My comments on the Mohabbatein BD.

Finally a movie 3.5 Hrs plus long that could never get sufficient bit rate on DVD arrives on BD. A bit too detailed but being a big... infact ‘biggest’ fan of the film(excuse the ego), I personally feel self obligated to write a bit on this Blu Ray:-

First things first:-
1)This is not a comment about the movie. There are enough people already out there who hate this film. Hence I know whatever I say about the film will be counter argued upon and I don’t want to take the discussion that way. Lets just stick to the BD.
2)This transfer is almost identical to the way DTPH has been authored. So anyone hating that BD transfer totally need not read any further.
3)Irrespective of the rumor, before anyone asks again, there is no pseudo surround present in the BD. There is no tweaking and audio is true to the source.
4)This is a 10 year old film (infact exactly 10 year old on coming October 29th 2010). So a little generosity is not a crime in judging the quality.
5)Disclaimer: As I love the film, the comments could be biased. Secondly I am not a techie so I judge a BD only by layman’s eye and not by BD authoring specs. So please do not consider this as a BD review.

Framing:
The BD has a much better framing than DVD. It shows more image on left, top and bottom. However it is very-very minutely cropped on the right when compared to the yrf DVD. Special mention is of opening credits sequence where broad vertical black bars appear on yrf dvd but are not only absent on BD but also the image appears on complete 2.35 frame with more information visible in place of black bars. I remember Shergill’s last ‘L’ used to get cropped soon as it appears on dvd.

There is however one error in opening credits- pay attention to the white frames behind the senior stars names and the film title- There is a clear vertical demarcation line at the centre of the frame that separates the look between the two halves of the frame. Thankfully, this is not true for the rest of the film.

Sharpness:
Very good 1080P sharpness and detail present in many scenes. The first frame was quite surprising where - I could even make out the name of the station from the yellow board far in the background. The film has many crowd scenes in songs and for the first time you can pay attention to the extra artists’ performance on the BD. It is quite fun to watch the other students in Raj Aryan’s classroom who are confused on where to look- camera or outside!! The film has got a semi-grainy look in some scenes and they just shine on the HD format. The exterior scenes especially ones outside Gurukul are sheer delight to watch.

However the sad part is that sharpness is not consistent. Every once in a while, a few shots come where the image becomes soft, gets uncomfortably smoothened and out of focus just like DTPH(refer Sanjay’s excellent review on DTPH). Strangely, in some shots, within the same frame, parts like face etc in focus are sharpest like reference quality BD but other parts are softer than any VHS!

Color:
The colors are very pretty and vibrant throughout the film making the film look the most beautiful ever on the home video format. For the first time I realized that every place I thought people are wearing white are not pure whites but shades of yellow/ other light colors.

The problem is that the rich colors are over saturated. As was mentioned earlier by someone, its not just a ‘red push’ but the way I see it, most of the colors are ‘pushed’ with red being the most dominant. Result- Its funny to watch all the male actors and extras sporting a ladies heavy duty red lipstick.

There is another weird mystery about the color(LCD display is my basis) - Its somewhat same as DCH issue of change in costume color between T-Series and ‘in process’ Cinedrome version discussed sometime back. E.g.: When Ishika comes in park to say sorry to Vicky, it is a stark red jacket she is wearing while in DVD it is clearly an orange jacket. Similarly, Aish’s first costume in ‘Humko hamise’ and swimming pool of Kim’s boyfriend look light blue on the DVD but slightly Light green on BD!.

Contrast/Brightness:
Definitely there is a contrast Boost as is evident from screenshots but thankfully not at the cost of loosing detail. The first frame was again quite surprising where you can see the tracks at night on the station which was a total dark-out on DVD. The shades of grey in clouds are very well visible in all sky scenes. Also point in mention is one scene- where Aish enters the film for the first time and second when she brings cake before the beginning of Aankhen khuli- There is a white spotlight that falls over her (since she’s a ghost) as she comes by side of Raj but thanks to something strangely different and better on Blu Ray- its not as obvious as it was on DVD.

