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U-571 comparison *PIX* - Page 4

post #91 of 184
8/25/08 at 9:24am
Quote:
DNRed product will produce a lower average video bitrate ceteris paribus.

I don't believe the bitrate is lower on the BD version because of DVNR. When you set the avg. bitrate in an encoder, it will most likely hit it. If I encoded a movie w/ and w/o DVNR, and set the bitrate to x Mbps, then it will hit x Mbps.

I believe the bitrate is based on available disc space. I am confused, is this disc a BD25 or BD50?
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post #92 of 184
8/25/08 at 9:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by sspears View Post

i am confused, is this disc a bd25 or bd50?

bd25
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post #93 of 184
8/25/08 at 11:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh Z View Post

Knowing how Universal operates, it's unlikely that they would remaster the movie to get rid of the e.e., so they probably applied the DNR to the old master in order to tone down the ringing.

It's unlikely they'd use spatial DNR to tone down ringing, that would cause some serious damage to the high frequencies (worse than there already is!)

I'd love to get some explanation from them over this, it's bizarre that they actually took the time to make them look worse than the HD DVDs!

Quote:
Originally Posted by sspears View Post

I don't believe the bitrate is lower on the BD version because of DVNR. When you set the avg. bitrate in an encoder, it will most likely hit it. If I encoded a movie w/ and w/o DVNR, and set the bitrate to x Mbps, then it will hit x Mbps.

I believe the bitrate is based on available disc space. I am confused, is this disc a BD25 or BD50?

Yeah, that'd depend on how the Bit Rate Control on the encoder was set up. It's quite possible that they have some Automatic control that sets the rate accordingly (whilst still not going over a certain limit). Most Universal discs have quite strange file sizes for the feature, so that scenario seems likely (it's not as if they're actually filling the disc based on capacity).
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post #94 of 184
8/25/08 at 11:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh Z View Post

I haven't watched the Blu-ray for U-571 (frankly, I don't like the movie enough to buy another copy), but some of the praise for the HD DVD is a little ridiculous. The HD DVD has quite a bit of edge ringing, especially noticeable during any scene above-water and during most of the close-ups of pressure gauges and the like.

Knowing how Universal operates, it's unlikely that they would remaster the movie to get rid of the e.e., so they probably applied the DNR to the old master in order to tone down the ringing.

This seems to me to be a "pick your poison" scenario.

ringing/added EE was in this master from day one on the SD DVD, then D-Theater and then HD-DVD and is pretty bad in some cases, but that is not the issue here, it is the grain/detail removal

I don't know if DNR would tone down EE, that is a very good question, my first thought would be no but I have no idea

-Gary
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post #95 of 184
8/25/08 at 11:10am
If anything, some of The Mummy shots on BD had slightly more EE than the HD DVD, so I doubt DNR was used to tone down the EE. I wouldn't be surprised if the EE is worse on the BD version for this movie. Maybe Xylon can grab some EE shots?
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post #96 of 184
8/25/08 at 11:47am
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Originally Posted by Gary Murrell View Post

this was a common misconception about D-Theater, the image did NOT degrade, EVER! it was in fact digital, you could watch a tape so much that it would start to wear and you would get image dropouts like satellite, but the PQ/AQ NEVER changed, this is incorrect info

-Gary




Image or sound drop out is a degradation if it wasn't there to begin with and it's due to the tape wear, which will occur like it or not at one point.
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post #97 of 184
8/25/08 at 12:03pm
Quote:


It's quite possible that they have some Automatic control that sets the rate accordingly (whilst still not going over a certain limit).

I worked on the VC-1 encoder they use. It will hit the target within a tolerance.
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post #98 of 184
8/25/08 at 12:11pm
Thanks for the info
Did you work on the Sonic encoder or Microsoft's?
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post #99 of 184
8/25/08 at 12:16pm
Microsofts.
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post #100 of 184
8/25/08 at 12:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidHir View Post

If anything, some of The Mummy shots on BD had slightly more EE than the HD DVD, so I doubt DNR was used to tone down the EE. I wouldn't be surprised if the EE is worse on the BD version for this movie. Maybe Xylon can grab some EE shots?

