Two cuts on BD with no seamless branching?!?

[spoRv]

It's the first time I encountered a Blu-ray with two different cuts of the same movie, and that didn't used seamless branching... instead, there are two huge m2ts files, one for the theatrical cut, and the other for the extended edition; the movie is The Chronicles of Riddick, US edition, BD-50.

I must admit it's a way to avoid possible (even if remote) player compatibility issues, and probably it's easier (and cheaper) to do so, but if they used the seamless branching, the bitrate would be almost doubled...

Anyone got a BD like this?

[Valeyard]

There's no compatibility benefit to doing it that way. You might want to do it that way if you have two different sources for each version of the film - i.e. you scanned the US theatrical o-neg and and then scanned the international cut inter-positive or something. Or if the colour grading on one version is different to the other. Or if you have a 3D and 2D version. But using separate discs for each version is also a good way to go about it.

[spoRv]

AFAIR there were some issues with seamless branching at the very beginning - I think they are all solved now.

Agree, it will be great to have two different cuts, color gradings, scans etc. in the same disk, but it would reduce a lot the overall bitrate... better 2x BD-50 instead!

[IcePrick]

If I remember correctly, one of the releases of Léon was like that. Also the US blu-ray of Danny the Dog (AKA Unleashed).

[Beber]

The French Blu-ray of "Apocalypse Now" is like that, too. Theatrical with French dub in 2.0, and "Redux" with French dub in 5.1 and different subtitle adaptations also.
And the British (?) Blu-ray of "Payback" also: two very different color gradings for theatrical and "Straight Up DC"

[zoidberg]

I've got a feeling Dark City is the same due to the massive difference between the theatrical and the director's cut.

[Evit]

A few Blu Rays use this system. It's the dumb way to get around the complications of seamless branching. For our purposes perhaps 50GB are too expensive in general to be considered.

[zoidberg]

A few Blu Rays use this system. It's the dumb way to get around the complications of seamless branching. For our purposes perhaps 50GB are too expensive in general to be considered.

Agreed, considering the price of 25GB vs 50GB BD-R, however I think spoRv is referring to retail discs. I guess the extra work/cost in producing a seamless branch title for back catalogue titles is the issue (cheaper to run 2 separate full encodes).

[Beber]

I've got a feeling Dark City is the same due to the massive difference between the theatrical and the director's cut.

That's exactly right. That's a Blu-ray that has both cuts seperately on the same disc.

[Bigrob]

Cannibal Holocaust (UK Blu-ray) is the same