The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

You wanna bet?

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

I've been through it before... anamorphic DVD, then EE... now this. Who knows, maybe the next AV format won't have any problems and there won't be anything left to talk about since nothing could be improved?

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Please stop acting like you're the only one that fought for those issues as this forum has been in the middle of those issues from the beginning, even traveling out to LA to talk with the industry people actually preparing the dvd transfers about issues such as anamorphic presentations and EE.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Ah, very true!

In 2000, in LA, we visited 4 DVD labs at least (one very interesting visit was to Sony's, leading to a rather heated discussion about anamorphic, colour issues and audio tracks; I remember Robert George taking part, and in those days those people working there were real enthusiasts as well). We also visited several audio recording studios.
Too bad for me I couldn't attend the next one(s)!

Yes, this forum has a long history striving for quality. That's how we know what we're talking about.


Cees

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

You guys crack me up. Keep fighting the good fight men! Whatever that may be?

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

RC and Cees, I never suggested that I was the only one pushing for quality or that HTF hasn't taken a significant role in that regard. No problem.



Can you share any of the details about thse "heated discussions"? I'd be curious to know what was said... both from the studio and you guys. I'm sure lots of folks would be keen to hear the details.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

lossless audio rules, what is there to discuss and I do agree it should be standard bottom line, Sony is a fine example in this regard

don't get down David, those who are not totally off the wall obsessed with A/V quality don't understand our enthusiasm most of the time, some like us and some hate us, I know that all too much, especially the later

-Gary

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Doug Monce pretty much nailed it, the feature zealots and format fanboys have finally worn me down. What _I_ care about is having high quality releases of interesting films with good quality extras. Anything beyond that is gravy, and arguing over the nit picky little crap and boycotting releases because they dont have one's personal 'pet' feature ignore the realities of HD media: It's a niche of a niche right now, and if the enthusiasts cut their nose off to spite their faces it will ever remain one. Each of the people who has such a pet feature acts incrudulous that HTF wont band together with them to champion it to the exclusion of every other feature and it always devolves into discussions that have nothing to say about what is actually there.

Am I willing to sacrifice trivial features like lossless and overindulgant web enabled and interactive doo dads to get a unified HD format in the hands of millions? Absolutely. And I find it especially irritating that every possible release comes down to petty arguments about whats wrong with the stuff that doesnt really matter and ignores how GOOD the quality of what is there, actually is (or isnt).

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Have just picked up on this thread - hadn't realised that anyone else was concerned about this issue. I thought I was a lone voice! I'm fed up of hearing folks beefing about 'this is great disc, apart from the grain'. When they go to the movie theater, do they watch with their eyes closed? Grain is a part of most films - live with it.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

I agree. Not that I have anything against those of you who are "purists," but there is a point where it becomes largely academic.

Andrew makes an excellent point about commercial theaters. If you take a close look, you might notice that the overall quality in their offerings isn't usually all that great. What I want is a single HDM standard that I can safely invest in. Until then, I'm sticking with good old DVD.

John

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

As someone who has dropped a lot of coin on hi-res audio (both SACD and DVD-A) in both software and hardware (I spent a lot more on my speakers and a player for hi-res audio than I ever would have if my set up were only for TV/movies), I would concur that lossless audio should be the default standard, when and where possible. However, I find that while I can fairly easily tell the difference between a lossy and lossless music disc (I've compared some DTS CDs with DVD-A and/or SACD re-issues where the mix is the same), doing the same thing with movies is more difficult unless I concentrate so much on the audio that it distracts from the movie watching experience. The visuals occupy so much of my attention that it renders the audio portion less central to the whole experience. It is not UNIMPORTANT (and I've clearly encountered examples of poor sound with movies) but I am much more inclined to forgive the lack of a lossless audio track with a movie than with just music.

That said, I think it important to express a desire to see lossless audio as often as possible. However, I think boycotting films because they lack lossless audio is a questionable tactic in terms of applying pressure (if it is a matter of principle for an individual, that's fine--I boycott a number of companies out of principle, but I don't presume it has much effect on them) as, at this stage of the game, the "bean-counters" will not discern that the boycott is because the film has no lossless audio. They will simply conclude that Title X is not selling as much as Title Y and so Title X must not be as well liked by the public. For a boycott to work effectively beyond expressing a personal principle, it must be co-ordinated and publicized. I don't think the size of the market has yet reached a critical mass for that to happen.

The goal should be, IMO, to help establish HDM as a viable product and then try to influence the quality of certain characteristics. Certainly people should express desire for lossless audio, but we should not "cut off our noses to spite our faces".

Just my 2 cents.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

On lossless audio:

Some years back, I looked at an OpenGL tutorial which recommended not using JPEGs for textures. The reasoning seemed to be that JPEGs which looked fine when viewed head on using a color corrected monitor would have obvious flaws when viewed obliquely, under different lighting conditions.

Dolby Digital uses perceptual coding. Stuff that cannot be heard by a listener under normal listening conditions is discarded. I wonder if these kinds of assumptions survive Audyssey processing?