The EE is more or less the same, it's just slightly more visible on the Blu-ray since it isn't masked as much by the grain (another "added bonus" of DNR.)
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post #101 of 184
8/25/08 at 1:42pm
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Originally Posted by Xylon View Post

The brutal honest truth is aside from the more compression artifacts visible, the D-Theater Mpeg-2 version (23 mbps) has more fine detail present and film grain than the Blu-ray VC-1 (15.70 mbps). The low bitrate on the Blu-ray is expected when you remove grain and HF details. No need for the extra bits. While the HD DVD VC-1 at only 19.44 mbps has the grain. Has the HF details.

Theoretically the bigger disc space and higher peak bitrate should in theory offer significant PQ improvement. But excessive DNR because of some *****! thinking that film grain does not belong to a movie has made all this a moot point.

The HD DVD version wins this one.

This pretty much sums it up. Unfortunate that Universal would effectively waste resources on this. In this case, a port of the HD DVD transfer would suffice and they could put resources into other masters (40 year old virgin, anybody?).

Brandon
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post #102 of 184
8/25/08 at 1:51pm
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Originally Posted by Gekkou View Post

Oh god if they mess up The Thing I will go apesh**!

Cut it out Universal it's not funny!

Me too. I pray "The Thing" turns out OK...
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post #103 of 184
8/25/08 at 2:48pm
DNR, edge enhancement, encoder and encode settings. So many knobs to twitter makes it easy to mess up. Especially when you can't see what you are doing. I get a kick out of every time I see people monitoring their work on a CRT based HD monitor. It doesn't work. The monitors themselves are filters (not to mention they use SMPTE C phosphors instead of HD.) That shadow mask and those phosphor stripes (or dots for old timers) and yoke technology (er, should I mention interlace and flicker?) do a great job of rolling off HD. Not to mention the small size of the screen. I'm afraid this will be a problem until broadcast and production figures out HD BVM's belong in dumpsters, not telecine bays or any kind of production environment. I won't mention names, but there are some out there trying to get it right. There is only one technology that works - DLP projection - and the vast majority of equipment manufactures don't even get that right. Those that do get a star on their collar - maybe even 3.
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post #104 of 184
8/25/08 at 4:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by thehun View Post




Image or sound drop out is a degradation if it wasn't there to begin with and it's due to the tape wear, which will occur like it or not at one point.

you obviously don't get it either, it took literally hundreds of viewings for this to start on D-VHS, in fact I never had a tape start exhibiting this and owned nearly all movie releases, some had areas that were viewed hundreds of times demoing my system and critiqing upgrades etc.

dropouts are not A/V degradation, they are signal loss, this is FUD that was spread about D-VHS for years, most people (even in this hobby) assumed that the tapes degraded visually with each viewing , clean heads and proper handling/storage of the media = 100% perfect results for hundreds of viewings, which was way more than anyone would ever get close to, I have had more dropouts and errors on HD/BD media than I did with D-VHS

-Gary
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post #105 of 184
8/25/08 at 5:30pm
Marshall, you actully made a post on AVS. Did hell freeze over? Can you pass the ice.

TVLogic LCDs are pretty common with some of the compression facilities now. This particular LCD actually makes compression artifacts easier to spot because it enhances the artifacts. I would never want to watch a movie on this display, but for compression it works well.
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post #106 of 184
8/25/08 at 6:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sspears View Post

I worked on the VC-1 encoder they use. It will hit the target within a tolerance.

Amir has said something along the lines of the encoder suggests what it thinks the optimal bitrate is after the first pass. Is that not the case?
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post #107 of 184
8/25/08 at 6:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sspears View Post

I don't believe the bitrate is lower on the BD version because of DVNR. When you set the avg. bitrate in an encoder, it will most likely hit it. If I encoded a movie w/ and w/o DVNR, and set the bitrate to x Mbps, then it will hit x Mbps.

I believe the bitrate is based on available disc space. I am confused, is this disc a BD25 or BD50?

Hi Stacy,

Welcome back. Could you please provide your sincere comments on the PQ of U-571 on both HD DVD and Blu-ray ?
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post #108 of 184
8/25/08 at 7:36pm
Wow Universal has royally ****ed up it's blu-rays. I'm not going to buy Universal's releases if they are going to be downgrades.
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post #109 of 184
8/25/08 at 7:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidHir View Post

The only problem is the Mummy movies were on BD50s and still had some DNR applied.


Yeah, I have no clue what's going on there. The Mummy BD was a larger file size than the HD DVD also. Maybe they applied some DNR, got good reviews, and decided to try pushing it one level farther to test critical response. Maybe they figured out they could cut costs at the same time by using single layer?

