Forum - View topicANNCast - Mastering the Universe with Clarine and Matt
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dewlwieldthedarpachief
 Posts: 751 Location: Canada |
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I'm still left wondering what the advantage of upscaling content on the disc is over using the myriad of competant to sophisticated hardware in televisions and BD players.
The people who buy BD just because it's new and shiny can't/won't recognize the value of perhaps circumventing poor upscaling hardware in their systems by having an upscaled BD. Whereas those of us who are interested in the best presentation possible know that: a) Optimally encoded and deinterlaced SD content will be just as good if not better than a hard-coded upscale with better players (Oppo, or anything with Qdeo I suppose). b) Choosing to upscale the content opens the door to mistakes; better to have unmolested native content than a compromised upscale. c) Optimal encodes would leave more space on the disc! After listening to this, everyone should know how expensive BDs are; shouldn't it follow that we use that space intelligently? |
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joelgundam00
 Posts: 153 Location: Western NY |
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It's pretty much the same answer. They used a DVD-5 (single layered disc) for the last disc to save some money. It's not a whole lot, but that extra $2 per set for another DVD-10 (dual-layered disc) could have driven them over budget. Sometimes every little nut/bolt/screw counts, especially when it comes to mass production. |
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jsieczka
 Posts: 150 Location: Rochester, NY |
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The film restoration arguments for like new or better then new is held in every feild were restorations are done, the classic car market is very heated on this discussion. For me in any restoration my preference is a show room new restoration. I want to see a film, car, desk, house, etc in the conditions that were present when it was new. That said I can see the better then new argument as well, with modern tech you can make colors more vivid, lines crisper and in many cases it will look better. There is no real correct way to do a restoration on any work and it goes in cycles on what restoration method is in vogue. Right now the movement in art, architecture, film, cars and comics is restoration to new condition. In a decade or so I’m sure the trend will reverse them selves.
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ljaesch
Posts: 299 Location: Enumclaw, WA |
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I can understand the reasoning from a business perspective. However, as a consumer, it's a little frustrating.
On the plus side, though, I have to say that I love, love, love the "Marathon Feature" on the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z DVD box sets. When I'm watching these sets, I'm usually pushing through 4-5 episodes a night, so the "Marathon Feature" is a Godsend. 
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Here's a few... 1. The vast majority of people do not have an Oppo or equivalent high-end BD player. Probably less than 2% of BD purchasers have one. This ensures everyone gets the same high-end upscaled output. 2. No MPEG-2 artifacts to attempt to process out. 3. Anime is notoriously difficult to IVTC properly in hardware due to the low cel counts, and sometimes varying frame rates. A disc-side upscale will prevent the stuttering caused by many hardware IVTC implementations. 4. DVD has mediocre color reproduction. 5. Lossless audio. Also, a lot of people who have upgraded to Blu-ray have just stopped shopping the DVD side of the isle in general, so upscales are a good way of making sure people are still even open to buying your product. |
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Kakugo
Posts: 163 |
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xxxHOLIC: The Movie in the "Clamp Double Feature" BD. There's no JP Blu-ray as of yet, but it has aired in HD in Japan and it was clearly no upscale. What's especially frustrating is that the Tsubasa Chronicle movie was an "HD Native" presentation. FUNi later released the Tsubasa movie with the TV show, but has yet to do anything else with the xxxHOLIC flick. Cynic that I am, I've wondered if they're trying to forget that ever happened...
"Optimally Encoded" SD video, even with high bitrate MPEG-4, is really nothing to get too excited about. The Digibetas they're sourcing shows from have better color reproduction than any spec-compliant SD video can reproduce due to color subsampling. HD video is subsampled too, but since you've already upsampled the color data with it, the difference is negligible at that point. Besides, as Justin points out, leaving the deinterlacing/upscaling to the hardware of the user is a total crapshoot. The PS3, for example, does not upscale Blu-ray video; if it's encoded at 480i - and make no mistake, if you're not upscaling you're probably not doing a manual IVTC, either - it spits out a poorly BOB deinterlaced 480p signal. Your hardware isn't going to fix anything at that point, it's pretty much forked. At that point, a 480i BD might look worse than a 480i DVD because the player actually 'knows' how to deinterlace and upscale those properly. So long as the upscale isn't messed up, there's no problem. Frustratingly enough, Gungrave proves that FUNi's output is still wildly variable, but they've done plenty of other titles that suggest they've mostly got this stuff down. |
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dewlwieldthedarpachief
Posts: 751 Location: Canada |
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Don't get me wrong guys, I did say I was all for lossless, advanced codecs, and deinterlacing the content on the disc. I just thought you could do all those things and not have to bother upscaling; I guess Kakugo's comment on the SD spec means you can't get the bit depth, though. A compelling argument, sir!
