What ultimately determines the picture quality of a given film?

The Master/D5 its taken from is a start.

I voted for the 3rd choice as I felt it was the closest for me. The director and other people working on the original film, as well as those doing the transfers play big rolls, but the capabilities provided by the formats are also relevant.

--Darin

and with that said, when everything is shot in digital and no film to digital transfer is involved, HD-DVD will likely not yield the great benefits over SD-DVD for the average joe on his typical sized HDTV.

I voted for the last choice, but if you're talking about perceived quality, you can't ignore the role of playback and display equipment, visual acuity, individual perceptions of what constitutes quality reproduction, and/or how far people sit from their displays. All of these factors are involved in an individual's assessment of image quality and that's why people differ in their opinions for any specific disc.

The Master/D5 its taken from is a start.

Actually... The condition of the original film negative, the quality of the high-contrast transfer postive, the age and calibration of the Rank-Cintel telecine machine, the dedication and experience of the color timer, etc. all come before the final video output. That's really where it all starts. :)

I voted for the second. The various examples of reference-level mastering in either HD DVD or BD (or even SD DVD for that matter) show the potential for high quality the respective format can deliver. It's been my experience that if a particular title falls short, more than likely it was the studio mucking it up rather than a technical issue. They control the storage of the original negatives, they control the transfer process, they control the authoring, they control the bit rates. The studios have the greatest influence on the final quality of a home video release, regardless of the format.

Of course the frustrating thing is: If they can do it so right sometimes, why can't they do it right all the time? :mad:

waterworld, although you could tell it was in HD format, was grainy and full of film artifacts... the masters make a big difference, as does whether they bother to clean up all the garbage or leave it....

the age and calibration of the Rank-Cintel telecine machine, . :)


Video masters tend to originate from datacines or are subsampled directly from a 4k or 2k DI ( almost the same difference). They tend to use the conformed neg although an interpos represents very little loss with regard to a 1080p master.

The capability of the format is the least important factor since ,although different, in most circumstances it simply isn't the limiting factor. The care from telecine to compression to choice of and quality of original source elements makes the difference. We've seen this rather dramatically in early BD releases being poorer than the same films over HBO !

Art

the age and calibration of the Rank-Cintel telecine machineVideo masters tend to originate from datacines or are subsampled directly from a 4k or 2k DI ( almost the same difference). They tend to use the conformed neg although an interpos represents very little loss with regard to a 1080p master.

I must admit my reference might be a little stale nowadays. I know the good ol' Rank-Cintel flying-spot scanner (with a D1 4:4:4 video output) used to be the standard for telecine transfers, but technology does keep marching on and I'm sure by now they've probably been superseded. Yeah, I did know that they've been able to get away from the interpositive and go directly off the negative with reposterizing in post-processing.

I acutally had the chance once to see a Rank-Cintel in action and I must say it was quite impressive! :)

The capability of the format is the least important factor since ,although different, in most circumstances it simply isn't the limiting factor. The care from telecine to compression to choice of and quality of original source elements makes the difference. We've seen this rather dramatically in early BD releases being poorer than the same films over HBO!

Absolutely true. Maybe I didn't make my original point as clearly as I could have so let me rephrase: The technological performance of any format only represents the potential level of quality possible. If the studios don't use the format to it's fullest extent, then sub-par quality will result. I saw this time and time again going from LaserDisc to DVD. While DVD is technologically superior, the studios would be cheap and use the old masters over again, resulting in "remastered" DVDs that looked no better than their LD counterparts during side-by-side comparisons. I see the same thing happening with HD DVD and BD.

In any event, the studios are in complete control of authoring, mastering and producing home-video releases and they have the greatest influence in final quality to the customer.

Choice 3 doesn't imply that bitrates are the most important factor.

I voted for the last choice, but if you're talking about perceived quality, you can't ignore the role of playback and display equipment, visual acuity, individual perceptions of what constitutes quality reproduction, and/or how far people sit from their displays. All of these factors are involved in an individual's assessment of image quality and that's why people differ in their opinions for any specific disc.

Friend, please remember the dictum: "garbage in...garbage out"...

-THTS

What ultimately determines picture quality? The weakest link!

Dave

Studio's attitude !

If they care, they can give old films top-notch PQ; if they don't, well, we have seen enough crappy releases, no technology can help.

XB - sorry to jump in here, but I noticed you using the results of this poll in another thread and just wanted to point out that the poll is not accurate.

As a result, I have chosen OPTION 3, a combination of all and other factors - I'll explain:

This poll leaves out some of the major realities that have contributed to bad releases to date.

1) What if you are a Bluray studio and expected to have 50 Gig discs available for you, but only got 25 Gigs? Some studios are now getting 50 gigs, but others are still being given 25 Gigs, apparently due to rationing of production.

2) What if a studio WANTED to produce a disc a certain way, with specific advanced codecs, but was unable to because the BLUEPRINT software (or whichever) didn't support it, or allow it??

3) What if the studio was "forced" to use band-width-hogging L-PCM audio tracks on their Bluray releases due to consumer expectations that SOny created, even though it negatively impacted image quality?

Your poll leaves out the real factors that contributed to a large percentage of the poor quality releases to date.

So I have chosen NUMBER 3, a combination of all and other factors...