Warner's Filtered 1080i Masters - Witness the Horror - *Pics*

[benes]

This is an old topic but there has been some renewed discussion on it lately. So I decided to take some screencaps and document the issue.

The exact cause is still in question. But we know the effect is horrible jaggies. They are most easily visible on a 1080p display.

These have sometimes been referred to as "bobbed" masters but I don't believe that is correct.

[_Avarice_]

reserved 12?

[lgans316]

benes. Thanks for the info. I also appreciate you for putting a note about this in your spec thread. As long as the PQ is top notch do we really have to bother about movies being authored using filtered 1080i masters ? Also I would like to know when and why the Studios will prefer this technique ?

[Laserfan]

Does anyone know: Is there anything to be done about the "vertical jaggies" i.e. do there exist clean frames within these movies, or is every frame hosed?

Wondering if I rip one and run an Avisynth script (e.g. SeparateFields) might I be able to find clean frames?

[FrancescoP]

Originally Posted by benes

Lethal Weapon 1 - Blu-ray & HD DVD - VC1

Some people have labeled this as a 1080i master, however I do not see any evidence of it. Judge for yourself:

No traces of VDF. I removed the VDF tag from the HD DVD pq list. Thanks.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=942015

[Bjoern Roy]

Hey benes,

good work. I don't see any indication that this is related to 1080i filtering, though.

I quickly analyzed a few pics and they all had 960 instead of 1920 pixels of HORIZONTAL resolution. At first i thought its downsampled to 960 and then upscaled again using nearest neighbor filtering. But it appears to be more complicated than that. Its similar to CUE, but in vertical and it doesn't match up (just swapping neighboring lines doesn't match up).

Some also had some vertical filtering, but that is NOT the issue here. And why this is supposed to be related to 1080i is beyond me.

Whatever the cause. We urgently need a complete list of titles like this.

Thanks again for the work
Bjoern

[Kram Sacul]

I love these threads. Great job, benes.

I'm also not sure that the jaggies are the result of filtering. Maybe some kind of improper 1080i to 1080p conversion or other mistake. They've shown up in many Warner HD transfers that have been broadcasted. Batman, Wild Wild West, Mavrick, etc. The Shining had it bad as well but thankfully the HDM versions are clean.

As for any other suspicious titles I'm very curious if The Twilight Zone: The Movie has it. The broadcast version sure did:

[Bjoern Roy]

Stop it guys, you are killing me

These pictures have jaggies due to limited horizontal resolution! 960 like i said above.

This has nothing to do with filtering due to 1080i nor 1080i to 1080p conversion, both would operate on the vertical dimension.

I want the source of the rumor that this is 1080i filter related. And names of people who believed it

[lgans316]

Do you mean to say that these titles are not 1920x1080p ? If so what's the correct resolution ?

[Kram Sacul]

They are 1920x1080p on the disc but a problem with the master results in the vertical lines being screwed up. Think of it as an upconvert but only vertically.

Did Warner expect people not to notice or are their screens really small and these problematic transfes went by unnoticed? At some point a flag sould've been raised.

Thank you, benes. I was worried about Twilight Zone. Looks like Warner corrected the problem so there is hope for the other titles to see proper releases.

[Kram Sacul]

Originally Posted by benes

Hmm. Anyone else see what's wrong with this picture?

[SirDrexl]

Yeah, they said around the summer of 2006 they weren't going to be releasing any more of these, except for a few already in the pipeline. I think Willy Wonka may have been the last one (although some of the titles already done for HD DVD got released on BD in 2007).

[FrancescoP]

Originally Posted by Bjoern Roy

Stop it guys, you are killing me

These pictures have jaggies due to limited horizontal resolution! 960 like i said above.

This has nothing to do with filtering due to 1080i nor 1080i to 1080p conversion, both would operate on the vertical dimension.

I want the source of the rumor that this is 1080i filter related. And names of people who believed it

The source was a Warner insider.

It was confirmed by many insiders after that, you can read the quotes in this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post11254282

I report all the quotes here for reference:

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

None of those titles were bobbed. The master was filtered, but proper de-interlacing was done.
It was bad vertical domain filtering on the master.

Well instead of guessing as to what is wrong, I got the information from the people doing the work.
The issues were in the master as a result of poor filtering. It had nothing to do with improper
de-interlacing. There are people on this forum that can give you more information on it if they want.
I am sure you guys can figure out who to ask.

I just report what I know, and the sources I use for information aren't speculative by any means.
Whether you agree with me or not means nothing at the end of the day, unless you can come up with a
source that is more credible (which frankly would be impossible given who the sources are) than you can
literally battle this out all day and I won't budge. I understand exactly what it LOOKS like, but there
are LOTS of things you can do to video to make it look bad, I am just saying that the reason people are
saying these look bad is incorrect. I am not saying that there isn't an issue, just not the issue you
think it is.

