That's about all you can comment on- the relative program size. Beyond that, your bias is greatly at risk of peeking through (specifically, when you attempt to tie a pq assessment to that 58%).

Yes, there is a slight advantage to the AVC version in that particular part of the frame, as shown here in a Lanczos blowup, also.

But, not MUCH, perhaps not enough to justify the extra 58% of data.

Yet, the other areas look almost identical...

http://www.CampaignHD.com/images/Flags_bd_1d_2xL.png http://www.CampaignHD.com/images/Flags_hddvd_1d_2xL.png

If the space was available, I say use it. That's 58% well spent, instead of wasted.

I'm kind of disappointed that I even have to say this to some people as I think they've been around long enough to figure this out. For those who would like to spin this Flags of our Fathers comparison as proof that the higher bitrate or space of Blu-ray don't matter, we are talking about a 2.35:1 movie (free black area on every frame to make things easier on the encoder compared to 1.78:1 or 1.85:1) on a release with no lossless audio track and no IME, with something shot pretty recently. This isn't nearly as bad as using animation to try to prove that higher bitrates don't matter, but please use something more difficult if the conclusion that higher bitrates don't make any difference is going to be jumped to. This should be used as a valid piece of information, but there is no need to jump to illogical conclusions based on it.

And that isn't even considering seamless branching like New Line did for a LOTR release on DVD. I don't think there is any way in the world that this Flags of our Fathers release is close to the most difficult thing either format will be asked to do.

--Darin

Those Flags of our Fathers pics look nearly identical with the exception of the one tindizzle posted. I think the way VC-1 encodes videos needs to be tweaked, I know Happy Feet and Planet Earth have been beaten to death with those scenes of color banding where the bitrate is ~5 mbps. It seems like it would take very little additional storage to raise the bitrate to something reasonable! 5 mbps is way to low! VC-1 is good, but its not that good!

I'm kind of disappointed that I even have to say this to some people as I think they've been around long enough to figure this out. For those who would like to spin this Flags of our Fathers comparison as proof that the higher bitrate or space of Blu-ray don't matter, we are talking about a 2.35:1 movie (free black area on every frame to make things easier on the encoder compared to 1.78:1 or 1.85:1) on a release with no lossless audio track and no IME, with something shot pretty recently. Huh?

Both the HD DVD version and the bluray versions are both 2:35 with similar features:
HD DVD: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/flagsofourfathers.html
Bluray : http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/flagsofourfathers.html

And even after this effort, and massive difference in encode size, the VC1 version is virtually identical to the AVC bluray version.

This should be used as a valid piece of information, but there is no need to jump to illogical conclusions based on it.Yep - we are awaiting "Coming to America" comparisons to help add more perspective.

EDIT - confused disc sizes with "Reds" - corrected

Huh?

Both the HD DVD version and the bluray versions are both 2:35 with similar features:
HD DVD: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/flagsofourfathers.html
Bluray : http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/flagsofourfathers.htmlYep. Both would be easier to encode than a lot of material out there. So, can you see how ridiculous it is to act like this comparison proves that the extra bandwidth isn't needed? Do you understand how using animations to determine how much bandwidth a format should have would be wrong and how, while this isn't the same thing as using something as easy as animations, the idea is the same? Should the people who decide how much bandwidth to design in assume 2.35:1, recent shoot, no lossless audio, and no IME?

--Darin

Huh?

Both the HD DVD version and the bluray versions are both 2:35 with similar features:
HD DVD: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/flagsofourfathers.html
Bluray : http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/flagsofourfathers.html

And even after this effort, and massive difference in encode size, the VC1 version is virtually identical to the AVC bluray version.

Yep - we are awaiting "Coming to America" comparisons to help add more perspective.

EDIT - confused disc sizes with "Reds" - corrected

the pictures only show that AVC beats VC1 with higher bitrates (not rocket science). You have not proven that VC1 beats AVC consistently at the same bitrates.

On a side note, what is more interesting is the studio's willingness to maximise each format's potential. Could anyone possibly disagree that the BD picture has exceeded the HD DVD version? Indeed, BD has an unfair advantage in available bitrates, obviously because it can.

Yep. Both would be easier to encode than a lot of material out there. So, can you see how ridiculous it is to act like this comparison proves that the extra bandwidth isn't needed? Do you understand how using animations to determine how much bandwidth a format should have would be wrong and how, while this isn't the same thing as using something as easy as animations, the idea is the same? Should the people who decide how much bandwidth to design in assume 2.35:1, recent shoot, no lossless audio, and no IME?

--Darin


I can almost understand no lossless, but why should "no IME" be factored in? What's the BD equivalent of IME on the BD encode of this title that would be eating into its available bits?

