Indeed! way to go BODGEGA! DEATH TO ZEROS /UTV! But may be SS, I do not see that level detail that I am to used to seeing in 40 plus GB stuff, this detail is 15-20GB level lol.

Wow, looks quite good! I hope we get the same disc in Region A.

I am another one waiting for the Region A (US) based blu-ray disc. What exactly are they saving by region-coding the blu-ray discs?

if anyone wants to look at a sample

here it is: http://www.sendspace.com/file/0bsyt9

What's the source of this? The ripped, pirated version?
Looks ok but not great.

source is BluRay - original

Just watched the blu-ray version and found the disc ok-ish. It could have been much better had they used the original DPX file.

Do you have any information what they used?

this sample does not have audio and plays jerky on my ps3! but detail is way better than seen on SS here!

I contacted somebody who worked on datacine process in India. It was a D5 tape.

Not directly related to the Blu-ray, but interesting articles nonetheless...

http://www.motion.kodak.com/US/en/motio ... aAkbar.htm

The reign of Jodhaa Akbar

Delving into history is challenging for any filmmaker, yet Ashutosh Gowariker, the producer/director of the Indian feature film, Jodhaa Akbar was undaunted as he created a three-and-a-half hour epic feature on a grand scale.

Starring Hrithik Roshan as Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar, the film is a romance, set in the sixteenth century. The story begins as a marriage of alliance between two cultures and religions and results in a genuine love between the great Mughal emperor, Akbar and his Rajput princess, Jodhaa, played by the stunning internationally-renowned actress, Aishwarya Rai.

No filtration

Director of photography, Kiran Deohans shot most of the film in Mumbai at ND Studios in Karjat. Although it was Deohans’ first collaboration with Gowariker, he was fortunate to have access to the director’s own research team and studied 16th century paintings to create a palette that was distinct from Western films from the same era.

Gowariker and Deohans initially wanted to shoot anamorphic but they chose Super 35mm due to the wider range of lenses available, working with a camera package provided by Prasad Mumbai. “The main cameras used were an ARRI 535, and three 435s (Ramavision) with a selection of Ultra Prime LDS lenses and an Angenieux Zoom 25-250mm (T 3.9),” recalls Deohans.

The period of the film called for a more naturally motivated light source and Deohans answered this by using either daylight coming in from windows, sunlight bouncing from floors or candlelight, which is why all key light units were placed either at eye level or below. With the exception of a polarizer and a couple of ND filters, he worked without any filtration.

“We shot in Jaipur, Rajasthan during winter where we have light for only a few hours a day,” Deohans explains. “The landscape in Rajasthan is quite barren but the costume colors are vivid saffron, yellows and reds, which is why I chose KODAK VISION2 100T 5212, 200T 5217 and the high-speed 500T 5218. I like the skin tone and color reproduction produced by tungsten film stocks.”

“Shooting in the valley the shadows of adjacent hills would start creeping up after 4pm and mixing stocks was the best way around this. From morning until lunch I shot 100T 5212, then later, when the light level dropped drastically, I switched to the 500T 5218. Most of the daytime battle sequences were shot with the 5217 without correction, which helped me achieve a higher aperture. Color correction was done during the D.I. process at Prime Focus.”

Large sets were constructed at ND Studios including the Agra fort and Amer fort. “Once we were on the sets, shooting during the day became much easier,” recalls Deohans. “However night scenes were difficult because of the magnitude of the set. For night interiors at the forts I used 5Ks and 2Ks through diffusion and an 85 CTO filter was put in front to get a candlelight feel. The 500T 5218 was used for all night interiors and exteriors. I was worried about grain because the D.I. would enlarge it but to my surprise I got absolutely clean images. Great details in shadows, rich blacks and excellent skin tone!”

“As a director, Ashutosh was very flexible and I welcomed his support. With such a challenging schedule, I had to make judgment calls on the spot. One has to trust one’s creative instincts and I appreciated the freedom given to me to do what I needed to do to photograph the film. He is one of the best directors I have worked with.”

Jodhaa Akbar was released in February 2008 and distributed by UTV Motion Pictures.

---

http://businessofcinema.com/news.php?newsid=7437&page=1

Deohans, Prime Focus work for 'real' look of Jodhaa Akbar
Story By: PRERNA MORDANI updated on: 16/03/08

Mumbai: Making a film look fantastic is difficult, but making it look real is even more so. This statement holds truer in the case of Ashutosh Gowarker's epic Jodhaa Akbar starring Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai.

Together with cinematographer Kiran Deohans (Aks, Kabhie Alvida Naa Kehna fame) and Prime Focus' DI supervisor Rohan Desai, Gowariker created a historic atmosphere for his movie.

A movie's look depends a lot on the cinematographer's interpretation of the theme and script, and this is where Gowariker scored. Deohans says, "After the script narration, Ashutosh and I did our individual researches and we both came up with same references for the look of the film. So there was no conflict of interest on the shoot."

Hollywood film Gladiator, which has a canvas of brown with splashes of color served as one of the reference points for Jodhaa Akbar.

Deohans further added that no filters were used while shooting. All the color grading and tweaking happened only in post-production through Digital Intermediate (DI) solution, in order to maintain consistency in the film's look.

To further keep things as natural as possible, even the lights during the shoot were kept to a minimum because in the 14th century, daylight and torches were the sole sources of light. Although dramatic effect demanded something extra, 'real' was given priority.

Speak about the song Azeem-o-shaan Shenshah, Deohans in all excitement says, "Our only reference was the movie Chitralekha and we decided to make it bigger than that. That song was shot over nine days with over a thousand people. The last shot where the camera keeps moving up to reveal more and more people was quite tough." Gowarikar even conducted a dress rehearsal of the song with a video camera to ensure no chaos on the sets on the shoot.

For the post-production, extensive preparation and storyboarding was done so as to achieve the exact look that the creative team was looking for.

"We graded four hours of film and this was, technically, the most difficult DI Prime Focus has done", says Desai. The reason was the brief given by the director Ashutosh and Kiran who wanted the movie to look as real as possible.

Adds Desai, "Even internationally, most of the period films use a tone to show ageing but for Jodhaa Akbar the look had to be natural, real and consistent throughout the movie. The action sequence in the climax with Hrithik Roshan and Nikitan Dheer was shot over 20 days, in different lighting and weather conditions, and it was quite challenging to grade to conform to the look of the movie."

The colorists at Prime Focus Rohan Desai and Manoj Verma spent nearly 45 days to get the look of the film right. With a team of 40 people, doing back-end work, masking, DI scanning, this was one long process for them.

Made directly from the DI?

Just out of curiosity, I have very little knowledge when it comes to these technology. Both DPX and D5 are 10bit format. Would there be such significant loss of video information if DPX was converted into a D5-HD tape? To the best of my knowledge D5 does support HD natively at 1080p @ 24/25/30fps.

D5 is HD primaries. DPX has no such limitation. The DI/DPX is also 2K and not 1080p.

Watched parts of the disk. I would rate the quality above "Om Shanti" but not "Sivaji" and "Saawariya" is out of reach. The transfer is rather soft and grain has been filtered. Filtering artifacts are visible. It's also not mastered correctly at 23.976 and creates drop outs via my video processor.
Sound is good. This is far better than the DVD but it's only ok to good for a BD. I wonder if the filtering was from the DI.