This is from an earlier hddvd thread I started. Some of the data is very pertinent to the recent Widescreen review interview with Chris Walker of Pioneer and Don Ekland of Sony concerning VC1 bit rates. Don claims the bitrate of HDDVD's with VC1 is 20 mbps average or the same as current mpeg-2 BD. Cjplay posted some bitrates from Warner titles that are identical on either format with the exception of Rumour Has It which is in mpeg-2 on BD.

Pick some titles and I'll fill in the blanks for you for Warner. Batman Begins came out to 13.54/19. Dukes will be about 12.8/19. HP4 is 13.7/19. Rumor Has It was about 16.4/25. T3 is 13.6/19. Firewall was like 13/24. POTO was like 15.2/21.

ABR/PBR

Cjplay.

What Cjplay is talking about is average bit rate ABR and Peak bit rate PBR not picture bit rate. tormond was confused concerning this and he found the old posts. He just didn't bother reading beyond cjplay's 1st post as this is all clearly explained that PBR is the peak bit rate. As you can see here the average for these 7 titles is 14 mbps. The peak average of the 7 is 20.8 mpbs.
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for more info go to Average bit rate of VC-1 on Warner or Universal titles? in hddvd software section.

I don't visit the HD-DVD section.

However, Eklund's claim was about "many of the early VC-1 releases", not all Warner VC-1 releases as you stated. A number of the titles mentioned by CJplay are newer or not yet released. I asked about this in the insider thread. Insiders have not been willing to report the average bit rates.

Okay then Phantom of the Opera, Rumour Has It, Dukes, Firewall all released more than 2 months ago average bit rate is 14.3 mbps.

Also your quote is not even remotely accurate.

WSR Weber: We have been told that the VC1 encoding bit rate on most of the HDDVD releases thus far have averaged 12 megabits with a peak of 20.

Ekland: Gary, I can tell you that this is patently false. If you put any of these discs in the Toshiba computer and you look at the file size you'll find that on average, the bit rate for all the VC1 files-the average rate, not the peak-is 20 mbps.

Yes, Ekland is claiming any HDDVD as stated above if put in a computer will show an average rate of 20mpbs.

The article is brand new so I can't imagine its much older than a month.

As you can see 16.4 mbps being the highest for Rumour Has It is not even remotely approaching 20 mbps or the needed 24 to 27 mbps titles to average them all out to 20 mbps.

This is not a Blu Ray bashing thread at all as your Warner releases will look identical to mine on HDDVD and thankfully Warner is releasing on the format as they are by far the best looking titles as a whole by manufacturer that you have. It is rather biased toward VC1 though. BD-50 will be needed for high def in Mpeg-2 to really shine and show the consistency that only HDDVD has shown up till now. Ekland also mentioned he was very pleased with the picture quality of all the BD-25 releases. I wonder if you all feel the same? These are the same releases that convinced me to return my Samsung player.

PRO-630HD,

almost none of Rob's posts are accurate.
He simply doesn't get that his behaviour hurts BD more than helps it.

Amir has said many times recently that with the new improved MS VC1 encoder titles will look as good or better than the early titles and at average rates of 12 to 15mbps.

Don't forget, Don is also including audio, PIP, subpicture, etc... in his bitrate calculation. He is looking at the file size of the muxed stream, not the video stream.

Some of the mags will start publishing the bitrates soon, which should clear the air.

The peak average of the 7 is 18.28 mpbs.Not that it makes much difference, but since thelowest peak is 19, the average can't be 18.28. Maybe there was a divide by 7 instead of 6 or something like that.

--Darin

Don't forget, Don is also including audio, PIP, subpicture, etc... in his bitrate calculation. He is looking at the file size of the muxed stream, not the video stream.

Some of the mags will start publishing the bitrates soon, which should clear the air.
I wonder who that will be? :D ;)

You are correct Darin the average peak is 20.8 mbps. My mistake.

Don't forget, Don is also including audio, PIP, subpicture, etc... in his bitrate calculation. He is looking at the file size of the muxed stream, not the video stream.

Some of the mags will start publishing the bitrates soon, which should clear the air.
Thanks for the input sspears. If Don is doing this he is wrong. If you read the article the debate is very clearly about video quality only, mpeg-2 vs. VC1. They are claiming great results at 18 mbps mpeg-2, again video only and he is claiming the video bit rates are all at 20 mbps VC1 for hddvd. The PIP for IME may be VC1, probably, bit I'm not sure. The audio on a hddvd is not encoded in VC1 as it is in DD+ bitstream or True HD bitstream. The extras are all mpeg-2, etc.

If Don is doing this he is wrong

Don has an incentive to confuse the issue. Nuh said.

The bitrates are not easy to calculate. You need special software that analyzes the whole disc and calulates bitrate. I have seen "bitrates" from WinDVD BD and HD DVD version that Amir says are way off and not even close to accurate. I would listen to those who have access to the software (Amir and MS) and believe their numbers are PC software players with bitrate meters are not accurate at all (Cyberlink, WinDVD,etc. )

Agreed Jon and I also tend to believe Cjplay's numbers who is a compressionist at Warner are entirely accurate.

I wouldn't say VC-1 is improving using lesser bitrates. As people are taking a closer, more critical look at Happy Feet, for instance, they're noticing more problems. And that has some insanely low VC-1 bitrates. Probably the lowest yet... down even below some DVD's!

So, I still think with these newer codecs you CAN starve them. I'd still keep them up in the 20's average with higher peaks for extremely hard to encode scenes. Just to be safe.

Dan

VC-1 at 12 mbps is incredible and yes the tech is only getting better! IMO, AVC is at least two years behind in terms of like quality at the same compression level (sorry Disney).

Not to mention encoding times are 25% better. However, I disagree with Amir on decoding. VC-1 takes as much or more raw math to decode than AVC.

Firewall looked pretty crappy. It's over-used, but it really did look like SD to me. I had to check to make sure my settings hadn't spontaneously changed. Very flat (and I don't mean "lacking 3D pop", I mean 2nd-generation-look flat) with light compression artifacting in solid walls. This wasn't a beautiful movie to begin with. It seems like movies with this color palette always need a bit of extra care in the compressions stage. Another ho-hum WB encode.