May 18, 2020

Digital errors: Pat a Mat kutí

Back in February, I wrote how DVNR massacred individual frames in some episodes from 2003 and 2004. I had to update that post right now with examples from even more episodes. However, these digital defects are not something I would expect to see in the newest episodes as they are all recorded digitally, so it was an unpleasant surprise to notice a few in the recently released episodes. Rakso 98 caught this one from Létající stroj. Look at Mat's beanie, which goes through deletion phases in a couple of seconds. It is a minor mistake, noticeable only from a really detailed viewing.


Výroba ledu has a much more noticeable defect which I spotted on my second viewing. Look at Mat's hands in front of the tree. An even larger section is deleted here. It's not just these individual frames, but the whole scene.


There's another type of error that appears in a few episodes. I mentioned it when talking about Automyčka (which, interestingly enough, doesn't have that error in the movie version) and here it is in Potrubní pošta. Part of the frame is left unfilled, this time the left corner.


Does anybody want to wager a guess why these mistakes happened? What did the video postproducer try to fix on the images that caused the first type of mistake? Presumably, it's all just a consequence of some bad settings. Let me know if you find more of these.

5 comments:

  1. I don’t think either of these issues are due to any automated software. In the case of the missing beanie, the edge of the “fix” is straight, so possibly there has been a split screen made to freeze part of the frame which had some unwanted movement in it – for example, movement in the foliage during the shot, and no one has noticed that Mat’s beanie has strayed into the frozen area. In the second instance, a “cleanup artist” has probably put a patch on the tree to disguise some flaw or imperfection in the trunk, and the patch has been left on for the whole shot when it’s been rendered. On the frames where Mat’s hand crosses over the trunk, individually shaped patches should have been made to accommodate the shape of the hand. The repair patch was probably put on and the shot rendered, and no one checked it properly afterwards. The fault where part of the frame is black is likely to be caused by incorrect settings when the shot is being rendered. When a production is under pressure, it can be difficult to pick up these issues. Usually, the quality control (QC) departments of major broadcasters would reject a programme with more serious errors, such as the case where part of the frame is black, and it would have to be repaired by the producer.

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    1. Hi Puppet Man, I thought you might be able to shed some more light to these, thanks. So, something was on the tree trunk and they wanted to hide it, which made the software incorrectly recognize Mat's hand as another obstruction. I agree that these mistakes were probably a result of hurried production.

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  2. Hi Marin, I do say "possibly" and "probably" in my comment because there can be any number of reasons why the defects you have identified might happen.

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    1. Well, that's why I wrote "probably" as well. :D In any case, it seems the error from Tube Post can be fixed without much trouble as that was the case with Car Wash. I loved the animation in Tube Post (by Mensdorff-Pouilly and Smrčka) and will be writing a post about it eventuallly.

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  3. I noticed one more mistake in the episode Létající stroj. Specifically, he is at 7:05. It is very similar to this error in Potrubní pošta, the left part of the screen is slightly cut off.

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