Originally Posted By ecdc <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Mickeys-Christmas-Carol-Blu-ray/76164/#Review">http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/.../#Review</a> It's one thing to muck up tripe like Bambi or the Little Mermaid, but to ruin Mickey's Christmas Carol is pure sacrilege. Sigh. I was looking forward to getting this. I should learn apparently to never get excited to buy another Disney blu-ray again. It's apparent they've made a deliberate decision to significantly alter the look of their films to appeal to children and showroom floors and then without a hint of irony label them "restorations." Yup, sigh.
Originally Posted By mawnck All you need to know right here, as seen in the article: Screenshot from the disc menu, showing "before": <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screenshot.php?movieid=76164&position=9">http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/...sition=9</a> Screenshot from the film itself, showing "after": <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screenshot.php?movieid=76164&position=23">http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/...ition=23</a> Insane. Hey Disney, someone in your home video department is clearly unqualified for their position and is ruining both your releases and your reputation (and your sales). For crying out loud, guys, are you TOTALLY blind? Thanks for the link, ecdc. I might have accidentally bought this.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I really didn't see a difference. What should I have noticed that I did not?
Originally Posted By wahooskipper It escaped me too. Didn't see any problem. In fact, other than being "crisper" I didnt' see any improvement for that matter.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Are they effn rotoscoping the original animation? The second frame grab looks like a quick & dirty tracing of the first. Come on, Disney. That's not "restoring" the original. That's making a cheap knock-off. So much for maintaining animation's legacy.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<I really didn't see a difference. >> <<It escaped me too. Didn't see any problem.>> And that's precisely why Disney did what they did. They're not restoring the original artwork. They're copying over it. Which loses the finer details of the original pencil drawings. And is far cheaper to produce. It's all about the bottom line now, boys. Maximize the hell out of it. And make sure to tailor future story lines to characters who will maximize toy sales, even if it means a crappy film with crappy box office returns. The Disney Animation Legacy is finally D.O.A.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>I really didn't see a difference.<< >>It escaped me too. Didn't see any problem.<< Question answered. Carry on, Disney.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I really didn't see a difference. What should I have noticed that I did not?<< Look at Scrooge's book in the first, then the second. Look at the back of his chair in the first, then the second. Look at his scarf, or the blue wax pot. Go back and forth a few times and the differences become stark. I do get that at first glance, it really does look the same, perhaps even better. Colors pop! Which is what Disney is going for. But if you look for the detail, you'll notice some of it is scrubbed free. The detail in the first looks just like that...detail that enhances the image. In the second, it looks faded. And Skinner is spot-on, if you take a moment to look at the first screenshot, then the second, you'll see the second looks...hmmm...plastic? The first looks like classic Disney animation, the second looks like a cheap knockoff. Check out the black outline of Scrooge's glasses and his beak. Notice how bold it is in the second screenshot? There's no subtlety at all. I swear, it's like they gave this to someone with a rudimentary understanding of Photoshop.
Originally Posted By LindsayC ^ yep unfortunately for the rest of us that’s true mawnck (again thanks to ecdc for linking to this) I’m actually gobsmacked that people don’t notice the difference. I don’t think I’m going to bother buying these anymore where the quality really is amateur hour at best - I was producing photoshop images back in 1995 that had better skill than the restoration on Christmas Carol/The Sword in the Stone (and it really does appear to have just been run through some photoshop filter which for the most part people with skills don’t use). We are/WERE in the process of selling on our VHS videos and some of the first DVD’s - but I’m appalled that the company thinks that these "restored" versions are anything like what the original’s were or intended to be. The art of animation is clearly a thing of the past to Disney and unfortunately people seeing these films for the first time on these discs are being sold very very short.