Just out of curiosity; do either of you think people at large would pay much attention to the hardware shenanigans you described? If it weren't for the few knowledgable people raising a fuss, wouldn't the FUNi upscale issues have gone unnoticed? |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Oh ABSOLUTELY. People would go, "WTF THIS BD LOOKS LIKE CRAP" and not know why, and they'd get even more hate mail than they already do. A good number of people (60%, educated guess) know what BD quality is supposed to look like, but very few (~10%) know enough to bother to look into hardware issues. |
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ljaesch
Posts: 299 Location: Enumclaw, WA |
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We use this trick on DVDs as well, except for the cases when the DVD has been authored in a way that you can't skip the intro credits and/or trailers. Off the top of my head, I know that my copy of the Ranma 1/2 Second Season DVD box set was done this way. There might be some others I'm not thinking off at the moment.
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Giolon
 SubscriberPosts: 59 |
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I just wanted to pop in to say that I greatly enjoyed the episode! Though some may find the technicalities dry, I thought it was very interesting to hear about all the work that gets put into making the disc releases.
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GhostShell
Posts: 1009 Location: Richmond, B.C., Canada |
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A very informative episode of ANNCast. I always appreciate hearing from the people who work in the industry, as they know exactly what's going on to produce and manufacture the final product. Many items that I was curious about (up-scales being one example) were discussed, and I appreciated a lot of the technical detail provided. Being a firm believer in, and early adopter of Blu-ray for titles that I've purchased, it was interesting to hear the many differences between encoding for the DVD and Blu-ray formats. Great show, guys.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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I haven't seen it and didn't ask, but I get the feeling Gungrave might've been a Japanese upscale they had to use. It was encoded 1080i, and for some reason some Japanese studios love to keep things interlaced, whereas I don't think any Funi upscales are anything other than 1080p. (Interlaced upscaling never looks very good, IMHO.) |
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hissatsu01
 Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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If Gungrave is a Japanese upscale, they've been "kind" enough to provide Funi with it when no Japanese release has been announced yet. I can't say I've noticed any trend with upscales looking either better or worse because they're in 1080i or p. Paranoia Agent for one looks rather good, and it's 1080i, meanwhile 1080p Gankutsuou is godawful. The biggest determining seems to be what if any destructive filtering they do to "improve" things. Paranoia Agent doesn't have any that I can see and has noticeably more detail than the DVD. Gankutsuou is filtered to death and frankly the Geneon DVDs were significantly better about 90% of the time.
And what good option is there to 1080i if there's 30fps content? In that case 1080p will get you either dropped frames or blended frames depending on what you do; neither is something you want. Don't need repeats of the FMP:TSR OP where it's 30fps content dropping every 6th frame to get 24fps. Stutter stutter stutter. Still wish BD as a format supported 1080p30 like HD-DVD did. There wasn't any technical reason not to, and even if over 90% of 1080i releases are really flagged 1080p30, it would have helped avoid the occasional botched release. |
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digitani
 Posts: 3 |
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Really enjoyed this episode guys! I love hearing about how the industry works. I would like to hear more of that.
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5828 Location: Virginia, United States |
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The Orange Box version picture looks like it jumped straight off the TV set. As to the cropping issue, I agree with you. I would hate it. But the DVD transfer and the BD pictures look like you are watching them with lightly tinted glasses. Nothing like what we watched on TV. The BD is more detailed as it should be, so why should the picture be darker than what you saw on TV. I am sure there is a valid or excusable reason for it, but it is clearly a big negative to weigh in deciding whether to buy it or not. For me, if I am going to fork out for a BD, I would want the BD to be better than the TV experience not worse. The darkened picture makes it worse, despite the added detail. None of these versions are a 'win'. |
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