In the BD software forum there is a thread going on basically setting up a tier system for movies based on their bitrate. I was actually curious, being HD DVD folk, how important the Bitrate of a movie is to you???
Below I've posted the synopsis of the BD bitrate thread to see what I'm talking about

It goes without saying that higher bitrate = a bigger number being displayed by the bit rate meter. Often a movie will interfere with this visual delight of seeing numbers fluctuate at a rapid pace....sometimes up......sometimes down but those moment are rather scarce for an enthusiast like myself. The anticipation of not knowing where the number might end up from one scene to another really does produce a chill of excitement within me. And I'm sure the census is similar amongst my fellow enthusiasts.

However, I am often deceived into believing garbage such as the style of shooting within a faithful representation of the master is what HD is all about. I say, BS! HD is about numbers. Why not right? 6x resolution of DVD. Hey, that's all numbers so why a movie shouldn’t be judged by the bitrate and bitrate alone irritates me to no end!

Throw out the silly variables and subjective bias! I want objective means of measure! and what better to give that than my friend: Mr. Bitrate Meter.

I say we used this thread of TRUE! enthusiasts like me and leave the pseudo hobbyists at bay. No more interfering in the SCIENCE! behind these HD formats.

Criteria for the Tiers:
Tier0 = BR > 45 for 50% of the movie
Tier1 = BR > 35 for 50% of the movie
Tier2 = BR > 25 for 50% of the movie
Tier 4 = anything below (crap that Warner puts out )

I'll update this thread as i get more info!

Honestly, I don't give two craps about bitrate. High or low... I can't "see" bitrate. I can "see" the movie. If it looks good, it looks good.

There's a thread right now in the BD forums complaining about the bitrate on TMNT, although admitting that the film looks great. That's crazy to me.


HD is *not* about numbers. It's a means of representing an artistic form. And you can't boil that down to an equation, no matter how you try. Given those formulas, you can have a "Tier 0" title that looks like absolute poop.

For me, I use bit-rate meters to marvel at the cleverness of engineers who developed these codecs. They are small miracles of mathematics, perceptual theory and implementation.

As far the relevance when watching a movie - it has none at all. As long as I cannot see *artefacts* of bit starvation, then I'm as happy as Larry.

How would you find out what the bitrate of a movie is anyway?

SUPER! Another Tier Thread!
And guess what?
It's more worthless than the original Tier Thread.
I swear to God the amount of time some people put in to being stupid on the HD forum just gets more astounding every month.

SUPER! Another Tier Thread!
And guess what?
It's more worthless than the original Tier Thread.
I swear to God the amount of time some people put in to being stupid on the HD forum just gets more astounding every month.

that was my first reaction. I'm just curious to compare how the 2 sides differ and are similar based on this little teensy factor.

On a scale of 1 - 10, how important is bitrate to me?

That would be a great big ZERO!!

:rolleyes:

High bitrate doesn't necessarily mean great PQ, and low bitrate doesn't always mean poor PQ.

CJPlay said the ABR bitrate for HPGoF was very low, and it is probably one of the best looking titles I've ever seen.

You can have horrible masters, that are so bad, you could throw all the bits available in the galaxy at them, and they're still going to look like $h*t.

You can have pristine masters, that are so good, you can have immaculate PQ with a very low ABR.

Wow, they're actually setting up a tier thread over there based on bitrate? I think Milt99 pretty much nailed what's wrong with that one...

I sarcasm a lost art these days?

Ha, I actually read it and it's pretty funny. I guess I could actually see some of them doing that.

As long as the movie looks good, i couldn't care less what the bitrate is.

Yeah lol that never even crossed my mind what bit rate a movie is in.

When I first read this I really was like WTF does it matter lol???

Like everyone else said if it looks good then it looks good!!

I would have to guess that the blu guys have to expect high bit rates to fill up the 50gig disk lol. They don't like to see improvements...

The thread gave me a chuckle. I'm a lover of sarcasm :D

With VC-1 I don't worry about it. It is consistant and offers a complete solution to the industry for encoding from 5mbps to 40! With MPEG2, you need 30+ to get the same result as VC-1 and with AVC around 20 seems to be the threshold.

As time goes on and the people behind the scenes get more experiance with them, it probably won't matter at all!

The thread gave me a chuckle. I'm a lover of sarcasm :D

Just what AVS forum needs...more sarcasm.

(oh the irony...or is that...a circular reference? :eek: )

As long as the movie looks good, i couldn't care less what the bitrate is.Pretty much.

Being concerned with a movie's bitrate makes about as much sense to me as complaining about single layer HD DVDs and no disc art on combo discs.

The anticipation of not knowing where the number might end up from one scene to another really does produce a chill of excitement within me. :eek: uhhh, okay. How about where the plot is headed? Honestly, I don't get it...is all this new gear so we can watch the bitrate meter, stare at disc art or WATCH MOVIES?... :p...maybe the Blu-ray folks are just waiting for Fox... ;)

The BD mongers are crazy. Thinking they need a Tier system based on bitrate like its the end all to video quality. lol. I love it.

