"The Fountain" Blu-Ray Quality...terrible :-(

[Brian Broz]

I just picked up The Fountain on Blu-Ray and although I enjoyed the film in the theatre, I'm confused why the quality is so poor on Blu-Ray (playing back on PS3 admittedly).
The picture is soft, colors very muted, and incredible amounts of noise in the blacks (more like a posterization)...any standard def DVD bought in the last 5 years looks better upconverted than this movie.
I realize the "look" of the film is very different from Casino Royale, Babel, or The Departed (other discs I own) but those Blu-Ray movies look fantastic, and are most definitely HD.
Has anyone else seen or experienced this?


Brian Broz

[David Mullen ASC]

The film was shot on push-processed 500 ASA stock (low-con Expression 500T) with diffusion filters (ProMist) so a certain desaturated, grainy patina to the image was intentional - but sometimes this plays havoc with video compressors and whatnot.

I've noticed that many movies with a grain or noise texture (like some of "Superman Returns", shot on the Genesis but with some noise problems) don't play well on some LCD monitors, for example.

"The Fountain" went through a D.I. so what gets released on HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, and DVD should be the original digital master just tweaked in a color-correction suite for video color space and then downconverted (plus any reframed versions are made for pan & scan, etc.) and compressed.

As far as the grain, it was intentional -- in fact, the DP told me that he had to shoot efx plates without the push-processing for the efx people, who told him they could match the graininess of the non-efx shots, but ultimately they didn't, hence why the movie has some variation in grain levels. But the intent was for a certain specific grain level through out.

But it sounds like this has interacted badly with whatever compression they used for the disk, and perhaps the black level was mis-set somewhere in the line.

[Policar]

Weirdly, I saw part of this in 4X3 on an airplane and thought it looked super clean. They must do some massive noise reduction for airplane movies.

David, do you have any articles about the cinematography in The Fountain? I thought it was quite beautiful. Was it really rated at 1000ISO?

[David Mullen ASC]

I doubt you'd see the grain even of Super-16 on an airplane's TV monitor...

He pushed 5229 (500T) one-stop but that doesn't necessarily mean he rated it at 1000 ASA. He could have rated it at 640 or 800 ASA, for example.

There was an article in the Nov. 2006 issue of American Cinematographer.

[Policar]

Great, thanks for the tip. I've got to get a subscription but the gear envy drives me nuts.

[Tom Lowe]

This sucks to hear. The Fountain was my favorite movie last year. Of all the movies from '06, this is the one I was hoping for most in HD.

[donatello b]

"noise in the blacks (more like a posterization)..."

if you are seeing posterization i would more suspect something about your viewing system ??


last week we were looking at some 2k scans on digital projector - there was severe banding in darks when we attempted slight CC ... turned out to be wrong LUT was applied ... once the LUT was changed it looked very good & we had good range of CC without artifacts ...

[Sam Druckerman]

I'm not surprised to hear the DVD is a disappointment.

FWIW.... I saw The Fountain opening weekend in a new theater in Century City (AMC), and I was actually pulled out of the story several times by the amount of grain/noise in the images. It's a personal thing, I know..... but that much grain/noise just kills the "suspended disbelief" experience I love about watching films. Like a said, that's just a personal preference. I understand there's a lot of people who feel different.

After reading David's comment about the efx grain matching issues, I wonder if Matthew Libatique was disappointed with the final outcome. My guess is he is. I'm not dissing Matthew Libatique, I'm just suggesting that as artists we try things and experiment.... sometimes we like the results and sometimes we don't.

[Tom Lowe]

I saw The Fountain on a very average mutliplex screen, and while the image was kind of soft, the grain issues did not bother me at all. In fact, I thought the picture looked amazing.

The only part that didn't look right to me was that opening sequence in the "jungle"... it looked more like a sound-stage jungle than a real one, which might be due to the fact that the film's budget was slashed from 70 million USD to 35 million when Pitt dropped out. That also is the fault of the art department, etc, and not just Libatique.

[Sam Druckerman]

Tom, I loved what they were trying to achieve... But, as an example... I don't believe they intended to have all that noise in the blacks.... I think some things didn't go as planed (surprise). And I'm not blaming anyone.

I think your point about the budget cut speaks volumes.

[C.H.Haskell]

When I saw the fountain in a full size cinema I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and the results the filmmakers were achieving with the textures etc.

