***Official Digital Video Essentials Discussion Thread*** (1 Viewer)

[RAF]

I'd be interested in your findings, Mark. I've used DVE on two players, a Denon 2900 and a Panasonic RP-91. I should also add that I'm using the interlaced output of these players to my Runco CL-710 DLP FP (the preferred method since that makes use of Runco's internal scaler) so I'm bypassing a lot of the electronics of my player (in case the scalers in the players contribute to edge enhancement.)

Lots of variables here. To anticipate a suggestion/request that some might have: I'm no longer set up to feed a progressive signal from a DVD player to my Runco without a major amount of rewiring (I did my A/B testing before deciding to go with the interlaced player output). That's not something that I wish to tackle at this time. The only progressive input to my Runco comes from my HDTV tuner and getting to the wires for a switch would involve moving a lot of equipment around.

Take care.

 

[Dan Stone]

Regarding the audio differences people are reporting when they are comparing their VE settings to the new DVE readings, I'm wondering if they are not following the new directions? Joe Kane now seems to recommend A-weighting be used, rather than C-weighting, after consulting with some audio experts and changing his signals accordingly.

The new directions can be found here:

http://www.videoessentials.com/ve_d_faq.htm

It will be interesting to see if the metered results change when following these new directions. If anyone tries this and notices a change, please post your findings.

Thanks,

Dan

 

[Chris Will]

Thats odd considering that on the DVE disc itself it says to use the C-weighting. When I did mine I found that the DTS tones were close to the same but the Dolby tones were about 3dB louder than the old VE. All the channels are balanced on DTS and Dolby, but Dolby reads at 78dB when DTS reads 75dB for all channels. I think everything sounds great with the setting I have. I will just have to remember to turn the volume down 3dB from where I'd normally have it when watching Dolby Digital.

That AviaPro is tempting but that $400 price tag is way to much. I'd use that money to have an ISF guy come and calibrate my system instead of spending that much on a set of DVDs that you will not be able to take full advantage of with out pro equipment. IMO DVE gives you everything you need to calibrate your system to the best of your ability without calling a professional and at 1/16 the cost of AviaPro.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I checked DVE on my Malata player also and still see the edge enhancement, though it's not as bad. Both were running into my Tosh 65H80 running in 3:2 pulldown mode.

One place where the EE is glaringly obvious to me is on the grey screens that begin each chapter in the video title (title 4, I think). The parallelogram in the lower left corner with the red-green-blue has huge haloes around it. Also if you look at the lettering closely on those screens, there are ghost letters to the left of them, the EE is so bad.

But apparently I'm the only one seeing this.... :frowning:

 

[Thomas Smailus]

Could it be an issue with the display you are using?

 

[TroyRD]

Can anyone confirm or deny the centering of the test patterns? Some earlier posts suggested they were off center again.

One of the primary reasons for me to get this disk is to have 16x9 test paterns for adjusting geometry.

Thanks

 

[Mitch Stevens]

Could it be that this new DVE is only saying that your DD settings are too high, because of how the Radio Shack meter reads? We all know that the Radio Shack meter reads 3 dBs to low, therefore in the regular old VE we were supposed to calibrate the sub to 72 so that we would have the correct setting of 75 dB. Maybe now, they recorded it keeping in mind that the Radio Shack meter reads lower than it actually is.

Could that be the problem?

 

[Eric_AP]

I bought the new Digital Video Essentials.

I'm a little confused on audio calibration due to the number of audio signals. There are limited band-width and full bandwidth pink noise.

Do you calibrate with the limited bandwidth pink noise signals or the full bandwidth?

Does it matter?

Also, regarding the LFE limited bandwidth pink noise, it seemed way off from my internal test tones on my receiver. The rest of the audio signals were in line with my internal test tones by a decibel or two (but the LFE was about 6 db off).

Which would be better for calibrating the sub level -- my internal receiver test tones or the DVE tones?

By the way, the "Swelltones" Jet logo has some fantastic sound. Great little sound demo.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

The overscan diagram on DVE appears to be perfectly centered on my calibrated set; can't vouch for the rest of them but that's the biggie.

