Sharkwater 1080i?

[uzun]

I purchased the BD disc Sharkwater today. It says the feature is 1080p on the cover, but the PS3 plays it back as 1080/60i.

I'm certain the data must be in 1080/60i format, since all other BD discs I have play at 1080/24p except for those that are 1080i. It's encoded MPEG-2 1080/60i at about 25mbps I think. With a normal Dolby 5.1 soundtrack at 448kbps.

Does anyone else have this disc, have you noticed the same thing? My "desktop" still comes up 1080/60p and all my other feature films show up as 1080/24p, so it has to be the data on this disc.

I sort of feel it's false and misleading advertising, I might as well have just rented the dvd.

[Makaveli Tha Don]

Are you using a PS3? This was the case with galapagos as well, it says 1080p but it was actually shot at 1080i and if I play it on my PS3 my tv displays it as coming out at 1080i, but if I play it on my sammy 5000 it shows as being 1080p. btw I picked up sharkwater today too, but I haven't gotten around to opening it up and trying it out yet...

[grommet]

uzun, yes... it's 1080i. The high-def video source was likely 1080i, too. Is there a "problem"? 1080i isn't any lower resolution than 1080p. Some/most standalone players convert 1080i to 1080p. (Your Samsung, Makaveli.) The PS3 doesn't. In your case, your TV does the conversion.

[GizmoDVD]

Yes, its 1080i.

[GizmoDVD]

I can't even get a timestamp to show up on my PS3 either...what a lackluster release.

[uzun]

It looks decent, it has a lot of stretched 480i footage, and a lot of it seems to have been improperly deinterlaced then reinterlaced with those errors.

It has good looking scenes, but mostly it looks pretty bad for even a normal DVD release. I would still recommend it, its an excellent doc but there are image quality issues that have been made worse by post processing associated with this disc.

I just feel it should be labeled properly, the data on the disc is 1080/60i not 1080p. I sort of assumed it was 1080/24p because it had a theatrical release.

So to answer grommet, yes there is a problem. The disc is mislabeled as being 1080p, its carelessly authored, and there is a lot of improper video processing associated with this title.

in the case of the Galapagos Blu-Ray disc, it was also improperly labeled but in fact there was no real issue. The disc was well authored and not plagued by massive video processing errors introduced by the creators, making the material look bad. In the case of sharkwater there are a lot of scenes that are just horrible looking, much worse than they should have been even though the material was originally 480i (much of this film is clearly SD-Video, although much of it is HD as well).

[bplewis24]

Originally Posted by uzun

Does anyone else have this disc, have you noticed the same thing? .

I watched it on the PS3 last night as a rental from netflix. It was in 1080i.

Originally Posted by GizmoDVD

I can't even get a timestamp to show up on my PS3 either...what a lackluster release.

Yes, this was incredibly annoying. I often check to see how long a movie has left to go to decide whether I'll watch the rest later or not. But the goddam thing doesn't work. I felt like I was being tortured. The disc definitely has issues, along with the extensive use of upscaled SD footage.

Brandon

[lgans316]

So this title joins the T3 bandwagon. Thanks to all for the info.

[Rieper]

Is Galapagos BD really 1080i?

[nm88]

Originally Posted by grommet

1080i isn't any lower resolution than 1080p.

Yes it is.

[vancouver]

^^^explain the science behind that.

1080p does not have more lines of resolution then 1080i.

[Makaveli Tha Don]

far as I know 1080i and 1080p are both 1920x1200 res. The difference being 1080i is interlaced, and 1080p is NOT. So if you have a tv that properly deinterlaces you in fact wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p.

I believe there was a fairly lengthy thread about this very subject not too long ago on here...

[PooperScooper]

The only time you might be able to complain about 1080i60 output is if the source was recorded as 1080p60 and then interlaced. But this does not happen.

larry

[bplewis24]

Originally Posted by Rieper

Is Galapagos BD really 1080i?

Yes, but it looks much better than this title. The problem isn't so much the 1080i portion but the upscaled SD portions, which are pretty common.

Brandon

[uzun]

Galapagos is 1080i but as was mentioned several times, it's not plagued by horrendous post processing that's done to the material on sharkwater. Sharkwater is also 1080i, and parts of it look fine, but much of it looks as if it has been improperly converted to 24hz, then converted back with those frame rate conversion errors, so many scenes "stutter" and have jerky motion.