Very disappointing to here about the poor quality of the Blu-ray release of the picture but I must admit I am not surprised. So far every blu-ray title I have picked up has produced tons of noise that simply drives me crazy, so bad that I would stop watching. (ps3 on plasma display)

Current day DVD quality so far outdoes my tiny blu-ray collection and I am hopping this changes for us HD filmmakers looking for a realistic home that can handle the content that we are delivering. (Soon to be RED content)

I understand it’s a new medium and just hoping they work out the compression details for future releases.

Can anyone generate a list of titles that look amazing?

[David Mullen ASC]

After reading David's comment about the efx grain matching issues, I wonder if Matthew Libatique was disappointed with the final outcome. My guess is he is.

I wouldn't read too much into that -- I'm sure Matty is rightly proud of the movie, which I told him was one of the best photographed films of the year. I was merely asking about the variations in grain in the release prints considering he shot the movie on one stock, which is when I heard about the efx not being pushed one-stop. He may have been mildly disappointed in that aspect alone, the matching issue, but I think he was just explaining something to me from a technical standpoint, that it's hard to fake grain in post despite what some efx people promise.

As far as the Blu-Ray DVD goes, I have no idea. When I looked at the DVD of my own work on "Akeelah and the Bee", I was dismayed at some of the compression artifacts in it, worse than most store-bought DVD's have.

[Weston Ford]

Thats too bad. I was really looking forward to seeing this in hd.

[Yash Keough]

Yeah I saw this film at the Toronto Film Fest and while overall it didn't blow me away (though it had some great scenes I thought) it was beautifully shot. Loved it the space scenes are pretty incredible! :-)

[Policar]

Tom, I loved what they were trying to achieve... But, as an example... I don't believe they intended to have all that noise in the blacks.... I think some things didn't go as planed (surprise). And I'm not blaming anyone.

I think your point about the budget cut speaks volumes.

The thing is, you've got the dailies. Maybe one or two grainy shots (I'm looking at you Superman Returns) will be an unintentional disspointment, but you don't choose an aesthetic for a film, shoot the film that way, then turn around and think "oops" unless you are very, very careless.

Although I still haven't seen the whole film yet (it's a long, long story....) what I've seen of The Fountain looks incredibly pretty. I love the grainy look. I think In the Mood for Love and 2046 (both shot by Christopher Doyle I think) also have some pushed nighy shots (that somehow maintain strong saturation) and those are some of the prettiest movies I've seen. I think Days of Heaven was pushed one or two stops even, and it may be a bit grainy but its overall look is just mind-blowing.

Even big budget action is now tending toward high iso photography: War of the Worlds, Transformers (night scenes), Spiderman 3 (entirely 500T, I think...), Batman Begins...

[Sam Druckerman]

The thing is, you've got the dailies. Maybe one or two grainy shots (I'm looking at you Superman Returns) will be an unintentional disspointment,

I agree.

My bad..... My point, which I didn't make as clear as I could have was...

If you're counting on post professionals to do work they say is possible, in this example the efx people saying they could match the grain, and in the end they can't or don't.....

To me.... that would be a disappointment.

And.... if that failure led to some weird noise in the image, to me .... that would be even more of disappointment.

To be fair, I really don't know what caused that noise. So, I really shouldn't try to discuss the cause of it here.

But, I do know that any thing that pulls me out of a story and reminds me that I'm watching a movie is real... disappointment to me.

Man, I'm sorry I chimed in here at all now. I don't want to be the guy who is overly critical. I have been around the arts my entire life and I know better than most the challenges, hardships, and pitfalls of being an artist. I think that the film has some exceptional imagery. As a narrative it didn't have the same impact for me as the way Requiem For A Dream did, which I Loved.

[David Mullen ASC]

Matty Labatique is a risk-taker in the best sense, which is why he is in such demand as a DP. And "The Fountain" looks gorgeous.

But one of things to remember about push-processing a whole movie is that labs are not consistent in the amount of density that results from extended development (it's not an exact science), plus working closer to the toe of the negative, you can have other minor variations in exposure and development produce greater variations in grain and blacks. A good example would be seen in the prints of "Eyes Wide Shut" (before it was degrained for DVD), which was a movie that was pushed two-stops throughout, but is not consistent in grain level. These variations are more dramatic with a two-stop push though - a one-stop push is pretty safe these days.