 

[Chris Will]

When will someone be able to explain the audio differences between VE and DVE. I calibrated my audio using DVE and most channels had to be raised a little, but the sub had to be dropped. Why is there a change at all between VE and DVE? 75dB in 1999 should still be 75dB today. Was one of the releases mastered wrong and if so which one is correct? Maybe I don't understand whats going on but I was expecting very little change if any at all. The sub setting is what is bothering me the most. Why is it set so much lower on DVE vs. VE. Granted that it was only lowered 2dB. Since the front channels were raised 2-3dB I now have to lower the master volume 2db so I'm really loosing 4dB in my sub setting. My new settings sound great but I do notice the missing LFE. Maybe it is just one of those things were I've been use to my old settings and just have to give the news a chance. I'm just curious as to why the difference is even there. I used the DTS tones on DVE as they were closer to my VE settings. Any opinions?

 

[Keith M.]

For those that ordered DVE from DVD International, which free dvd did you choose???

 

[Dustin Wind]

Well i received this disk today.
I had the "Home theater magazine calibration disk" and used that to calibrate my system.

I used my new essentials and NOT one thing changed compared to my other disk.
Not one DB with the sound test.
Not one point of contrast or brightness.

I didn't expect much, but hey.

As for the rest of the DvD....the menu system is terrible and hard to navigate, and most of the DvD is too technical.
Sure the audiophiles will love it...but its not for the average Joe like myself.

So what i'm saying...if you have a calibration disk...you don't need to waste your cash!
If you don't have a calibration disk...well its still a great disk for sound and color.



edit....

One thing if someone can explain this.
The only thing that changed was the BASS...it changed big time.
It was set to 1DB before on my receiver....with the new disk it went to 9DB!
Why did none of my speakers change at all...but the sub was a dramatic change?

 

[Chris Will]

It was set to 1DB before on my receiver....with the new disk it went to 9DB!

I had to lower my sub 2dB and I don't understand why either. If the radio shack meter reads to low then that could be why I had to lower my sub setting. That does not explain why I had to raise the front three channels by 3db. Was it b/c I used the DTS signals. I check the DD signals before making any changes and all channels were about 78dB which supports the 3dB radio shack problem. The sub was at about 82dB before I made my changes. When I checked the DTS signals before I made my changes everything was around 71dB and the sub was around 77dB. I choose to use the DTS b/c it had the least amount of change to the sub. DVE says to make sure you move around the seating area when calibrating the sub and take the average. I thought you only had to do that if you had more then 1 sub. Could that be where I'm going wrong?

 

[Brian L]

I had posted this in another area of the forum, but I guess it needs to go here.
---------------------

Got the disc yesterday, and had only a few minutes to play with it before the family got home (they have a very poor attitude about hearing band limited pink noise at reference level. Go figure.).

Initial impressions are that there is something screwy with the test tones. The tutorial says to adjust for 75 dB, C weighting, slow setting.

No biggy there, except in my rig (NAD 762) with the volume knob at 0 dB, I can't get 75 dB on all channel unless I run the channel trim to max (+12 dB), and even then it does not quite get there.

Using other test tones its no problem getting reference without maxing out the trims. My speakers are of average efficiency (B&W and Klipsch).

Obviously, I need to play with it a bit more, but something seems fishy.

Another quirk. The disc has DD and DTS. But, you can not pick DTS from the disc's menu. You have to use the players AUDIO buttom to get DTS. But if you do that, and then enter title/chapter search (the quickest way to select a particular section of the disc), it reverts back to DD.

This may be a quirk of my player, but it rendered the DTS test tracks pretty much useless in my case. Why no DTS from the disc menu? Seems like DTS was an after thought.

Navigation was not bad, but as been posted elsewhere, its not as easy as Avia.

Last comment....the framing of the disc appears to be such that, if your set has a normal amount of overscan, the text at the top, bottom, and sides of the screen get slightly cropped.

That is admittedly not really a problem with the disc, in that I should not have that much overscan, but many sets that are not ISF'd will have this issue. In fact, on my set, when playing a 1.85:1 movie, you will not see any black bars, although you should see very small bars on a properly adjusted 1.78 set.

Oh well, thats a minor complaint, and its really just a cosmetic issue, but it is a bit of a fork in the eye. Other than the overscan test patterns, I don't know why framing had to be that tight.

I will report back after I have had more time to play with it.

