I recently bought the Tai Sheng DVD of Touch of Zen, but the picture's truly horrible and to be honest I don't fancy wading through the 3 hours when it's at sub-VHS quality.

Is there a better version available? I've looked, but no joy so far.

There's a good version available, only the sound sometimes has sometimes a little distorsion.
You can find more here.

I have watched it three times, so if there any questions..............just ask!

I almost forgot, my captures are at HKcinemagic.com.
This is one of them.

Picture hosted by HKCM.

I'm from England - and it never occurred to me there might be a UK version - I've been trawling the HK film sites/shops. A definite "D'oh!" moment, there.

I must say I've never seen this version in any shops, though. Maybe I should be more observant in future.

So thanks for that, I've ordered it and will give it a go. Incidentally, the running time seems to be 10 minutes shorter on this version. Anything missing?

As far as I know the running time of this DVD is almost 180 min.
Differences up to 5% can be caused by NTSC-PAL conversions and because some films are measured at 24 frames a second and others at 25 fps.

I don't know if there's anything missing, because it's the only TOZ I have seen. I couldn't find any strange cuts in the film, that's all I can say.
(I hope my English is correct)

Post edited at 18.48 GMT.

The Tai Seng version of A TOUCH OF ZEN is taken from a "2 part" print (designed to be shown over 2 nights/weeks?)... that just means it's split in the middle, with a "previously on buffy" sort of recap. There's no new footage (or missing footage in the UK).

I actually thought the UK disc looked worse than the Tai Seng, from a comparison session at Asian DVD Guide when it came out, so I didn't pick it up.

I did pick up the French DVD which came out later though - should have better picture, and has removable subtitles (in French and English). Unfortunately it's not anamorphic, but afaik it's the best option out there at the moment. Be sure to pick up the French release of RAINING IN THE MOUNTAINS too, which is really excellent.

This English release has subtitles that can't be hidden. But all the subtitles are placed below the screen.
Accoording to the information on my DVD-players it runs one second less then 170 min. (So the information I gave before was wrong, sorry for that!)
There's no split. Perhaps the 180 min. mentioned before are the runningtimes of part 1 and part 2 of split version put together? (I assume that the split version shows the credits two times.)

Mr. Booth
Are these screencaps from your DVD?
If not; can you show us a cap from yours?
And where can the French version be bought?

Hiya, those caps are from the Tai Seng disc... actually for a dvd comparison thread when it or the UK disc came out. I must actually get around to watching the French disc one of these days (maybe a mission for July 4th :p), and I'll do a new set of images for the page

I've used Fnac and Alapage for French DVDs before... I can recommend both. They're easy enough to order from with babelfish open in another tab, even if you don't speak French (like me).

You should also pick up the HK Video release of The Blade, which I'm just finishing up a new set of English subtitles for

You should also pick up the HK Video release of The Blade

I will keep that in mind!

which I'm just finishing up a new set of English subtitles for

and that too

MrBooth wrote:I actually thought the UK disc looked worse than the Tai Seng, from a comparison session at Asian DVD Guide when it came out, so I didn't pick it up.

Hmm, that's troubling. I'll do a comparison when the disc comes and I'll let you know what I think.

MrBooth wrote:The Tai Seng version of A TOUCH OF ZEN is taken from a "2 part" print (designed to be shown over 2 nights/weeks?)... that just means it's split in the middle, with a "previously on buffy" sort of recap. There's no new footage (or missing footage in the UK).

Thanks, I'm a stickler for the most complete versions of each film. Guess I don't have anything to worry about there, then. I'm sure I had a great print of this that I taped off british TV about 10 years ago, but it must have been heavily editted - I'm sure I'd remember sitting through a three-hour film! Lost the tape now, though, so I can't be sure.

I think it was uncut when it screened on BBC2... I got it a few years later when Channel 4 (well, Film Four) showed it, and I think it was the same version... in all it's 170-ish PAL minutes of glory. It doesn't feel like 3 hours because it's so damn good

Very quick comparison:

Tai Seng 7.05 vs R2 French 6.50:



Tai Seng 8.56 vs R2 French 8.53



The French disc has better colours but is slightly cropped around the edges. Tai Seng looks sharper, and may have better translated subtitles.

