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:

   
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

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

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.

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.