I really have no idea what they are up to... just speculating like most in this thread.

Heck, it could be that they want these DNRd versions out there in the market to differentiate from the HD DVDs to give the clean freaks a reason to rebuy them?

Again, I have no idea. It could be anything.
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post #110 of 184
8/25/08 at 7:53pm
Having looked at all the above screen caps I'd say all 3 formats looks identical and overall look great IMO. I see no issues worth getting irate over whatsoever.

I'd venture to guess that if anyone actually watched the movies side by side (vs. freeze frames) there's NO way anyone would notice ANYTHING wrong with any of the formats shown here...especially the white specs people are freaking out about...come on who's honestly going to notice this while the movie is running and you are at proper viewing distance?

I wouldn't hesitate for a second buying this movie on any of the above formats and best of all I'd enjoy every second of it since I really did enjoy this particular film.

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post #111 of 184
8/25/08 at 7:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Lizardo View Post

Having looked at all the above screen caps I'd say all 3 formats looks identical and overall look great IMO. I see no issues worth getting irate over whatsoever.

I'd venture to guess that if anyone actually watched the movies side by side (vs. freeze frames) there's NO way anyone would notice ANYTHING wrong with any of the formats shown here...especially the white specs people are freaking out about...come on who's honestly going to notice this while the movie is running and you are at proper viewing distance?

I wouldn't hesitate for a second buying this movie on any of the above formats and best of all I'd enjoy every second of it since I really did enjoy this particular film.



Maybe you can't see it but there is a difference and it's not a tiny one. Both look better than dvd but to throw your hands up and say both look good enough isn't really doing justice to the format.
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post #112 of 184
8/25/08 at 8:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vriess View Post

Maybe you can't see it but there is a difference and it's not a tiny one. Both look better than dvd but their is no reason why the hd-dvd's should be the definitive version.

Again I'd be happy with any of the formats and thoroughly enjoy the movie..simple as that...I'm not an over analyzer and don't bother with which format is "supposed" to be the best especially when they all look identical to me..
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post #113 of 184
8/25/08 at 9:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrandonJF View Post

I don't get it - how could it ever be not possible to use a BD50?

I would guess that a BD50 may cost more and possibly take longer to get a production run scheduled. Universal may have decided to try and fit what they can on BD25s for some of these "less important" catalog titles. .

Its all about the discs, baby. Either BD50's are hard to get or the price is too expensive.

Heroes Season 2 is a great example. It includes 2 BD50's and 2 BD25's. Why not 3 BD50's? Either Universal was unable to secure more BD50's or the price of BD25s (times two) is cheaper then a single BD50.

Take a look at The Scorpion King 2. Originally announced as a BD50 loaded with special features, gets down graded at the last moment to a BD25 with zero special features.

End of Days. BD25 and drops all the HD DVD special features.

U-571. Drops all the individual special features to incorporate them into a U-Control.

Miami Vice is a BD50 and has all the previous HD DVD special features plus a few more (though no Theatrical cut).

It looks like Universal finally might be correcting its mistakes with Knocked Up and 40 Year Old (both 50GB discs), but then comes along The Thing which may drop the 80 minute doc. Land of the Dead should be fine as it was originally on a 15GB/9DVD Combo disc and Dawn should be fine as well.
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post #114 of 184
8/25/08 at 9:50pm
Edit: Anyone know the HD DVD file size for The Thing?
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post #115 of 184
8/25/08 at 10:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidHir View Post

Can't tell - is the film itself 14 or 21 gigs?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidHir View Post

Anyone know the HD DVD file size for The Thing?

Movie size: 14,438,524,928 => 14.43 GB
Disc size: 21,196,942,048 => 21.19 GB
Average video bit rate: 15.02 Mbps [but still an excellent encode considering Universal's ho-hum track record with their catalog titles]

Code:
Dawn of the Dead (2004): Unrated DC     VC-1    1:49:07 18,798,559,232* 21,870,225,636  22.97   18.94   Dolby TrueHD 5.1 24-bit No      DDPlus 5.1  448Kbps
Land of the Dead: Director's Cut        VC-1    1:36:43 14,307,549,184 ~14,624,761,713  19.72  ~17.13   DDPlus 5.1 1536Kbps     No
The Thing                               VC-1    1:48:35 14,438,524,928* 21,196,942,048  17.72   15.02   DDPlus 5.1 1536Kbps     No
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post #116 of 184
8/25/08 at 11:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary Murrell View Post

you obviously don't get it either, it took literally hundreds of viewings for this to start on D-VHS, in fact I never had a tape start exhibiting this and owned nearly all movie releases, some had areas that were viewed hundreds of times demoing my system and critiqing upgrades etc.