The post was set up in response to another post about TMNT and the bitrate for it. It was meant to be a joke, as alot of people were saying that it seems like alot of people on the HDDVD and BD forums think that some people on here buy movies just to stare at the bitrate counter and not actually watch the movie. Move along, nothing to see here.

Guys, it's a joke....I didn't actually read the thread when I first posted, then went back and read it. I guess what's funnier is that most of us wouldn't have any second thoughts about it actually being a real idea...

As long as PQ and Aq are excellent, I couldn't care less.

Bitrate doesn't always = great PQ. I could care less what the bitrate is. What's King Kong's bitrate? Don't care, the picture is outstanding.

Bit rate means nothing to me as a movie weiwer.. I don't get 4 different encodes of the same movie at different bit rates to compare. Work on codecs will continue. I think the BD crowd is scared to death of efficient codecs as it will make VOD more viable.. Heck I would love to see fabulous encodes with very low bitrates...

They just want to have more FUD and spin... it is all part of their need to make an argument for superiority of BD50 over HD30. Total nonsense.

In an absolute sense headroom is a good thing but in practice it does not mean anything. Codecs will improve and we have long since reached the point of diminishing returns with audio for 99% of the audience.

What is important is the size and quality of the display and the viewing distance that will have a heck of lot more effect on actual perceived image quality than bit rate that you can't correlate to anything you can actually see on the screen.

Whether the thread(s) are a joke or not, the instantaneous bitrate meters are basically a joke, or at least not much more than eye-candy. They oversimplify something inherently complex, and have little or no meaning.

If the movie looks good, it's good.

If a movie looks good, it looks good. Nothing else matters.

In fact, a lower bitrate with great quality video is actually a sign of technical mastery. The lower number is more advanced.

What does bitrate have to do with anything? There are so many bits that a movie needs to look good and after that the rest are just using up space. Take TMNT it should have a lower bitrate then normal because it is CGI, so there should be no noise in the master at all.

Bitrate is the third most important aspect. The list goes like this.

1. Quality of the master.
2. Talent/Experience of the people doing the encoding.
3. Bitrates.

Like just about everything, the end result is all that matters.

does your **** look good and sound good? All righty then.

I dunno about bitrate, but I've been thinking that the argument for greater bandwidth with BR discs is becoming more and more irrelavant as the VC-1 and AVC codecs get more efficient.

If it looks good, the numbers don't really matter.

for example, 1 year prior to the last superbowl broadcast in HD on ABC there was no way to do HD wirelessly from the cameras, this was a bitrate problem.

Just months before the superbowl a company that had been working the problem solved it.

The superbowl on HD was the best looking football game I had ever seen.

They found a way to make it look great and still fit within wireless spectrum.

bit rate is pointless. There is a point of diminishing return. I could record a file using 192 khz sampling rate. But you would have to have ears that make a dog look bad to hear the difference! Same with eyes. You can scan something at 19200 dpi. it will be several hundred GB and would be a pain to work with. You can still get an amazing picture from 1200 dpi.

some of us care about that extra 1%

Its definitely becoming less of an issue IMO thanks to codecs like Dolby TRUEHD and VC-1 & AVC

I am of the opinion that bit-rate displays on hardware and software players should be banned. People, especially Smurfs, are having their judgement clouded by looking at numbers rather than looking at pictures with their eyes. There is so much more to video coding than just setting the bit rate. Thankfully the studios know this and don't let Smruf-Fud influence them.

I just read a review of TMNT by Warner and it gave it a stunning picture and audio quality. Thankfully that reviewer wasn't influenced with numbers. But on the Smurf-scale it would be Tier 5.

Also, who sits there plotting a graph during a film instead of watching the film?

HD DVD/BD fanboys need to realize that many of us PQ/AQ lovers are not saying that current transfers look bad. We're saying that they could look better. Even if that 1%+ difference is only visible to a small minority, isn't it worth it? What's the use of creating higher bitrate ceilings if you aren't going to use them to squeeze out that last bit of quality during encoding? I know HD DVD is handicapped when using lossless audio, but they should still maximize what's available. BD needs to stop the two lossless tracks nonsense since they are about 2Mbps (audio+video max bitrate) short of being able to do so without lowering the bitrate ceiling. Both formats need to forget PiP and seamless branching. (Perhaps not seamless branching. I'm not exactly sure how it affects bitrates.) Just do it on a separate encode and include two disks. When there is a format with bitrate ceilings around 100mbps then they can start adding all the fluff they want. Until then, give us PQ/AQ first. That's why we are buying HD media.

I don't give a flying f*** about bitrate.
I simply want the movie to look good, and if it does I'm happy, no matter the bitrate.

Bitrate is the third most important aspect. The list goes like this.