But the killer comes again is the inconsistency of this feature. There is an extreme variance between contrast/brightness levels of different dark scenes at different times during the film. All Daylight scenes definitely look different and much-much better and consistent altogether. There is not one level calibrated for the whole film. This becomes obvious and almost destroys the film in roof-top scenes in which a life scale poster was used in film set to signify the sky at night. While earlier it was only the adults, now, thanks to the technology of HD format accompanied by wrong black levels, even a five year old can point at the posters and laugh at the stupidity of filmmakers. It is however always to be recognized that this is a ground breaking film in terms of the scale of sets that were built at the time. It raised the Bar ahead of its time.

The Mysterious source:
The similar Softness/ ‘Out of focus’ issues of DTPH and Mohabbatein have made me believe that this issue has something to do with source. Having watched all versions of film on DVD,VCD and Satellite channels for multiple times, I am 100% sure that this is definitely not the source yrf used for authoring its DVD. I am also 100% sure that the source for this BD was also used to telecast the film on Satellite channels and to manufacture yrf’s VCDs. It might be a calculated decision as the source for dvd may not give the best results on BD. However, this might be shocking to some people but I believe that if you can ignore the heavy pixellation, the appearance of the film on the yrf dvd version is the closest to the theatrical exhibition of the film. The Blu Ray is an excellent transfer in terms of glorifying and celebrating the beauty of the film on home video but it is not honest to the ‘intended look’ of the film. I also feel that Mohabbaein is one of the first few Indian films having a ‘look’ designed by DOP for the overall feel of the central storyline. (DTPH did not have any look attached so I never cared for this issue in its BD) Because of inconsistent contrast/Brightness/Sharpness and color, this look is mostly absent on BD.

Audio:
Nothing much to say about the audio. Thoroughly impressed- It is true to the source, great soundtrack for music lovers- Jatin Lalit’s tunes come alive in DTS HD MA. Most important is the sound design by Anuj Mathur- u might wanna re-discover why it won the filmfare award for best sound design in the year it was released because movies of this genre usually do not win such awards. The technology for bass at the time did not have a punch (refer sanjay’s DTPH review again) and so do not expect your subwoofer to blow you away or something.(U can try that with the same director’s subsequent film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi if you wanna have a blast).

Ah there is though one tiny thing I wanna complain about the BD audio- when Raj Aryan enters and drumbeats start as he approaches gate through the camera’s pov, the first drumbeat in the music is skipped. I still remember this was the case with first batch of YRF DVDs. But later when they re-released the dvds for India, they sorted it out and the first beat was restored. Some way it hurts that the hero of the film missed his first beat on his entrance. It happens just because there is a reel changeover at that point in the film.

Final verdict :
First with DTPH and then with Mohabbatein, yrf and u tech are showing us yet again that they are not great professionals at mastering older films for Blu ray. However, considering the age of the film and the way the movie has become more beautiful than ever on the HD format, especially for the fan of the film, it comes highly recommended from me. Caution: If any one is a first time audience of this film itself, beware that this is not how it looked in theatres.

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However the sad part is that sharpness is not consistent. Every once in a while, a few shots come where the image becomes soft, gets uncomfortably smoothened and out of focus just like DTPH(refer Sanjay’s excellent review on DTPH). Strangely, in some shots, within the same frame, parts like face etc in focus are sharpest like reference quality BD but other parts are softer than any VHS!
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In all likelihood not a BD issue but simply the way the film was shot/produced. Out of focus shots or missed focus are not rare and it happens also in Hollywood films regularly.

Thanks Mhafner. I get what you are trying to say here. The sad part is while shootng, they see the preview on their monitors but still they dont correct the shots. The result, when tranferred in HD format, the variance between focussed and unfocussed shots are of giganctic proportions and this has come out especially well in DTPH and Mohabbatein BDs.

Take for example the scene when vicky is caught coming late in lobby by Naraynan Shankar. I bet it is impossible to watch the scene with a straight face by anyone - fan or no fan. The Blu ray enhances the Vicky's face shots so well that its almost reference uality 1080 p shots but the out of focus Narayan Shankar's face looks even poorer on BD when compared to DVD. Strangely the BD takes both shots to extreme ends- the good gets better and the bad gets worse. Would really like to know your/other experts' comments on this particular scene.

