[Jim Story]

The below is from "DVD International"

is this actually an improvement?

I thought all dvds are 480 capable?

____________________________________



Announcing our Ultra DVD Series!


Ultra DVDs are created in PROGRESSIVE SCAN- 480 LINES OF RESOLUTION AT 30 FRAMES PER

SECOND, also known as 480P(30).


Click here for more information on our Ultra DVD Series and Progressive Video


New Ultra DVD Series titles available:


Natural Splendors Vol. 1

Natural Splendors Vol. 2

Natural Splendors Vol. 3

Natural Splendors Collection (3-disc set)

 

[Marissadad]

The big advantage with these is that they are in a progressive scan mode natively and at 30 fps so they do not requre 2:3 pulldown or interlace conversion. They are also Anamorphic and offer DD 5.1 and DTS 6.0.

Here's a link.

 

[Jim Story]

Thank you for the link, that explained it well.

Wonder how the "Ultra" would compare to "Superbit"

in Picture quality?

 

[Frank J Manrique]

It seems to me that movies authored at high bit rates and done in this process should provide improved DVD imaging overall, better than what we're getting now......provided everything else remains equal, of course.

Let's hope this process becomes course for the par soon.


I don't think this process is a gimmick, yet I still yearn for real HD. However, every bit ( ) helps...


-THTS

 

[amillians]

Am I missing something here? The MPEG2 decoder is still going to spit out 480i/60, right? They're marketing it as if 480p is going to come off the disk. Help me here!

 

[hob]

I thought all movies were shot in 24p AKA 24 frames per second.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

They are. And a 3:2 pulldown is used to get them formatted for TV (simplified explanation).

 

[Frode]

Quote:

Originally posted by Frank J Manrique It seems to me that movies authored at high bit rates and done in this process should provide improved DVD imaging overall, better than what we're getting now......provided everything else remains equal, of course. Let's hope this process becomes course for the par soon.

Problem is that with 30fps instead of 24fps you have approximately 20% more data per second. Thus in order to get the same results as with normal 24fps discs you need 20% more bitrate. The smoothness gain they're talking about is minimal, and most standalone progressive DVD players produce more than smooth enough motion for my tastes. I'll take the extra bitrate any day.


I also have to wonder how cadence reading progressive DVD players will handle this kind of stream. I know some flag-reading players will choke and use the wrong de-interlacing method for instance.


It's also a rather pointless discussion as there are no big titles being produced this way. This is only for those titles being shot with a 30p camera, and I don't exactly see those mentioned earlier in the thread as interesting.

 

[uncle eric]

This will be about as usefull as wearing shirt in a swimming pool.


Eric

 

[Dean Roddey]

Quote:

The smoothness gain they're talking about is minimal, and most standalone progressive DVD players produce more than smooth enough motion for my tastes. I'll take the extra bitrate any day.

I don't question that its a tradeoff, but for some material that isn't length constrained, it wouldn't be a bad deal. To me, and to most others AFAICT, 24fps is a woefully slow frame rate that causes headache inducing jumpiness during medium speed pans. That last film I saw at the actual movies was LOTR, which was the first one in many years, and I was pretty disgusted at the jittery panning from the low frame rate. And the bigger the image, the more apparent it is.


I can't believe that 24fps was chosen as the digital standard, since that's going to now keep us in this low frame rate quagmire for more decades.

 

[Frank J Manrique]

Originally posted by Frode:


"It's also a rather pointless discussion as there are no big titles being produced this way. This is only for those titles being shot with a 30p camera, and I don't exactly see those mentioned earlier in the thread as interesting."

________________________________________


Which just goes to show that there really isn't any free lunches...


-THTS

 

[clehner]

Hi,

I second that. There does not seem to be much in there for us film lovers.


BTW: Film is always based on 24fps (only video is 30/60 p/f per s). The downside of NTSC is that there always is a 3:2 stutter present unless you have a device (such as an HTPC) and a display (like a CRT or very few digital projectors) that would on the one hand produce frame rates that are multiples of 24 and on the other hand accept 48/72/96/... Hz.


Regards

Christoph

 

[era]

Quote:

Film is always based on 24fps (only video is 30/60 p/f per s). The downside of NTSC is that there always is a 3:2 stutter present unless you have a device (such as an HTPC) and a display (like a CRT or very few digital projectors) that would on the one hand produce frame rates that are multiples of 24 and on the other hand accept 48/72/96/... Hz.

If that's the case, then somebody--or more likely a committee--really screwed things up for us. Those stuttering pans are extremely annoying (I thought it was a result of compression algorithms). Specifying a standard that permits high resolution pictures, then mucking up the motion with jerky movement is profoundly stupid. I hope there's a hardware fix. Even my new cable HDTV usually includes the stammering motion.

 

[clehner]

Quote:

Originally posted by era I hope there's a hardware fix.