1. Quality of the master.
2. Talent/Experience of the people doing the encoding.
3. Bitrates.
You forgot the codec in between.
According to your list, the same master, encoded by the same people would look better in 14 MBit MPEG-2 than in 12 MBit VC-1/AVC.

Bit rate is very important to me though it doesn't mean that high bit rates will result in high PQ.

STOP making SENSE!




;)

I just read a review of TMNT by Warner and it gave it a stunning picture and audio quality. Thankfully that reviewer wasn't influenced with numbers. But on the Smurf-scale it would be Tier 5.




LOL!

Sig worthy!

what matters imo, is the lack of visible compression artefacts in the final product and the final pq, which is very subjective as hardly anyone can compare the hdm in his/her ht 1:1 to the 'master'.

The average bitrate alone says nothing about pq, only about filesize. If you have a 'crap in, crap out' situation, the highest bitrate will not improve anything. Ranking media by bitrate is, erm, strange. But to each his own, i guess. :)

I don't give a flying f*** about bitrate.
I simply want the movie to look good, and if it does I'm happy, no matter the bitrate.


You forgot the codec in between.
According to your list, the same master, encoded by the same people would look better in 14 MBit MPEG-2 than in 12 MBit VC-1/AVC.

For the superbit model MPEG2 is an impossibilty thus not on the list. AVC/VC-1 are the only choices. MPEG2 can still give great results on some titles, but not superbit quality results.

what matters imo, is the lack of visible compression artefacts in the final product and the final pq, which is very subjective as hardly anyone can compare the hdm in his/her ht 1:1 to the 'master'.

The average bitrate alone says nothing about pq, only about filesize. If you have a 'crap in, crap out' situation, the highest bitrate will not improve anything. Ranking media by bitrate is, erm, strange. But to each his own, i guess. :)

FINALLY - someone who understands what bit rate is all about. . . a tool used to control compression artifacts when scenes of fast motion and action will normally overload the compression algorithum when lower bit rates are used.

It is like the "kick down" feature in an automatic transmisson. Crusing at 50 MPH - it is not used . . . want to pass a truck quickly? Step down on the gas - the transmission kicks down into a lower gear and the car accelerates faster then just slowly pressing down on the gas.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest?

-1

But I do understand the smurfs - with their love of PCM it seems pretty obvious that "new fangled technology" isn't their strong suit.

But then I only pay attention to Xylon's screens to determine if the PQ of a given flick is up to my criteria = so what do I know.

How would you find out what the bitrate of a movie is anyway?

Sony includes one in the PS3 (hence you get all the bit junkies talking about it.) I am not sure about the other BD players but I own the Panasonic BD10 and it does not have one.

most people just want the picture to look good and don't care about how the technology makes it happen.

the primary purpose of codecs is to get the pq with the lowest bitrate/file size possible.

now we have people associating quality of an encode with high bitrate which is totally bass ackwards. imo a clear indication of how understanding of the science of codecs is going down the crapper at avs.

if you start paying studios for high bitrate encodes, what you will get is studios slamming titles through the encoding process with as little effort on their part to make the encodes efficient as possible. why take the time to do the job right if your customers will pay you to leave the useless bits in anyway?

Bit rate is VERY important. I can't tell you how many times I've been enjoying a movie immensely, only to take a glance at the bitrate meter and have it ruin the experience. Even though I can't see or hear it, just knowing that the bitrate may be holding back the best that my aftermarket power cord can deliver really brings me out of the movie.

As a side project, I've whipped up a small applet that takes the bitrate and instead displays it as a fraction of the uncompressed rate of the movie. You have no idea how it makes my heart swell to see the bitrate jump from 0.03446% to 0.03582%!

HD DVD/BD fanboys need to realize that many of us PQ/AQ lovers are not saying that current transfers look bad. We're saying that they could look better. Even if that 1%+ difference is only visible to a small minority, isn't it worth it? What's the use of creating higher bitrate ceilings if you aren't going to use them to squeeze out that last bit of quality during encoding? I know HD DVD is handicapped when using lossless audio, but they should still maximize what's available. BD needs to stop the two lossless tracks nonsense since they are about 2Mbps (audio+video max bitrate) short of being able to do so without lowering the bitrate ceiling. Both formats need to forget PiP and seamless branching. (Perhaps not seamless branching. I'm not exactly sure how it affects bitrates.) Just do it on a separate encode and include two disks. When there is a format with bitrate ceilings around 100mbps then they can start adding all the fluff they want. Until then, give us PQ/AQ first. That's why we are buying HD media.

No it is not worth it and I would bet that the minority who thinks they can see a difference really can't see any difference. It is like audio encoding you might think you can hear a difference because you know the bitrate is higher but if you do a blind test you find out that your ears are not as good as you thought they where.

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(
They are, they are NOT however concerned about something that isn't directly tied to the final product.

You can have:

a) high bitrate & crappy picture
b) lower bitrate & good picture
c) high bitrate & good picture
d) lower bitrate & crappy picture

It's all in the master & the encoding. Proof? Name me one picture that uses identical codecs with differing bitrates & has a demonstrably better PQ?

