Lord of the Rings (TE) - Page 75

Originally Posted by BsRoz

It's just hilarious how every single time a big title seems to have been messed up, people go into full denial claiming screenshots
don't offer an accurate representation of the actual quality.

Please people, if the history of comparisons here at AVS have shown you anything,
you would know they have always been spot on. The fact that you like LOTR is no excuse to defend a clearly inferior product.

Should, by some inexplicably magical reason, the final quality of these discs turn out to be
stellar (or any different from the screencaps), I'll eat my keyboard.

Originally Posted by Pincho

If the grain was sharpened it would stand out more, but it disappears. So it's not sharpened. The Blu Ray is processed in a way to remove grain, and keep detail.

Originally Posted by Pincho

I think that the grain is noise anyway. Maybe the 3 hour movie was restricted in some way? With extras, maybe they should have gone for a Superbit version?

Originally Posted by sej69


If I thought these discs were going to be crap I'd have cancelled my order.

As mentioned I....erm borrowed the 1080p bdrips. I have a huge screen (130").

In motion, without pausing and examining it - they look great. Particularly ROTK which just looks incredible.

Yeah I know it's not as sharp as fight club/braveheart etc - but it was never that sharp - ever.

Originally Posted by madshi

Sharpened grain does stand out more, you're right about that. But you're also right that it seems that the Blu-Ray may have been "processed in a way to remove grain" (which basically is DNR). If you apply DNR and then sharpen afterwards, you get exactly the kind of look the Blu-Ray frame shows.

But we're talking about one frame here, only. I'm still waiting for eric.exe to post some more comparison screenshots. I'll wait for that before forming a final opinion. But my hope is quite low right now...


Not sure what you mean. Do you mean grain is generally to be considered as noise and thus removed? Is that your opinion? Or are you saying that the HDTV screenshot doesn't contain grain, but it contains noise instead, caused by too low bitrate? Or are you saying that the grain is missing on the Blu-Ray because the bitrate is too low? Or something else?

Originally Posted by Toe

So how is the audio???

Originally Posted by Pincho

What I mean is that I examined the Bilbo pictures very carefully, and they appear to not match the other screenshots which contain noise in the Blu Ray. When I look at the Bilbo picture of the Blu Ray the noise has gone, but the detail hasn't gone. Removing grain often removes detail, but artificial noise created by a limited encode is the other way around. It adds noise over the detail, and therefore you do not lose any detail if you can get rid of it with a higher bitrate. It seems to me that the Bilbo pictures show two different bitrates, and also some contrast adjustments. That has nothing to do with grain. I see no grain in either of the two images. Basically, the two Bilbo images should really be ignored, I don't think that they compare with any of the other screenshots.

Originally Posted by madshi

I don't really know where you got your "limited encode creates artifical noise" theory from. A bitrate limited encode can result in block artifacts, or smoothed away detail, but it usually does not add noise. Ok, with MPEG2 there was Mosquito noise, but that was only near edges. There exists no compression artifact which looks like a regular grain like pattern. Compression can make grain look an ugly mess, if the bitrate is too low. But compression does not "add grain" as an artifact.

The HDTV screenshot definitely has grain in it, and not noise. And this grain is missing in the Blu-Ray screenshot. And with the grain also some texture is gone. Just look at Bilbo's left shoulder (right side of the image). In the HDTV image the jacket clearly has texture to it (not just noise). In the Blu-Ray image it's a flat waxy area. In the HDTV image you can see what kind of material the inside of the jacket is made of. In the Blu-Ray image it could be anything, from plastic to leather. But again - let's not judge based on one screenshot alone. For all we know, the Blu-Ray frame could be an odd non-I frame. So I'm still waiting for more HDTV <-> Blu-Ray comparison screenshots to appear before making final judgements...

Originally Posted by bases1616

I am with Toe, How about the audio? I have asked a couple times, but everyone is so stuck on the PQ. Can someone who has early copies please post there impressions about the 6.1 DTS-HD MA audio tracks? Maybe there is a upside from the AQ.

Originally Posted by Pincho

I think that Gandalf's finger is the sign of artificial noise / fake grain. If it's not a low bitrate, then I don't know what it is. I certainly looks similar to a jpeg artifact

Originally Posted by madshi

Ok, here's some background knowledge for you...

jpeg artifacts fall under the "mosquito noise" category. This artifact occurs in the direct neighborhood of high contrast edges. It's caused by the DCT (discrete cosine transform) used by jpeg and MPEG2. Look here for a nice image showing how this artifact looks like:

http://i.cmpnet.com/videsignline/200...lith-fig2s.jpg

As you can see, this artifact doesn't cover whole image areas, but it occurs only near high-contrast edges. Which means that the "whatever-it-is" you see around Gandalf's finger can't possibly be mosquito noise, because it's not concentrated around high-contrast edges at all.

