I agree, the problem is the movement, not the screen caps: if done properly, they look exactly as if we were pressing "Pause", I´ve done comparisons so many times. Its just that we can´t be sure about the content of the entire BD by checking 1/24 th fraction of a second. Anyway, I still think they are useful. I knew Patton, Amadeus, My fair lady, Back to the future or El Cid (just to name a few) were bad transfers and I knew The Sound of Music, The Ten Commandments or Breakfast at Tiffanys were good before reading anything. Sometimes they don´t help , for example I thought West Side Story was fine), but certaianly screen caps arent useless, and they are far better than reading what some reviewers write.haineshisway said:
Patton and El Cid are very good examples for movies that look so bad on screencaps that nobody can expect them to miraculously look good when seeing the title in motion, motion cannot completely change all characterstics of a picture.Lidenbrock said:
But you can't base your opinion of a transfer on a screencap or frozen frame. You're not supposed to see a single frame in isolation, you're supposed to see twenty-four of them every second, and your eye/brain combination interprets them as a homogenous, moving image. Grain will always look worse - if not downright terrible - in a still image. It stands there frozen as a layer of noise in the picture. If the image was moving, your brain would tune out the grain automatically and you'd see the information on the picture the director wanted you to see. I don't think screencaps are worthless by any stretch of the imagination - they give you an impression of the movie, but you have to see the picture moving on a screen.Lidenbrock said:
If screencaps taken from various points in a film reveal a PERSISTENT image quality problem, then I think it's safe to say that the same problem will manifest itself when you watch the actual Blu-Ray - at least that's been my experience. If screencaps show a generally soft image, then you can expect that the actual Blu-Ray will also exhibit a soft image. If screencaps show a general lack of detail in lighter or darker areas of the image, then you can expect that the actual Blu-Ray will also exhibit a lack of detail in those areas of the image. Now if someone wants to argue that what appears as problems are actually not problems at all - for example, some claim that the DVD of NORTH BY NORTHWEST was too bright, and that the darker look of the Blu-Ray is more true to a theatrical presentation - that's fine, but I think it's ridiculous to argue that screencaps can reveal NOTHING about the general image quality of a Blu-Ray.Mark Oates said:
One thing which might help DVD Beaver's caps is if he would get the BD and DVD comparison images the same size. I'm kind of in the middle on caps. I think they may help at times but are far from conclusive. Sometimes they appear pretty much the disc, other times not. I think they are a better indication of color and maybe contrast rather than sharpness.haineshisway said:
But if the Beaver resizes his Blu-ray caps to match his DVD caps, he's compromising the integrity of the image - the resizing involves a resampling of the image - and we don't know if he puts any image processing into his screencaps. As it is, the screencaps on his site are .jpg files - potentially as removed from the data on the disc as a theatrical print from an OCN if the screencaps have been edited and resaved more than a couple of times.John Hermes said:
Well, I show both my BD and DVDs on a 106" screen (120" for scope films), so it's easy to compare the two. There must be some way to do caps the same way. It just seems to me if the caps are not the same size, it's hard to make a direct comparison. I agree with your last sentence.Mark Oates said:
A 1080p image should actually fill the entire screen of a 1080p monitor. Most screencaps of Blu-Rays are, as you point out, considerably smaller than that. The compression, however, doesn't prevent the screencaps from revealing a lack of detail in closeups or the overall brightness of a Blu-Ray. For example, I could easily tell from screencaps that the Blu-Ray of NORTH BY NORTHWEST was going to be considerably darker than the DVD.Mark Oates said:
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We have an accord!FoxyMulder said:Screencaps without commentary is not always good or desirable, i think when you have someone reviewing the film they have watched and then giving some screencaps from various points in the film it can be a good thing, there are instances where screencaps cannot give you the whole picture, for example, you may have screencaps showing film grain, that film grain may have issues when not seen as a still frame, blocky, or static in motion or something else, that's when a posted comment comes in handy.
Screencaps are good for showing edge enhancement or issues with DNR or the differences between various region releases of a Blu ray or a DVD-Blu ray comparison, of course as you are aware there can be conflicting opinions on all this, i guess there will always be differences, for me, if i have any screencaps at my site then i have viewed the film first and i like to give an opinion with the caps. I'll never convince some people about the value of screencaps though and DVD Beaver is damaging the cause.
Anyways back to Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, damn i can't get the song outta my head. ( I keep editing my posts - I'm a Libra, go figure
I knew we were on the same page all along. Quite. As a matter of fact I have two laptops from the same manufacturer which are as far as I can manage identically calibrated, and the two screens bear little resemblance. There are all kinds of issues like native resolution, graphics card and the like that can affect the output, and tv displays have their own foibles. I think you'd wind up spending more (time and money) calibrating all your various displays to match and only have this lousy straightjacket to show for it.
