Blu Ray movies vs Windows VC1 Movies

WMV-HD titles are auto-encoded with no hand tuning. The BD titles on the other hand, are tweaked manually to create the best picture quality. In addition, VC-1 tools available to studios are much more sophisticated than what is used for WMV encoding.

Further, if WMV-HD file is that much smaller, it is bound to suffer some quality drops because of that.

So in general, BD should be able to outpeform the WMV-HD encodes in the eyes of skilled viewer, especially in more difficult segments. Whether you fall in that category of viewer is something you can decide .

I don't know that much about VC-1 (Amirm, you are the man!) but for other codecs I would watch for lack of details in dark scene. Most homemade encode tend to "crush" detail in dark scene.

I was just watching what is available out on the Interent these days, and noticed something funny.

Animation/pixar type movies as well as comedies get compressed all the way down to 4.7 gig.

Good action movies get compressed to 8.5 gig, and the better action movies get split in to 2 8.5 gig parts.

I have no clue what the results are, but it is interesting that for some movies people think the large sizes are not worth it.

If your so cheap that you won't pay to even rent a movie then I expect your equipment to be of a quality that it doesn't matter what you compress it to.

How big is your lcd? If your under 46 then the WVC1 will look very good. As your home display rig gets bigger is when you'll start noticing all those things that are hidden on smaller sets by these HD lites. WVC1 aside blu ray and up until it's death HD-DVD was about picture and sound quality. WVC1 is half the experience watered down.... If this is good enough then good for you.

Whats makes videocompression effective, is that it can utilise that each frame looks very simlilar to the next one.

What makes compression more demanding is when there are severe changes between the frames. So lot of motion and grain are two things that makes compression harder.

So for alot of content a WMVHD encode (DVD9) could look more or less the same as a BD encode. But there could be other content were the weakness will be more appereant.

Also considering the difference in tools for encoding. a BD9 will make better result then a WMVHD9.

Most of the movies I found were either AVCHD or x264 (or is that the same thing?). The only movie I ever saw in this format was Two Towers and that didn't even come from Blu-ray, but it did look pretty good.

I would love to see how a Pixar movie looks and compare it to the original Blu-ray version. As I said most of those appear to be trimmed down to only 4 GB.

Edit: I just saw a Wall-E Blu-ray (can that be??) rip out on the Interent that is 4 GB and contains a DTS track. How would pirates get a Blu-ray version already? I don't have the time to waste to download it (plus its ILLEGAL), so I have no clue what it looks like.

Personally I just rent from netflix for free because we rarely watch a movie more thatn once. If I like a movie I find it used on ebay.

x264 is an open source encoder that creates H.264 (i.e. AVC) compliant encodes.
AVCHD is a subset of the H.264 format created by Sony/Panasonic for their latest HD camcorders.
The DIY encodes are done in AVCHD when you want to put them on regular DVD media and play on a PS3.

Animation is easier to encode and some 8GB x264 encodes I've seen were very close to the original (e.g. Ratatouille).

Diogen.

Some people report having received their disks already. It is a very bad sign if they are tuning up on the net that fast though.

Thanks for the clarification. I knew that AVCHD was kind of a mini Blu-ray format Sony and Panasonic use. I had a Panasonic HD camcorder and now have a Sony (both used AVCHD). Its funny that the Sony AVCHD player software does not work with my Panasonic recordings but everything works on my PS3.

What's weird is I see files named "ps3-x264-dts", but IIRC, the PS3 can't play DTS on ACVHD discs.



My thought was that there might be some dishonest "reviewers".

This is happening for about 6 months already.
Re-encoding BDs into SL/DL DVD using x264 and MKV container is highly automated with recent tools/presets from doom9...

Diogen.

But mkv is a pain as a container. Except for HTPC nothing can read those. They should go with MP4 as a container for their x264 encode at least then you could watch/stream them on the PS3 and maybe the 360.

I have a receipe to convert mkv to mp4/mp2/xvid but it's a pain especially when there is a subtitle track and the guy who made the mkv use the .ass format. You have to extract those, convert them to .srt and then you can have the sub in yuor end product.

A 46 inch lcd looks the same as a 52 lcd if you take a small step forwards.

Resolution, contrast ratio, etc matter too. People shouldn't get so hung up on small size differences.

For 8GB highdef movies, I'd pay close attention to things like water and the edges of characters and people's hair while in motion.

On top of that, I'd search for pulsing in relatively slow pan (but complex scenes with a lot of detail).

