Big Trouble in Little China - Netflix HD Master

[zoidberg]

As I touched upon in my previous thread regarding Die Hard, there is a version of John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China currently streaming on netflix which is different to that on blu ray. When I say different, it's most definitely different:

 [Image: 290e50520021227.jpg] [Image: a87a25520021235.jpg] [Image: 88895c520021247.jpg] [Image: 1eeead520021256.jpg] [Image: ca6728520021266.jpg] [Image: bef65c520021273.jpg] [Image: 5cfbe1520021280.jpg] [Image: e7e7e1520021288.jpg] 
It looks to be a new scan, I'm wondering if a certain Mr. Cundey was involved?

edit: Here are the links. I'm still figuring this out

http://www.imagebam.com/image/290e50520021227
http://www.imagebam.com/image/a87a25520021235
http://www.imagebam.com/image/88895c520021247
http://www.imagebam.com/image/1eeead520021256
http://www.imagebam.com/image/ca6728520021266
http://www.imagebam.com/image/bef65c520021273
http://www.imagebam.com/image/5cfbe1520021280
http://www.imagebam.com/image/e7e7e1520021288

[PDB]

Mind if I ask what size is your cap for this and Die Hard?

[zoidberg]

Hi there no worries. I used an external usb capture device (LGP lite GL310 by Avermedia) that hardware encodes AVC at 1080p24. I used the maximum bitrate of 60Mb/s so the files are both pretty big, around 29G each! They are to my eyes identical to the original stream with no extra artifacting introduced. Probably overkill I know but I need to edit them for audio sync and to replace where the netflix page pops up during the end credits, so they will be re-encoded to a lower bitrate anyway.

[spoRv]

Zoidberg, thanks for what you are doing with these movies - keep on!

Yes, 60mbps is surely overkill if you leave the video "as is", but as you said, it's the right choice if you have to edit video; for the final bitrate, you could always use the Advanced Kush Calculator to know the minimum bitrate needed to achieve a good quality - a tool that I use every time I have to compress a video; I never use lower bitrates than the result, but possibly higher, usually around +20% at least, often +50%, but no more - take these figures in mind if you will add a grain plate!

[The Aluminum Falcon]

Almost looks like a 35mm scan! Lots of grain and contrast. I have no idea where Netflix got that master, but it seems great. Looks a lot more atmospheric than the version released on BD.

[spoRv]

May you make some screenshot comparisons between BD and streaming? You can of course use http://screenshotcomparison.com

[PDB]

Not same frame but...

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&...38&i=1&l=0

vs

http://www.imagebam.com/image/bef65c520021273

This needs to be a project. Sync the LD PCM tracks.

[DoomBot]

Hell i'd love to have the 29gb, it's not overkill to me, that's just BD50 size anyways. If anything, Die Hard first just in time for Christmas!

[zoidberg]

Here's a quick sample video I've put together:

https://we.tl/sdkEAJvrvs

The audio is a 2 channel downmix from the 5.1 stream. The artifacts are from the original netflix stream's low bitrate. A grain plate would probably go some way to help in a lot of shots. It's surprising that Netflix would let such a grainy master stream without any sort of filtering to aid compression. I've uploaded a few caps to screenshotcomparison.com but nothing's come up yet, maybe I messed it up. I do intend a preservation of both of these caps, I have the UK Arrow blu which has the (in my opinion) superior PCM Dolby Surround mix. Any thoughts?

[zoidberg]

Both title require a re-edit as the netflix app forces a menu mid-credits, necessitating a second grab of the affected sequence. Additionally sometimes the first few seconds are typically at a lower resolution while the connection bandwidth is established. I'm streaming through a tivo box with a cable service which is pretty solid so there are very rarely any drop-outs or resolution bumps, it also outputs 24p which helps tremendously. So I can get the filesize down without any quality loss to BD25 sizes.