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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

BD impressions: Amelie

7:03 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

One of my favourite films of all time. I've already written about it here, so if you want to know why I like it so much, click the link.

Image quality: Amelie's first BD release came in September 2008, a broadly disappointing affair from Canadian label TVA Films consisting of a 1080i encode and a lack of English subtitles. (Many seemed convinced that the fact that this disc was 1080i was the reason for its disappointing image quality. I haven't watched the disc myself, but the screen captures I've seen suggest that the problems stem from excessive noise reduction and poor compression.) In an uncharacteristic display of self-restraint, I opted to wait for another label to get it right.

That label turned out to be Australian company Icon Home Entertainment, responsible for some slam-dunk releases including the UK Transsiberian and the Australian The Descent. (Oh, and they were responsible for the recent Braveheart remaster. Need I say more?) There was little doubt in my mind that Icon would deliver a better release than TVA, and I was right: the Australian Amelie BD is a colossal improvement on its Canadian counterpart. Gone is the piss-poor compression and blitzkrieg of NR. Detail is greatly improved and the healthy bit rate gives the film room to breathe. It's also enough of an improvement over the standard definition DVD releases for me to recommend it unhesitatingly to those who already own one of the existing releases. (Duh.) I was, on the whole, pretty satisfied with the presentation.

And yet it's not perfect. Far from it. Broadly speaking it's good, but I'm not one of those people for whom "good" is the same thing as "good enough". Amelie was an early digital intermediate title, and the technology then was not what it is now. Detail is, on the whole, a little disappointing, and edges show the sort of ringing I tend to associate with filtering. What looks like edge enhancement can also be glimpsed at times (see Example 2), although thankfully not too often. I also spotted a handful of instances of a very odd artefact whereby, in certain shots, coloured dots became visible - usually pink or blue-green. (See here and here.) I'm at a loss to explain these.

It's also worth pointing out that the DI team have gone somewhat overboard with the colour timing, resulting in an image that lacks dynamic range and feels a little overbearing at times. On the audio commentary (unfortunately not included on this BD), Jean-Pierre Jeunet expresses some regret at having had the colours pushed so far, and I'm inclined to agree, particularly with regard to the proliferation of yellow. Still, that's ultimately an issue with the film itself rather than the disc. I just thought I should mention it here in case anyone was wondering if my final score took it into account (it doesn't). 7/10

Amelie
studio: Icon; country: Australia; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 27.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.76 Mbit/sec

5 Comments

 
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