The Matrix Trilogy had IME and lossless

I can almost understand no lossless, but why should "no IME" be factored in? What's the BD equivalent of IME on the BD encode of this title that would be eating into its available bits?In the long run IME is one of the things that determines what kind of bandwidth is necessary for both formats, so it should be included in a discussion of what kind of bandwidth they should have. While Blu-ray doesn't have the SD PiP that HD DVD decided is all they would ever have (at least if their specs are finalized), they will have HD PiP available to the studios as an option (where the person could swap the PiP part to be the full screen and be watching it in HD and not SD).

Also, your question with "on this title" seems a little strange to me when the whole point is that a single title that is easier than many others shouldn't be used to determine how much bandwidth is necessary for a format. If it was a silent movie that should be taken into account as far as disqualifying it as the barometer for the format also.

--Darin

In the long run IME is one of the things that determines what kind of bandwidth is necessary for both formats, so it should be included in a discussion of what kind of bandwidth they should have. While Blu-ray doesn't have the SD PiP that HD DVD decided is all they would ever have (at least if their specs are finalized), they will have HD PiP available to the studios as an option (where the person could swap the PiP part to be the full screen and be watching it in HD and not SD).


As we are all well aware of the fact that BD will always be better... eventually.... later.... no, really .... the end result is the same. If one title (any title) doesn't have IME (or the IME equivalent) because one format didn't include it, and the other format can't include it, then it's a level playing field and there's no need to factor it in...neither of them are having IME subtracting from their respective bit-buckets.

As we are all well aware of the fact that BD will always be better... eventually.... later.... no, really .... the end result is the same. If one title (any title) doesn't have IME (or the IME equivalent) because one format didn't include it, and the other format can't include it, then it's a level playing field and there's no need to factor it in...neither of them are having IME subtracting from their respective bit-buckets.Depends on what you are trying to do. If you are comparing the pictures on them to see what is better, then I agree that they don't need to have IME factored in. If a conclusion about how much bandwidth a format should have is going to be jumped to, then the bitrate for IME should be factored in. That is, unless movies will never have IME. Even just considering HD DVD, if some movies will have IME, then that goes into the bitrate equation, since it takes away from the bitrates they have left. Flags of our Fathers on HD DVD likely could not have been compressed at the bitrates used if the title had IME. That isn't to say they couldn't have done just as good a job with less bitrate to work with, but someone would have to check that given that IME takes bandwidth away from other things.

--Darin

By the way - reviews of the VC1 and AVC versions of "Coming To America" are up. And the VC1 version has beaten up the AVC version.




It's just a codec, man. It's not love or acceptance.

Could anyone possibly disagree that the BD picture has exceeded the HD DVD version?
Apart from a single image of the sleeve and shirt cuff, there are virtually no differences AT ALL between these two encodes, even tho AVC required about 60% more bit budget to deliver it.

It'll be VERY interesting as more AVC releases come out that are at closer bitrates to the VC1 encodes. I don't think that AVC will be able to outperform VC1 at similar bitrates, judging from this comparison...

Rdjam, did you miss all that compression junk in the sky of the night shot?

Of course you have to blow it up 200% and play with the gamma but it's there. :D

Apart from a single image of the sleeve and shirt cuff, there are virtually no differences AT ALL between these two encodes,...

This would seem to imply that you have verified every other frame of the movie, as well?!

Coming back to reality, what you meant to say is that of the 2 scenes examined so far, differences DID exist, though very subtle. Given that trend of 2 out of 2, it would seem to suggest that differences pervade the entire movie. The differences may vary from nill to substantial, depending on the difficulty of the scene. Can you honestly say that the scene with the sleeve and shirt cuff is all that tough on the encoder? Now translate that to other scenes which contain some considerable motion and detail. Are you that confident that the differences will simply remain subtle, regardless if more stuff happens onscreen? It just might be THAT is the time you really wish you had an extra 58% of data at your disposal.

Apart from a single image of the sleeve and shirt cuff, there are virtually no differences AT ALL between these two encodes

Oh my, hahaha. What a bold statement from someone who has seen a total of two screenshots, both of which are static shots which wont show the difference between the bitrates well.

But Ill humor you; please explain why I see such things like:


In the first shot:

http://dot50cal.the-horror.com/dv/legs.jpg

The left soldiers leg. The middle soldiers shoe. The top of the rock, which all display macroblocking on the VC1 encode.

Second shot:

http://dot50cal.the-horror.com/dv/audience.jpg

The audience becomes a mess of smeared blocks which you would expect from streaming video in the VC1 encode.

Third shot:

http://dot50cal.the-horror.com/dv/trucks.jpg

Truck details are smoothed, Field is smoothed, giving way to macroblocks and smearing. People become globs on th VC1 encode.

Gamma adjusted (watch the fanboys harp on this!) the same amount on both shots to illustrate the point, blown up nearly 2x (AVC on top, VC1 on bottom):

http://dot50cal.the-horror.com/dv/gamma.jpg

The whole sky is mess with the VC1 encode.

