Birth of a Nation (1915) UPDATED

A collection of completed Requests and Submissions as of December 28th 2014. This is for reference only.

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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) UPDATED

Postby James-Masaki_Ryan » 21 Jan 2019 14:12

Updated the DVD and Blu-ray pages.

Didn't delete the Madacy for now. It may be of poor quality but it's perfectly legal.
Added the German DVD as well.

For the Blu-ray, the note about the 2011 restoration Blu-rays having extras in SD is wrong so I removed that. The US has the intros in HD and the Eureka has all extras in 1080p.
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby Brent_Reid » 22 Jan 2019 00:20

Cheers James. I wasn't questioning the legality of the Madacy, just its overall uselessness, and figured the footnote would cover it and its woebegotten ilk.

My MoC BD would take some digging out so I can't check right now, but are you sure about all its extras being in true HD, not just upscaled SD? If so, that would make for five hours of HD content, all possibly with lossless audio. That's one hell of a stretch for a single BD.
Additionally, I'm almost certain David's documentary was actually made and mastered on SD video. I'd expect the 1930 reissue prologues to be HD, as they were scanned recently by the Library of Congress (as per my article), and are also incuded on the BFI and TT BDs.

On top of that, back in 2002, only SD masters were created of the remaining civil war shorts and extras. Even by the time of Kino's 2011 BD, there were no HD masters of these, hence Kino's decision to keep costs down by adding their old DVDs containing them. Divisa's release was the following year, as a BD with the feature and HD prologues, like Kino, and an extras DVD with the still-SD shorts, etc. MoC's BD was released in 2013 and to have those shorts in true HD, they'd have had to go it alone in ponying up for new HD scans and masters of the film materials. If they did so, that would have pushed up the cost of the project inordinately.

All this is from memory, but without retrieving my packed away MoC BD, I'd like to know if it's actually even better than I remember!
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby James-Masaki_Ryan » 22 Jan 2019 01:19

Whether it’s upscaled or not, the extras are in 1080p. Also added the runtime for the “play all” on the Eureka.
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby Brent_Reid » 22 Jan 2019 08:10

Fair enough, but my note said the extras were in SD, which is accurate. The current "Extras are in 1080p." note is misleading, implying they're HD. How about altering it to: "Extras are SD, encoded in/upscaled to 1080p."

Well done on finding the German DVD specs.

On the DVD comparison, the Kino DVD says: "* The Film, restored by David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates in 1993 (186:57)"
Replace it with "* The Film - 1992 David Shepard restoration (186:57)", as per the same disc on the BD page.
Alternatively, as is more usual here, delete the DVD specs from the Kino BD listing altogether (they were added before I pointed out they were the same) and link through to the DVD page.
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby James-Masaki_Ryan » 22 Jan 2019 14:37

Brent_Reid wrote:Fair enough, but my note said the extras were in SD, which is accurate. The current "Extras are in 1080p." note is misleading, implying they're HD. How about altering it to: "Extras are SD, encoded in/upscaled to 1080p."

Were you able to confirm they are all standard def upscales?

Brent_Reid wrote:Well done on finding the German DVD specs.

Yes, but the only thing uncertain is whether the German is for subtitles for English Intertitles or German Intertitles only.

Brent_Reid wrote:On the DVD comparison, the Kino DVD says: "* The Film, restored by David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates in 1993 (186:57)"
Replace it with "* The Film - 1992 David Shepard restoration (186:57)", as per the same disc on the BD page.

Fixed
Brent_Reid wrote:Alternatively, as is more usual here, delete the DVD specs from the Kino BD listing altogether (they were added before I pointed out they were the same) and link through to the DVD page.
[/quote]
I don't see why we would delete that from the page. Best to list out all the extras on one page. Keeping it as is.
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby Brent_Reid » 22 Jan 2019 20:39

Can't find my MoC BD, so will have to get back to you on it, unless you fancy dropping Eureka a line. You could try asking them here. There are various online references to the shorts having very poor visual quality, which chimes with my memory of them. I own Kino's DVD set and am pretty certain they look exactly the same as they do on there.

Re the German, it's original English intertitles with German subs. I've never known Absolut interfere with anything like that; they're also co-co-distributors of the German Essanay/Mutual box set we're currently discussing.

Don't forget the missing Caps link!
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby James-Masaki_Ryan » 22 Jan 2019 23:18

Updated.
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Re: Birth of a Nation (1915) FAO Staff Members

Postby Brent_Reid » 23 Jan 2019 05:51

I have to find my MoC for another article I'm working on. I'll let you know if those extras turn out to be any different.

Thanks for sorting everything!
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