BGL

 

[Keith M.]

my disc is due to arrive this afternoon, I will give it a run through and report my results...

After reading the comments in this thread, Im getting concerned about the accuracy of the test tones on this disc. Why would the audio tests result in ANY changes from the last VE tests?

 

[Thomas Smailus]

I would recommend, to try and ensure accurate results - that every with the old VE disk, when they get their new DVE disk do the following:
1) Calibrate the system again with teh old VE disk.
2) Then calibrate it with the new DVE disk.

This will ensure any possible changes from when you did your old disk VE calibration are not in the results. Who knows, someone fiddled, the acoustics of the room have changed, furniture moved, its a more humid day, the batteries on the sound meter are different or the sound meter changed, etc.

Then you can compare if the two discs result in the same calibration results.

IF the tests are accurate - then you should se NO change at all in the settings. If there is a change, then one of the two reference discs are obviously in error. Which one is, we cannot tell, and if they got one wrong, how can you assume the won't get another one wrong. There should be no change.

The benefit of the new disc, for folks with existing discs, should only be some new tests that were not on the previous disc such as new display tests, more audio channels supported perhaps - support for HDTV set calibration using SD signals (since there is no HD media yet, but you can still do some calibration of the HD display with SD media).

I'm wondering what the benefit is to the end consumer like me, of these discs, over the THX tune-up that comes on my Monsters Inc dvd with the $2 THX blue paper glasses I just got. Will the THX image and sound tuneup get me close enough to count? Given I'm using an SD set thats only 23" or so, I'm probably ok. Anyone with a larger or HD set know how the freebee THX tuneup optimizer fares?

 

[Eric_AP]

I'm wondering what the benefit is to the end consumer like me, of these discs, over the THX tune-up that comes on my Monsters Inc dvd with the $2 THX blue paper glasses I just got. Will the THX image and sound tuneup get me close enough to count? Given I'm using an SD set thats only 23" or so, I'm probably ok. Anyone with a larger or HD set know how the freebee THX tuneup optimizer fares?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the tones on the THX disc are not for calibrating audio levels, but for ensuring that the speakers are wired right (i.e, left is left, phase is correct, etc).

Even so, the THX tones do not stay on one speaker. I think for calibrating audio, the tones that don't move by themselves are easiest to use.

 

[Brian L]

Played with VE and DVE at lunch.

I set all channel levels for 75 dB with VE. I then ran the DD test tones on DVE. All main channel read 71 dB, save for the sub. It read 79 dB.

I changed nothing after I calibrated to VE. I do not not what level VE was supposed to be recorded at (-20 or -30 dBfs), nor do I know what DVE should be.

But they appear to be different, and the sub tones are not even in the same ball park.

FWIW, I also ran Avia (I take longgggggg lunch some time). I think I read that Avia is at -20 dBfs. To get Avia to 75 dB my channel trims needed to be between 7 and 8 dB lower than VE.

Given that they frequency range of the tones is likely to be different, I would be willing to wager that VE is at -30.

And given what I saw with DVE, it would appear that DVE is perhaps at -35 dBfs or so.

And someone asked about using A weighting or C weighting. The DVE tutorial calls for C, but I ran it both ways. Other than the fact that A does not read the low frequencies, the main channels were more or less the same, as the should be given that the tones are all band limited pink noise.

I am puzzled that one user reported absolutely no difference. While the main channels were close, in my rig, the sub tones (VE to DVE) were very different.

BGL

 

[Daryl L]

With Avia you calibrte to 85db.
With Old VE you calibrate to 75db.

I believe DVE uses the same type test tones whih should still be calibrated to 75db. Still waiting on my disc. :frowning:

 

[Quinn]

I posted in another heading, but was refered over here. My problem with DVE is two-fold at this point.

1) I am not able to see ANY difference with my sharpness control. The pattern provided remains the same at 0% as 100%. Thoughts? Suggestions?

2) I have the same problem with the 5.1 pink noise audio calibration. In order to have all speakers at 75db, I have to turn the internal speaker settings all the way up to 10 and then really crank the volume far above anything I would watch a movie at. Am I doing something wrong or misunderstanding what I am doing?

As someone mentioned earlier, I am not an idiot (well, depending on your point of view), but parts of DVE seem pretty technical unless you really know what you are doing.