Rdjam, did you miss all that compression junk in the sky of the night shot?

Of course you have to blow it up 200% and play with the gamma but it's there. :D

I assure you; its there. Whether or not you choose to see it is a personal problem which some people will have to come to terms with. Adjusting the gamma of a picture only brings out the artifacts more clearly. I did it so that those of us who are using the white forum style could see it properly.

I don't really care one way or the other about the topic, but I would like someone to correct the title of the thread. I see it every day and it DRIVES ME CRAZY!

Should it be:

Why IS VC1 so much better?

or

Why VC1 IS so much better?


The current title makes no sense (Why IS VC1 IS so much better?)

Thanks :)

Gamma adjusted (watch the fanboys harp on this!) the same amount on both shots to illustrate the point, ...

Not particularly a fanboy for either format. But even I object to adjusting the brightness and/or gamma to bring out artifacts. Good (lossy) compression tries to use bits needed to keep differences under the threshold of vision, as shown on a calibrated display. Screwing with the gamma negates this effort.

The two images look close enough to me that any buying decision would be based upon other factors.

Though I would like to see at least one more scene that had a bit more motion.

- Tom

edit: and I had never before noticed the typo in the thread title. I just felt it seemed wrong for some reaon. ;)

I don't really care one way or the other about the topic, but I would like someone to correct the title of the thread. I see it every day and it DRIVES ME CRAZY!

Should it be:

Why IS VC1 so much better?

or

Why VC1 IS so much better?


The current title makes no sense (Why IS VC1 IS so much better?)

Thanks :)Fixed.

AND YET! The two encodes are virtually identical. Now this means one of two things, in my view: (1) That AVC needs a lot more data to look the same, and may look worse at the same rate, or (2) Worse! That there is no additional benefits to a high data rate on the next gen codecs at all, and that the extra bandwidth of Bluray is NOT NEEDED when using the advanced codecs.

It's option 2, but only to a degree. Both VC1 and AVC allow the encoder to compress incredibly without affecting quality, down <15mbit, if he spends enough time on it. However, when you have no bitrate or space limitations, as most Bluray discs don't, you might as well use a bucketload of it. It can't hurt, and you'll finish the encoding process maybe 5 times faster.

If you want an example of AVC at lower rates, look at the Babel HDDVD. Or even the Pirates2 Bluray, which is commonly called the best HD disc ever - most of the time it is at 15 to 20mbit.

Personally I tend to the opinion that AVC is the better codec, but VC1 clearly has better commercial toolkits for HD disc ultra-compression. There's a reason why all commercial broadcast HDTV has chosen h264, not to mention the pirates (they're always at the vanguard of video tech!).

By the way - reviews of the VC1 and AVC versions of "Coming To America" are up. And the VC1 version has beaten up the AVC version.

Wondering about this just received title, the french issue of, Molholland Dr., it looked very soft on HD DVD, so I ran my D-Theater D-VHS copy and guess what, the D-VHS copy was head and shoulders above the HD DVD version, how is that possible? MPEG2 seems to have a little life left in it, how about that? :rolleyes:

What can i see from this post that you are taking your revenge now,why i will tell you.

Dont forget Coming to America is done only on BD-25 whereas HD-DVD is Done on 30GB

second its obvious that BD version got a lower compression of AVC codec so in other words if Paramount done this title corectly as others do with AVC codec ,I Assure and i Bet you the BD version will be outstanding and surpasses The HD-DVD version.But this time Paramount Choose BD-25 with lower compression AVC.

At the end this is nothing to me and nothing to you and doesnt mean at all HD-DVD is better format.In Contrary you should look to every titles done correctly and released in BD if its not identical to HD-DVD its better.Except for Exclusivity Studios for BD are doing great Job and releasing smashing titles just can keep HD-DVD dreaming ...POTC and Apocalypto are among them so experience than back to me

If you want an example of AVC at lower rates, look at the Babel HDDVD. Or even the Pirates2 Bluray, which is commonly called the best HD disc ever - most of the time it is at 15 to 20mbit.



Or Clerks 2, even. I just got this disc the other day and the bitrate never goes above 16Mbit/s. Once you strip away all the audio tracks you're looking at about 10GB for the video elementary stream.

The Matador was pretty small-ish IIRC as well, and is an underrated disc IMO.

Well, up to now, I have taken my material for this thread from what been posted in other threads by Xylon and Madshi. However, it is unfortunate that I have been accused of deliberately biasing the comparisons, when all I have done is used whatever became available.Which just happened to consistently give an advantage to VC-1 in the majority of your comparisons. Personally I think that all three video codecs can make reference quality encodings but it is interesting to note that there are now screenshots being posted showing an MPEG-4 AVC encoding that looks slightly better than a VC-1 encoding. Not surprising considering it is at a higher bitrate but that is a rather important thing to note since it does indicate that bitrate and capacity are important even for the advanced video codecs.