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Part of the reason that the difference is not as obvious on movie soundtracks is just the very nature of the way a movie is recorded and mixed.

Movie soundtracks are mixed for effect, not fidelity. Dynamic compression is used liberally. Tracks are sped up, slowed down and manipulated in any number of ways to get a particular effect. Not to mention the fact that many sound effects libraries (and yes effects libraries are the bread and butter of sound effects editors even on big films) contain sounds that were recorded as far back as the early 1930s. I know of some sounds recorded for Dracula in 1933 that were used as recently as the Star Wars sequels. These are sounds that were recorded on optical film!

I'm all for lossless audio when its available and when it really is superior to a lossless track, which a 16 bit lossless may not be when compared to a 1.5 mbps DD+ track. However having said that, a film soundtrack is hardly a high fidelity or audiophile recording to start with.

Doug

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Doug, I don't at all agree with your thoughts on soundtracks, many soundtracks are high fidelity in nature and are very high quality, lossless or uncompressed soundtracks are always appreciated with any source material IMHO

lossles audio can improve the dynamics, details and enjoyment of any audio material, it separates the men from the boys in regards to sound mixes and reveals ALL flaws

there is simply no excuss for lossy audio on BD/HD, nor DNR or EE which is why I started this thread in the first place, you are certainly not alone Andrew nor is David on his thoughts of audio

audio is one main reason why BD has it's zealots and in that regard I can understand why (I hate fanboys BTW)
Fox, Sony and Disney have all released 100% of their titles with lossless audio, this stance is not overlooked by video and audio philes

-Gary

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Well again don't get me wrong, I'm all for lossless audio and surely it can be an improvement on lossy audio particularly when its fairly low bitrate.

The point I was trying to make though is that the techniques used to make a film soundtrack are looked down on fairly strongly by those that are doing what is considered to be audiophile recordings. Recordings in which no dynamic compression (compressing the volume not compressing data) is used, where often there is no EQ used, no filtering of any kind. The way a film soundtrack is made flies in the face of what many people would consider audiophile recording techniques. Of course the processing of a film soundtrack is quite necessary for reasons of intelligibility.

Yes film soundtracks, particularly modern film soundtracks that didn't rely on the EQ curve that was used on films from the introduction of sound until the advent of digital, can sound amazing, but they are not what most audiophiles would consider to be an audiophile recording. Far too much manipulation of the sound. And actually the few audiophiles that I know won't even condescend to have any video devices in their listening rooms.

Doug

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

But IMHO, there is probably an order of magnitude difference between those two though. I have a pretty strong idea of what real people look like in very many different situations (and from many different angles). I don't really have a strong idea of what explosions and many other movie effects sound like. Yes, I'm oversimplifying movie sounds, but at least some of the talk revolving around lossless vs high quality lossy seem to push the envelope a bit anyway.

Still, yes, of course, I'd rather have lossless than lossy audio (assuming higher sampling lossy isn't better than lower sampling lossless in certain cases). But I'm not about to boycott a title just because it has DD+ instead of a lossless track.

And really, as Doug pointed out just above, I wouldn't really consider any soundtrack put to film to be audiophile quality at all -- and I'm not even a serious audiophile.

_Man_

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

_Man_

It depends on what wets your movie whistle. Some of us get a zing out of pristine video. That's a videophile. Some get it from audio. That's an audiophile. Some get it from both. We're bi-philes, I mean audio/video-philes.


Good to know...

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

To me, a videophile is a film lover, I'm not so sure about an audiophile because an audiophile can love lossless audio, but not care for film at all.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

What you just described is a "cinephile": one who loves movies.

That's all of us here.

"videophile" refers particuarly to image. "Audiophile" particularly to sound.

And since movies have both picture and sound (at least most of the films that we tend to enjoy in our HT systems) it's perfectly consistent for cinephiles to also enjoy both videophile and audiophile enthusiasm.


And a videophile can enjoy the "eye candy" of a really bad movie with a demo-quality HD transfer just as easily.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

My first encounters with people that described themselves as audiophiles goes back 25 or so years ago and very few of them cared about video or cinema. They were totally into audio without anything visual being a part of it. Furthermore, the videophiles I encountered during that time were into video formats that they can play at home to further enhance their love affair with movies. I consider myself a videophile that has spent a small fortune since the early 1980s wetting my long-standing appetite for movies by collecting movies on a home video format.

Now, you can call yourself anything you want, but I take issue with you trying to define home theater enthusiasts into videophiles versus audiophiles because most of the audiophiles I know have a mild interest in movies at best. Of course, there are some exceptions to that rule so I'm basing my opinion on the people I know which might not be in the same age group you're talking about. Case in point, I think RAF would consider himself a videophile and audiophile.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Count me as another who absolutely hates overuse of NR. I'm actually going to send an e-mail to Anchor Bay/Starz on the subject after I post this message.

Of course, I hate film grain, but if grain is supposed to be there, then let it be there! I care more about fine detail than pretty, clean images that look unnatural.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

I hear what your saying, and I think it has to do with how both audio and video technologies have evolved along different time-lines in consumer gear over the last 30 years. Most "audiophiles" from the 70s and 80s grew up with a love for high-end music playback when home systems were gaining tremendous grounds, yet we only had an NTSC video display system which could hardly compare fidelity-wise with what could be accomplished with a good sound system.