As for AQ the attachment to a fixed bitrate sound track is utter nonsense, it simply makes no sense. I am however grateful that people of this mind set aren't generally involved in creating technology - with the "fixed bitrate" think we'd never have stuff like fax machines.

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(

IMO pq/aq is important or i wouldn't bother to be in this hobby.

what you don't seem to understand is that pq/aq are NOT DETERMINED BY BITRATE.

possibly affected, yes. but there are many many other considerations.

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(

Here's a data compression theory question for you:

Is it possible to have a greater amount of data represented in fewer compressed bytes in one scenario versus another? Explain.

For extra credit: How does perceptual coding affect this?

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(

Maybe they understand the bit rate doesn't equate to better PQ and AQ, You seem to think it does and i don't see a whole bunch of posters agreeing with you.

If you want agreement - just go over to the BD Software forum - I am sure you will get many who agree with you :rolleyes:

The original Highlander DVD has very high bit rate but is one of the worst DVDs in existance for picture and audio quality.

In the BD software forum there is a thread going on basically setting up a tier system for movies based on their bitrate. I was actually curious, being HD DVD folk, how important the Bitrate of a movie is to you???
Below I've posted the synopsis of the BD bitrate thread to see what I'm talking about

DING DING DING DING!!

WARNING! DORK METER OVERLOAD!

Sorry, but who cares what the bit-o-meter says. Watch the damn movie!

i see it like this.

240hp Lotus Exige can be faster around the track then a 500hp Vette Z06 with a better driver........ but the potential is there on the more powerful car to lap even faster times. Bluray has the potential to look better due to higher bandwiths, not that is necessarily true at this point.
I was blown away first time saw a movie on Super VHS, LD and DVDS, didn't think it could get much better then that but new technology's always out do themself. Why hate on more bandwidth?? Sure "hotfuzz" was one of the top hd movies I've seen, but you have to wonder if it could have looked even better with less compression. Just like TrueHD sound isn't gonna be better then DD+ sound but there is that potential. At the end of the day don't we want to have the best possible experience?

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(

Hmmm, that´s a bit of an odd thing to say about a forum titled AV-Science. :p

Of course, 'we' care about PQ/AQ a great deal. That´s why HDM really is a blessing. And you are right in wanting the best PQ/AQ, as do most of the people who come here (although i have my doubts about some of the foot-soldiers for the fundamentalist religions of red or blu. :rolleyes: )

It´s just that focusing on 'bitrate' is a "bigger is better" approach, that imo is misleading. If the encoder is doing his/her job correctly, chances are we will get much better pq even at a (slightly) lower average bitrate, than when the job is done sloppy, but the disc-space were maxed out. "Superbit" would just be a marketing term. :)

i see it like this.

240hp Lotus Exige can be faster around the track then a 500hp Vette Z06 with a better driver........ but the potential is there on the more powerful car to lap even faster times. Bluray has the potential to look better due to higher bandwiths, not that is necessarily true at this point.
Kind of a good example. Back in the early eighties when Chevy re-vamped the Vette the numbers where excellent (skidpad, hp, etc)..............but it got it's *ss kicked on the track by the Porsche 944 (SCAA ). The Vette had all the numbers but in the real world they meant nothing. Very similar in this case, BD has the better numbers but are they useful? Does it matter? It would seem that the current codecs show that the extra numbers are overkill & won't give us much of anything.

We may at sometime reach the limits - who knows.

I dunno about bitrate, but I've been thinking that the argument for greater bandwidth with BR discs is becoming more and more irrelavant as the VC-1 and AVC codecs get more efficient.
A subjective picture quality evaluation of FRExt (MPEG-4 AVC) for HD movie content, conducted by Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF), on May 10th, 2004 with an old MPEG-4 AVC encoder (May 2004)

"In this contribution we present results of a subjective picture quality evaluation of FRExt for HD movie content. This evaluation with participants from movie industry was conducted by Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF) on May 10th, 2004 to evaluate the latest MPEG-4 AVC performance. We are able to provide a bitstream for part of the materials that were shown at the evaluation.

The following Figure 1 shows the overall results of the subjective evaluation. The evaluation was done by blind test for following six coded sequences; MPEG-4 AVC FRExt at 8, 12, 16 and 20Mbps, MPEG-2 at 24Mbps as “DVHS emulation” and original picture. For each codec and bit-rate, three HD movie clips were used."

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/7528/subjectivequalitypercepyj1.jpg

The MPEG-4 AVC coded sequence at 16Mbps has almost same rating than the uncompressed original video (4.00 vs 4.03)!

Honestly, I don't give two craps about bitrate. High or low... I can't "see" bitrate. I can "see" the movie. If it looks good, it looks good.

There's a thread right now in the BD forums complaining about the bitrate on TMNT, although admitting that the film looks great. That's crazy to me.