dropouts are not A/V degradation, they are signal loss, this is FUD that was spread about D-VHS for years, most people (even in this hobby) assumed that the tapes degraded visually with each viewing , clean heads and proper handling/storage of the media = 100% perfect results for hundreds of viewings, which was way more than anyone would ever get close to, I have had more dropouts and errors on HD/BD media than I did with D-VHS

-Gary


The tape gets stretched or wears out by touching the head and that's what cause the the drop outs, and yes it is a degradation since digital cannot wear out the way analog does slowly, but one day you'll see errors which you just admitted to already. indeed! The same thing could happen to optical discs as well if it gets physically damaged, but that won't be caused by playback alone like it happens with tape formats. How long it takes is irrelevant, the fact that no tape format can escape this, is .
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post #117 of 184
8/26/08 at 1:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lgans316 View Post

Average video bit rate: 15.02 Mbps [but still an excellent encode considering Universal's ho-hum track record with their catalog titles

Not so strange, since the critised Universal titles has old masters, were The Thing had a more fresh one.
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post #118 of 184
8/26/08 at 1:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MovieSwede View Post

Not so strange, since the critised Universal titles has old masters, were The Thing had a more fresh one.

Yes. In terms of new master, The Thing could be on similar lines to Troy but the biggest question is whether The Thing would fall victim to DNR.
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post #119 of 184
8/26/08 at 2:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh Z View Post

Knowing how Universal operates, it's unlikely that they would remaster the movie to get rid of the e.e., so they probably applied the DNR to the old master in order to tone down the ringing.

The transfer had EE from the D-Theater days and it's a pity. But applying DNR to get rid of EE artifacts is very silly since the tool is simply not designed to deal with ringing and haloes. That requires an inverse filter to the original sharpening filter. If information was destroyed by the original filter the EE can not be (completely) undone.
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post #120 of 184
8/26/08 at 6:07am
Whimsy agrees with us. Looks like Xylon has proven his point to the naysayers at HTF.

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/arc...some_more.html

Quote:


I first got wind of this when I took a look at DVD Beaver's review of The Mummy on Blu-ray. The article features a number of full resolution 1920x1080 screen captures, which immediately struck me as quite a bit more waxy-looking than how I remembered the HD DVD, which I had briefly rented some months prior. Of course, memory can play funny tricks on you, but a little later, the proof arrived in the form of an image comparison by AV Science Forum member Xylon, whose screen captures are one of the main reasons I visit that forum and are worth more than a thousand text-based reviews. The difference may not be massive, but it's there: Universal have added further noise reduction for the Blu-ray release. The Mummy Returns shows a similar situation: again, the Blu-ray version is noticeably less grainy and more synthetic-looking than its HD DVD counterpart.

Finally, today's scandal involves U-571, once again released on Blu-ray by Universal with a vulgar level of noise reduction applied to it. The difference should be clear to even the most visually-impaired of viewers: the HD DVD (and its D-Theater counterpart) was hardly a stellar-looking disc, but the Blu-ray version looks positively alarming, sucking much of the grain out of the image and rendering it fake-looking and waxy. Predictably, the usual suspects have emerged from the woodwork to decry Xylon's findings. Unfortunately, whatever such individuals might attempt to claim, the pictures speak for themselves and reveal the truth that no amount of whitewashing or "it doesn't look like that on my screen" nonsense can hide.

In summary: as a rule, Universal treated their catalogue titles rather badly on HD DVD, and now they are making them look even worse on Blu-ray. What will it take to hammer it into these fools' heads that this sort of image degradation is neither necessary or wanted?

From a HTF poster who talks about childish and personal attacks on the first paragraph, turns posters out here into monkeys in the next para.

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I mean that a technical community with the width and breadth of AVS should not allow direct personal (and frankly childish) attacks on industry insiders or anyone for that matter.

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Also I agree that Xylon provides a fantastic service to the HD community and his insights ARE valuable. It is how his work gets used as a weapon by the monkeys that have nothing better to do than foam at the mouth over every perceived slight to perfection is what I find tiring, and it is the personal attacks which I refuse to idly pass by.
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