Originally Posted By LindsayC ah! sorry my post was meant to follow on from mawnck - but yep ecdc is spot on
Originally Posted By mawnck Well, aside from the natural film grain, which should be obvious … Missing from the "after" version *All but three of the spots on Scrooge's scarf *Most of the text in his ledger book *Most of the wood grain, especially in the table Now focus your attention on Scrooge's eyebrow. The original looks like an ink line, which an actual human actually painted on a cel. It's solid, and slightly thicker on the nose (beak?) side. The "restoration"? Now the thick part is thicker, whereas the thinner parts are noticeably faded. It's no longer sharp - it's darker in the middle of the line than on the edges, which you couldn't do with cel ink if you tried. And the line itself has an outline - a brighter "halo" caused by a sharpness filter, our "restoration expert's" attempt to undo the damage caused by the earlier filters. Every other line in the entire frame - indeed, in the entire SHOW, is the same way. This is kid-in-his-basement-level restoration work, the sort of thing you'd see on YouTube from some twerp with Photoshop who thinks the colors aren't bright enough on his Pokemon DVD. The sad part is, the image on the menu is excellent. Had they just left that alone, they'd have a very nice looking Blu Ray.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Well, aside from the natural film grain, which should be obvious<< In some ways, I find this the most egregious "clean up." We can have an aesthetic discussion about film vs. digital, about whether the Hobbit in 48fps is realistic or crap, and that's fine. But this is called a freaking restoration! To restore means to return something to its original state. Mickey's Christmas Carol was animated then went through a film-out process to put it on actual film stock. Film stock has grain. The end. Words mean something. You don't get to call a radical departure from the original a "restoration."
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Well, looking in detail at the spots pointed out I could see the differences... especially the spots on the scarf. I don't know that normally I would ever notice or that it would bother me... especially since I've not seen the originals. I imagine that is the situaiton that most people are in.
Originally Posted By dagobert Are these differences also noticeable when watching the movie? I mean now we are looking at still pictures, but in the actual movie the pictures are moving.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Are these differences also noticeable when watching the movie? I mean now we are looking at still pictures, but in the actual movie the pictures are moving.<< Oh yes. Same problems, just in motion. Actually it's worse, because the DVNR adapts to motion. So whereas it might correctly identify an outline as an outline in any individual frame, put it in motion and it might decide that it's a scratch after all and remove it. It gets pretty distracting when details in the *background* come and go as the camera pans.
Originally Posted By dagobert >>>Actually it's worse, because the DVNR adapts to motion. So whereas it might correctly identify an outline as an outline in any individual frame, put it in motion and it might decide that it's a scratch after all and remove it. It gets pretty distracting when details in the *background* come and go as the camera pans.<<< Thank you. I didn't know that. I have to admit that I wouldn't notice the problems. Until now I didn't own most Disney movies and it has been a long time that I've seen them before.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>What chair? I don't see any chair in either print.<< The wood you see behind Scrooge is actually his high-backed chair.
Originally Posted By Bellella Question: did they do another restoration of "Sword in the Stone" after the first release of it in the Golden Classics collection? Because I have that version and it looks and sounds AWESOME!!! ecdc, how dare you call "Bambi" tripe. And I have the first DVD release of "Bambi" and it is a HUGE improvement from the shoddy VHS versions I watched through my childhood. I'm guessing that once the Disney classics go Blu-Ray, the restoration quality slips right down the tubes? If they've already done one amazing restoration of a film, why would they need to do another? Oh, but then they've never understood that you can't improve upon perfection.
Originally Posted By mawnck Disney hasn't historically had many DVNR problems on their releases. The most consistently ghastly DVNR I'm aware of is on the DVD reissues of the Filmation library. One of the previous owners got the bright idea of transferring their entire film library to standard definition video and then *throwing out the film elements*, so we're stuck with the crummy transfers they did at the time, DVNR and all. The Betty Boop VHS and LD box set from several years ago was also notorious for excessive DVNR. This article is from 1999 and the technology has "progressed" since then, but the issues remain the same: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.12/3.12pages/amididvnr.php3">http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3....vnr.php3</a> It appears that in this case, its less of an attempt to clean up film grain and scratches and more of a half-baked attempt to "undo" the Xerox look of 60s/70s Disney, in which the animation clean-up drawings were transferred directly to the cels using an early Xerox machine. It made a sketchy, kind of scribbly look that doesn't fit well with the super-scrubbed clean appearance of their "full" restorations. In a way it is a tracing - a computer-made tracing that tries to make Xerox lines look like hand-inked ones, trashing the look of the rest of the artwork in the process. But who cares about art as long as the Marketeers are happy and Joe Sixpack can't tell the difference? Lowest common denominator wins again. And for what? Nobody asked for this. As we've already determined, the film buffs are furious, and nobody else can tell the difference. Weirdly, there was some noticeable (but not NEARLY as bad) DVNR degradation on the last two releases of "Cinderella" - a movie that didn't use the Xerox process at all, and you'd think would have rated the full frame-by-frame human-driven restoration given the other "classics".