HD is *not* about numbers. It's a means of representing an artistic form. And you can't boil that down to an equation, no matter how you try. Given those formulas, you can have a "Tier 0" title that looks like absolute poop.

What he said.
+1

The MPEG-4 AVC coded sequence at 16Mbps has almost same rating than the uncompressed original video (4.00 vs 4.03)!
Hear that big swoosh? It was the sound of the above quote flying over the heads of those arguing about bit-rates.

I put bitrate concerns in the same category as people who bitch about black bars and too much grain. Some people just have to have something to complain about. I'm sure that ten years from now we'll have movies in 1440p and 10-bit Deep Color with audio tracks replicating the studio masters, and you can bet there will still be those individuals that won't shut up because they were watching their bitrate meter that dropped to 80 mb/s on their 50" TV.

I thought more PQ/AQ enthusiasts would be on this site. What a shame. :(
We are, thats what drives our enthusiasm and expenditures, but most are movie-buffs first and foremost. We all desire the best possible presentation, in every aspect, but at some point you have to stop to watch and appreciate the movie. And if you can't do this without obsessing over a presumed missed potential of every frame then why do you even watch movies?
Any professional strives to improve their craft. As I improve my skills, I'm a software engineer, my codes footprint reduces while it's efficiency increases. Likewise, I would expect as a compressionist's skills improve their encodes bitrates will decrease. Lossy compression is all about tricks that remove information while maintaining a level of transparency.
And 9 times out 10 this issue is only discussed to subvert HD DVD. Blood Diamond is the perfect example. High-Def Digest releases a review questioning the picture quality and before anyone else has seen it the "Warner is sacrificing BD for HD DVD" drums start pounding. Lo and behold, a month later when I receive my copy the disc looks great. And markedly better then the theatric presentation I attended.
When a real issue is found on an encode I'm with you. But when you are arrogantly quibbling over a meaningless metric I'll be enjoying the fruits of this hobby and watching some awesome movies in beautiful high definition.

HD DVD/BD fanboys need to realize that many of us PQ/AQ lovers are not saying that current transfers look bad. We're saying that they could look better. Even if that 1%+ difference is only visible to a small minority, isn't it worth it? What's the use of creating higher bitrate ceilings if you aren't going to use them to squeeze out that last bit of quality during encoding? I know HD DVD is handicapped when using lossless audio, but they should still maximize what's available. BD needs to stop the two lossless tracks nonsense since they are about 2Mbps (audio+video max bitrate) short of being able to do so without lowering the bitrate ceiling. Both formats need to forget PiP and seamless branching. (Perhaps not seamless branching. I'm not exactly sure how it affects bitrates.) Just do it on a separate encode and include two disks. When there is a format with bitrate ceilings around 100mbps then they can start adding all the fluff they want. Until then, give us PQ/AQ first. That's why we are buying HD media.

So let me get this straight; the rest of us should give up on extras and even educational material such as PiP so 1% of the population with “special eyes” and “golden ears” can feel better about their bit-rates?

Perhaps you could tell us mere mortals how to see the advantages offered by a higher bit-rate transfer. While you’re at it you can tell me how to tell the difference between LPCM and uncompressed Dolby TrueHD; if you can tell a difference on that one I REALLY want to know because it means we have grounds for a class action lawsuit against Dolby.

I can't hear a difference between LPCM and TrueHD and I never said I could. Not sure where that's coming from. I think LPCM is the best option for BD since it has the bitrates needed.
However, on a lot of material it's easy for anyone to see the difference between low and high rate video. I could care less about supplements. I just want the best encode possible for the film not something watered down for the sake of supplements or laziness.

If you really believe lots of Warner's titles couldn't look better to just about anybody, I've got some Sony HD DVD titles to sell you.

As the sig says.........

Bit rate is VERY important. I can't tell you how many times I've been enjoying a movie immensely, only to take a glance at the bitrate meter and have it ruin the experience. Even though I can't see or hear it, just knowing that the bitrate may be holding back the best that my aftermarket power cord can deliver really brings me out of the movie.

As a side project, I've whipped up a small applet that takes the bitrate and instead displays it as a fraction of the uncompressed rate of the movie. You have no idea how it makes my heart swell to see the bitrate jump from 0.03446% to 0.03582%!


http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c111/mic-el/smileys/rofl.gif

Hear that big swoosh? It was the sound of the above quote flying over the heads of those arguing about bit-rates.

Was that a swoosh? I thought it sounded a little more like tap-dancing, like they were tap-dancing around it....or something. :D

Boy, I'm gonna be DESTROYED for this, but I don't care about bitrate. I really don't. I don't pay attention to any of that kind of stuff. Maybe ignorance is bliss.

All's I care about is that the movie looks and sounds good. That's it. I don't need lossless sound or a certain bitrate or a specific compression, nor do I care too much about any of it, either. Not at this point in my technophile life anyway. I can see how others would be completely into all that stuff, but for me, I dunno, I'm more simple about it all, I guess. So...yeah.

Lemme have it.