I know that I was a "videophile waiting to happen" for many years but spent all my $$ on audio since you could actually put together a sound system that would produce impressive fidelity, but no amount of $$ could do the same with 1980's/90's video technology. By comparison, even the $100,000.00 9" CRT video system powered by Faroudja line-quadruplers and state-of-the-art video processing from laserdisc still looked like *big video* blown up to 100 inches at the sterophile convention in NYC in '96. Sure... better than my NTSC 480i TV, but nothing even remotely like "film" and the disparity between this mega-buck processed video and real film was almost painful to watch given the extreme cost. I remember watching the laserdisc of Goldeneye blown up with the no-holds-barred video system at the show and being dismayed by the blurry detail, muddy colors, and ringy-edge contours. There was just no way to magically turn that laserdisc back into 35mm film no matter how expensive the system it spun on.

Of course, it was the best we had, and those with means did indeed purchase what degree of equipment they could in the pre-DVD/HD era to try to recreate a meaningful film-experience in their home. And thank-god that did because they laid the ground-work for what has evolved into the truely cinema-quality experience we have today just a few short years later.

The point I'm making is that folks who grew up with NTSC video as their only option often didn't embrace "videophile" spending habits and passions because the rewards were not as great as what they could get with the same $$ invested in audio. And yes, many of those foks bitched and moaned with the advent of Home-theater with DVD and multi-channel audio just like tube-heads resisted solid-state electronics (and with good reason. ). However, even my die-hard audiophile friends with their tube amps, turn tables, and 3" thick speaker wire loved *film* despite their hatred of "home theater. They tended to be among the most serious film lovers I knew. They just viewed home-video as a compromised state of affairs and one that threatened the transparency of their audio systems with the day's budget-surround-sound Japanese receivers.

But that's not as representative as what we see today. Today, you can love sound *and* picture and get a good return on both. You can have a projector on a screen that won't affect the imaging/soundstaging of your audio system, and you can "have it all". The finest audiophile companies in the world now make multi-channel gear with the same transparency as their dedicated 2-channel systems. This wasn't a given 10-15 years ago when HT equipment was dominated with low and mid-fi brands while many high-end audiophile labels sat on the sidelines.

Certainly these days, there's no reason why one can't be both and audiophile and videophile: there's no contradiction between enjoying good picture and good sound together at the same time.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Here you can find very good examples with pictures of DNR versus no DNR:
HD Disk (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) EE and DNR list - AVS Forum
Go to "Pan's Labyrinth" entry.
Mouse Over version: http://horn.hdtvtotal.com/hdtvtotal/...h/6d3c815e.png

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Wow. Wish I'd paid closer attention to those picks before I wrote my review of the US version. The detail on the UK version is dramatically improved.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Well maybe the thing you OUGHT to be addressing more is that different decoders seem to be giving different levels of EE. So when I tell you I don't see these crazy EE and noise effects its cause THEY ARENT THERE on my setup. Prime examples 1 and 2 are the ridiculpous amount of noise I saw on Heroes at the HD DVD trailer and the ZERO I saw on mine and the zero noise/ee I see on Tremors yet many others report seeing it.

A LOT of those guys who are complaining about this stuff are doing multiple generations of 1080i to 1080p and stuff and it is much more likely to be their setups then on the masters.

Now obviously I'm viewing downconverted to 720p and that has some effect on it as well, trading a minute amount of softness to erase any trace of ringing in a good way. Dunno. But as it stands right now, this is a huge mess, but I'm very happy with my setup and dont see the huge problems others are reporting.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Then enjoy as long as you can. Direct digital 1:1 stills don't lie.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

I'm doing 1080i from my HD DVD player directly to my Toshiba 1080i television, and I'm still seeing plenty of noise reduction and edge enhancement. I am seeing more of it on AVC encodes than on VC-1 encodes, which seems to be the opposite of what a lot of other people are reporting, but that could be the difference between Warner and Paramount's respective encoding facilities rather than the codecs themselves. There are a few Paramount discs that look outstanding and I suspect that for those they shut off the AVC loop filter. But most discs from Paramount look like a smeary mess to me.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

Mark,

can you do the same comparison with any BDs from Sony/Disney to see what their AVC encodes look like?

BTW, I just watched Santa Clause 3 which which is a (disney) VC-1 encode and it was probably the best live-action HD I've seen in a long time. No kidding... serious demo material. It far out-performs many of the VC-1 transfers I've seen from WB (which may be related to the quality of the film source or D1).

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

I am wondering is Dolby the only one involved in video noise reduction on HDM?

And while I have not read all the posts in this thread yet I am wonding how many titles have had NR applied to them so far? And how much of a negative effect has it had?

Sorry I have not read everything so I am not up to speed on the subject yet.

Re: The new enemy of the HD Formats is Noise Reduction!

As far as I know Dolby is not involved in the video end of DVD or HDM at all. What made you think that they were?

Doug