Both sets of images were scaled to 768 x 576 to match aspect ratios, then auto-cropped to remove black bars and compressed to JPG at max quality in XNview. French images look bigger because the Tai Seng disc has larger black bars at the sides (overscan area).

Well, the UK version came today and I carried out a quick comparison. At first, I thought the UK version was easily better, but while skipping through I noticed that the portrait painting scene (at about 23 minutes into the film - I think this was used in your comparison, Mr Booth) was so bright you couldn't actually see what he was painting. So I popped the Tai Sheng DVD in again and it was much clearer.

Furthermore, I think I was perhaps a little harsh on the quality of the Tai Sheng disc. I think I can watch it without too much hardship.

I did try to find my VHS taped off Channel Four all those years ago, but no luck, so I can't compare that. I did, however, find a load of HK stuff I'd forgotten I had - including a whole bunch of TVB series' meticulously taped which I'd borrowed about 7-8 years ago from somebody I used to know. Oops .

Hi Cal42,

When you were talking about the Tai Seng DVD like this

but the picture's truly horrible and to be honest I don't fancy wading through the 3 hours when it's at sub-VHS quality.

I tought it was like some of the DVD's I have.
- never sharp
- cropped on all sides
- burnt-in subs that sometimes doesn't fit the screen or can't be read at all or even worse: awfully dubbed.
- too light in the light parts and too dark in the dark parts.
- vertically stretched.

Sorry for misunderstanding you.

MrBooth, you said:

Both sets of images were scaled to 768 x 576 to match aspect ratios

Does that mean they have different aspect ratios?
Can you give us the original screensizes in pixels or tell us which one has the correct ratio?

No problem. I'm still not keen on the yellow subs on the Tai Sheng disc though. Yuck. But I'll persevere.

So...does anyone want to buy a copy of A Touch of Zen on DVD? It's never been viewed .

When the film was originally screened in the cinemas in the 1970s, the film was actually shown in two parts. I am unable to remember the respective screening times. But after watching the Tai Seng DVD, I do not see any significant parts which are missing.
The quality of the DVD of a "Touch Of Zen" is a lot better than most of the other Taiwanese films which are released. At least it is on a widescreen format rather than on a pan and scan.

Does that mean they have different aspect ratios?
Can you give us the original screensizes in pixels or tell us which one has the correct ratio?

Just because of the PAL/NTSC difference... here's two of the unresized caps:

R2F

Tai Seng


The Tai Seng disc isn't that bad, really. Neither disc comes close to what this film deserves though!

Here's the real-size capture from the Optimum DVD. It looks likes the aspect ratio on this one is the best (perhaps because I'm used to watch this one?).

that's not original video size... 768x576 is aspect ratio corrected by whichever program you did the capture in... non-anamorphic pal is 720x576

that's not original video size... 768x576 is aspect ratio corrected by whichever program you did the capture in... non-anamorphic pal is 720x576

You are quite right and a very good observer too.

I assume that your caps show the original size of the frames on the disc. As that is not what we see on our screen and as I didn't know you took the disc as source for your caps, I took the cap as Asus-DVD (=power-DVD) displays the video, when it's not in full-screen mode.
Shall I replace the capture?
(I think it's better to show the frames as we see them on our screen.)

Yep, that's why I aspect-corrected the pics in my first post

Here's all 3 with just resizing for aspect ratio and no black bar removal:

UK:

FRA:

USA:


Judging by file sizes I'd guess you used a lower JPG quality setting though, which is probably making the UK disc look unfairly lacking in detail Or perhaps the files are smaller because there was less detail to encode :-p

In XnView I have the JPG quality options set to 81. If I compare the BMP with the JPG there's hardly any difference (in fact I don't see any difference, but perhaps I need a new monitor or better glasses !).

Did a new conversion.
Filesize BMP: 1,27 Mb
JPG 100%: 193 kb.
JPG 80%: 38 kb.
Framesize: 768x576