I don't know for certain but didn't this whole bit rate issue start when someone tried to prove that mpeg2 (or was it avc) was better then vc-1?

I don't know for certain but didn't this whole bit rate issue start when someone tried to prove that mpeg2 (or was it avc) was better then vc-1?No. I think it started last summer when somebody who actually does encodes for these discs (Cjplay) got into it with Amir where Cjplay told us about what was really happening, which was VC-1 encodes hitting the bitrate limitations of HD DVD. It wasn't long after that that Cjplay was banned from posting here by his company for a while and when he was allowed to come back seemed to be much more careful. Months and months later on Cjplay was banned from posting at all by his company (that one followed a disagreement with the other side).

--Darin

In the BD software forum there is a thread going on basically setting up a tier system for movies based on their bitrate. I was actually curious, being HD DVD folk, how important the Bitrate of a movie is to you???
Below I've posted the synopsis of the BD bitrate thread to see what I'm talking about

Looks pretty dumb to me! All they need is another foolish yardstick for eliminating titles that look perfectly fine and are enjoyable to watch. Thank goodness none of the HD DVD players have a bitrate meter, or else we may be subjected to the same foolishness -- the tier thread is bad enough.

You know, my very first DVD player had a bitrate meter and it was interesting to take a look at for a while after I got it, but then it was basically forgotten about. It's the movie -- not the numbers. As long as the encode has sufficient bitrate to be transparent to the master (both audio and video), and under reasonable conditions (as in not 12" from a large screen), then I'm entirely satisfied.

The BD mongers are crazy. Thinking they need a Tier system based on bitrate like its the end all to video quality. lol. I love it.
Well, given a major criticism BR folks have of HD DVD and VC-1 is the lower bitrate, it's probably logical to take it to the Nth degree and start ranking on the basis of bitrate -- it's a virtual guarantee VC-1 will be at the bottom. I guess that means barely an improvement over SD DVD?

Looks pretty dumb to me!It was a joke (sarcasm by the person who started the thread) that it looks like somebody took seriously.

--Darin

HD DVD/BD fanboys need to realize that many of us PQ/AQ lovers are not saying that current transfers look bad. We're saying that they could look better. Even if that 1%+ difference is only visible to a small minority, isn't it worth it? What's the use of creating higher bitrate ceilings if you aren't going to use them to squeeze out that last bit of quality during encoding? I know HD DVD is handicapped when using lossless audio, but they should still maximize what's available. BD needs to stop the two lossless tracks nonsense since they are about 2Mbps (audio+video max bitrate) short of being able to do so without lowering the bitrate ceiling. Both formats need to forget PiP and seamless branching. (Perhaps not seamless branching. I'm not exactly sure how it affects bitrates.) Just do it on a separate encode and include two disks. When there is a format with bitrate ceilings around 100mbps then they can start adding all the fluff they want. Until then, give us PQ/AQ first. That's why we are buying HD media.

That may be what the A/V Freak wants, but that is absolutely not what will attract the other 99.999% of the population to HD video disc. The studios want a format that sells, not another LD. Additional bitrate that achieves essentially nothing, and at the expense of sellable interactive content, is the LAST thing they're interested in.

i see it like this.

240hp Lotus Exige can be faster around the track then a 500hp Vette Z06 with a better driver........ but the potential is there on the more powerful car to lap even faster times. Bluray has the potential to look better due to higher bandwiths, not that is necessarily true at this point.
I was blown away first time saw a movie on Super VHS, LD and DVDS, didn't think it could get much better then that but new technology's always out do themself. Why hate on more bandwidth?? Sure "hotfuzz" was one of the top hd movies I've seen, but you have to wonder if it could have looked even better with less compression. Just like TrueHD sound isn't gonna be better then DD+ sound but there is that potential. At the end of the day don't we want to have the best possible experience?

With advanced CODECs, how the bits are used are far more important than how many are used. Since it's clear that you and others pushing bitrate don't understand that (especially in the BR forum), it's also clear the studios shouldn't seriously listen to what you have to say on the subject. Technology is not half as simple as many around here choose to think, and we are far better off with people knowing what they are doing deciding on the rates, than people who know next to nothing, but don't yet understand that!

I've seen the bitrate limitation for HD DVD mentioned, yet my own encodes point to peak bit rates of 41.24643 mbps, and these play perfectly on HD DVD.

What's up?


