A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Departed -- in HD (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

Saw this with the roomates the other night on BD. Wow. What a great movie and yes... what a strikingly detailed and film-like image.
Now to upgrade to a 1080p projector!
Struggling along with 720P at the moment... sigh...

 

[Max Leung]

What? David you don't have a 1080p projector yet? I'm SHOCKED! Shocked I tell you!
You still using that dinosaur Benq 8700+ right? Me too. *sigh*
The PQ on this was really good. Headshot blowback in HD - beautiful!

 

[DaViD Boulet]

hehe. Yep, the 8700+
So far my next dream PJ is that new JVC 1080p with near-CRT blacks and crisp optics. The Ruby and Pearl are too soft for my taste... I think it's the optics (the Pearl especially, the Ruby I could probably live with).
My dream PJ would also have a "native 24p film" mode where it would auto-detect the 3-2 cadence of 24p orgin film coming in at 60Hz... even if progressive... and automatically frame-drop to get back to an even cadence with a 24 fps interval (like 24 or 48 or 72). Wouldn't *that* be cool!
dave

 

[Michel_Hafner]

There are reports of severe grain filtering with unacceptable artifacts:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&page=84&pp=30 :
Take a look at chapter 33 (dialog in hallway). There is some SERIOUS noise reduction going on. This scene is just an example of the worst case of noise reduction I have ever seen applied on any disc based HD transfer so far. The Departed has quite a lot of natural film grain. eg. in Chapter 33 there is no grain at all. It is not just that excessive NR is applied but the used filter is subpar - it smooths and smears the picture significantly, ALL detail and definition is lost, typical noise reduction artifacts are all over the place AND the VC-1 video stream AVERAGES 6.5 MBit/s during this scene (which is not surprising as there is no detail left to encode). Wait, it gets even better. After each cut in this scene the first 2 frames contain excessive amount of (natural) film grain. This film grain "magically disappears" from the third frame of each cut onwards - till the next cut. Cheap NR at it's worst.
As mentioned the VC-1 bitrate during this scene averages ~ 6.5 MBit/s. The very next scene of chapter 33 is not filtered - film grain is still present - and the VC-1 bitrate suddenly jumps to ~20Mbit/s.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Curious that within two pages following that neither Amir nor any other poster has commented on that topic.

Is there any more information that can be shared?

 

[Vincent_P]

What's your opinion of the scene in question, David? Since you've watched the Blu-ray version which would be a port of the VC1 transfer used for the HD-DVD and all. Did you notice the alleged egregious artifacts mentioned or not? Your positive comments re: the Blu-ray disc suggest that you did not see any of these so-called artifacts which should so clearly be visible, no?
Vincent

 

[Ben_Williams]

The artifacts are definitely there on the BD and the HD DVD... the scene happens pretty quickly, so it is easy to miss. It definitely looks like there has been some serious NR applied to this part of the film. All in all, it isn't horrible, but it does raise certain questions as to the reasoning behind such seemingly random application of noise reduction. It's just sloppy.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Vincent,

I haven't had a chance to spot-check this portion yet. Ben's comments seem to confirm there is a problem in this specific scene. I'll check soon myself to see what it looks like.

BTW, problems like this may be due to a variety of reasons... "filtering" being only one of them, which would be odd given it's isolated instance in the film (ie, why would one scene be heavily filtered and the rest not?). It may also be a situation of bad digital post-processing editing. Perhaps there was a problem filming this scene and the editing team though "no problem, we'll just fix that digitally later on". It's possible their digital work station wasn't properly optimized or they reduced apparent resolution to mask a problem they were trying to hide. Perhaps that's giving too much credit towards the genesis behind this problem--I only mean to suggest that there could be multiple reasons why a scene ends up looking similar to to this. During such an editing phase its entirely possible that they used a DNR algorithm by mistake or to poor effect. Whatever the case, given its isolate context, its doubtful that it was executed in an attempt to ease compression demands on the film.

 

[Ben_Williams]

I agree completely David on this one. There are about 1000 reasons how this could have happened and I seriously doubt that it is the result of someone's nefarious plans to over compress this title. I doubt any conspiracy was involved.

 

[Edwin-S]

What artifacts are present? If artifacting is present, what should a person be looking for? I watched this title on HD DVD last night, and I looked at the suspect scene several times. What I noticed was the scene looked soft and somewhat blurry. I noticed that the hallway was done with a striped wallpaper, yet the definition between the stripes was very poor.

