i just finished backing up beowolf hddvd to a dvdr-dl authored to play on hd-dvd player, and thought we could see if the differences in PQ could be easy spotted.

heres the screenshots marked 1a and 1b.

so which is which :
A:
http://www.cif-forums.com/png/small/BEOWOLF_1a.png (http://www.cif-forums.com/png/BEOWOLF_1a.png)

B:
http://www.cif-forums.com/png/small/BEOWOLF_1b.png (http://www.cif-forums.com/png/BEOWOLF_1b.png)


so i re-encoded the original down to fit on a dvd DL disc which plays in my A2 just so we know what we are looking at here :)


RESULTS:

88 people out of 142 guessed correctly.

well it was Pic A that was the HD-DVD screencap and B was encoded down using x264 AVC to dvd9. i am glad i made it tough for a few of you at least. that means my encodes are as good as i can do with the bitrate available to me :)

for those that wanted to see motion encode, heres a 20sec clip of video only ... hxxp://www.filefactory.com/file/f4e32e/

thx for taking part...

Oh god. Judging from fully digital source material is hard as hell. My eyes can spot some slight differences (mainly in colour. Picture b seems to feature higher contrast). I would say it's b.

But if they are really from a different format I think I could live with the SD-DVD.

Oh god. Judging from fully digital source material is hard as hell. My eyes can spot some slight differences (mainly in colour. Picture b seems to feature higher contrast). I would say it's b.

But if they are really from a different format I think I could live with the SD-DVD.

sorry i edited the original to explain better what i did. the backup is 8.5gb dvd DL which i authored to play on my A2. both are 1920x1080 encodes.

You should do the same comparison with Blu-Ray :)

I voted for "they are both the same" but after looking closely I'd have to say that picture A has a bit more detail. If you a/b the shots and look closely at the cloak you can see there is a bit more detail in shot A. As far as color and contrast, I have to say I don't see any significant difference between the two.

Can I vote again?:o

The screenshots are too capture influenced to make a good comparison. In a blowup there appears to be no difference beyond the obvious white shift. Each has the same jaggies, which I would more likely attribute to the capture than to the original image. And on an A2 the deinterlacer in your display may have more influence than anything else.

Need better test than this. No vote from me. 1900 by 1200 display, both pictures opened in Nikon Capture zoomed and compared.

dude, you re=encoded the disk to fit on a dvd-9??? WTF, that's not fair, to get that compression down there you are sacrificing a lot of quality and detail. not even remotely fair for either one.

You should do the same comparison with Blu-Ray :)

i could but not with beowolf of course... not yet anyway...

All i can see is a contrast difference and a slight tint differential.

dude, you re=encoded the disk to fit on a dvd-9??? WTF, that's not fair, to get that compression down there you are sacrificing a lot of quality and detail. not even remotely fair for either one.

1 screenshot above is hddvd and 1 is dvd9, so if i am losing alot of detail please tell us which is which...

1 screenshot above is hddvd and 1 is dvd9, so if i am losing alot of detail please tell us which is which...

ok, I see what you did. I was thinking you were comparing the retail DVD vs a downconverted HD DVD that was re-encoded to fit on a dl dvd. comparing SD to downconverted HD basically.

My PC's monitor isn't really calabrated for that sort of stuff, but image 1 looked just a hairs bit better to my eyes.

Seggers

Very close, but I think A has slightly more detail (noticeable in the cloak if you squint your eyes, tilt your head slightly, and put your nose against the screen). Point is it's very subtle...and could be just my imagination.

So I will go with A is the HD DVD

I would go with B being the compressed one, but I guess I can only vote once...so what's the point of 4 options? Seems three options (A is HD DVD, B is HD DVD, or they are the same) would be better....

Bubba,
Can you tell us the procedure you used to convert?
They both look good to me but B looks a little sharper.

Always look at the facial features when comparing dvd to a HD source. High Definition always reveals more than the dvd. Everyone knows what a human face looks like up close. Look for wrinkles, crow's feet, lines, moles, etc. Dvd simply can't show that level of detail. As others have said here I'm not sure this is a good test. It reveals more about the typical computer moniter that most of us are viewing the forum on than anything else.

Very close, but I think A has slightly more detail (noticeable in the cloak if you squint your eyes, tilt your head slightly, and put your nose against the screen). Point is it's very subtle...and could be just my imagination.