***** Loading: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts


2007-08-10 22:29:21 Opening file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts, filetype is: MPEG2 TS PIDs: x20 / x21
2007-08-10 22:29:21 Startup - Number of PTS checks: 8
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Opening file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts, filetype is: MPEG2 TS PIDs: x20 / x21
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Startup - Number of PTS checks: 8
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:29:22 HDTV material detected, switching on YUV acceleration, width: 1440, height: 1080
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Using display driver: VMR9
2007-08-10 22:29:22 VMR9 (Windowed), MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12
2007-08-10 22:29:22 VMR9 (Windowed), MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12
2007-08-10 22:29:23 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:31:56 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:57 Sampled peak video bit rate of 41.24643 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:58 Sampled peak video bit rate of 41.24643 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:58 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:59 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:00 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:01 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:02 TS->Auto Mux with 8 samples: Mux Mbps: 43.74341, avg video: 25.313, peak video: 41.246, audio: 0.420, PSI: 0.015
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Starting new Frame Accurate Output Segment: start:466365.922 (00:07:46.11), end:579979.422 (00:09:40.00)
2007-08-10 22:33:36 Output complete. Input file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts
Output file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\test.ts
Mode: Frame Accurate
TS Video packets: 1939394
TS Audio packets: 35520
TS PSI packets: 2274
TS Null packets: 0
TS MUX Rate (Mbps): 43.74341
-TS Discontinuities: 1
Video output frames: 3406
Audio output frames: 3552
Processing time (secs): 96
Processed frames/sec: 35.41
Actual Video Bitrate: 25.09 Mbps

So let me get this straight; the rest of us should give up on extras and even educational material such as PiP so 1% of the population with “special eyes” and “golden ears” can feel better about their bit-rates?

Perhaps you could tell us mere mortals how to see the advantages offered by a higher bit-rate transfer. While you’re at it you can tell me how to tell the difference between LPCM and uncompressed Dolby TrueHD; if you can tell a difference on that one I REALLY want to know because it means we have grounds for a class action lawsuit against Dolby.

I agree whole-heartedly, but I think you mean "lossless", since compression is what both Dolby and DTS are all about :)! (Compression does not equal lossy, it can be either lossy or lossless. Which is why the expression "uncompressed PCM" is so nonsensical, PCM is inherently uncompressed -- neither the word lossy nor lossless applies to it.)

It was a joke (sarcasm by the person who started the thread) that it looks like somebody took seriously.

--Darin

I can believe that, though, unfortunately, I can believe the other way as well :)!

I can't hear a difference between LPCM and TrueHD and I never said I could. Not sure where that's coming from. I think LPCM is the best option for BD since it has the bitrates needed.
However, on a lot of material it's easy for anyone to see the difference between low and high rate video

Yes please name for me a non MPEG2 transfer that has substantial PQ gains due to increased bandwidth.

No. I think it started last summer when somebody who actually does encodes for these discs (Cjplay) got into it with Amir where Cjplay told us about what was really happening, which was VC-1 encodes hitting the bitrate limitations of HD DVD. It wasn't long after that that Cjplay was banned from posting here by his company for a while and when he was allowed to come back seemed to be much more careful. Months and months later on Cjplay was banned from posting at all by his company (that one followed a disagreement with the other side).

--Darin

Darin, you seem to imply that Amir had something to do with the sacking of Cjplay.

Do you?

I dont give a **** about bitrate....just good picture quality and audio quality....if it can be achieved with lower bitrate, I dont care.

I've seen the bitrate limitation for HD DVD mentioned, yet my own encodes point to peak bit rates of 41.24643 mbps, and these play perfectly on HD DVD.

What's up?


***** Loading: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts


2007-08-10 22:29:21 Opening file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts, filetype is: MPEG2 TS PIDs: x20 / x21
2007-08-10 22:29:21 Startup - Number of PTS checks: 8
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Opening file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts, filetype is: MPEG2 TS PIDs: x20 / x21
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Startup - Number of PTS checks: 8
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:29:22 HDTV material detected, switching on YUV acceleration, width: 1440, height: 1080
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Using display driver: VMR9
2007-08-10 22:29:22 VMR9 (Windowed), MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12
2007-08-10 22:29:22 VMR9 (Windowed), MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12
2007-08-10 22:29:23 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:31:56 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:57 Sampled peak video bit rate of 41.24643 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:58 Sampled peak video bit rate of 41.24643 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:58 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:59 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:00 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:01 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:02 TS->Auto Mux with 8 samples: Mux Mbps: 43.74341, avg video: 25.313, peak video: 41.246, audio: 0.420, PSI: 0.015
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Starting new Frame Accurate Output Segment: start:466365.922 (00:07:46.11), end:579979.422 (00:09:40.00)
2007-08-10 22:33:36 Output complete. Input file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts
Output file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\test.ts
Mode: Frame Accurate
TS Video packets: 1939394
TS Audio packets: 35520
TS PSI packets: 2274
TS Null packets: 0
TS MUX Rate (Mbps): 43.74341
-TS Discontinuities: 1
Video output frames: 3406
Audio output frames: 3552
Processing time (secs): 96
Processed frames/sec: 35.41
Actual Video Bitrate: 25.09 Mbps

So you authored some HD DVD over 40 mbps? Home made video or something? And it played back fine on a HD DVD player?

I've seen the bitrate limitation for HD DVD mentioned, yet my own encodes point to peak bit rates of 41.24643 mbps, and these play perfectly on HD DVD.

What's up?


