I've added some "new" Blu-ray screenshot comparison pages. I put the "new" in quotes because most of these screenshots were made and published here a couple of years ago, but I had not really put together proper comparison pages to view them together until now. The initial layout may not be ideal, but it's a starting point for discussion and I hope to hear some constructive criticism for improving the concept.
At the moment, I have two types of comparisons. The first type is to compare fundamentally different types of presentation within a single Blu-ray release - this includes black & white vs. color or multiple aspect ratios provided on disc:
Black & White vs. Color Comparisons
- 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) [US Sony Black & White vs. Colorized]
- The Mist (2007) [US Weinstein Black & White vs. Color]
Aspect Ratio Comparisons
The second type of comparison is between releases with different mastering or video encodes:
Release Comparisons
- Centurion (2010) [UK Fox vs. US Magnolia]
- The Children (2008) [UK E1 Entertainment vs. US Lionsgate]
- Let the Right One In (2008) [UK Momentum vs. US Magnolia]
- Micmacs (2009) [UK E1 Entertainment vs. US Sony]
- Playtime (1967) [UK BFI vs. US Criterion]
- Splinter (2008) [UK Icon vs. US Magnolia]
- Triangle (2009) [UK Icon vs. US First Look]
While finding the matching frames between different versions of a title, I ran into a bit of a conundrum. I had already made and published a set of shots from one release, but this original shot set consisted solely of I-frames. When I examined the comparison release later, many of the matching shots turned out to be P- or B-frames. This hardly seems fair to the comparison release, since the original frames to be matched are merely spatially compressed, but the matching frames might also be temporally compressed. So I put on my "screenshot scientist" hat and came up with the terrible idea of doing a cross-comparison, which I applied to The Double Life of Veronique.
Ideally, I would just compare I-frame to I-frame when they happen to align between two encodes, and this was done for shot set #3 below. However, since I had already taken I-frames from one release that didn't necessarily have an I-frame equivalent in the comparison set (represented by set #1), I thought to compensate for this by finding the closest I-frame match in the comparison set, then reverse match back to the original set. This result is shown in set #2 below:
- The Double Life of Veronique (1991) [UK Artificial Eye vs. US Criterion Set 1]
- The Double Life of Veronique (1991) [UK Artificial Eye vs. US Criterion Set 2]
- The Double Life of Veronique (1991) [UK Artificial Eye vs. US Criterion Set 3]
As you might guess, putting together screenshot comparisons is kind of a pain in the ass, but I do hope to make more in the future.