So I will go with A is the HD DVD

I would go with B being the compressed one, but I guess I can only vote once...so what's the point of 4 options? Seems three options (A is HD DVD, B is HD DVD, or they are the same) would be better....

yes i didnt think the poll up correctly did i, and i cant edit it now.

I picked B. I clearly didn't mean to. Crap!

The screenshots are too capture influenced to make a good comparison. In a blowup there appears to be no difference beyond the obvious white shift. Each has the same jaggies, which I would more likely attribute to the capture than to the original image. And on an A2 the deinterlacer in your display may have more influence than anything else.

Need better test than this. No vote from me. 1900 by 1200 display, both pictures opened in Nikon Capture zoomed and compared.

these caps are taken from a PC, straight to PNG using ffdshow libavcodec which is known to be a very good decoder.

Always look at the facial features when comparing dvd to a HD source. High Definition always reveals more than the dvd. Everyone knows what a human face looks like up close. L

Keep in mind that BOTH are HD, one is simply compressed further to fit on a DVD9. The main thing to look for here would be compression artifacts, which I can't seem to find here.

For a facial close up those look like about what I would see on a SD DVD on my current setup especially for a CGI movie. HD would look a little sharper.

They do look remarkably close. I picked A as the original.

The DVD9 is 8.5GB, how big was the original? What codec is used for the re-encode?

OK I will try again and zoom even further. I was already at the pixelization stage on the diagonal lines. And how is it that one picture is 1.8 meg while the other is 1.3 meg. If both were on 1920 by 1080 with the same color depth the file sizes should be the same regardless of the source. Something is rotooon in Denmark.

I voted A after blowing up the images so that a single pixel filled about a 1/4 inch square on my monitor. The A has a few pixels in color change areas which are differentiated more than the B picture. I probably should have tried to put the pics up on the Main HT display. Too much trouble.

I have backed up a couple of movies to dual-layer DVD as well. AVC, two-pass. The bit rate varies from about 8000 to 11000, which is roughly equivalent to 16000 to 22000 in MPEG2, or higher than the best quality ATSC broadcasts, but encoding only 24 frames per second.

Quality is quite good, considering. I haven't done any A-B comparisons, but I've never noticed any macroblocking or fuzziness. But it's not a quick or easy process. Takes 2-3 days on a quad-core.

They do look remarkably close. I picked A as the original.

The DVD9 is 8.5GB, how big was the original? What codec is used for the re-encode?


original AVC video was 17.4GB.
encoded dvd9 x264 encoded file 7.45GB.

I have backed up a couple of movies to dual-layer DVD as well. AVC, two-pass. The bit rate varies from about 8000 to 11000, which is roughly equivalent to 16000 to 22000 in MPEG2, or higher than the best quality ATSC broadcasts, but encoding only 24 frames per second.

Quality is quite good, considering. I haven't done any A-B comparisons, but I've never noticed any macroblocking or fuzziness. But it's not a quick or easy process. Takes 2-3 days on a quad-core.

my encode took 14hrs total for 2pass on a QX6700 running at 3300mhz

Who needs HD DVD or blu-ray if DVD 9 can look this good. Of course I'd like to see an action scene with fast moving objects.

This is not possible, we need more bitrate, that's why we need BD50. If this is possible then downloads can look good and we don't want that.

The problem with burning for the consumer is that all the disc are dye based which
means they have a shelf life not what the modern collector wants.

Of course I'd like to see an action scene with fast moving objects.
This is the critical detail (pun intended) in the discussion. I have not seen that movie, but if the scene has relatively little motion, any particular frame can look good at a very low bitrate.

What I wonder most, is why would anybody go to all that trouble, 14 hours(!) of re-encoding, to have a "backup" of a movie. If someone has that much trouble with disc damage in their home, I would think they should try to improve the care with which things are handled, first.

my encode took 14hrs total for 2pass on a QX6700 running at 3300mhz

Depends on what options you set and what software you use. I go for as slow as possible.

One of the movies I did was X-Men United, definitely enough action. Obviously though, any kind of lossless audio is out of the question.

I don't know which radio button to select from the poll. But I can say that
BEOWOLF_1a.png is sharper because I can see loss on his left shoulder, just above the metal circle thing.

But I am interested how you rip it. Did you use Xbox HDDVD drive?

BEOWULF_1a.png is definitely sharper. You can tell in the knit pattern of the red cloak. The "holes" are darker and more contrasty on A than they are on B. Ergo, A is the HD DVD, B is the DVD-9.

