Monday, June 28, 2010

BD impressions: Wanted

9:28 PM / BD Impressions / Comments13 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

Can I have those two hours of my life back, please?

I really don't feel like writing paragraph after paragraph about WANTED. It started off well, but rapidly disintegrated into a sludge of cod-philosophical mumbo-jumbo, incomprehensible action and a narrative so muddled it can only have been the work of a committee. What ends up playing out feels like a more colourful, sillier and vastly less entertaining rip-off of THE MATRIX - the sort of film that it's hard to believe anyone involved in the production actually cared about. The impressive cast is wasted, with Angelina Jolie doing nothing but pout and James McAvoy thoroughly miscast as a would-be action hero, overdoing the goofy facial expressions and making annoying "Waaaahoooooooeeeeee!" noises during the copious slow motion fight/chase scenes. And does Morgan Freeman not get tired of constantly getting the "Yoda" roles? An awful, awful film - loud, clumsy, confused and utterly forgettable.

Image quality: This is a very impressive-looking disc but for one issue that is impossible to overlook: sporadic combing artefacts that affect the film from beginning to end. I'm not aware of anyone else reporting on this, and I wonder whether perhaps only the UK release is affected (although I doubt that's the case, as I can't imagine Universal preparing a separate encode for either side of the Atlantic). Regardless, it's a pretty severe problem and one that I'm a little surprised made it through QC. (See Examples 19, 20 and 21.) Other than that, it looks great, with impressive detail and intact grain. 7/10

Wanted
studio: Universal; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 24.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 32.3 Mbit/sec

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13 Comments

1. Bleddyn Williams said:

This is not a film where posting a "defence" is worthwhile. You either buy into it, or not - looms that impart messages, thousands of individually wrapped rat-bombs, etc. I was surprised how much I enjoy this film and the terrific action sequences, watching it about twice a year.

I should point out that it is TOTALLY different from the comic its based on - that has costumed superheroes in it, and absolutely nothing about bullets, straight or bent. Its a very mean-spirited book, and I actually like the film better.

...and no, I've never noticed the combing either on my 53" set!

(Posted on Monday, June 28, 2010 at 10:58 PM)

2. Chris said:

The US release definitely also has the combing. I wonder what the cause is?

(Posted on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 1:56 AM)

3. paku said:

Universal has actually prepared separate encodes for the UK/Euro/Worldwide releases plenty of times (with lower video bitrates to make room for dubs), including American Gangster, Changeling, Hot Fuzz and the Bourne films. But this seems more likely to be a mastering issue.

As for the movie I like some of Elfman's themes and I think Bekmambetov has a great mind for cool action sequences that are NOT forgettable, scenes like the "Time to Say Goodbye" assassination in the upside-down car, which isn't an easy feat in a post-Matrix world (forgettable would be Iron Man and Transformers, which is mostly just stuff slamming into other stuff.) Unfortunately I have to agree that the script, pacing and everything in between is rather poor.

(Posted on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 1:59 PM)

4. FoxyMulder said:

I really enjoyed this movie. I think i was sick of so many PG-13 watered down action movies and yearned for a full blooded R.

It was dumb but it was fun, although maybe its also because i like Angelina Jolie.

I did mention compression artifacts at my own site but only when i turned the brightness levels up.

Can't say i noticed anything else, i'd like to have another look though, can you give me a timeframe and i can get the disc out and give me an idea of where to look. I have the American edition but as you say it's likely the same encode.

(Posted on Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 1:54 PM)

5. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxymulder:

As regards the combing, it's present from the beginning of the film to the end, so a timeframe wouldn't be much use. The problem occurs on a number of the I-frames, so if you load the movie into DGAVCIndex and skip through it you should be able to find some examples fairly quickly.

(Posted on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 5:32 PM)

6. FoxyMulder said:

Had another look, didn't notice it.

I'm probably just immune to it all or maybe the Oppo hides it well.

(Posted on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 7:05 PM)

7. FoxyMulder said:

Ok now that i think about it, i saw this combing effect on Dead Snow and mentioned it on my website and wondered if it was the interlacing effect situation due to how my Oppo is set up, while getting caps on my computer i noticed every second frame would go haywire.

Didn't see it at all on Wanted. Is it possible the USA version is unaffected. ?

(Posted on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 7:10 PM)

8. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxymulder:

Chris (CinemaSquid) mentioned above that it's also present on the US version.

It has to be said, the problem isn't MASSIVELY annoying in motion. Definitely noticeable, though.

(Posted on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 7:25 PM)

9. FoxyMulder said:

It must be something that doesn't distract me too much, i tend to notice edge enhancement and DNR issues more than artifacts and this type of problem. Dead Snow which is 25fps on the UK blu ray was much more distracting since several scenes did have minor and quick issues while viewing it and while taking the captures had anomalies although i thought the image was still generally good on that one.

(Posted on Friday, July 2, 2010 at 12:31 AM)

10. LGans316 said:

I have noticed few compression artifacts. Besides that, the PQ on this one is solid.

7/10 is a way too low score for the Video.

(Posted on Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 2:09 AM)

11. Author Profile Page Michael said:

LGans316:

Considering the frequency of the combing artefacts, I actually thought I was being pretty generous giving it a 7.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 6:53 PM)

12. FoxyMulder said:

I have been looking into this more.

Combing is an interlace artifact.

Isn't combing an equipment related issue and not disc related. ?

I have checked your screen captures above and perhaps its my limited experience with combing artifacts but i'm just not seeing it.

I mean i'm looking hard and i still don't see it, which part of the image on the captures 19, 20 and 21 are affected by this. ?

I mention equipment because with my Oppo i have seen this combing issue on a number of discs, i have the options in the Oppo set to automatic.

Now with the Playstation 3 i never saw these combing issues, therefore i just assumed the Oppo itself and the fact its on automatic was to blame and not the discs.

I'm not an expert on de-interlacing but i have searched for some information. The below is from Wikipedia.

Weaving is done by adding consecutive fields together. This is fine when the image hasn't changed between fields, but any change will result in artifacts known as "combing", when the pixels in one frame do not line up with the pixels in the other, forming a jagged edge. This technique retains full vertical resolution at the expense of half the temporal resolution.(Motion)

Not sure if the above is what you refer to but while i have seen the issue using my Oppo on other discs ( not on Wanted ) i have always considered the player as being the issue or the automatic setting i was using since it was never a problem with the Playstation 3.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 7:27 PM)

13. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxymulder:

Combing can be equipment-related, but it can also occur on the disc itself. Back in the DVD days, improperly flagged discs were a major irritant - Anchor Bay's DVDs of Argento's TRAUMA and THE CARD PLAYER were both flagged as interlaced for no apparent reason, which was a real pain for HTPC users given the less than stellar quality of most video cards' deinterlacing solutions at the time.

In the case of WANTED, no other discs I've seen are affected in this way, and other people have confirmed the problem on their own systems. I can therefore only assume that the disc itself is the issue, not the hardware. There should be no reason for interlacing on a 24p title, so I'm assuming either the encode or the original master are at fault.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 11:04 PM)

 
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