Thursday, April 7, 2011

Silent Hill quickie comparison

11:48 PM / Blu-ray / Comments5 Comments

Blu-ray
Blu-ray

This is a quick preliminary look at the differences between the German HD DVD (and BD) of SILENT HILL released by Concorde Home Entertainment in 2007 and the 2009 French collector's edition from Metropolitan Film & Video. Bear in mind that this is not a full, in-depth comparison - I've only sampled the first few minutes and taken a few captures at random, but they reveal some interesting things.

The most obvious difference is in the black levels - the whole reason I bought the French version in the first place. All previous releases of SILENT HILL that I'd seen - DVD, HD DVD or BD - suffered from raised blacks, giving the image a greyish, murky appearance. For the French release, the blacks have been brought back down to their correct levels, so the completely black screen against which the opening titles appear is "true" (or close to true) black as opposed to dark grey. This appears to introduce some clipping (see the German vs. French versions of the title card). My guess would be that the source of the French version was also at one point affected by the raised blacks and that they were corrected at least partly by pushing up the contrast, achieving richer blacks at the expense of some shadow detail.

For the most part, it would be fair to say that the French version is punchier than its German counterpart, but the alterations (approved by director Christophe Gans, as per the sticker on the front cover bearing his signature and the legend "Édition supervisée par la réalisateur") were not simply achieved by pushing the contrasts across the board. In the scene immediately after the title card (Radha Mitchell and Jodelle Ferland in the field), the image has been slightly desaturated (German, French), and in the next scene (Sean Bean in his office), there is more of a green push in the French version (German, French).

That's as far as I've got so far, and I'm sure there will be a more all-encompassing follow-up post at some point, but from this brief comparison it's clear that quite a bit of work has been done to subtly alter the look of SILENT HILL. It's nothing like as extreme as, say, the greenification of THE MATRIX or the dramatic re-timing of Blue Underground's INFERNO, but it's noticeable nonetheless.

Oh yeah, and while the VC-1 encoding on the German release is pretty damn good (and a big step up from the artefact-afflicted MPEG-2 version Sony put out in the US as one of their BD launch titles), the AVC encode on the French disc is clearly superior. This is particularly noticeable in the aforementioned field scene, where the numerous blades of grass cause some problems on the German disc.

Silent Hill
studio: Concorde; country: Germany; region code: N/A;
codec: VC-1; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German) Silent Hill (German)

Silent Hill
studio: Metropolitan; country: France; region code: ABC;
codec: MPEG-4 AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French) Silent Hill (French)

 
5 Comments

1. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

Contrast boosting definitely seems to be the case. I saw the movie a few times in theaters and it was murky as a swamp every time. I'm liking the superior encode of the French BD (based on these caps), but I suspect the German BD is far more representative of how the film looked—at least, it's much closer to what I saw on film and digital projections.

(Posted on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 6:03 AM)

2. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

The scene in shot 8 was also very vibrant like in the German screencap, because I remember thinking at the time it was an oddly colorful and bright scene, which contrasted how dark and "dull" the opening was.

I'd say the French BD is revisionistic. It looks nice, though.

(Posted on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 6:08 AM)

3. FoxyMulder said:

My own opinion is that the original release was wrong, something was off about the black levels and skintones.

My feeling is that Gans has supervised this new release and tried to correct the issues which may well have been on the digital intermediate, for me i think it's a massive improvement, not only are the colours improved but i feel the black levels are now perfect and i don't actually share the view that shadow detail is adversely affected.

I don't feel this is a simple case of contrast boosting, i feel Gans has gone scene by scene with this one and carefully altered things to how he wants the film to look, to how the film SHOULD look, so to me this is not revisionism, i feel there was a mistake made with the original, all conjecture though and someone really needs to watch the film with Gans commentary switched on ( with subtitles unless you speak French )

I feel parts of the image which should be dark are now very dark and yet the scenes which should be seen are clear and detailed, as it should be, i am doing my own comparison which i will publish over the weekend, well it's actually been finished over a week now but i just haven't got around to writing it yet.

For me, the German release actually lost detail in the shadows, this one gets back those details yet keeps things suitably dark and natural, the actor Kim Coates is seen talking with Sean Bean in one scene and in the German edition his face is way oversaturated and orangey, this one dials back that, much better in my opinion.

So i would question what the original cinema look should be, should we trust Gans or should we call it revisionism, even if it is revisionism should we damn it if it actually makes things better or celebrate it. ?

Luckily viewers now have a choice, buy the German edition or go for this new French edition.

(Posted on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 6:01 PM)

4. Kentai said:

Based solely on a few screenshot comparisons - Michael's included - I think the French release is a notable improvement. Revisionist? Well, maybe. But if this is the standard "price" of director's overseeing their own work, I think fewer people would be upset with the idea.

I'm curious why the black levels were so elevated to start with. It was released just 5 years ago, and it wouldn't be the first Gans film to be finished on a DI (that'd be Le Pacte des Loups 5 years earlier). It just strikes me as strange that there'd be an issue of that sort at all when the whole process should be using properly calibrated studio monitors every step of the way.

(Posted on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 8:02 PM)

5. ChuckZ said:

I saw this movie in theaters and I'm remember it being dark and murky as hell as Chris points out. I can't recall whether the black levels were that far off as seen in the German release.

I've had these French Blu-ray screenshots sitting on my computer for some time, but I don't remember where I found them. I left the file names intact in case that helps.

http://rapidshare.com/files/456552975/Silent_Hill_BD__FR_.zip

(Posted on Saturday, April 9, 2011 at 4:01 AM)

 
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