Movie Blurays: Pros and Cons

[Cheapjack]

No, I'm not trolling at all.

Look at those screencaps from other films. They look like film. Then look at the Trek core screencaps. You can see the difference. They're processed, sharp edged, enhanced. Not as good as the original film. Look at the price of those blurays. Look at the reviews on the net.

Whether you can see it, or you just won't admit it, i don't know.

As to the klingon subtitles, they are part of the menu program and can be deleted, transferred, I guess. And those ST4 comparisons may have changed colour transferring between formats.

Come on, ST4 is a bit poor. I'll buy it, and buy it again, and again, it's my favourite film, but it's a bit poor. And 1,3, and 5 are better, but not the full whack. 2 isn't as good as it cold be, either.

They should just give me the job. I'd spend four months in a lab.

Actually, in some ways, it's a very positive thing. it shows just how much you can do to enhance and restore an image. It could be done to all those Dr Who episodes, or American TV shows from the 50's, or stuff that has been degraded or lost. It shows how far we've come one since those Nasa picture enhancement programs of the 60's and 70's.

 

[Amaris]

Yeah, he's trolling guys, and probably getting a kick out of it. He has been for some time. For those of us who watch these things, he's got all the earmarks of a troll and he's trying to get you upset. Just ignore him. Seriously, just ignore it.

Oh, I've known that he has been trolling for pages now. I'm getting a kick out of it too. I'm not upset at all, i'm actually quite amused.

Just saying that he's trying, not that he succeeded.

 

[Cheapjack]

Has anyone seen that advert, that shows Bruce lee playing table tennis with a nunchuck? That fooled me, for a week, cos I wanted to believe it was possible, till I found out it was a fake, that it was a digitally superimposed ball.

Check this out:

http://www.truview.com/examples/photoflair_examples.htm

 

[Sparky]

If you had bothered to read one of my earlier posts you would know that I agree with you that ST4 does not look very good for a blu ray title.

It is not because it is transferred from DVD though. It is from excessive digital noise reduction. It is an honest to god real HD transfer. Just not a very good one.

 

[Ssosmcin]

 

[Cheapjack]

If you had bothered to read one of my earlier posts you would know that I agree with you that ST4 does not look very good for a blu ray title.

It is not because it is transferred from DVD though. It is from excessive digital noise reduction. It is an honest to god real HD transfer. Just not a very good one.

Don't think so. Look at those other screencaps.

I think they will be relreleasing these in a few years time and I look forward to your reaction.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

If you had bothered to read one of my earlier posts you would know that I agree with you that ST4 does not look very good for a blu ray title.

It is not because it is transferred from DVD though. It is from excessive digital noise reduction. It is an honest to god real HD transfer. Just not a very good one.

Don't think so. Look at those other screencaps.

I think they will be relreleasing these in a few years time and I look forward to your reaction.

My reaction will be "great, my beloved Star Trek movies released once again with (presumably) higher PQ". In the meantime I will enjoy the current batch of BD's with their flawed but nevertheless significantly superior to DVD HD transfers.

 

[Irishman]

Well, if you lot can't see that they're just put them in a processing program, for that price, I'm stuck.

http://screenmusings.org/

Look at these screencaps of popular films. Look how they appear, the colour balance, the resolution. Then go back and look at Trek Core screencaps. Apart from ST2, they're all enhanced from DVD. Why on earth would they put all that edge-sharpening in, all that processing?

I thought ST fans were supposed to be discerning.

I'm discerning. There's a difference between being discerning and agreeing with you.

In this case, enough data points have been introduced to show you're wrong. All you keep coming back to is motion blurred hair and pixelated eyes in one shot as evidence of upconversion.

I think you're overdone.

Next?

 

[Cheapjack]

...and a few website reviews and a few screencaps of Blurays that have been taken from film. And some appeal to reason.

Next...

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

...and a few website reviews and a few screencaps of Blurays that have been taken from film. And some appeal to reason.

 

[Irishman]

...and a few website reviews and a few screencaps of Blurays that have been taken from film. And some appeal to reason.

Next...

:yawn:

 

[Trekker4747]

Saved.

Perfect "I Give Up" thread bomb.

Reading through this thread... Oy!

 

[Cheapjack]

Same here.

Nearly.

Well, not.

Look at other bluray screencaps.

I'll still buy the boxset. I'll be watching them on a Bang and Olufsen home cinema setup, hopefully.

 

[Trekker4747]

Ok, let's see if we can ration this out. Though I'm likely hitting my head on a brickwall here.

Film has nearly infinite resolution, it's analog.

Tape has "high resolution" but highly compressed. It's much less than film or any digital media.

DVD has a resolution somewhere around 420 for vertical lines. This means there's 420 vertical lines of pixels. It's been digitized from the original nearly infinite film stock but it's higher resolution than tape because it's not been compressed as much. It's just been... "simplified."

So, or example, say there's a letter on a piece of paper or something, or on a plaque in the background that's 5x10 pixels in size. That's five pixels wide by 10 pixels high. That's all of the information the DVD has. It doesn't know, and can't know, what's supposed to be in-between those pixels or next to those in-between pixels. All in knows about are those 50. Now, you can do a lot/I] with those fifty pixels. Make a pretty nice looking letter. However...