This lab variation (combined with human error exposure variation) is one reason why most people might push one-stop but only underexpose by 2/3's of a stop, as density "safety net".

One reason why Labatique used the lower-con Expression stock for "The Fountain" (though it is a bit more grainy than normal 500T stock) is that he had a lot of warm lighting in the film and he didn't want the shadows and faces to pick-up too much red in them. Lower-con stocks tend to be more pastel.

[Alexander Nikishin]

Can anyone generate a list of titles that look amazing?

The Prestige looks absolutely beautiful on Blu Ray.

Underworld: Evolution also looks gorgeous but as a film in general it isn't the greatest.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl are said to have the best transfer to Blu Ray yet.

Some others;

Planet Earth: The Complete Collection
Saw III
Terminator 2: Judgment Day

For anyone interested, here's a website dedicated to blu ray releases...
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/

Haskell, what sort of HDTV do you have btw?

[Michel Hafner]

Current day DVD quality so far outdoes my tiny blu-ray collection and I am hopping this changes for us HD filmmakers looking for a realistic home that can handle the content that we are delivering.
DVD stinks compared to BR or HD-DVD. Some early BR discs had subpar transfers and MPEG2 compression, but were still far ahead of DVDs. Naturally the higher resolution means the noise/grain is far better resolved than on DVD and therefore more visible. And some displays do no favours to that at all.

[Ken K]

Can anyone generate a list of titles that look amazing?
There are constantly updated lists of HD-DVD and Blu-ray titles and how they look at AVSForum. They are put into tiered categories based on various factors and the PQ is pretty much decided democratically. It's a good way to avoid certain movies though, like The Fifth Element, which they happen to be re-releasing later this year.

HD-DVD Ratings:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=705387

Blu-ray Ratings:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=753726

Most HD-DVD titles are encoded with VC-1 and most of the titles Sony encoded for Blu-ray were MPEG-2. Now Sony is using AVC/H.264 and some studios are using VC-1 for discs that are Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

I picked up The Fountain on Blu-ray this weekend but haven't checked it out yet. I loved the movie and even knew it was getting some bad picture quality reviews, but it's just too good to pass up.

[David Mullen ASC]

I was at an ASC Tech Committee meeting and a post supervisor for a major studio was mentioning that they were having to go back and look at their HD masters all over again because they noticed that some grain and noise problems were showing up on consumer LCD screens that weren't visible on the large pro 50" HD CRT screens used in telecine bays, due to the nature of the CRT raster lines softening some high-frequency detail and hiding these flaws. So perhaps HD telecine suites are going to have to start installing large consumer LCD screens as well as a double-check for these artifacts.

[Tom Lowe]

Interesting.

Yeah, nowadays, you are playing to so many audiences in terms of resolution and display type, it's got to be difficult.

[Jerry Hofmann]

It is difficult. Some people will see your film on a huge screen, some on a CRT, some on a computer display, and yet others on plasmas and LCD's... what does one choose as a monitoring device for color correction? yikes.

Jerry

[Gunleik Groven]

Jerry Hofman!
I never knew you, but your input on the "cow" is always very good.

Good to see you here!

Gunleik

[Tom Lowe]

I just looked at a 720p sample of the Blu-Ray Fountain compressed down to 4.4 gigs on bit torrents, and I have to say, it looked beautiful on my 24" LCD!!! Gorgeous, in fact!

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6431/tfnsamplecm9.th.png (http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tfnsamplecm9.png)

[Alexander Nikishin]

I think Brian Broz may have a crapper of an HDTV.

After seeing The Fountain on both a Sanyo Z5 projector and a Sony 34"XBR, I think it's a beautiful transfer.

I think people forget that you've got to have a nice display to see the true quality of Blu Ray.

[Tom Lowe]

oh man, i cannot wait to watch this in HD!

[Brian Broz]

I neglected to mention I was viewing on my Panasonic Pro 42" HD Plasma (8th Gen) Viewing at 720p, not the newer 1080p model.

[Tom Lowe]

that screen sounds so crap, i think you just give it away.... TO ME. :)

[Alexander Nikishin]

I neglected to mention I was viewing on my Panasonic Pro 42" HD Plasma (8th Gen) Viewing at 720p, not the newer 1080p model.

That's a 720P set. Not too great of a picture IMHO.