Era,

as I tried to point out, you need an HTPC with a software player that can perform 3:2 reverse pull down, i.e. reconstruct the original 24 full frames that are available through properly mastered film based DVDs and then feed a suitable display with that. You will end up with very smooth pans, at least as smooth as they can be in a conventional movie theater. There you also might sometimes (depending on the camera work) notice 24 fps stutters. If the camera pans too fast there is no way you can avoid suttering as in the end you only have 24 discrete states to capture the motion.


Regards

Christoph

 

[Vern Dias]

Quote:

BTW: Film is always based on 24fps (only video is 30/60 p/f per s).

Not always... Early 70mm Todd-AO was filmed and projected at 30 FPS. Examples: Oklahoma, Around the World In 80 Days, one or two early Todd-AO shorts, however their names escape me at the moment.


Super-8 is 18 FPS, and silent 16mm is 16 FPS.


Beware the word "always"


Vern Dias

 

[Dean Roddey]

Quote:

If that's the case, then somebody--or more likely a committee--really screwed things up for us

Just the opposite really The problem was that this was no committee, just two groups doing different things who went their own ways and we have to now try to put them together into one HT system for display. One uses 24p and the other 60i. I really wish that they'd decided to go with at least 30p on the new digital 'film' cameras, if not 60p. Probably a decade or more before we get another chance to change that standard, we will have display systems capable of doing 2Kx2K progressive at 120Hz probably, and we'll be cursing the backwards thinkers who made that decision.

 

[CKNA]

These titles are obviously shot on video at 30fps.

If it was film than they would've been stored at 24fps.

Everybody in Hollywood and most movie makers all agree that 24 fps is too low. There are main two reasons why it is still used.

1. 90% equipment used in film making is 24fps.

2. Transfering any higher frame rate to PAL which runs at 25fps is very difficult. It would have to be done electronically thus losing quality. Sure there is still issue of 4% speed up but video quality is much better than doing it electronically.

BTW, some TV shows today are shot at 30fps, for example Friends.

era,

Movie projected in movie theater does not really have smooth panning. It is all blurry. Just pay attention next time you go to see a movie.

DVD standard is fine, 3:2 pulldown is really the only way to transfer 24fps to 30fps. In PAL which runs at 25fps you get smoother pans but movie is speeded up by 4%. This causes the movie to run too fast and makes music sound really horrible.

 

[clehner]

Quote:

Originally posted by Vern Dias ... Super-8 is 18 FPS, and silent 16mm is 16 FPS. Beware the word "always" Vern Dias

Vern Dias,


I have to admit that


BTW: Spend my youth at the Film Museum in Munich so I know what you are talking about. You have to have seen Kriemhild slowly walking to the altar (Fritz Lang's Nibelungen) at 16 fps, when I first saw that on Video at 50Hz (i.e. 25 pps) PAL I was about to p***e


Lot's of people just don't know what they are doing when it comes to older films.


Regards


Christoph

 

[hdtv_moron]

Quote:

Originally posted by era If that's the case, then somebody--or more likely a committee--really screwed things up for us. Those stuttering pans are extremely annoying (I thought it was a result of compression algorithms). Specifying a standard that permits high resolution pictures, then mucking up the motion with jerky movement is profoundly stupid. I hope there's a hardware fix. Even my new cable HDTV usually includes the stammering motion.

As you say "stutter" (which really is judder - big deal same thing - sorry for getting picky ) is present in all 24fps film. I see it all of the time in the movie theaters. It depends on the shutter aperature time on the film camaras as to how bad it is (the worst is like it is in SPR). Fast aperature times causes noticable judder (the movie is more like a series of high speed stop motion pictures) whereas long aperture times allows the scene to "blur" the individual frames a little thus reducing ones ability to notice the judder.


As for the 60i vs 24p goes, the earliest TVs were capable of syncing to the TV signal only by use of the 60 Hz frequency it picked off the AC power line. Europe uses 50Hz AC line frequency instead of 60Hz. That's why PAL is 50i and NTSC is 60i.


Of course by the time color came around they could build TV's like todays which could sync all on their own so the actual field rate was changed to 59.97 to allow color burst spectral interlacing (interesting reading if you chose to pursue it).


Like most things. Goofy standards and conflicts of standards can usually be traced back to the historical advancement of technologies.

 

[clehner]

Quote:

Originally posted by hdtv_moron Of course by the time color came around they could build TV's like todays which could sync all on their own so the actual field rate was changed to 59.97 to allow color burst spectral interlacing (interesting reading if you chose to pursue it).

HI,

could you give me any references on the internet for that topic?


BTW: The artefacts in SPR are called time slicing which was also used in the fight scenes of Gladiator, but maybe that isn't what you really meant, sorry, if I misread you.


Thanks

Christoph