Blu-Ray's vertical resolution is almost 3 times higher. (1020, depending). Now that letter is 15 pixels high and 30 pixels tall! But if it's sourced from the DVD it doesn't know what those pixels are supposed to be. So it's either going to guess, take averages or just plain make it up. Otherwise it's going to look like blurry, blocky, crap.

So you have to go back to the film, or the digital transfer (likely to be very, very, very high resolution) and get the movies over again so the disc can know what those pixels are.

That's why the Spacedock shots show of this nicely. In the DVD, for the sake of argument, the windows would be smaller than a pixel. This means that four pixels have to average together their colors to give the "idea" of a window being there. On BD this window is now a single pixel and, boom, it's there as a single, tiny, window on a massive space-station.

There's no way to go directly from Blu-Ray to DVD because there's no way for whatever system is doing the transferring to know what is supposed to be between those pixels. For it do so it'd have to take averages which is, pretty much, what 'upconverting" is to ensure a DVD picture isn't a box half the size of your TV screen. But it cannot know what is going on between pixel A and pixel B. The information isn't there on the DVD and is only there either on the film or the digital transfer.

Now, it seems that these BDs have been overly "processed" and cleaned up too much to take away natural imperfections in, well, sight to give things a false look. (The "waxy" faces) This is part of the reason some Special Effects in movies look fake and some SFX in movies look better. Sometimes the FX guys make the background or distant objects look to crisp and sharp when, as in real life, they should be slightly blurry and indistinct due to atmosphere.

They've smoothed out the picture too much and removed too much of the "grain" and mess in it that's just natural to sight.

But these are not transfers from DVD. They simply cannot be. The DVDs do not have the information to provide the BDs for the type of detail the BDs show.

 

[Sparky]

Valiant try Trekker. It won't change anything though.

Obviously we have blurred the DVD screenshots and altered the color to make them look worse. Remember, he has been looking at screenshots on his 1000 line Apple monitor. (He actually has never watched the Blu-Ray, just looked at crappy jpg images) He has also been looking at websites that he can't even remember the names of. He has absolute proof though. A proof so solid that no one could ever refute it.... His unemployed friend agrees with him. If that's not solid proof then I don't know what is.

 

[BillJ]

Valiant try Trekker. It won't change anything though.

Obviously we have blurred the DVD screenshots and altered the color to make them look worse. Remember, he has been looking at screenshots on his 1000 line Apple monitor. (He actually has never watched the Blu-Ray, just looked at crappy jpg images) He has also been looking at websites that he can't even remember the names of. He has absolute proof though. A proof so solid that no one could ever refute it.... His unemployed friend agrees with him. If that's not solid proof then I don't know what is.

 

[Cheapjack]

Look at the reviews on the net.

You can upscale. There's algorithms to do it. It's called upscaling. You can interpolate the dots. If you couldn't, you wouldn't be able to put a standard 525 line DVD in a bluray and get a picture. You wouldn't be able to hit that little full screen button on youtube and watch full screen. And you can, cos the computer does it. Computers do it all the time, cos there are a dozen different formats and a dozen different size screens. That's what they've done to 1,3, 4 and 5. Sent them to a lab that does it a bit better. Edge sharpened. Read the reviews. But it's not perfect. If you're superhuman, you can see it. Or, if you read reviews on the internet by people who are paid to do this and look at screencaps for about a year, as I have.

I wonder how that photoshop works. I've never even used it, much, apart to recolour my 1986 photo op with De Kelley. Surely you can't fiddle with photos to make them look different?



I'm looking forward to my bluray player.

 

[Sparky]

Look at the reviews on the net.

You can upscale. There's algorithms to do it. It's called upscaling. You can interpolate the dots. If you couldn't, you wouldn't be able to put a standard 525 line DVD in a bluray and get a picture. You wouldn't be able to hit that little full screen button on youtube and watch full screen. And you can, cos the computer does it. Computers do it all the time, cos there are a dozen different formats and a dozen different size screens. That's what they've done to 1,3, 4 and 5. Sent them to a lab that does it a bit better. Edge sharpened. Read the reviews. But it's not perfect. If you're superhuman, you can see it. Or, if you read reviews on the internet by people who are paid to do this and look at screencaps for about a year, as I have.

I wonder how that photoshop works. I've never even used it, much, apart to recolour my 1986 photo op with De Kelley. Surely you can't fiddle with photos to make them look different?



I'm looking forward to my bluray player.

I can upscale? AND it's called upscaling? Holy shit, I never knew that. What a coincidence that both words sound so similar. I'm sure glad this thread has someone as superhuman as you to tell us about this newfangled upscaley thingamabob. Youtube has a fullscreen button? Where is it? Can you post a screenshot and point out the button for me? I would really appreciate it.

 

[Cheapjack]

There a a dozen different video formats and a dozen different size screens, if not more. Computers have programs that translate bewteen them all the time. The only people who do not know that, in this world, are the ones who are 95 and live in old folks homes, and even some of them, do.

 

[Starbreaker]

Cheapjack, you are delusional if you think everyone is conspiring against you.