Michel Hafner (31 December 1999):
This is the DTS version of Dreamwork's DVD edition of _Saving Private Ryan (1998)_, one of the major US films of 1998. It has been announced as a no compromise reference quality DVD. Hype or fact? Read on.
The transfer used for this DVD is not the same as the transfer used for the Laserdisc. It's a new digital transfer made on a state of the art C-Reality teleciné and it's approved by Spielberg and Kaminski personally. Wow. How does it look?
The film elements used are clean and image steadiness is good. But I have seen cleaner DVDs and steadier images as well. And I'm not talking about the shaky hand-held camera here! No reference quality, but not far behind. The harsh contrasts and the muted color palette are accurately rendered. The impression is very film-like. This is close to reference quality. In chapter four there are shots that show a strange vertical smearing of the image extending to the borders. This is Spielberg's use of a special lens and not a transfer glitch. It's simply another tool out of many he used to create a unique stylized look for this film.
Images are crisp and by no means fuzzy, but sharpness is not even close to the sharpest we have seen so far, and that's what a reference quality DVD must measure up to. The reason is that the C-Reality teleciné is not the sharpest around, but it makes up for this with practically no aliasing and other video artifacts and wonderfully smooth images. If you want sharper stuff you are better served with a Spirit Dataciné (used for most New Lines titles, for example). Oh well, the reference quality claim is getting into trouble now. What about the rest?
It does not look better concerning the grain level. It is anything but low. It's actually rather high for a new transfer of a new film. It must be said that this is not so much a problem with the transfer but the artistic choice of Spielberg and Kaminski who adopted grainy pictures as part of the overall concept to get a stylized look. A look that supposedly is meant to provide an extra layer of authenticity and the impression of being there, just like the highly refined sound design. So this category is not conclusive. The DVD looks pretty much as it should in this respect. Compression quality is good, but due to the grain level fine image detail is noisy anyway and subtle compression problems, so they exist, are effectively masked. The grain creates its own compression problems. But these are best left to an expert with the uncompressed master at hand for comparison. I don't claim that I can tell the authentic part of the grain apart from the simulated part as provided by MPEG.
Now for the bad news: video artifacts. It's not the teleciné's fault though. There is practically no aliasing and, how nice, I haven't seen any distracting noise suppression artifacts either, but there are, and I really don't understand why, plenty of overenhanced edges. Someone in the processing chain that likes it 'edgy' and unfortunately was not stopped, enhanced as if he were optimising for VHS. There goes any credibility as far as this DVD being a reference quality DVD. Sorry folks, but overenhanced edges and top quality are mutually exclusive. You can't have both. If you want super sharp images, use a sharper and less grainy film element and a sharper teleciné (such as the Spirit dataciné) or be happy with less sharp images. Overenhancing works for tiny screens, but looks ugly and distracting on any bigger screen of good quality. People walking around with white haloes around their outlines followed by a black line simply sucks. Some shots have no high contrast edges and the effect is neglectable, others seem to have been less enhanced, and yet others are way over the egde (pun intended) and annoying. For example the cross in the viewfinder of the sniper in chapter 7. It has white borders and at least 2 black echoes on both sides. Same thing in the viewfinder in chapter 12, and the radar in the same chapter. Yuck! There are many other examples all over the DVD.
What I find most disturbing and unbelievable is that such abuse of the digital tools that negates all the effort that has been put in the transfer so far to make it look film-like, is allegedly approved by Spielberg and Kaminski themselves. Director approved overenhanced edges!? The mind boggles. Could it be they approved the transfer before this enhancement happened, but not the finished DVD? Could it be that they watched the DVD from a rather small studio reference monitor, sitting five or more screen heights away and not seeing the problem? I'd love to know the answer. Sad, very sad.
This DTS version of "Saving Private Ryan" is a mixed bag as far as image quality is concerned. Ignoring the over-enhanced edges we have a very good looking disc that approaches reference quality in some areas, and is pretty good in the others. Images are film-like and the special look of the movie is well transferred to the digital video medium. The over-enhanced edges are a completely unnecessary liability and should be fixed for upcoming releases in other countries. The menus are designed with a touch of class. The documentary of the Dolby Digital version is missing. The bits have been invested in the DTS track and the video for the film instead.
