Hi All,

I don't suppose anyone has the blu ray of Lock Stock from either Hong Kong, Japan, Scandinavia or Thailand? Every other release uses VC1 but those releases use AVC. 

I'm planning a reconstruction of the director's cut using the blu ray and the extra scenes from the DVD, plus the color grading from the DVD. 

Also what are people's thoughts on the level of grain in the blu ray - see below? Would you leave it as is or try and remove a little? I read it was shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm so I guess it will never look great. 

Thanks

Why do you prefer the Japanese blu ray over the US or any other? They look identical to me.

(2020-09-10, 03:45 PM)allldu Wrote: Why do you prefer the Japanese blu ray over the US or any other? They look identical to me.

Because the Japanese blu ray, or any of those others listed, uses AVC whereas the US, UK etc use VC1. As I understand VC1 encoding isn't as efficient as AVC. So if you have a VC1 file and an AVC file that are the same size the AVC will have a higher slightly bitrate. I figured if it's easy enough to get a version with AVC encoding then that will be a better base for the project.

Obviously the Japanese blu ray could be a smaller file size and the VC1 encode is the better option, but at the moment I don't know anything about the Japanese disc (or the others mentioned).

Again I haven't seen the Japanese disc, but Universal's VC1 efforts seem to be pretty well known as soft poor looking images, whereas the Japanese disc is put out by Sony using AVC.

Disc info on caps-a-holic

I can't help with the BD but the level of grain is ingrained (sorry for the pun) in my mind as an integral part of the movie.

(2020-09-10, 06:51 PM)alleycat Wrote: As I understand VC1 encoding isn't as efficient as AVC.

All things being equal, that's true, but things are rarely equal, so it's always necessary to check rather than going by codec.  (For example, I favor the VC-1 UK BD of the TC of Dances with Wolves over the AVC-encoded DE BD of the same.)  In this case, with the same master and the VC-1 encoding's having a higher average bitrate, the difference might be rather slim.  What weighs more with me is that the JP disc is from Sony, who are generally better at compression than Universal, so it is probably worth trying to track it down.

The other factor is that reliable decoding of VC-1 is not as easy to achieve, especially with free tools.  If you do end up going with a VC-1 disc and have any trouble with it, just shoot me a PM.

By the way, anybody on here have a now OOP Polygram DVD of the theatrical cut they'd like to share? Would love to have the DD 5.1 for my collection...

leave the grain, take the colouri.

Alley!!! I have the AVC Remux of Lock Stock if your interested?

Video
ID                                      : 1
Format                                  : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                          : High@L4.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                  : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP                    : M=1, N=10
Codec ID                                : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                : 1 h 47 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                : 24.1 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                  : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                    : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                              : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                      : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                      : 0.485
Stream size                              : 18.1 GiB (84%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                  : No

Thanks for the offer Kreeper, however I have since managed to pick this up. It's now on the huge list of stuff to do! Cheers