I think plasma screens are over rated, that is unless you get into the $4,000 range. Plasmas and LCD TV's are very hit and miss.

I much prefer projectors or the last oldie but goodie 34" Sony XBR HDTV.

[Ken K]

Interesting. First of all, are the plasmas you guys are looking at calibrated at all? There's a HUGE difference between the factory default (and 99.9% of store floor models) and how you should be viewing it. I have a 37" Panasonic plasma (from their last batches in Sep. 2006) and it looks gorgeous once it's calibrated. I assume most people are aware of this though.

I just watched about an hour or so of The Fountain on Blu-ray via the PS3 with component at 1080i and it wasn't bad at all. There was some banding in places, but nothing I don't see elsewhere. Picture still looks good in my opinion.

Try those settings and these ones for the plasma if you haven't already:
Picture Mode = Standard
Picture = +22
Brightness = +8
Color = -1
Tint = -4
Sharpness = -14
Color Temp = Warm
Enhanced Black Level = Off

I have these settings memorized, so whenever I go to a store that has the Panasonics, I change their settings and the picture looks SO much better. The default settings are on Vivid and extremely bright and colorful, but far from realistic.

[Tom Lowe]

So I just watched a 720p version of The Fountain from bit torrents (compressed down to 4.4 GBs), and it was glorious! I can't imagine how great this would look straight from an HD-DVD at 1080p. This is the first time I have ever watched a movie I love in 720p, so it was a great experience.

The Fountain now goes from being my favorite movie of 2006 to being one of my favorite movies of all time.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

A problem I've seen from a lot of LCD and Plasma TVs is their gamma is off. When a DVD is compressed the last few bits are usually assumed to be clipped. Poorly calibrated LCDs I've seen tend to "salvage" that garbage data and lift it up into the visible range glorifying all of the compression artifacts. I was compositing a few weeks ago on a system with a really bad viewsonic for a timeline/web monitor and I found it was easier to just move a viewer window over onto it than apply a LUT to inspect how well the really dark shadows were blending. All of a sudden all of those +/- 2% luminance levels around black become painfully clear.

[Kemalettin Sert]

sorry for bumping this thread but i would like to say there is 2 different versions for bluray out there..First US release other German one.German bluray looks better and having DTS HDMA
Screens from German bluray
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/5633/27e184a9e7db599661f0d10.th.png (http://img29.imageshack.us/i/27e184a9e7db599661f0d10.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/6563/37a4e0c3eea388271340980.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/37a4e0c3eea388271340980.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/9038/2b4d3373179b33bfeb7ce5f.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/2b4d3373179b33bfeb7ce5f.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1218/31e02bb489f31e76c757592.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/31e02bb489f31e76c757592.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1029/514588505fe4b496e1e0ef1.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/514588505fe4b496e1e0ef1.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/2029/686e5409bf501122315bc6c.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/686e5409bf501122315bc6c.png/)http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/7155/328805629c21c3134893330.th.png (http://img46.imageshack.us/i/328805629c21c3134893330.png/)


US Bluray

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/5856/3fe1fc232723cb4ae4c0bbc.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/3fe1fc232723cb4ae4c0bbc.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1774/e81675ff405b1050ea44f4a.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/e81675ff405b1050ea44f4a.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/9269/0f95944a60f26c6bcfe30e2.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/0f95944a60f26c6bcfe30e2.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/7281/bd47454ae9419cc360366d5.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/bd47454ae9419cc360366d5.png/)http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1875/99d58eb1bc49aa00816fc83.th.png (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/99d58eb1bc49aa00816fc83.png/)http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/235/7fd3957ae2eb7c65c2c5cfc.th.png (http://img46.imageshack.us/i/7fd3957ae2eb7c65c2c5cfc.png/)http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/11/a342e4899fffbc5062fa514.th.png (http://img46.imageshack.us/i/a342e4899fffbc5062fa514.png/)



This movie one of my fav and deserves better PQ :cheers2:

[Jeff Coatney]

I'm a fan of Aronovsky, but The Fountain is definitely not his best effort. I think the care and handling of the DVD tranfers are directly proportional to how much the film grossed. Why should the studio spend the same on an underperforming movie as they do on a hit?

[Michel Hafner]

sorry for bumping this thread but i would like to say there is 2 different versions for bluray out there..First US release other German one.German bluray looks better and having DTS HDMA

UK version is same as German.