Originally Posted by Pincho

Removing grain often removes detail, but artificial noise created by a limited encode is the other way around.

Originally Posted by Pincho

I think that Gandalf's finger is the sign of artificial noise / fake grain. If it's not a low bitrate, then I don't know what it is. I certainly looks similar to a jpeg artifact, using some sort of Gaussian compaction method. I look at it, and I see compaction written all over it.

Originally Posted by Schils

@ Pincho....the "Bilbo face" comparison is throwing me off as well. I can't find Dave Uptons grab of that particular frame, most of his pics have vanished, arghhh! Not sure if the one eric.exe used in his side by side is from HIS grab of the BR or if he used Dave Uptons?

Originally Posted by Imeldhil

from what I know, New Line is the only one mastering this one, so every copy send to the world for other retailers (like EiV in the UK or Aurum in Spain) will have the exact same video.

That's what was told at least here in Spain by Aurum.

Originally Posted by lyris

Pincho, compressing video does not add noise to it in the traditional sense. Digital compression artefacts look very different to analogue noise.

Edit: Madshi has already explained the correct situation.

In any case, these shots (I assume that this: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6456/71241344.png IS from the legit BD encode and not some sort of pirated version?) are disappointing. Clearly the master has been tampered with. I always remember LOTR looking soft down to how it was made, but it was optically soft, not poorly DNR'd.

I just hope that we don't have a repeat of the LOTR DVD situation. Those DVDs were blatantly sub-par in terms of resolution (not surprising given the number of audio tracks crammed onto the disc, I can understand why the video was lowpass filtered to allow a lower bit rate), yet many people seemed to confuse the extravagant cinematography with a high quality video presentation.

What sort of poor DNR adds a gauss?

Originally Posted by lyris

People with experience in this sort of thing will tell you that the images show obvious manipulation, definitely some sort of temporal smoothing, and perhaps spatial as well.

Are you talking about adding gaussian noise? That isn't relevant here: the patches of grain left on that image of Gandalf are areas that have been falsely detected as motion and left unprocessed (or less processed) by whatever device has been used. The images posted here actually look remarkably similar to the before/after images that Digital Vision use to promote the "grain management" (nice euphemism) capabilities of their AGR4 ME algorithm, but it could be any device.

Originally Posted by Pincho

I think that Gandalf's finger is the sign of artificial noise / fake grain. If it's not a low bitrate, then I don't know what it is. I certainly looks similar to a jpeg artifact, using some sort of Gaussian compaction method. I look at it, and I see compaction written all over it.

Originally Posted by stwrt

In that cap, Gandalf's finger is (intentionally) out of focus. You surely can't expect Blu-Ray to "fix" all the out of focus shots.

Originally Posted by lyris

Pincho, what are you talking about?

Originally Posted by Pincho

I think that Gandalf's finger is the sign of artificial noise / fake grain. If it's not a low bitrate, then I don't know what it is. I certainly looks similar to a jpeg artifact, using some sort of Gaussian compaction method. I look at it, and I see compaction written all over it.

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

Really thankful for all the screencaps. They look so much better than the dvds and the HDTV broadcasts that I'm actually laughing out loud at all the criticisms of these images. I'm still holding out for the EE's, but it's got nothing to do with the quality of these discs, which seems absolutely top-of-the-line.

(NOTE: This is NOT to be read with any sarcasm; I am 100% sincere. I'm genuinely sad for anyone expecting more. Life's too short to find fault with this level of quality.)

Originally Posted by KMFDMvsEnya

Let it it go, Pincho.

Filtering is the culprit along with and not just compression artifacts. -Such as Gandolfs beard is mess and that can be due to both factors.
The only reason these don't look worse is because the stock was most likely pretty fine grain for S35, of the time, and the degree of filtering applied wasn't set to eleven.

All filtering algorithms are going to remove detail along with the inherent characteristic of film grain. That is why it should only be used very prudently and judicially.

Best Regards
KvE

PS I'm still waiting with baited breathe for your mystical Degrainer tool that doesn't remove fine detail. You have been talking about it for what 2-3 years now. Inquiring minds need to know.

PPS

That isn't from artificial grain being added that is what is left of the natural film grain after being filtered and processed.