Laser Examiner Article - DVD Quality Starting to Lag? (1 Viewer)

[Paul Borges]

Here's the link:

http://www.dvdscan.com/astaire.htm

Why are the studios not using the full capacity of DVDs?

Is our ferocious appetite for product leading to a decrease in quality? Should we all be more patient?

Thoughts?

 

[Mike Wadkins]

to better sell hd ? mastering getting better less lossy?

 

[Dave Mack]

Wouldn't surprise me, Mike.

 

[Esten]

hah. Even with an HDTV, I'm not buying anything Hi-Def on disc, until one format gets the dominance. Don't wanna get stuck with another Spectravision CED format.

HD-CED.... now THERE'S an idea!

 

[John Hodson]

Warners are really getting it in the neck recently are they not? Anyone catch Griping The Light Fantastic at DVD Beaver? They really are rubbish aren't they...

 

[Robert Harris]

Mr. Zagarac's piece is off-base, and not in sync with the reality of the situation.

RAH

 

[Mark Anthony]

Out of all that was mentioned in both articles, the only thing that really concerns me is the amount of space used, or not used, by certain companies to encode a film onto dvd.

Given that a lot of these titles need as much help as they can get with imperfect source material, putting an unnecessary limit on space used seems very short-sighted.

Zegarac's comments on titles not looking pristine and the amount of films not yet released are really perplexing, as the amount of time and money involved to make them look as good as they currently do, encoding isssues aside, are whats delaying the release of more vault classics.

Until a Lowry-a-like full-digital restoration costs less than $100,000, or thereabouts, a title, making it cost-advantageous for virtually all films, we will have to live with what studio's deem affordable to give us - which means the more popular titles, ie those that sell the most will get the better, more expensive treatment.

M

 

[John Hodson]

I was thinking much along the same lines...

In another thread I've said that Ben-Hur is an excellent presentation. For me; I am happy. I'm looking at it on my CRT, hearing it through my system, in my environment. It's not much, but it's home. I like the extras, I like the price (don't care much for the flimsy packaging, but hey...)

I don't really care about the minutiae of transfer science. I look at it, am I happy? If it looks okay to me, then for me, all other considerations fly out of the window. As selfish as that might seem...

 

[Robert Crawford]

As I read the article, my first thought was similar in nature. I believe his thinking is unrealistic when it comes to budget limitations and ROI expectations as well as the varying conditions of the film elements involved for the different films.







Crawdaddy

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

As far as using up available disc space, why is this article off-base? Why wouldn't the disc producers want to take up as much available space as possible? Why does the disc for QUEEN CHRISTINA only take up a little over half the available disc space? More than one-third of it is left unused. Isn't this a waste of resources?

 

[GlennH]

Could be, but more likely it's a voracious appetite that's to blame.

 

[TomDaniel]

Hi-

Why does the disc for QUEEN CHRISTINA only take up a little over half the available disc space?

It's on a DVD5, and uses all but about 30 MB of the space available. I should know, as I backed up my copy to a DVD5 without further compression. I don't know why he says that about Queen Christina. Maybe he mixed it up with another movie in the Garbo set (however, several more are also on DVD5). His argument about Warner not allowing enough bitrate for some of the movies, and capping the maximum bitrate fairly low is a good one. I've been wondering for some time myself why some of their classic films on DVD9 aren't using more of the space available.

I noticed that glitch in Swing Time while watching it, went back and forth frame by frame, trying to figure out how that could have happened. I was glad to read the explanation.

As an encoding hobbiest I found the article fascinating, and I thank Paul Borges for bringing it to our attention.

 

[Cees Alons]

In this case, I think that's the old consumer's paranoia speaking, not reality.


Cees

 

[Mike Wadkins]

was intended as a joke the second comment made was not my guess but the facts MPEG2 is now easier to compress by far

 

[Francois Caron]

Laws of diminished returns maybe? As was already mentioned, MPEG2 encoding has steadily improved over the years. Maybe it's no longer necessary to encode a movie at an excessively high bit-rate in order to obtain the best picture quality.

Here's the comparison I would like to see. Using the same HD master from a technically high quality movie, create MPEG2 transfers of carefully chosen clips using the same equipment used by the studios, but encoded at different bitrates: a "cheap-ass" level used by the lesser studios, a "standard" level used by Warner, and a "high bit-rate" level similar to Columbia's Superbits format.

In other words, don't just tell me that there's a significant difference between the various bit-rates, PROVE IT! Prove it in a controlled environment, using THE SAME EQUIPMENT currently used by the major studios, and using THE SAME WORK PRACTICES as the studio technicians.

 

[Cees Alons]

That question was partly answered already: because they don't know yet how much space will be available precisely.

When the compressed video files are made, it's not yet decided in most cases what else is going to be put on the DVD. They even don't know exactly which audio tracks are going to be added (languages on different versions), what extras, and so on. This is one of the practical problems.


Cees