The Indian film industry has some of the poorest guidelines and procedures in the world. Many of their top post production houses still use old 625i monitors to perform DI 2k or 4k HD colour correcting. Most cameramen rely too much on their small TFT monitors, and many directors/actors do "one take" only - which mean the shot (good or bad) is not noticed until dailies or editing stage. I have seen such practises with my own eyes. It’s quite shocking!!! Even the most expensive film Endhiran had some of their 4K HD colour correction done on a 625i monitor @ Prime Focus, Chennai.

I am currently working on a 2K DPX film Naan Mahaan Alla - which was shot with different types of negatives. One shot would have a ratio of 2.35:1, and then suddenly the next shot would have a ratio of 1.85:1. When doing the blu-ray and DVD I have to ensure it looks great for home viewers.

I have seen technicians handle original camera negatives with their hands (minus gloves or protection). Bad handling of negatives results in wear and tear. To solve this problem the film is filtered through wetgate. Then during the DI stage DVNR is used to hide negative damage - resulting in soft and waxy shots, with weak film grain. Its very very sad

I am not surprised with the problems found on Mohabaatein. It sounds like a production problem, further fuelled by a poor post production process. Not the fault of blu-ray encoding.

Haven't you ever wondered why recent films from Turkey, Iran, Israel, Czech Rep, Thailand, and South Korea (who have smaller budgets then most Indian films) look great?

+1

Whoa! Thanks a lot sunny. I am not a techie so that was really some heavy duty good information overload for me. I really took sometime to understand and believe what I was reading !! The endhiran part is the most shocking of all cause i thought atleast in south especially 10 years post mohabbatein, they would care for these things during production. This actually makes us realise how big headache and hardwork it must be for people like you to transfer it as intended on BD. I feel very happy to have an industry expert like you respond to clarify these issues on this forum. Will now be keeping these incompetencies of filmmakers in mind whenever (if at all) i comment on any other blu ray in future. Frankly speaking, something as shocking as this, I wont even have to try to remember. I dont think i will ever forget this knowledge gain.

Now that the root cause of the issue can be clealy seen, As you said, "production problem, further fuelled by a poor post production process" can be forgiven for Mohabbatein as at the time the movie was made, nobody would have even in their dreams imagined about something called HD and BD.

This also makes me realise, No wonder cinedrome people are taking so much time for DCH. I am quite sure there must be out of focus shots a plenty on DCH source. Anyone having T-Series can confirm of such issues on the T-series DCH BD?

Now Something about the Mohabbatein EXTRAS DVD that i did not mention earlier:
I have the first YRF 2-disc dvd release (2001) which had a second extras DL (8.5 GB) DVD in very good quality . It is to be noted that this was one of the best extras content disc ever from the lot of all bollywood extras disc out there yet. Though a promotional material but the making is a good 45 minute long and very exciting for me to remember the days when I was all excited to wait for the film pre-release. Interviews are 15-20 mins each of all lead stars. Not to mention has got 8 deleted scenes as well in which a few are really good. Fans of SRK, as he says in his interview, note that his fav scene of the film is one of deleted scenes infact. My personal favourite extra feature from the original extras disc were Poster, movie and working stills.

Unfortunately, yrf was able to degrade the quality of extras disc in their dvd re-releases to compress and fit the extras on a 4.7 GB disc and this dvd with the BD is from the same re-released batch. So everyone please note that not only did they remove the stills feature from the original extras, The audio quality of all featurettes which was 'mono' was modified as some kind of 'out of phase stereo' and sounds very irritating. This BD is not worth for the extras quality in case any one cares. As a fan of the film, I would be instead happy to send a copy of the original DL extras disc to anyone interested.

One funny thing about packaging i noticed was - anyone wondered why Yashraj puts double hologram on non Indian releases and only one on Indian? The Back cover hologram is actually to cover the INR 599 printed at the same place behind the hologram so that it can be priced accordingly for US/UK pricing.

