problems with Ambersons DVD (French)

[Jaime N. Christley]

I can't get over how bad this transfer is - the thing looks granulated, not nearly as clear and fine as the Criterion laserdisc. The blacks and greys are severely pixelated, and the deep blacks seem to flash - pulse, rather - and you can see blocky, digital artifacts all over the place. I haven't checked out the extras, except for listening to a bit of the Bogdanovich part, which of course I see is from the tapes he used for This is Orson Welles.

The major problem with the disc may be a problem with my TV. Maybe not. Dig it:

Starting with the titles, where the "T" in "Magnificent" is cut off, there appears to be a portion of the image missing from the left side of the screen. I did some measuring, and it appears that the image is stretched to exceed the boundary of the TV screen...in other words, if you were to overlay exactly the same frame from the DVD over the laserdisc, the right side would match perfectly, and the image would match up less and less as you approached the left side. Like this (top LD, bottom DVD):

=======================edge of screen
==A==A==A==A==A==A==A==A (laserdisc)
==A==A===A===A====A====A=====A=====A (DVD)
=======================edge of screen

I hope that makes sense. And I hope that's an error on the part of my television set.

Regardless, the image quality is still severely compromised by bad compression or encoding or whatever the hell they do. If I had to bet money, I'd say that the fancy menus and the overabundance of extras is to blame.

[Jeff Wilson]

It might be an issue with your TV or player. What type of player are you using? Some players don't convert PAL as well as others. APEX players are notorious for this. I would say that while the transfer is far from perfect, it didn't appear any where near as bad on my set-up as what you're saying. I don't think the extras would be an issue; I've seen more loaded discs that look just as fine or better. The extras amount to the different language tracks and the two interviews, which are only about 40 minutes total?

[Jaime N. Christley]

It might be an issue with your TV or player. What type of player are you using? Some players don't convert PAL as well as others. APEX players are notorious for this.

Well, you've already heard me whine about my TV, so I'd suspect that first. My DVD player is a Sampo, which is notoriously crap, so that might be it, too.

However, Narshty and I were discussing this on another board; I believe he's in the UK, and he's the one that told me about the clipped "T" in the title card. (My shipment was already en route when he told me, so I couldn't un-order it.) That would rule out the possibility of it being a PAL conversion problem.

I would say that while the transfer is far from perfect, it didn't appear any where near as bad on my set-up as what you're saying. I don't think the extras would be an issue; I've seen more loaded discs that look just as fine or better.

As have I. But it all depends on who's working the console. I've been reading about how David Lynch and his engineers are deeply unhappy with the inability of the DVD format to do justice to their frame-by-frame restoration of Eraserhead - and that's a director who has no interest in extras. They said they tried all manner of compression options, and none of them made them happy.

And on the other hand, the Criterion Collection has more than a few amazing transfers in their catalog, all of which defy the notion that compression means compromise: Written on the Wind, L'Avventura, Do the Right Thing, just to name a few. If anyone's qualified to assemble the long, long overdue R1 disc of Ambersons, it's them.

I'm surprised that you think the transfer is all right - what kind of TV/player set-up do you have, and do you use an S-video cable or the RCA plugs?

[Jeff Wilson]

I have a Malata N996 DVD player and a Sony 27" TV, with S-Video connections. As you can see in my screen caps page, the "T" in Magnificent is there, but it might be covered either by overscan on your TV, or the Sampo might be eating it. Some of the cheaper players do funny things to PAL conversion, I'm told. But if Narshty is getting the same thing in the UK, I don't know, unless he has a similar player. The Malata has a zoom feature that allows me to move out on the picture and see what is being covered by my TV or the disc makers. Of course, the screen caps are from my DVD-Rom, so it's visible there also. I imagine this disc might look much worse on a better TV, but it looks fine to me. The other Jaime has a copy I taped off it for him; maybe he can say what he thinks of the picture.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Hmmmm. Must investigate further. I wish I had a local friend with a code-free player.