To be fair, the images are awfully close, however.

BEOWULF_1a.png is definitely sharper. You can tell in the knit pattern of the red cloak. The "holes" are darker and more contrasty on A than they are on B. Ergo, A is the HD DVD, B is the DVD-9.

To be fair, the images are awfully close, however.

+1

I'd say that A is het original. The difference is only visible when looking very close, just inches away from the screen. And then only when switching back and forth between the two. From normal viewing distance the difference would not be possible to see.

I've seen a lot of downloaded material, and the differences are huge. When you know exactly what you're doing, you can make a very decent backup that would stand up to critical view (I own a Panasonic 42" plasma). But some 'backups' are compressed to death and barely reach the bitrate of a DVD. You can definetely see differences in scene changes, shadow areas etc. That is exactly where the bitrate of a BluRay rises to peak values of sometimes up to 30Mb/s. This one is done with care, and altough we can't see the effect on the whole movie, this particular frame looks good.

Compression can be done without sacrificing a lot. It's a matter of algorithm and computing power.

IMHO if you used something like a live action movie it would be easier.

in CGI details are limited by texture resolution.

Its easier to encode a movie that doesnt have much grain.

But it was a real fine encode you made of this movie.

This is not possible, we need more bitrate, that's why we need BD50. If this is possible then downloads can look good and we don't want that.

As said MANY times before, bitrate is only a small part of the overall quality. People tend to drastically over estimate the importance of high bitrates.

so when do we get the official answer; i imagine you'll update post 1 to reflect the correct answer?

"A" has more detail.
JJK

I voted for "they are both the same" but after looking closely I'd have to say that picture A has a bit more detail. If you a/b the shots and look closely at the cloak you can see there is a bit more detail in shot A. As far as color and contrast, I have to say I don't see any significant difference between the two.

Can I vote again?:o

This is my results also. If you zoom in on the cloak and compare picture A has slightly more detail than B. And B is just slightly softer overall.

Very close though. I would say the difference might be a bit more noticable in a higher bitrate scene.

Man they do look very similar. I going with A as the original.

i have posted the results in the first post now.

Woohoo I got it right. And I voted yesterday before the experts chimed in ;)

That makes me super cool :cool:

Brandon

If this is possible then downloads can look good and we don't want that.

Why dont we?? Who is we? YOU? You dont count! :D

Everyone wants the EASIEST and CHEAPEST way to watch movies. If compression can happen without loss of quality then this is better FOR EVERYONE. Get your head out of the sand man!

Why dont we?? Who is we? YOU? You dont count!

Everyone wants the EASIEST and CHEAPEST way to watch movies. If compression can happen without loss of quality then this is better FOR EVERYONE. Get your head out of the sand man!.

I think he was referring to those "easy and cheap" downloads you can find for free online, AKA pirating movies.

Why dont we?? Who is we? YOU? You dont count! :D

Everyone wants the EASIEST and CHEAPEST way to watch movies. If compression can happen without loss of quality then this is better FOR EVERYONE. Get your head out of the sand man!

Remember that Blu-ray is the Studios effort to bring a new product with better quality so they can have better revenue. If people can rip a movie and compress to 8GB without visual difference, then maybe they can go lower with 1280x720 resolution and that means it will be easy to download those without paying, hurting Blu-ray growth.

Remember that Blu-ray is the Studios effort to bring a new product with better quality so they can have better revenue. If people can rip a movie and compress to 8GB without visual difference, then maybe they can go lower with 1280x720 resolution and that means it will be easy to download those without paying, hurting Blu-ray growth.

1. Why is this hurting the Blu-Ray growth?

2. Not all movies would look like this. Beowulf is in some way CGI (I know,not full CGI like Final Fantasy) and as this the optical difference isn't that big, even with some compression.

If people can rip a movie and compress to 8GB without visual difference, then maybe they can go lower with 1280x720 resolution and that means it will be easy to download those without paying, hurting Blu-ray growth.


Ripping movies and piracy has NOTHING to do with level of quality, never has never will so this isnt important to the topic what is important is that someone actually thinks its a bad thing to be able to compress video from 30+GB to something much lower and I just think that is just a foolish way to think about it. Smaller Files means quicker load times. This is good no matter what for the consumer.

We can download HD movies now. Bandwidth will continue to increase and downloading a 20 Gig movie in the future will be a no-brainer.