Wow, that's appalling to hear. Maybe the Enthiran team should have outsourced the DI to a Chinese company the way they did with the special effects. I saw it projected from 35mm, and for the most part I thought the grading looked fine, though Kadhal Anukkal had an odd, oversaturated look. Maybe a digital projection would have revealed more of the flaws.

Even in my college photography class we were required to use gloves to handle our negatives. Why can't these big post houses do this? What is wrong with them?

I am sorry to say it's the same "chalta hai" attitude at play here, that has become synonymous with Indians and everything Indian. It is the result of a work ethic, wherein the only motivator is success and the only barometer of success and even 'quality' is just money. It is a result of the total lack of desire to excel or pride in one's work, that is evident in all parts and walks of life in India today.

PS: Great review 'Anurag1700'.

i would like to draw your attention towards this new thing being used in bollywood these days........a remote focus-ing unit
http://i.indiafm.com/onthesets/10/zinda ... still5.jpg

look down left of this pik

http://i.indiafm.com/onthesets/10/zinda ... still6.jpg

more details on this out here
http://www.freshdv.com/2008/02/bartech- ... setup.html

there have been lots of improvements in these years

None of the links work.

o iam so sorry........links edited now.....!!!

just watched the whole film mohabbatein and my verdict is GO FOR IT

the movie was amazing for me.....it was surely 4/5
music was really very soulful and amazing 4.5/5
the background score was effective 4.25/5
the cinematography amazing the visuals were 5/5
simply mind blowing
sound mix (taking time into consideration) 4.5/5

comming to the blu ray

Picture Quality(again taking age of film into consideration) 4.25/5
OR
(In general-no age factor into consideration) 3.75/5

Sound Quality (again taking age of film into consideration) 4.5/5
OR
(In general-no age factor into consideration) 4/5

and i forgot to mention the thing that the DIALOGUES sound cristal clear and crisp and highly detailed.....better than many recent films....though the sound of the singers in the songs is just opposite.....i thing it has to do with the quality of the microphones......but the movie i remember comes close to this type of dialogue recording is SIN CITY...

overall 4/5
(SINCE THIS MOVIE IS 10 YEARS OF AGE IT HAS MADE ITS AUDIENCE THE ONE'S WHO LIKE THE MOVIE MAY GO FOR IT AND OTHERS MAY NOT......BUT I FELT IN LOVE WITH THE MOVIE--i think others may rent it first.....they no longer make these kind-of movies and music anymore)

REGARDS
DIVYANSH

DCH has its share of out of focus shots and also intended soft focus from diffusion filters. And blurry edges from old lenses. Nothing that can be done here basically (or should). The problems we have to solve are scan related and related to poor digital work we have to undo and then properly redo. You can see plenty on the already released BD if you know what to look for.

Congrats for re-living the film exactly after it completed 10 years. Yes it just completed 10th year on October 29th. Nothing better to celebrate the festival season!! Feels really great to have someone here who shares the same level of Enthu I have for this movie. Its first viewing in theatre is still as fresh in my mind as yesterday.

You are correct they dont make these kind of films anymore ...the genre just died due to arrival of cinema blending realistic elements with mainstrem entertainment.....also not to mention Adi Chopra himself so beautifully 'De-constructed' the character of 'Raj' in Rab Ne bana di Jodi.

On a side note, remember that was the time when Diwali was the best date of year for biggest releases while now it has become Christmas date since the success of Ghajini, 3i etc.

Thanks for the valuable info Mhafner I am sure u guys will do your best to deliver the best possible DCH has ever looked. I havent seen the T Series BD but am prettty sure they would have never ventured to correct any of such flaws.

As for Mohabbatein, I am quite happy they didnt attempt to correct anything because they just dont have the expertise as is obvious from their recent re-authoring disaster of a few titles. The movie still looks pretty and beautiful, thanks to the condition of Source which is surprisingly in excellent condition as is obvious while watching the Blu Ray. Any usual minuses of theatrical print - blemishes/ scratches/ fingerprint effects etc are nowhere to be found.