***** Loading: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts


2007-08-10 22:29:21 Opening file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts, filetype is: MPEG2 TS PIDs: x20 / x21
2007-08-10 22:29:21 Startup - Number of PTS checks: 8
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Opening file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts, filetype is: MPEG2 TS PIDs: x20 / x21
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Startup - Number of PTS checks: 8
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:29:22 HDTV material detected, switching on YUV acceleration, width: 1440, height: 1080
2007-08-10 22:29:22 Using display driver: VMR9
2007-08-10 22:29:22 VMR9 (Windowed), MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12
2007-08-10 22:29:22 VMR9 (Windowed), MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12
2007-08-10 22:29:23 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:31:56 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:57 Sampled peak video bit rate of 41.24643 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:58 Sampled peak video bit rate of 41.24643 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:58 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:31:59 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:00 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:01 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Sampled peak video bit rate of 32.99715 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)
2007-08-10 22:32:02 TS->Auto Mux with 8 samples: Mux Mbps: 43.74341, avg video: 25.313, peak video: 41.246, audio: 0.420, PSI: 0.015
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Bumping mux rate to: 25.000 Mbps to accomodate video bit rate of: 25.000
2007-08-10 22:32:02 Starting new Frame Accurate Output Segment: start:466365.922 (00:07:46.11), end:579979.422 (00:09:40.00)
2007-08-10 22:33:36 Output complete. Input file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\Carribean1_cnvt.ts
Output file: C:\Users\Thomas.ThomasRoper-PC\Videos\test.ts
Mode: Frame Accurate
TS Video packets: 1939394
TS Audio packets: 35520
TS PSI packets: 2274
TS Null packets: 0
TS MUX Rate (Mbps): 43.74341
-TS Discontinuities: 1
Video output frames: 3406
Audio output frames: 3552
Processing time (secs): 96
Processed frames/sec: 35.41
Actual Video Bitrate: 25.09 Mbps

I think the hardware spec for HD DVD is something like 36.8 Mbps and they capped the software at about 30 Mbps. It just may be the players will operate out of their range (which is good to know).

I think the hardware spec for HD DVD is something like 36.8 Mbps and they capped the software at about 30 Mbps. It just may be the players will operate out of their range (which is good to know).

It's not really outside the limits. From what I know all the HD DVD drives in HD DVD players are 2X, but studios only author HD DVDs to 1X, 30.24 mbps. So it's not outside the real limit of the drive, just outside the limit currently used by major studios. amir has been talking about 1.5X speed for the TL51 discs, and even though I don't care what bit rate is used so long as I get a nice picture and audio track I hope the TL51 discs and 1.5X bandwidth are utilized so there isn't so much heated debate over the topic.

So you authored some HD DVD over 40 mbps? Home made video or something? And it played back fine on a HD DVD player?

Flawless, on the A1 and A2 Toshibas that I own.

It's just generic 1080i mpeg2 HDV video from a Canon XH-A1 camcorder. This is the log file generated when the m2t stream is converted to program stream for authoring to HD DVD.

It says what it says, the peak bit rate exceeds the header. The encoding is done by the Digic processor hardware inside the camcorder, it's not re-encoded anywhere. In other words, HDV (the camcorder recording format) video is natively compatible with HD DVD, and the peak encoded bit rate is higher than what some people are saying HD DVD is supposed to be able to support. Obviously, that isn't be the case, although you can expect somebody to try and put a different spin on it.

Flawless, on the A1 and A2 Toshibas that I own.

It's just generic 1080i mpeg2 HDV video from a Canon XH-A1 camcorder. This is the log file generated when the m2t stream is converted to program stream for authoring to HD DVD.

It says what it says, the peak bit rate exceeds the header. The encoding is done by the Digic processor hardware inside the camcorder, it's not re-encoded anywhere. In other words, HDV (the camcorder recording format) video is natively compatible with HD DVD, and the peak encoded bit rate is higher than what some people are saying HD DVD is supposed to be able to support. Obviously, that isn't be the case, although you can expect somebody to try and put a different spin on it.

Well that's good news for the possibility of higher bandwidth for HD DVD movies in the future. Thanks for your post

I think it's simply hilarious to see people watching their bitrate meter more than the movie. If they see artifacting, blurring, etc. in the movie, and check the meter, and it's low, then yes, okay, bitrate is important.

But establishing tiers based on bitrate is like establishing tiers based on the number of special effects artists that worked on a movie, and assuming that had something to do with the end product.

I'm sure most of the "Tier 0" Bitrate movies will be MPEG2 and LPCM, which are incredibly wasteful of bandwidth and have to work harder to do what VC1 or AVC can do in less space/bandwidth.

Bitrate is like horsepower or money - it's a means to an end, but not the end itself. I saw that thread in the BR section on bit rate and it convinced me there is a subset of users that are hung up on numbers, like overclockers who have to get that extra 50Mhz out of the CPU clock, when in the end, the difference is utterly unnoticeable to a human being.

Whacked out.