All the typical things people look at when watching a movie.
(OK, maybe just the people on this forum)

Some do, some don't... The biggest defect that I find in homemade encode is crushed black and some pixelation that may occurs in fast transition. I mostly watch anime that way but I've seen those defect creeps in on some movie also (Batman Begins is an example of a movie that would suffer from loss of detail in dark scene). You can tweak your encode to diminish or eliminate those defect but most people just use the default setting in their encoding application with a final size restriction, or follow a receipe that they found on the net by some guy...

You mean, SumYungGuy?

MP4 only supports AAC so I hope they don't. Even if they make a 5.1AAC from a lossless source (not sure if these same devices support 5.1AAC) I would have to use analog to play it (losing all the stuff the receiver does and using my sound cards crappy DACs). Its easy to remux mkv into m2ts for PS3 playback (just no DTS).

No longer true for the past year. Some small boxes like NMT's (Popcorn Hour, HDX-1000, M31B), the DViCO HD M-7000A, and the Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player all can play mkv.

funny that you mention this thread. i was at a friends house yesterday and actually watched a sample of it.

but that was x264 encoded? or achvd or something? i am no expert on this, but it was wall-e in 1080p at least that is what he told me.

anyway it looked ok. better then dvd. but in no way better then an orginal disc. ( i dont have the orginal disc yet ) but i compared it to the latest animation i saw, kung fu panda. and the colors and detail are much more detailed on the orginal, then this Wall-E sample. and since i read the reviews that picture quality of WaLL-E is comparable to kung fu panda i compared it with that.

the thing that actually upset me the most is that he could watch it earlier then me. i have to wait 1 more week until amazon delivers the disc. and the wait it killing me.

however i do know when i receive the disc. my watching experience in the end will be 10 times better.

my release got lossless audio. while he has to hear it in dvd audio.

and my release has more detail and color.

Not true about the audio being only AAC in mp4. I take it you meant for AC3/DTS then yes you are limited then to AAC.

Form wikipedia:

• Video: MPEG-4 Part 10 (also known as H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC), MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2, and MPEG-1.
• Audio: AAC (also known as MPEG-2 Part 7), Apple Lossless, MP3 (also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3), MPEG-4 Part 3, MP2 (also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2), MPEG-1 Audio Layer 1, CELP (speech), TwinVQ (very low bitrates), SAOL (MIDI).
• Subtitles: MPEG-4 Timed Text (also known as 3GPP Timed Text).

It all depens on what they put inside the mkv container. I've seen some pretty esoteric mkv in my life...

And also do you still need to buy another piece of hardware just for mkv? I already have 5 "box" able to play divx/xvid, mp4, wmv, avchd etc. etc.

I mostly watch anime in those format (except for the tv that I capture). I find it funny when I see those "upconverted" anime serie available in mkv format when the raw are in 720x480. People end up downloading bigger file containing 1 audio track and subtitles when they could have use a xvid for the same end product but in a smaller file size.

I've seen this, and many others on my 9 foot, 1080p, FP setup. Without freeze framing, it is difficult to tell the difference between the much smaller rip, and the Blu Ray.

BTW, I've only done this because many titles are available weeks before release date. I've purchased the Blu Rays when they become available. The only real improvement has been the sound, and special features.

Art

I agree. I watched a few movies that a friend had on his 50 inch 1080p plasma. Standing a few feet away it looked impressive, but we never froze frames to analyse them. Also, because what I watched were animated flix, I can't say whether very dark scenes would look as good. He did have Narnia 2 also, but I didn't get to see it.

This is sad, the friend I mentioned is going over to a buddy of his to watch Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder this weekend. I guess they are available in a rippped 1080p format of some kind on the Interent. Whatever happened to BD+?

One can safely assume that SL/DL-DVD versions of BDs show up in usual places at least one week prior to the official BD release...

RE: BD+
The "protection for the next 10 years" got what it deserved some ten months ago. And it looks like everybody but Fox knew that from day one...

BD+ was a huge joke, and it is still amazing that so many people fell for it. I guess some people are willing to believe anything...like the people at Fox.

Also, when you say "at least one week prior to the official BD release", you should emphisize the "at least". I have some friends who watched Hancock a few weeks ago, and I don't think it was released until today...btw, they didn't like it, so I am just to to rent it.

The problem with BR piracy isn't BD+. It's the amount of time and effort it takes to reencode those title and the complicated process. Until there is something as easy as dvdshrink BR piracy will be limited to well established group with time and resource to do it and to distribute it contrary to DVD where everybody can do it at a press of a button.