The Godfather Trilogy 4K UHD

[captainsolo]

How does everyone here feel about the new 2022 masters for the Godfather films? I’m flabbergasted at what they did so far.

I ran the UHD of I. Then I watched the new little "restoration" featurette in desperation.
Zoetrope team handled it instead of Paramount. MPI did the scans.

So what the hell happened?

Frozen grain, random DNR that comes and goes from shot to shot, noise popping up everywhere....again Frozen Grain in The Godfather!!! And then you have the HDR application which seems kinda all over the place.
The new source scan and work seems lovely and doesn't have the drawbacks of what affected the old BD compared to the source restoration and DCPs produced by RAH and the 2007 team. When whatever the heck was done disappears or is dialed back there is obviously much more detail. But even though throwing those old Paramount discs on shows how they haven't aged well in their encodes and have too much red for example...at least you don't have the hideous issues of the new disc.
Again...what the hell happened? This is nuts.

The color is more neutral overall in its approach. It never hits the saturation levels of the 2008 disc but is relatively close when viewed on an OLED with the DV grading. The wedding is less blown out but they did keep some degree of trying to have that vintage home photography effect. I did notice the Vegas signs sticking out as RAH mentioned because they apparently sourced them from a master source.

Audio is the same scenario-lossy mono but at least its better than every other version I've tried save for the stupidly rare initial video releases.

I really don't even know how to describe it. It's better in some ways and hideous in others. At first I thought I was seeing things.

How in the hell this got glowing reviews is beyond me. It could look nice if you look past all the tomfoolery sure. Sure it's good to be in 4K instead of the outdated BDs. But at what cost???

[PDB]

Hey captain I don’t have the uhds as I heard they are pretty bad.

(witness your post)

Have you looked at the web-dls/rips of the first two films in comparison? Not without issues but they are based off the Harris restoration and not the Zoetrope one.

[captainsolo]

I’ve seen a few people mention they didn’t like some things but it’s nothing but 5 star reviews everywhere. I was stunned at what I was seeing. Every few seconds I was biting my fist like Sonny or saying “son of a bitch!!”

I hadn’t thought of dl versions. The dcps of the 2007 are supposed to be without the color issues of the BDs. I wonder if the dl versions are any different to the BDs. I would think they were the same.
I was about to see if the new 2022 sdr BDs made any difference at perhaps hiding some of the new tomfoolery.

It’s nuts to think that we really need to see the 2007 source dcps and the 2022 master before any work was done to properly evaluate any work.

And the mono on I and II is still in iffy shape. I heard some tics in I on the UHD and Moshrom found they tweaked it a little vs the BD mono. My 1.33 mono LDs don’t sound very good and I need to track down a few tapes to try. The early tapes are rare and stupidly expensive.

I should have some time to watch II soon which I’ve heard is supposedly not as bad as I.

[PDB]

Here is what the WEBs (SDR) look like for conversational purposes.

GF


GF2

[Yarp]

Frozen grain, random DNR that comes and goes from shot to shot, noise popping up everywhere

Timestamps/screenshots for these so we can see/make some comparisons?

[alexpeden2000]

I really like the colour off the web-dl’s but the grain is a little out of control (and I’m not against a healthy layer of grain). Maybe that’s what happened with an older 4K scan of a fairly rough source.

I was thinking of trying to regrain the scenes in the UHD’s that need it and then use the web-dl’s as a colour reference but have various other projects to try before that.

[dvdmike]

All the digital restorations suck, they are just all wrong to me

[zoidberg]

I'm sure they'll finally get it right for the 45th anniversary boxset

[dvdmike]

I'm sure they'll finally get it right for the 45th anniversary boxset

Not if Harris is involved again

[Stamper]

There's a huge progress, but the shooting in the restaurant from Godfather I still doesn't have the blue light it was bathed in, except for the last exterior shot.