The master had the vertical domain filtering done to it already, not when doing this encode. The vertical
pixels are essentially doubled because of the filtering. It looks almost like the scan was made at 960x1080
rather than the full 1920x1080. Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by ForceFlow

yes. all posters above are correct. Titles was filtered -- ask Josh Z, from what I can recall
he also heard from the source and was spreading the truth.

Originally Posted by TrevorS

Not bobbed (Fettastic refused to change the markings on his Tier lists), they are "vertically filtered".
Apparently that was a frequent process applied to 1080i masters to improve their appearance on 1080i
display's -- supposedly it reduces the jaggies.

The only way they can can solve the problem is to build a new master from the ground up, and I guess they
aren't in an immediate rush to spend the money. Bobbing would be worse, that would actually fully discard
half the original picture information. The vertical filtering apparently just trims the vertical resolution
a little.

Previously, the following titles were supposedly confirmed as having been "vertically filtered"
(not bobbed -- that was always wrong):

Enter The Dragon - 1080i master (per KrisD)
The Fugitive - 1080i master
Full Metal Jacket - 1080i master
Lethal Weapon - 1080i master (per KrisD)
Lethal Weapon 2 - 1080i master
The Perfect Storm - 1080i master

Bobbed means they throw away one of the two fields from each frame and then duplicate the remaining one.
This avoids temporal motion artifacts within a given frame (since the fields are no longer time offset),
but at the expense of half the picture information.

Originally Posted by awmurray

Forget the tier discussions on this title, too. I tried to get it moved higher but it didn't work
(no love for this title). And apparently it wasn't bobbed (as it says on the tier thread) either. Some have
tried to get that note changed, but to no avail.

I think you should at least rent it and judge for yourself-- I just don't understand the criticism that this
transfer has taken. Out of the supposedly "bobbed" titles, only Full Metal Jacket really is obviously FUBAR'ed.

Originally Posted by Josh Z

The issue was that Warner had used older 1080i masters that had been vertically filtered (to reduce aliasing on 1080i broadcast) on some of their movies. This leaves them lacking in detail, and when deinterlaced for HD DVD it introduced jaggies on diagonal lines.

From another forum too:

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Yes, WB confirmed that this happened -- bob-linedoubling an older 1080i60 master instead of using a proper 1080p24 master or properly deinterlacing the 1080i60 master to get full frame-reconstruction for a *correct* 1080p24 signal for the authored HD DVD.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...ted-1080p.html

From a DVDTalk Review of FMJ:

Originally Posted by Joshua Zyber

Like the HD DVD before it, Warner authored this Blu-ray disc from an older HD master originally transferred in 1080i format and only recently deinterlaced to 1080p in the studio. Unfortunately, at the time the master was struck, heavy vertical domain filtering was applied to reduce the appearance of aliasing and interlace artifacts on 1080i TVs. The process has the side effects of losing vertical resolution detail and introducing jagged artifacts and shimmer in diagonal lines when reassembled to 1080p or other progressive resolutions.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=24109

[Kram Sacul]

Originally Posted by TrevorS
The only way they can can solve the problem is to build a new master from the ground up, and I guess they
aren't in an immediate rush to spend the money.

I was going to say this is untrue because of Twilight Zone The Movie having no jaggies on the HDM versions but upon closer inspection they look different enough to be from seperate transfers, or is it just the color timing?

Different transfer?:

Broadcast

HD-DVD/BRD

Has it been confirmed that the new Full Metal Jacket is a new transfer and not a fixed version of the old master? I remember captures that were posted and the colors were indeed better but they might've just been tweaked.

Bobbing would be worse, that would actually fully discard
half the original picture information. The vertical filtering apparently just trims the vertical resolution
a little.

Isn't that what we're seeing though? Half the vertical resolution is definitely gone on the first FMJ and Lethal Weapon 2. The other affected titles seem to vary in jagginess.

[DaViD Boulet]

Has WB made any statement about not continuing to release such poor HD DVD/BD product with these sub-standard masters? What's the latest/most-recent affected title to have been released?

Whether it's improperly bobbed/flagged/deinterlaced masters, or simply older masters that were compromised by filtering/processing and cannot be fixed, it doesn't matter. New film-to-digital transfers should be struck.

[MSmith83]

Originally Posted by SirDrexl

I think Willy Wonka may have been the last one (although some of the titles already done for HD DVD got released on BD in 2007).

That's a fair assessment. Willy Wonka is definitely the last title I've seen to suffer from this issue.

[DaViD Boulet]

Sounds like it's an issue that's been effectively dealt with at WB in that case.

