To Live and Die in L.A.

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

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oh yeah
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:45 pm

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#26 Post by oh yeah » Sat Dec 03, 2016 6:43 am

Glad to hear these positive testimonials. I'm probably just too used to the muted MGM disc. Eager to check this one out, for sure.

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HJackson
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 7:27 pm

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#27 Post by HJackson » Sat Dec 10, 2016 3:28 am

Only saw this once before on DVD so I have nothing to say on the authenticity, but I had a blast with this blu. Absolutely gorgeous presentation of one of the coolest films ever.

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PfR73
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:07 pm

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#28 Post by PfR73 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 4:35 pm

Recently purchased this disc and it has one of the strangest Blu-Ray authoring situations I've come across.

I've gotten into the habit of scrutinizing the runtimes of extras for discs I'm upgrading from DVD to Blu-Ray, verifying that they are the same (within a reasonable variation). This is because I've come across multiple instances where Blu-Rays look like they have carried over the extras from the DVD, but they've been altered/cut either intentionally or unintentionally.

When I was going over the extras for this disc, the runtimes for almost everything carried over from the DVD (Counterfeit World, the deleted scene stuff, & alternate ending stuff) were very different from the DVD runtimes. It wasn't PAL speedup and there wasn't a clear consistency to the differences.

Normally when I find examples, I rip the extras from both the DVD & Blu-Ray onto my computer and play them side-by-side or disassemble their editing in Final Cut to try to determine exactly what the differences are.
However, when I ripped the extras from the Blu-Ray, the runtimes of the raw files all suddenly matched the DVD runtimes, without me doing any altering or conversions.

Eventually I discovered that when you're actually playing the disc, certain sections of the video files for the extras (some MGM logos, copyright information) are skipped over at the beginning & endings of the extras. But not only are they skipped over, an actual Blu-Ray player literally doesn't know those sections of the video files are there and only displays the runtime for the sections of the video file it's playing. It can't rewind past the "beginning" or fast-forward past the "end" to play those video sections, even though they're encoded on the disc in the video file.

Now I don't really mind not sitting through a bunch of extra MGM logos, but I've never seen any other disc encoded this way, and it was really perplexing me for quite a while as to why the same video tracks were showing 2 different runtimes depending on whether the disc was in a Blu-Ray player or ripped onto my computer.
Last edited by PfR73 on Fri Jan 18, 2019 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

David M.
Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 1:10 pm

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#29 Post by David M. » Fri Jan 18, 2019 4:45 pm

That's not too strange. A few titles have master tape slates and color bars that get skipped over at the playlist level.

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MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
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Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#30 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:10 pm

A reviewer inadvertently gave away that he'd ripped the disc of Indicator's The Pumpkin Eater in some way instead of watching it in a conventional setup after complaining that the selected-scene commentary was almost unlistenable because of its long patches of absolute silence. I was petrified that we'd cocked up the authoring in some way, so had to listen to the whole thing again myself - and when it turned out to be fine I contacted the editor to express my bemusement. He wouldn't admit what his reviewer had done (although I'm pretty certain I'm right), but the piece was swiftly corrected. (Which is why I'm not naming the reviewer or site, as it's one of the better ones.)

The problem was that the video file on the disc is the full-length feature - but when you select the commentary (and only then), the authoring is designed to skip the video from segment to segment, thus serving up a continuous piece running about an hour or so. However, if you don't play the disc in a conventional setup, the video file loses its embedded "instruction manual" and you get situations like this.

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#31 Post by TMDaines » Sun Jan 27, 2019 4:51 am

He could have just been playing it on a PC, and depending what player he used he may have experienced the disc like this. I dom’t see the menus of 90% of Blu-rays I watch, in fact I only do so when I open them in VLC to easily browse the extras.

David M.
Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 1:10 pm

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#32 Post by David M. » Sun Jan 27, 2019 9:29 pm

PC players show menus and obey the Playlist in and out points too.

Reverse engineered/unlicensed ones on the other hand won't and will generally just play the individual clips. Those shouldn't really be relied on for review purposes...

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#33 Post by TMDaines » Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:21 am

Yeah, but all the licensed Blu-ray software on PC is utter garbage, such as PowerDVD. It beats the whole point of having an HTPC in the first place, which would usually be to turn off hard subtiles, use fansubs, use better upscaling software, modify the video stream in real-time to compensate for poorly authored discs, etc.

I use PotPlayer w/ MadVR and Kodi to watch Blu-rays, and they won't show most menus aside from simple ones in Kodi. VLC is used just for the menus to watch extras.

I couldn't ever go back to having a vanilla Blu-ray player.

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MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
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Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#34 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:44 am

The bottom line is that if you're reviewing something - i.e. adopting the position of an ordinary punter watching the disc under normal viewing conditions - it's madness to use a method that means that the disc might not play as its authors intended. At the very least, if something seems slightly odd about the presentation, the onus should be on the reviewer to investigate upfront instead of condemning the disc for "faults" that don't actually exist.

Although, to be fair, the editor did say that he should probably have run the issue by us first, as it sounded like a very serious mistake on either our part or the reviewer's, and I'm only thankful that it was the latter.

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tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#35 Post by tenia » Tue Jan 29, 2019 12:34 pm

I would point that if you're using MadVR for what it seems to be designed (a scaler with tons of options), you're likely not to be reproducing what's on the disc 1:1 anyway.

On a similar note but different aspect of this subject, I stumbled on Wild Side's release of Climax, which supposedly contained 2 video clips and a short feature as extras. Except that I could only find 1 video clip + the short despite trying tons of possibilities with my remote. But when I had a look at the disc on my computer, I found the other clip there. I still have no idea how to access it and have indicated so on my review... since it turns out the retail release doesnt mention the 2nd clip anymore...
I need to ask Wild Side about it though, but since the clip isnt advertised anymore, I supposed it's not a big trouble.

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: To Live and Die in L.A.

#36 Post by TMDaines » Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:52 am

I don't disagree with the above posts.

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