I have bought almost all the NFDC restored titles released till date. Though the restoration work is great (as evident through the great video and audio quality on all these DVDs), the choice of encoding opted by the studio spoils the quality of the experience. The restoration studio that NFDC have collaborated with (some Pixion Studios, Mumbai) for these releases doesn't seem to have any clue as to what they are doing.
Either they come up with a 29.970 fps blended progressive transfer (for movies that were definitely shot on film) with tons and tons of ghosting (fieldblends). The studio is doing a 24->30 fps sliding-blend-conversion. As a result, the video shows very ugly and funky blocking artifacts (the blocking is introduced after the blending).
Massey Sahib,
Duvidha,
Uski Roti and many other titles have this kind of transfer. Has any Zulmi come across these sliding blend conversions on any DVD?
Or the studio turns up with the usual PAL to NTSC field averaged DVD
To top this all, the studio also seems to be color correcting the transfers. This is very much evident in the DVD's of Ketan Mehta's
Mirch Masala and Mani Kaul's
Duvidha.
Also, subtitles are missing for a few important scenes here and there and almost for quarter of
Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (yeah, that quarter is the last and most important quarter of the movie).
While the initiative taken by NFDC does help bring these movies to a larger audience, it saddens me that the best of Indian Parallel Cinema is getting the worst of treatments.