Watchmen - Warner (DC) vs Paramount (TC) Blu-ray comparison PIX - Page 2

This and the ‘Blade Runner / 300 / V For Vendetta’ comparison thread remind me of the format war days, back when Amir & Co. were feeding us that crap about transparent low VC-1 bit-rate encodes (specially WB stuff).

Now, the apologetic crowd is calling us sick people, with OCD and stuff. I gotta laugh at these things.



BTW, does anyone wanna bet Sony’s international version of Terminator Salvation is going to surpass US WB version again?

Warner did low bitrate vc-1 encodes so they could fit them on 30 gb hd dvd. They just re-cycled them for blu-ray. If compression artifacts are to be gotten rid of, they need to do encodes at 20 mbps or more. They should have done this with Watchmen.

Possibly. Would have to recheck the scene. But on the frame it looks like typical dust.

Actually it's worse than that.

Back in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray Disc hey-day, Warner subscribed to a "least common denominator" approach to encoding for both formats:

1) They limited themselves to 25 GB, as most of their releases were for single-layer Blu-ray Discs (this didn't really impact HD DVD too badly since they usually included lossless audio on the HD DVD, while leaving the Blu-ray with lossy Dolby Digital).
2) They limited themselves to the max bitrates of HD DVD.

It's not clear to me if they've ever turned off their "least common denominator" encoding system. I'd hoped they'd do it with The Dark Knight, but it doesn't seem that they have even with Watchmen.

It is worth noting that they were typically well under those limits, as well.

Funny how quickly people have forgotten about BD25 or even HD15. I guess if the bitrate is high it must be DNR and if the bitrate is low, blame the lack of bits. And if all else fails, blame VC-1 and the other format.

Was there ever an HD15 release for a feature length film?

It's transparent if you have no source frame (or better encode) to compare to

Both version look good, but UK version shows that it can look better. You need a big screen to see difference in motion, but you will see it.

Andrew

If spending 72bucks on a decent T2 Blu Ray taught me anything, its that VC1 is the worst attack on the moving picture since Pan/ Scan and the MPAA combined!!!!!

So you claim everything on VC1 is bad and everything on AVC (or whatever) is good?

Are you serious? It's a modern video codec. I've seen good looking MPEG2 discs and VC1 is FAR more advanced.

Sorry, but that is pure ignorance.

If you're going to post such nonsense at least try to back it up.

That is my guess as well, that someone at Warner has decided in advance that certain properties need as much bandwidth as possible for extras, and let the video encode suffer as it may. Other studios appear to do the same thing, but they are much more selective with this practice.

T2 is one of the greatest films ever made.
Perhaps the definitive boys adventure film, Vc1 on Skynet Edition isn't as good as AVC on the Geneon Premium Edition. Anything that degrades T2 is an abomination. Thus- VC1 is one of the worst things ever.
Everybody on AVS hates VC1 as well, this thread is essentially devoted to it.

So I will ask again, do you claim everything on VC1 is bad and everything on AVC (or whatever) is good?


Funny, I thought people on AVS loved movies rather then codecs or even, dare I say it, video formats.

Yet, the French/UK HD DVD is VC-1 and it is quite possibly the best transfer of the film out there.

You logic is along the lines of *insert dictator here* had a mustache, *insert dictator here* was evil, therefore, mustaches are evil.

Sheesh, and I thought that was the one he was talking about.

High bitrate encode of ANY codec = Good
Low starved bitrate encode of ANY codec = Bad

The Skynet T2 release was DNRed before the encode even took place.

There is only one main implementation of VC-1 codec used by professional studios. There is nothing wrong with it and also with US Watchmen version. It's quite low bitrate encode and that's all. UK version uses highier bitrate (for me on the proper level) and difference is visible- mutch better high frequencies retention (as expected). There are some interesting things about these encodes:
- encoders spread data slightly different- AVC puts much more to I frames when VC-1 to B frames (encoding settings)- this makes VC-1 encode look "better" in static frames, but in motion good quality I frames are more important, as long as there is no visible "pumping effect" (to bad quality B frames in compare to I frames),
- AVC encode has quite small B frames, but even so they are still better quality then VC-1 ones (very visible on the frist frame),
- frames 19 (I frame for VC-1 and B frame for AVC) shows that you should try to compare the same type of frames as I frames are always better quality than B ones- US looks not lot, but still sharper,
- frame 13 shows big difference, becuase both encodes are B frame+AVC is bigger,
- the biggest difference is probably visible on the 3rd frame, becuase AVC is I one and VC-1 is B,
- frame 12 is interesting- even if AVC one is much smaller still VC-1 looks way less detailed- does it prove that AVC is more efficient???


There is nothing wrong with US version- just to low average bitrate, to achieve good transparency. It would be nice to have source frames- than people would see how much is removed during encode The difference between source and AVC would be probably about the same as between these 2 versions.


Andrew

Sweet Jesus...

What's a matter? You joined AVS for the codecs right?

I joined for the blue blazer and bubble pipe.

for most of the shots the difference is small bordering on OCD level nitpicking though i can see how someone with a triple digit screen size would easily appreciate the higher bitrate version

but let's face it warner got within 3GB of the full space of a BD50 and at best they might have been able to squeeze a couple more Mbps out of the encode (which wouldn't have made much difference anyway)

So what are we looking at here, im just curious. Is the bitrate resolving more detail somehow? Did the u.s. have slight dnr, does the uk have more grain?


Also im just curious to those that watched both, and if i could get a god honest answer with no agenda's. Can you really see the difference during the movies? If they are noticeable i do upgrade. But i dont wish to upgrade if you cant really tell a difference while watching them. And if you did what was the difference between them. More grain in one? Sharper image? More 3d?

If you have one version already there is no point to upgrade.
You should see the difference (mostly in sharpnes, clarity, grain look), but only on a good big screen 50 or better 60inch one.
You also should see it easier if you watch them simultaneously- eye adopts realy quickly to the motion picture.


Andrew