Patton on BD. How is it?

mytime

Sorry if this has been done already. I just got a BD player so of course I want to buy BDs. I love the movie Patton and was wondering what the transfer was like. If any members who have made this purchase would care to comment on the PQ/AQ it would be appreciated.

JTK69

But I'll pick-up Patton of course the movie so good anyway !

HD Goofnut

I intend on buying Patton on BD to replace my SD DVD version, but I am waiting for the price to come down so maybe someone in my family will get it for me for Christmas or something.

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Linkmon

Blu-Ray.com gave it 5 stars!!

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sptrout

I thought that the Blu-ray version of the movie was excellent, especially when you consider that it is nearly 40 years old. However, I have seen many comment that when the transfer to Blu-ray was made that excessive DNR was applied and that makes the actors look almost "like wax." I disagree, but you may not like it because of the DNR.

tvine2000

many have said that.some say on a 32'screen you don't notice the like wax. dnr issue is a hot topic everywhere on forums.
the good news some people running these forums that have attended shows,have expressed this issue to the studio's and ce's.they know were not happy about it.and they are listening.
one issue is the people the studio's use to in the procees of making blu-ray discs.their needs to be a standand.dnr isn't a bad thing,they need to know how much to apply.apply to much to remove grain and you end up with a bd that looks like a dvd.leave the grain and you end up with a great looking movie,less is more.what the studios should do is trust there own in house people,or have someone watching the procees as the bd is being mastered,i'll take the job,sign me up.

Bravestime

Just viewed this movie and what a treat! Great PQ, at least a 4.5. The AQ was good, but only a 3.5. You can definitely hear a difference in the AQ from that film to prersent day releases, but still not bad.

Overall, a great movie and another I would recommend for a purchase.

1080PsF

It was a lot of work for a bunch of people here at where we did it. I even pulled a 39 hour shift to get it out the door. We did the scan and all of the work to make the master that was sent out to make the BD's. We also did "The longest day" at the same time but I never did even get a chance to see either movie all way through after we finished them.

hapfl

Even if you watch it now you get no chance to see the movie. What you see is a plastic nightmare that looks nothing like the original movies. It's a caricature of the original films, a travesty!
Are you people at this facility the least bit interested how film looks? What textures it has? How one film is different from another? If there is fine detail or not? Do you think of film as something that needs to be homogenized into a standard look with some specific qualities such as:
- grain and noisefree
- no fine detail
- some sharpening
- cartoon like appearance
- compression friendly
- looking best in 480p
??
What on earth are you trying to achieve when applying such processing to old classic films? Pretend they were shot on digital cameras in 720p resolution? Make the transfer look good on small displays with sharpness and brightness set way too high? What??
Certainly not restoring these films or giving a faithtful rendition of how the film was made and finished in its time.
You are treating HD like DVD, completely negating its ability to give us a quite close experience to watching 35mm prints and be faithful to the original.
Patton and Longest Day are the most misguided HD mastering of film I have seen so far.

Oliver K

Can you please elaborate on the process of what you call "the scan" ?
Is it a scan from 65mm film elements ? Was it a 4k scan for Patton and did it still have all the grain of the film elements intact ?

It seems that you did a lot of work on Patton to arrive at a product that a lot of people do not like. Would you say it is possible with the equipment and tools at your disposal to emulate the look of the film elements as closely as possible with the film grain still intact ?

1080PsF

It was from the 65mm film and it was a 4K scan and no it didn't have all of the film grain. I can't say everything we did to it, but we scan each frame one at a time and those frames are recorded on a SAN and then we have someone QC the reel of film off of the SAN to note all of the dirt and problem items. We repair all of the items that were listed, after that someone does another QC pass to make sure all of the items listed were fixed. Then it was recorded on an HDCAM SR (4:4:4) from the SAN, that tape is also QC'ed and then it is sent to Panasonic to make the Blu-ray disks. I don't work on the computer side or the film side I'm only a tape guy.

Some people like this transfer and some don’t. Grain isn't something magic it's a limitation of the film. I have never liked film and never will, I can’t wait until it is never used again, but that’s just me. When I look at the world I don’t see grain, I see a nice clear view.

Vincent Pereir

When I look out the window, my vision doesn't cut from a wide shot to a close-up and back and forth, nor does it occasionally lapse into slow-motion, nor do I see spaceships whizzing my or dinosaurs walking the Earth, nor do I see Gladiators battling in an anicent arena, etc. etc. etc.

In other words, movies are not nor have they ever been simply about presenting reality as it actually is.

I'm sure you're good at your job but this is a terrible attitude to have if you're going to be involved with helping prepare classic films for release on Blu-ray. And to make the point again, the problem folks have with the releases of PATTON and such isn't the lack of grain per se, rather it's the fine detail that was removed along with the grain.

Vincent

Grain Reaper

65mm film means that this was imax I guess, so maybe the grain wouldn't zackly come out and hit you over the head. and grain doesn-'t have to be there anyway so i don't really care one way or t'other about it but when i looked at it it just didn-'t look all that sharp or imaxlike even my 42, which is a blazer.

sorry, man bout those 49 hour days. hope you get overtime.

anyway really nice work taking out the grain, but it just isnt sharp enuf forme. come on, like really. imax should be sharper.

1080PsF

First off I don't have anything to do with the film side of it or the computer part of it so my attitude doesn't really matter. I only deal with the tape side of it and any type of problems found. I'm just a techno geek that comes up with the fixes for any of the problems found. I didn't write the code to remove the grain (we have a really smart guy for that) I just had to deal with a bunch of other problems.

As for the detail I would like to know where we lost any, because what I have seen of this title it is very sharp.

We did a test for "The longest day" our scan vs. the last HD transfer of it and it was unreal how sharp our scan looked vs. the older transfer. The older transfer looked like a VHS copy not a HD transfer. So I don't understand where people say either one of these scans have lost any detail. If someone can tell me what transfer I can compare our scan to I would love to know.

Oliver K

Thanks for your answer !

So I understand there was a certain amount of grain reduction already for scans that were recorded on a SAN and you were in charge of dealing with dirt and other problem items. Was the HDCAM SR (4:4:4) recording that you did still in 4k or is it already down to 2k ?

I understand your point but a lot of us want Patton to look like it was shot on film and without any trace of grain this just isn't possible and not representative of how film looks. Would you say that Patton still had noticable grain when you sent it to Panasonic ?