We now have some great shots from Flags of Our Fathers for comparison.Yes, the screenshots that were posted by tindizzle (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10684930&&#post10684930) and Dot50Cal (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10686805&&#post10686805) were interesting comparisons.

Hey, I posted that screengrab of the guy's jacket. Tindizzle just shared it. I did the composition, lettering, and everything. ;)

yes all credit goes to Kram Sacul!

Where's a comparison between VC-1 and 20mbps< MPEG2 scene?

Wondering about this just received title, the french issue of, Molholland Dr., it looked very soft on HD DVD, so I ran my D-Theater D-VHS copy and guess what, the D-VHS copy was head and shoulders above the HD DVD version, how is that possible? MPEG2 seems to have a little life left in it, how about that? :rolleyes:
Feel free to post screenshots for us to evaluate, Mikey...

VC-1 sounds like an ideal broadcasting codec, where bandwidth and hard-drives (for PVR's) are at a premium.

VC-1 sounds like an ideal broadcasting codec, where bandwidth and hard-drives (for PVR's) are at a premium.

That's what a lot of people thought at first - whatever the arguments on quality/bitrate vs AVC (frankly I think they're pretty similar), there's no doubt VC1 has much lower hardware decoding requirements. In the early days, that means _much_ cheaper set-top boxes.

Given that, perhaps it's even more telling that h264 has been chosen everywhere for broadcast.

VC-1 needs more bitrate than Warner are giving it.

David Vaughan's review of Blood Diamond.

http://www.***************.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/137411/

VIDEO:
I had very high expectations going into this move for a number of reasons. First, I had waited to watch it for so long in HD, I expected an “A” list title to receive the “A” list treatment. Second, with a “newer” release I expected an upgrade over the mostly catalog titles that I have been reviewing lately. Unfortunately, I was let down in a big way.

The encode is done in a VC-1 1080p presentation, that is extremely starved in the bitrate department, and boy does it show. From the opening scene, compression issues arise in the backgrounds as well as the foreground. At first, I thought it might possible be grain, until I got up from my seat to get about 2 feet away from the screen and I was greeted with what looked to be “mini-macroblocks”, which from my normal seating distance shows up as video noise. I then popped up the bitrate meter on the PS3 and was astounded to see a bitrate of 7.9 Mbps! That is damn low for HD content, and frankly, I’m not surprised that it didn’t look worse! From this point on, I was on the lookout for this type of phenomenon, and it appeared again quite frequently in the presentation in low light situations. In one such case, DiCaprio and Connelly are speaking on the porch of an orphanage, and the camera pans back and forth between the two of them, out of about 5 sequences of each character, the video noise only showed up in one of them! Why were the other 9 OK and the other one it was present? Hard to tell, but I wasn’t that impressed.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the only thing that is wrong in the video department. Banding is quite evident in a lot of scenes, specifically in the skyline and in the setting sun. Fine detail is lacking at times, especially in the backgrounds of the forest on the longer shots where instead of seeing individual leaves, you are left with a more DVD like picture of the leaves blending into a green blob.

The highlights of the presentation though are the exterior shots, which have a tendency to be very lifelike, especially when there are close-ups of our main characters. Overall, I’m sure that many will enjoy this presentation on smaller displays, but on my 88-inch screen, there was more to dislike than like in this one. There was plenty of space made available on this disc for content since it is a BD50, but I have to wonder if having an uncompressed PCM track and a low bitrate VC-1 encode was the best choice on this one?


Obviously we can see from BVHE that you can have a 24-bit PCM track and a 30+ Mbps with Blu-ray, yet Warner still seems to be using the same codec for each release.

Who does Warner's VC-1 encodes and was this title perhaps rushed?

That's what a lot of people thought at first - whatever the arguments on quality/bitrate vs AVC (frankly I think they're pretty similar), there's no doubt VC1 has much lower hardware decoding requirements. In the early days, that means _much_ cheaper set-top boxes.

Given that, perhaps it's even more telling that h264 has been chosen everywhere for broadcast.
Not everywhere - there is European broadcast using VC-1, for example. The real issue is that H.264 live encoders got to market first. But now we have the Inlet Spinnaker box on the market, VC-1 has a price/performance advantage for live encode as well.

http://www.inlethd.com/encoding/20/Spinnaker/

Not everywhere - there is European broadcast using VC-1, for example. The real issue is that H.264 live encoders got to market first. But now we have the Inlet Spinnaker box on the market, VC-1 has a price/performance advantage for live encode as well.

http://www.inlethd.com/encoding/20/Spinnaker/

May i have the name of the european broadcaster?