Though it's a bummer about this title... it's one I've been waiting to get on Blu-ray though now I'm in no rush for WB to bring it to that format! hopefully, as with full metal jacket, maybe this one will get revisited... with more luck for its first appearance on Blu (and re-issue on HD DVD).

[Johnsteph10]

Why bring this up again? It has been discussed to death in multiple other threads.

Simply do a search.

[Kram Sacul]

Because until now we haven't had captures of Perfect Storm, The Fugitive, and The Twilight Zone. What would you rather talk about?

[Brad Ley]

Originally Posted by benes

Lethal Weapon 1 - Blu-ray & HD DVD - VC1

Some people have labeled this as a 1080i master, however I do not see any evidence of it. Judge for yourself:

Yeah, I've never understood the complaints about Lethal Weapon 1. It's just not there. Lethal Weapon 2, on the other hand, is the WORST high def title released on either format. The fact that it ranks as high as it does on those tier lists is a testament to how ill-conceived those tier lists are. How you could rank that disc as anything but unwatchable is beyond me. I actually have to crank my sharpness almost all the way down to hide the artifacts. Wonka is just as bad. From there they get better.

[Kram Sacul]

I don't see any jaggies on LW1 as well. I guess it got the guilt by association treatment.

The jaggies on L2 do seem to be the most obvious. The pixels are huge! Enter the Dragon and FMJ look pretty bad as well.

[mhafner]

I have several WB broadcast titles on D-VHS that have the issue too.

[FrancescoP]

Originally Posted by Brad Ley

Lethal Weapon 2, on the other hand, is the WORST high def title released on either format. The fact that it ranks as high as it does on those tier lists is a testament to how ill-conceived those tier lists are. How you could rank that disc as anything but unwatchable is beyond me.

On the HD DVD list is ranked at the bottom of the lowest tier:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=942015

On the Blu-ray list is in tier 4 and above LW1:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=858316

Proof that the voting system works better.

[Kram Sacul]

The Breakfast Club really looks that bad?

[trbarry]

Originally Posted by Bjoern Roy

Stop it guys, you are killing me

These pictures have jaggies due to limited horizontal resolution! 960 like i said above.

This has nothing to do with filtering due to 1080i nor 1080i to 1080p conversion, both would operate on the vertical dimension.

I want the source of the rumor that this is 1080i filter related. And names of people who believed it

I don't know if I believe it but it is possible. Most of the various 'bob' algorithms try to make an entire frame from a 1920x540 field, using various scaling or doubling. This creates jaggies though it only makes the 'bobbing' up and down motion if you try to do it from both the top and bottom fields to get a full 60 (or 48, 50) fps.

More problems come about from attempts to remove the obvious jaggies introduced above.

Often it is felt you can't remove much more vertical information so to reduce jaggies (stair step) on diagonal lines you instead/also filter horizontally and it appears you also have less horizontal resolution. Though you still won't have really smooth diagonals unless the original picture had only vertical detail below the new 540 line Nyquist limit and thus avoids the ambiguities introduced by using only half the vertical samples.

I believe some of the deinterlacing chips have these properties.

- Tom

PS - Even worse, sometimes credits or graphic overlays are introduced after telecine to 60i, creating more obvious problems. Dunno if that happened here anywhere.

[Laserfan]

Tom you are an Avisynth wizard--would I be wasting my time ripping TPS to disk and attempting a repair? Maybe see jaggies in every field/frame so it's in no way fixable?

[Kram Sacul]

The video is stored as 1080p so the jaggies are baked in. FUBAR.

I imagine scaling the video down to 540p or another res and then up to 1080p would eliminate most of the jaggies.

[Laserfan]

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul

The video is stored as 1080p so the jaggies are baked in. FUBAR.

I imagine scaling the video down to 540p or another res and then up to 1080p would eliminate most of the jaggies.

Wonder if re-rezzed smoothness might beat hi-rez jaggies? Guess I will give this a try; I also just got "The Fugitive" in the Vol. 2 pack, so won't be watching it until I see if the problem can be tuned somehow...

[Laserfan]

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul

the jaggies are baked in. FUBAR.

"You ain't just whistlin' Dixie, there, Brother" (I think that's from Bugs B.)

I ripped & loaded it and it's jagged on every image, though of course certain shapes look worse than others. This is from Perfect Storm.

How could you, Warner? "The horror...the horror!"

[trbarry]

Originally Posted by Laserfan

Tom you are an Avisynth wizard--would I be wasting my time ripping TPS to disk and attempting a repair? Maybe see jaggies in every field/frame so it's in no way fixable?

Sorry, it is beyond my meager powers. It is lost to the dark side.

- Tom