 

[Andy_MT]

this one looked just a little too soft for my liking (BD version). maybe it was shot like this, maybe DNR was applied over the whole transfer, maybe VC1 on the PS3 doesn't produce great results, maybe after watching a week of MPEG BD catalog titles, i've got used to the sharper, coarser look of MPEG. but i've seen VC1 on HD-DVD and it can deliver impressive detail, so not sure what's going on here.

although saying that, there were a few select scenes that did look sharper than the others and more akin to VC1 on HD-DVD.

oh, and that hallway scene. wow. that couldn't have been shot that way. really shocking. i think DVD could've out done that scene.

hmmmmmm, i don't know, but of course, this is the one title that many proclaim how great the detail level is. typical, as usual. i'd laugh if it wasn't so frustrating.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Andy,

are you running 1080p or 720? Just at 720 here and I've noticed that sometimes folks going full 1080 notice subtle differences between HD transfers that look very similar on my setup. Part of the reason I need to get 1080p as soon as I can afford it!

 

[Andy_MT]

David - i'm only running 720 (120"), but using other discs as a reference point. my setup can definitely produce a sharper, more detailed image, as other discs have proved. and yes, bring on 1080P !!!

 

[Vincent_P]

Maybe the scene in question needed to be "pushed" in the lab, and they applied some heavy DNR filtering in the Digital Intermediate phase in order to compensate for the grain build up due to the pushing of the original film negative? Whatever the reason, I sincerely doubt it's the fault of VC-1. I'd wager that it's in the original source itself and not the fault of any HD compression codecs.

Vincent

 

[Cees Alons]

Yesterday evening, we watched The Departed on my (new) 46" 1920x1080 Samsung TV at 1080p (my new HT is closer to completion, but still not ready :frowning: ).
When you're watching the film, the scene (#33) doesn't particularly jump out as "bad" or even striking PQ-wise. In fact you won't notice it in particular (apart from the fact that it's a "difficult" scene plot-wise), I think.
So, later, on my own, I watched it isolated several times, even stepping through the images. I have to disagree with complaints that the wall paper seems (too) soft: there a first take when it's simply out of focus (because the focus is on the character glancing round the corner), later it's properly visible when expected to be so.
Indeed the whole scene looks a bit more "processed", and the grain is somewhat less. I'm not sure that wasn't in the original film already, because the wall almost seems to be a bit oversaturated, brightness wise, as compared with the persons and their faces.
It looks more like problems in the original take with the contrast being corrected (the faces having been too dark compared to the background?).
In one or two of the shots, there's slightly more than a hint of halo around a character's hair when the background is particularly clear. This is even consistent with a blue back-screen shot (the wall projected in later), I don't know for sure.
It's certainly no edge-enhancement artifact, IMO.
The lower bandwidth of the scene is easily explained by the simplicity and static nature of big parts of the image (the walls).
Note: I watched the HD DVD version on a HD-A1, I did put the combo disc in with the proper side up ( ) and I used the 1080i/1080p settings of player/TV set.
As I said: I don't find the scene problematic at all when watching the movie and I wonder if it doesn't look slightly worse, perhaps, on some 720-displays.
Bottom line: I honestly think that the "problem" gets way too much attention for it's severity (which is close to none) and length of footage.
What a terrific movie and what a stunning HD image!
Cees

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

If artifacting is present, what should a person be looking for?

The best response to that question (and this applies to any title, not just The Departed) is to not look for it. If you don't recognize it, ignorance is bliss. If you get it pointed out to you then you'll unfortunately have a much easier time of spotting it in many transfers in which you didn't originally notice it.
I realize this probably isn't the best response but it's a very practical one.

 

[BrettGallman]

That's true, Mark. I never noticed edge enhancement on SD-DVD until I read a web-page that explained it and showed examples. The Phantom Menance became especially difficult to watch after that.

 

[Tim Glover]

Kind of like I nearly had a salesman TRY to show me how to look for DLP rainbows! I nearly shot him and did this...

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but the more BDs I buy with VC1, the less I like it. While there are things I don't like about MPEG2, it looks more natural to my eye, as does AVC. The VC-1 encodes just seem to have been smoothed over and lack the finite detail that I've seen on other BDs. Goodfellas and The Departed are just the two latest I've experienced this with. The Prestige on the other hand (AVC) was stunning. I'm not sure what exactly is going on, and maybe it's just a coincidence with the titles I've watched recently, but I can definitely see a difference.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Jeff,

what player do you have? On my PS3 I've noticed that AVC titles tend to look the best. But I do have some good MPEG2 titles (Kingdom of Heaven) and VC1 (corpes Bride, Searchers) as well.