It also has a lot of "stretched" 4x3 480i material that looks horrible as well.

Combine this and the inability to skip chapters, or see a timestamp while playing, and you have one shoddy BD release.

1080i is the same resolution as 1080p, but there are many benefits to shooting 1080/60p and displaying / storing it as 1080/60p, or 1080/24p. You avoid all sorts of issues associated with deinterlacing material for display on a progressive device. And all modern digital displays are not interlaced. So to blithely state 1080/60i is the same as 1080/60p on a modern 1080p display isn't accurate. For the most part you wouldn't know the difference if the material is deinterlaced correctly, but there are SO many steps along the way prone to error, it's really best to avoid interlaced altogether when possible.

[bplewis24]

I was going to assume that the HDD review had a typo, but Kenneth Brown goes in depth about the "1080p MPEG2" encode in Sharkwater.

As one would expect from most documentaries of this sort, the picture quality in 'Sharkwater' is at the mercy of its various video sources. The 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer looks gorgeous when it cuts to undersea footage captured on HD cameras, but takes a serious hit any time it's forced to rely on standard definition footage when Stewart climbs out of the water.

Shots filmed in HD are nearly perfect. Colors pour off the screen and give the aquatic life a three dimensional quality that was simply breathtaking. Better still, the oceanic vistas are sharp and packed with detail -- I could count every scale and practically feel the texture of every fish. These moments easily live up to the excellent PQ exhibited on high-def heavy hitters like 'Planet Earth' and 'Galapagos.'

I have to say, I completely disagree with that. IMO even the 1080i (?) HD shots looked pretty soft even when it isn't suffering from other issues that uzun touches on. He does comment on the SD material, though:

The SD footage, on the other hand, is blocky, stretched, dull, and bland. Static interview scenes fare better than shaky handheld camera shots, but none of it looks any better than an upscaled DVD presentation. However, the SD elements shouldn't scare anyone away from 'Sharkwater,' and serious documentary fans will shrug it off as par for the course.

I honestly wouldn't recommend this for viewing to any buddies. The content is good (and if you read his review of the movie itself I agree completely with his description of it) enough to sit though, but I'd almost rather watch the DVD version because of all the issues with the BD release. That is of course assuming I could skip chapters and see where I'm at in the movie with the display button on the DVD version.

Brandon

[Ruined]

Most documentaries and concerts are shot at 30fps.

If you want the original framerate preserved, you need to deliver it on Blu-ray on 1080i60 as Blu-ray spec does not support 1080p30 video encoding. Sharkwater may have very well been shot at 1080p30, but needed to be encoded at 1080i60 to be compatible with Blu-ray spec.

Downconverting 30fps to 24fps yields ugly and unnatural motion blur, and this unfortuantely has been done for some BD concerts so they could market them as 1080p. Not only does this downconversion fail to reflect the original framerate, but it downright looks crappy in comparison to the original source framerate.

So 1080i is okay, as its the only way to deliver 30fps material on Blu-ray without destroying the original framerate. Don't rag on companies for delivering 1080i otherwise we will get framerate-compromised 1080p24 versions of what were originally 30fps films/concerts.

[GizmoDVD]

The HDD review has several errors. For one the Blu-ray version has exclusive feature. The
Blu-ray version is also missing a feature present on the DVD. I reviewed this title last week and mentioned it in my review.

[bplewis24]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Don't rag on companies for delivering 1080i otherwise we will get framerate-compromised 1080p24 versions of what were originally 30fps films/concerts.

I don't know if you're responding to me or not, but I'm not ragging on 1080i. I'm merely pointing out that the HDD review is incorrect in saying it's 1080p, and also that this is a poor encode. The fact that it's 1080i is somewhat coincidental. As I stated earlier other 1080i encodes look much better than this.

Brandon

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by bplewis24

I don't know if you're responding to me or not, but I'm not ragging on 1080i. I'm merely pointing out that the HDD review is incorrect in saying it's 1080p, and also that this is a poor encode. The fact that it's 1080i is somewhat coincidental. As I stated earlier other 1080i encodes look much better than this.

No it was just a general post. I see a lot of people react negatively when they read something is 1080i, when they shouldn't if it is a documentary or a concert.