Submitted by
Christoph Michel
Looking closely at the DVD
The first example: We come to the end of the first part of the introductory
monologue; it is 2:24 into the film, and we have been guided across a map
towards where it is showing Canterbury. We will soon dissolve to shots of
mediaeval pilgrims, but first we are invited to peruse this image:
Clear and sharp, well detailed, as I hope this piece illustrates which I
have chopped out of it:
"Six hundred years have passed
what would they see / Dan Chaucer and his goodly company today"
Let's have a look at a shot (at 3:55) just after the famous transmutation
where a bone changes into a satellite. Oh, I am sorry, that was Stanley
Kubrick's genius at work (nothing new under the sun).
Now go to the lower right hand quadrant; in the middle of it, you can see
the chinstrap, and one can even recognise its weaving:
Not too bad, what does the VHS tape say about this?
I don't know if you can see it here, but one can easily make out even the
camouflage webbing on the underside of the helmet in detail:
All right, so the bright mid-contrast stuff works well; let's look at something
darker, shall we?
"Can't I have early morning coffee?"
"Oh no, sir !"
The time is 24:37, the place a room at the inn. The maid opens the curtains
and light begins to pour into the bedroom:
Hope I didn't brighten it too much. Look a little closer (below), and I
hope you can see even in this compromised rendition that the blacks are
solid (not blocky), the shadows textured (without noise), the highlights
sharp yet structured:
Then the details get muddy as soon as the camera or the object moves, however.
I certainly don't want to tout this disk as a great achievement. That weakness
about the details being there only as long as you have a static shot is,
I'm afraid, not demonstrable within the technical limitations
set for this exchange, but there is a severe problem I will address in the
next installment.
The ghost in the orchard
Now for that nasty "ghosting". Unlike the effect you sometimes get in terrestrial
TV reception, where the present image gets doubled as it were, this is more
in the nature of a pre-echo, and reminiscent of overdone contour enhancement.
What it is is a premature imprint of the NEXT frame's key contours. Very
helpful in creating high image compression, but a highly annoying distortion
nonetheless. Let me point out again that for the purpose of clarity, I have
reduced the quality of the image drastically.
Now here's the scene (at 42:37): Alison is looking forward to spending her
lunchbreak with Fee Baker, fellow victim of the glueman. Fee arrives and
is in this frame walking away from the camera towards Alison:
Here are two enlargements showing Fee (left of center). The contours you
see show where her arms and hat are GOING to be in the following frame.
Terrible, isn't it? You can also see that the fellow on the right is far
more blurred than his movement would suggest. This saves data on the DVD.
Idiots. What kept me from going into DVD at first was precisely this arrogant
attitude of the DVD producers, deciding for the viewer what's crucial to
an image and demonstrating a position of "aaah, nobody's going to notice
that". Luckily this view has all but disappeared. Now and then, however,
it still shows.
The stone from the old road
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude concerning two arbitrary extremes
picked out on a whim, both generously cropped.
A very nice insert pops up at 20:48, during Alison's conversation with the
innkeeper, who asks her, "That stone interest you, Miss?"
Is it well readable on your end too? The way it looks now, it shows just
what they did right in mastering this disk. Solid shadows that don't bleed
or block, so important for the night scenes; fine textures that represent
wood as wood, rock as rock, not macroblocks as pixels; clear contours that
only rarely wear a "piping", if you know what I mean.
An extremely strange incident of the pre-echo Ghosting occurs at 22:55,
when Alison knocks on Bob's door at the inn. While we are still inside the
room watching the angry Bob, we hear her ask "Is that you, Bob?", and I
kid you not, here's the frame just PRIOR to the cut to her:
Is it at 56:00? - "That's right:"
We come to one of the high-contrast night shots.
The most wonderful Esmond Knight should be seen a little larger, don't you
agree?
I hope it looks just as satisfying on your end. The blocks come from the
JPEG compression, the original was really smooth. Hey, this looks much better
on the DVD, sorry it won't come across. It's the second-to-last installment
anyway.
Covering all the detail
Finally, we are holding a volume of "Climbing in The British Isles" at 1:12:04
...
... and it seems nicely detailed. If we take the trouble to get a little
closer ...
we will even notice that the title is embossed. Again, this is at about
half the resolution of the image proper, but I hope it does give an impression
anyway.
All in all, the disk is alright, there are no really serious slipups. A
little sloppiness in compression is in evidence, but rarely annoying. Definitely
worth its price, and far better looking than a tape. I didn't mention the
sound quality at all, which is adequate. The music comes out fine, without
drowning the rest of the sound, as is sometimes the case in DVDs; luckily
Carlton didn't get around to doing a remix.
That's all for now, I hope I have managed to shed some light on the quality
issue concerning this disk. For any comments, questions, requests and things-I-did-not-think-of-checking,
just drop me an e-mail.
Regards,
Christoph
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