which is better than nothing I guess.

http://adg.invisionzone.com/index.php?s ... #entry8983

thelostdragon · Post by **thelostdragon** » 05 May 2006, 21:52

Thanks, Tom!

So how much is missing?

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 05 May 2006, 22:00

Taking into account PAL speed-up, approx 6 minutes.
I'll know more when I receive it.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 06 May 2006, 03:40

That's a real big shame. Looks like we won't see a decent release of AoT any time soon.

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 06 May 2006, 11:12

Forget about the caps. All my favourite scenes are missing.
I don't even want to watch this DVD.

It's missing:
-The opening monologue from Leslie Cheung about happiness.
-The opening fight against Lau Shun.
-The opening text with the buddhist scriptures.
-The ending montage showing all the characters.

Picture quality is awesome compared to the Mei Ah DVD.
Subtitles are great too, but I don't care.

Fuck this. Fuck TF1. Go to hell you rotten bastards.

I'm gonna keep my Mei Ah and make my own removable french subs for it.

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 06 May 2006, 12:25

I told you.

HungFist wrote:Fucking TF1.

So, how is the Japanese disc? How much is it cropped? Is the image better than mei ah other than cropping?

Also, a little translation help would be greatly appreciated. What does it say here: http://www.asia-diffusion.com/new/cgdv.php about returning unopened items and refunds? Are they actually saying you can't return items that are not defective (I hope I got that part wrong)?

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 06 May 2006, 13:27

So, how is the Japanese disc? How much is it cropped?

It's very cropped and very soft. The Mei Ah looks much better (I know it's hard to believe, though

).

Nous ne reprenons ni n'échangeons aucun film, sauf dans le cas où celui-ci est défectueux

"We do not accept returns for any film, unless it is defective."
In other words: you're screwed.

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 06 May 2006, 13:29

Tom2681 wrote: In other words: you're screwed.

Thanks, I really appreciate that

Shen · Post by **Shen** » 06 May 2006, 15:10

lol hung youcould always try wha my mom did when she was bought a freeview box and it didnt work, they wouldnt change it unless it was defective or scratched...so she scrached it slightly and took it back...they refunded her lol might work...or not

its cheating tho

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 06 May 2006, 16:16

Since I'm dealing with a french store and I don't speak any french... no thanks, I would probably end up into a bigger problem. But thanks anyway

I've only seen the film once so I think I'm gonna try if I could enjoy it in this form. Normally I wouldn't even consider keeping a "cut" version, but I'm kinda tired of fighting with this film. I just wanna add it into my Wong Kar Wai collection and forget about it...

Btw, didn't dvdrama give The Blade 10/10 for PQ? It's 9/10 now...

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 06 May 2006, 18:44

didn't dvdrama give The Blade 10/10 for PQ? It's 9/10 now...

Yep, they've taken one point off for a few compression artefacts visible on blue backgrounds (skies). We all know that Mpeg-2 doesn't like blue.

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 06 May 2006, 18:52

In case someone is interested, here's a few caps from Wild Side's DOA. Anyone got any other versions to compare?

The PQ looks very nice to my bad eyes. Some scenes are a bit on the dark side, but it's not a big problem. There's some softness in some scenes, but I guess that's due to source material. Considering the origin of the film, I think this is a very good transfer.

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 06 May 2006, 20:22

That looks very nice

I wish I knew more French *cries*

thelostdragon · Post by **thelostdragon** » 06 May 2006, 23:38

I love DOA!

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 07 May 2006, 10:10

Since we've been talking about losing quality when you compress dvds, I though I should post a comparison screenshot. Now, this is just a freeze frame so it's not the ultimate truth about the loss of quality but it gives you some idea what happens when you compress a 6GB video file into 4.3GB

Non Compressed 6GB
http://www.freewebs.com/hungfist/%2D%20 ... n%20cp.BMP

Compressed 4.3GB
http://www.freewebs.com/hungfist/%2D%20 ... 284%29.BMP

There's a difference, and I'm sure it's more notable when you watch the film on a big screen TV, but quite honestly it's not that big. French and japanese dvds are usually so much better than any other dvd available that it really doesn't matter if you lose some quality in compressing. The image will still be miles away from the other releases.

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 07 May 2006, 14:07

You should have used PNG (same as JPG, except that it's lossless).

Thanks for the comparison. Some settings in DVD Shrink allow you to ensure that you don't lose much detail when compressing a DVD.

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 08 May 2006, 18:14

Tom, would you happen to own TF1's Last Life in the Universe? I own the R1 and I'm not completely happy with the image. This is a bit hard to explain (especially with my english) but it looks like there's something on the image.. not quite a "net" but something. It’s like if there was something on the camera lens. You can’t see it so well in screencaps...

Anyway, it’s something you can’t miss. I was wondering if TF1 has this. It may even be intentional (you never know about Doyle). The TF1 only costs 10€ at asia-diffusion, so...

Here’s a screencap from the R1. Look at Tadanobu’s shirt. I’m sure the image is intentinally soft, but it doesn’t look ”normal softness”. The image actually looks a bit grainy, but it’s not grain. It’s something else (like I said, impossible to explain. Don’t worry if you didn’t understand a word...)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v716/ ... ifecap.jpg

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 08 May 2006, 19:21

would you happen to own TF1's Last Life in the Universe?

Errm...No. I've seen the movie but I didn't like it. A little too boring for my taste.

Look at Tadanobu’s shirt

Looks like digital noise removal gone bad.
I have a few french dvds that suffer from this issue. It's usually the Mpeg-2 encoding software that enhances this flaw.

I was wondering if TF1 has this

It shouldn't. But then again, it could be some kind of "Doyle-filter" that backfired.
For 10€ you should give it a try.

I've read some positive reviews about that disc.

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 15 May 2006, 18:10

Goyokin: Wild Side Video vs. Media Blasters

Okay, this is no definitive comparison. Both caps are resized, black bars cropped with my total incompetence, and the source for R1 caps is dvdbeaver (:lol: ) . So, the idea is only to give you a basic idea (brightness, colors) of the differences.

If someone here has the R1, please post some caps and we can make a real comparison in the review board.

Media Blasters

Wild Side Video

Media Blasters

Wild Side Video

Media Blasters

Wild Side Video

EDIT: as you can see, it's not the exact same frame. Like I said, just to give a basic idea...

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 15 May 2006, 19:49

The R1 looks about as appealing as an orang-utan's scrotum. Wild Side's transfer is at least slightly watchable. I know it's not a definitive comparison but the difference is huge min.

Markgway · Post by **Markgway** » 15 May 2006, 23:33

One's too dark, the other too bright and colourless.

Verdict: both are mince.

HungFist · Post by **HungFist** » 16 May 2006, 14:04

I have to say I'm a bit surprised about your comments. I thought Wild Side's transfer looked very good for a 37 year old movie (I rated the PQ 4/5)

A few more caps:

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 16 May 2006, 14:31

Media Blasters is definitely too dark. The Wild Side is pretty good.