[Welles Fan]

I have a Sampo player, too. It may (or may not) be crap when it comes to playing R2 discs, but it certainly does a good job on R1 discs. I have had a couple of people at work complain about "skipping" on certain discs (including KANE), but my Sampo plays those same discs like a champ.

When I play a full-screen R2 DVD, there is a very thin ribbon of black (rather like letterbox bars) at the top and bottom of my screen, and the picture is a tad "squashed down" from top and bottom as well, as if the "vertical height" needs to be adjusted (sadly, that adjustment is not available on today's TV's). This makes the actors look slightly "fatter" than they should. This could be what is causing you to loose the extreme sides of the AMBERSONS titles.

I never really lose much on the sides, because my TV is a Pioneer 51" projection TV called "CinemaWide". While not as wide as today's 1.85:1 TV's, it does have smidgen of extra picture area that traditonally shaped TV's do not have. I have watched videos on this TV and compared them to my 26" Toshiba picture tube TV and often found that information was lost on the Toshiba due to overscan, while the Pioneer picked it up. so, you could have a crappy R2 player or a first-rate one and still find that the TV does not necessarily work well with either.

When I play an anamorphic WideScreen R2 disc, the reverse occurs-the picture is lightly "squeezed up", making the actors look a tad thin. None of the "squeezing" is particularly noticable, but I can tell the difference if I play them in a code-free DVD player on my computer, so screen captures will not show any of this. Of course, another PAL side-effect is that the film is slightly sped up, due to differences in frames per second speeds between PAL and NTSC.

It is sad that we are not seeing as many great DVD releases as we did in the good old LaserDisc days. I once thought DVD was superior to LD, in that the quality was, for the most part, as good, and one could get a loaded Criterion DVD for $39.95 List as opposed to $99.95 for the same package on LD. I honestly do not think we will ever see certain great films on DVD, including the great classics of Hollywood's "Golden Age". More and more films which were shot in widescreen are being released on DVD in full frame only, and some retailers and rental chains are not even carrying the widescreen versions-thus skewing sales figures in favor of full frame. They seem to be targeting teens and kids, thus neglecting to release films like AMBERSONS. I think the DVD buyers that think the full-frame edition of Jim Carrey's THE GRINCH is the ultimate in entertainment are the buyers being targeted by the DVD industry (they must be thrilled over the imminent release of SCOOBY-DOO!). Collecters who were LD owners helped start the DVD indusrty by converting to the cheaper medium, but the studios have fogotten the niche collector market and are concentrating on the Homer Simpsons of the world.

We thought DVD would be the "new" LD, but sadly, it is turning into the new VHS.

/<rant>

[Narshty]

Yeah, it's below average, though my opinion isn't quite as damning as Jaime's, I was expecting more given the generally high quality of French DVDs.

It's clearly made from an analog NTSC master, and my first thought was the Criterion laserdisc, but they've zoomed it in - there's barely any of the shaded edges of the frame in the opening sequence.

One stupid thing they've done is to include the Welles interviews over the film itself on another part of the disc, needlessly having it play over an hour of the film, so wasting a hell of a lot of space on the disc. With such a poor master to begin with, you'd have thought they'd use every single bit of space the disc had to offer to smooth out the artifacts.

Also, by placing it on another audio track and actually editing it carefully, they could have had a commentary-of-sorts, by placing Welles' often scene-specific comments over the correct footage.

It breaks my heart to think Criterion will never get to release this - if anyone can do this right, it's Criterion. Hell, with their track record for recovering missing material (the Grand Illusion camera negative, for instance, or their upcoming disc of The Devil and Daniel Webster which will, for the first time ever, present the original version of the film, taken from the only surviving print at the director's estate), they'd probably dig up Welles' mythical Brazilian workprint.

I'm sure with material like the Bogdanovich interviews and the BBC Arena interview (and outtakes from that session) an excellent commentary by Welles can be pieced together, just like Walt Disney's on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

If there's a film that NEEDS documentation and annotation every step of the way, it's Ambersons.

By the way, I just recieved Carringer's book and read through the entire cutting continuity. My heart broke once it knew exactly what it was missing.