.

Beowulf is in some way CGI (I know,not full CGI like Final Fantasy)

AFAIK beowulf is full CGI.

AFAIK beowulf is full CGI.

I'm confused now. On HIGHDEF-Digest someone mentioned that it isn't full CGI but real-life scenes which got postprocessed.

Welp, that's it. I think the OP owes it to us now to do the same process with a movie that is shot on film with heavy grain present. One that comes to mind is Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. That would be a pretty good and worthwhile science experiment, IMO :)

Brandon

How do you even backup the original HD-DVD movie to DVD-DL dics?

edit: thx Blinx123. Then another I forgot to ask. Quite many people think audio track is very important hidef experience. What happened to the audio track during the backup process?

edit: and if a normal SD-DVD player cannot play it, is PS3 able to playback this backup DVDR-DL movie?

How do you even backup the original HD-DVD movie to DVD-DL dics?

Easy. There are some tools out there. With the help of these tools you can compress and burn videos in MPEG4 format on a DVD. These discs won't be readable on a SD-DVD player,however.

All i can see is a contrast difference and a slight tint differential.

+1

How do you even backup the original HD-DVD movie to DVD-DL dics?

edit: thx Blinx123. Then another I forgot to ask. Quite many people think audio track is very important hidef experience. What happened to the audio track during the backup process?

edit: and if a normal SD-DVD player cannot play it, is PS3 able to playback this backup DVDR-DL movie?

No. Sorry.

Only HD-DVD players can play them.

Actually these 9GB DVD-DLs are encoded in the exact same way every HD-DVD is encoded.

No. Sorry.

Only HD-DVD players can play them.

Actually these 9GB DVD-DLs are encoded in the exact same way every HD-DVD is encoded.

What exactly is the reason for doing so then, if only HD-DVD players can play them? Because you would have to own the disc to do this, unless you go the illegal route.

You want backup copies? Extra disc for other players in the house? If you take care of your discs, there doesn't seem to much reason it seems. Just curious.

What exactly is the reason for doing so then, if only HD-DVD players can play them? Because you would have to own the disc to do this, unless you go the illegal route.

You want backup copies? Extra disc for other players in the house? If you take care of your discs, there doesn't seem to much reason it seems. Just curious.

Actually most people only use it for their own home videos but it's good for a backup copy too.

I don't think most "crackers/rippers" would do it this way but instead copy all files to HDD.

I voted B HD DVD:( I might of go run out, and get the sd version..AAAHHHHHhhhhh..:(


Djoel

I voted B HD DVD:( I might of go run out, and get the sd version..AAAHHHHHhhhhh..:(


Djoel

B isn't showing the SD version of the movie but a pretty compressed HD version on 9GB DVD-DL.

What exactly is the reason for doing so then, if only HD-DVD players can play them? Because you would have to own the disc to do this, unless you go the illegal route.

You want backup copies? Extra disc for other players in the house? If you take care of your discs, there doesn't seem to much reason it seems. Just curious.

I believe the OP said he was originally doing it for a backup copy. Still, I hope he does another one and posts it for us using non-CGI material with fast movement and perhaps even heavy grain. I think it could help a lot of us lay men see the effect compression has on an encode.

Brandon

The HD DVD Director's Cut of Beowulf is 114 minutes long, and the audio track is 1.5Mbps DD+.

1,500,000 bits per second x 60 seconds per minute x 114 minutes / 8 bits per byte = 1,282,500,000 bytes for audio (~1.3 GB if the audio was unmolested)

8,540,000,000 maximum capacity on a DVD9.

This leaves 7,257,500,000 bytes for the video max theoretical.

7,257,500,000 / 114 minutes / (60 seconds per minute) x 8 bits per byte = about 8.5Mbps for 720p resolution.

Note that 1080p is 2.25 as many pixels as 720p, so this is analogous to a "true" HD DVD bitrate of about 19Mbps; and for a film with lots of letterboxing (2.35 OAR), that's more than plenty to make it look great, assuming the re-encoding process didn't introduce new artifacting.

Small wonder that the image looks pretty good. :)

i guessed correctly by noticing the slightly better detail in the main characters beard.

I failed.

B isn't showing the SD version of the movie but a pretty compressed HD version on 9GB DVD-DL.



Thanks I feel a little better now, I was about to burn all my Hd animations;)


DJoel