Originally posted by Lyris
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I saw the film twice theatrically at the BFI IMAX so I’m familiar with all the digital manipulation the 35mm footage went through for that version, and much of that is evident in the Blu-ray (as rather than go to the 35mm source itself for the 35mm footage here it seems as if the whole thing has come from an IMAX internegative). What this means of course is that the sharpening and edge enhancement is therefore present, but it’s quite sporadic and – I think – random enough and not severe enough as to be seriously distracting. That’s really where the faults lie rather than it looking (to use an irritating and overused term) “waxy” with the grain being sucked out…etc.
The first indication I had that the Blu-ray’s HD master had been struck from the IMAX interneg was when I saw the Warner logo as it has the same jagged edge of noise reduction running down the side of the W that caught my eye when I saw it theatrically, and I spotted little things like that on Friday night when I wasn't even looking for them. I found the sharpening to 35mm scenes at its most noticable when Joker has his meeting with the mob as certain shots (mostly medium shots) look a little “digital” - particularly with people’s hair it’s got got that effect similar to what you see when you boost sharpness on your display settings beyond recommended levels. My eyes are better at seeing things like this than edge halos (which I don't tend to notice unless I look for them, or they are so severe as to be unmissable). No digital manipulation here has robbed the image of a filmlike quality though. The sharpening and noise reduction doesn't suddenly render shots to look as if they've been captured on video/data.
I’ve given up on AVS though. They just don't know how to pick their battles, and even when they do they can't work out how to do anything constructive with their criticism. A friend told me to check out their “Dark Knight Picture Quality Issues” thread, which is thirteen pages and counting, with only about five people posting who actually own the disc. The usual suspects there just drive me to the point of insanity now as you’d think this was a Gangs of New York like atrocity. Is Dark Knight perfect? Nope. Sharpening and EE? Yup, but it's not constant and there’s a lot to account for due to all the factors of the movie’s post production workflow. I knew using the IMAX IN was likely to be the route they went for the Blu-ray as soon as we knew the disc was going to reflect the aspect ratio switching (the optimal way would have been to master the 35mm footage from the 35mm internegative, then cut in the re-framed IMAX footage from an IMAX interneg source. Warner will probably have a second HD master used to strike the DVD from and for HDTV broadcast that will have come from the 2.40:1 35mm IN so when it’s been broadcast on TV there ought to be room for comparison).
On the subject of the ratio switching I’m actually pleased how well it worked at home. If you have a light controlled room and the contrast ratio your display device effectively renders “black bars” invisible against the black bezel of your display and/or darkness of your surroundings then the effect of the image opening up still works well (though naturally without the truly breathtaking effect it had at IMAX venues). The 1.78 cropping wasn’t as bad as I expected either, though is a little tight during the opening scene in the bank. As it was in IMAX venues, if you’re captivated by the film itself your brain eventually tunes out the black bars disappearing and re-appearing. Scope screen owners could probably just about get away with running the whole movie through an anamorphic lens without completely destroying the framing of shots (it'll look a little tight though as the 35mm/DLP release didn't simply have every IMAX shot matted top and bottom, but some of those shots had to be optically re-framed to maintain composition).
Outside of the sharpening issues I think it is quite similar to the Batman Begins encode (despite higher average bitrate on the sequel). Comparisons can only go so far though as the approach to the lighting was a little different this time around – but much on the disc still accurately reflects the look of anamorphic photography that had a photochemical finish to my eyes. The (naturally) sharpest 35mm scenes that caught my eye theatrically remain the sharpest 35mm scenes on the Blu-ray (Joker’s interrogation scene) so - again - whilst not perfect I find the encode is pretty honourable to the look of the film in my opinion.
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