Friday, September 18, 2009

Screenshot science: Se7en

2:02 PM / Blu-ray / Comments8 Comments

Blu-ray

Because some people have been asking for them, I've decided to go ahead and post some screen captures from Dutch label RCV's recent Blu-ray release of David Fincher's Se7en. Because I haven't watched the disc all the way through yet, these shots are provided "as is" without any commentary of my own.

I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to view it from beginning to end for myself (there are already several discs in my "to watch" pile, most of them films I haven't already seen and therefore more of an immediate priority), but hopefully these screen grabs will give people some idea of what sort of quality they can expect from this disc. Certainly, having seen captures of the open matte 1080i Canadian version from Alliance Atlantis, it's fairly clear which of the two Blu-ray releases of this film on the market is the preferred one.

Se7en
studio: RCV; country: Netherlands; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.8 GB ; average bit rate (including audio): 23.49 Mbit/sec

Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en Se7en

 
8 Comments

1. Johan said:

Oh boy, this culd have been soo nice, way to much NR i guess. Pic 17 looks like a painting =/. Remember getting the R1-Dvd shipped from USA back in the day, with DTS and loades of extra...and macroblocking. The scandinavian edition had forced subtitles!

(Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 at 5:37 PM)

2. AlexBC said:

Thank you very much Michael.

It's clearly the best version available, even though it's still bit filtered. It could use some improvements in compression as well.

Regarding your reply on the oder post, from what I gather, Anchor Bay BDs are indeed authored by Sony. That's why they got the huge jump in quality alongside with Sony's own catalog and that's why the cover style is also similar.

They have the same menu, BD-Java and promo style. The AVBR is about the same as well, very efficient encodes around 26mbps.

Their day-and-date releases have been almost flawless, much like the stuff coming from Sony themselves, lately, their catalog titles seem to be getting new tranfers (Children Of The Corn, Hellrainser).

I wish Universal and Warner could learn a few lessons from them.

(Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 at 10:26 PM)

3. Kram Sacul said:

Looks like the PQ varies between passable and blah.

(Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 12:49 PM)

4. FoxyMulder said:

Apart from a few scenes already mentioned i think this looks very good to me.

I have also done some research regarding the releasing company and i personally think this encode will be identical to the New Line one when it eventually arrives.

Looks mostly good to me though based on the screenshots alone.

(Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 3:09 PM)

5. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Yeah, my overall impression is that it's a pretty good but not exactly stunning presentation. And yes, it does vary between very grainy and quite mushy-looking, more or less in keeping with the look of the Platinum Series DVD. It's almost certainly the same master, I suspect.

By the way, I highly doubt that New Line will use the same encode. They have never, to the best of my knowledge, used AVC.

(Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 6:15 PM)

6. Geoff D said:

Yep, it looks like the master that New Line minted for the SE DVD, right down to the edge enhancement (although it's nowhere near as bad as the SE DVD).

Still, I like what I'm seeing. It's not perfect, but for a single-layer encode of such a dark and grainy flick it doesn't look bad at all. Gonna wait for a proper New Line version, I think. Or I might just keep the lovely R1 DVD and get this Blu to supplement it.

(Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 at 9:28 PM)

7. AlexBC said:

"Gonna wait for a proper New Line version, I think"

That's the problem, they don't do that.

With the exception of HTWWW, Shoot Em' Up and few animated titles, there's no such thing as a proper authoring job from New Line/Warner.

(Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 at 11:25 PM)

8. David Mackenzie said:

There's nothing wrong with New Line/Warner's authoring. It's the encoding and pre-processing that I wish they'd improve.

(Posted on Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 7:45 PM)

 
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