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Your DVD compression looks as good as Blu-ray compression, David! If it wasn't for the pixel size, I'd guess these were BD grabs. You really are knocking out some of the best looking DVDs that I've seen. I'm sorry we didn't get to work together when I was at MoC - it's been a crazy year.

Ah, that's too bad.

Thank you, but the only credit I can take is for careful treatment in the upstream stages, and for CCE Assist (which I really wrote to save my own time, I don't know if any other compressionists are using it). The guys in Japan at Cinema Craft deserve the credit for designing an encoder of this quality, that isn't confused by film grain and other random patterns.

I think there are parts of the "upcoming title" could pass for Blu-ray on television sized screens.

peerpee wrote:Your DVD compression looks as good as Blu-ray compression, David! If it wasn't for the pixel size, I'd guess these were BD grabs. You really are knocking out some of the best looking DVDs that I've seen.

I agree. Those caps look beautiful. (To the point where I'm tempted to offer up the heretical opinion that I'd much rather have a diligent DVD transfer like that, and rely on upscaling, than get a monkeyed-with Blu transfer, where you're saddled with somebody else's bad decisions.)

Yes, resolution isn't everything. Freedom from artefacts is important too.

The other thing is, at this level of detail, the scaler being used is very important. When most DVDs have been lowpass filtered and are therefore defective by design when it comes to resolving full detail, there's probably not much impetus for chipset designers to do their best when it comes to upscaling. I've seen a lot of in-TV scalers that don't really do a good job of rendering crisp details. The HQV scaling solution found in a lot of high end amps and video processors is my favourite in this regard.

Of course, the better a scaler is at keeping high frequencies intact and crisp, the more mosquito noise will be visible in average MPEG video. All the more reason for the compressionist to avoid that appearing in the first place

I became aware of the Cinema Craft encoder in 2005 when we were working on our ONIBABA release, it became our encoder of choice from there on in. It's been around a while, and I'm guessing that it's been used by Criterion for a long time too - because they've been having great results from DVD for even longer.

With Criterion, I got the idea that the DVD work was done by various different freelance studios, rather than internally. I don't think I've ever seen a Criterion DVD that wasn't lowpass filtered though.

Caps from Mr Bongo's Falstaff

The last one looks a bit soft, but overall that suggests something better than what we've gotten in the past.

The whole disc looks a bit soft!

Certainly looks like it's been noise reduced with FFT3DFilter or something similar. And I see you used VLC, which AFAIK doesn't apply any processing gubbins (unless requested).

This is from a test pressing of Second Run's 2012 reissue of Mother Joan of the Angels, but it's a dual-layer DVD-R and it's likely to be identical to the final retail version. Grabs have been deliberately chosen to match this Beaver review of the original VHS-quality 2005 edition.













One compositional point is that the entire image appears to have been pulled down a fraction - i.e. there's a bit taken off the top of the frame, but a fair bit more visible at the bottom. But since the new restoration was supervised by original cinematographer Jerzy Wójcik (credited explicitly at the end) and God knows who approved the old analogue transfer, I'm more than happy to accept the new version as more authoritative.

Some of those caps look a bit soft (2+6), while others are fine?

That can't surely be what the compression on the disc is like? What did you use to take the grabs, perhaps it's heavily compressing the images?

EDIT: (Facepalm) I just realised that because I'm using a 3G connection, my mobile internet provider is squashing the quality of incoming images to reduce the bandwidth! So ignore my previous comments. That'll teach me to use the web outside on a sunny day!

The latest version of VLC, running on a MacBook - I've no idea what compression it applies and there doesn't seem to be a setting in preferences.

I'll take a look so we can solve the mystery!

Nothing like sitting in the middle of Glasgow in a sunny day with a laptop updating software

I just checked it out. VLC grabs PNG images from the disc and re-scales them. It outputs a good representation of what's on the disc.

(Facepalm) I just realised that because I'm using a 3G connection, my mobile internet provider is squashing the quality of incoming images to reduce the bandwidth! ](*,) So ignore my previous comments!

Phew - I was seriously questioning my eyesight, monitor, computer and software for a minute there!

Back home now with a proper connection.

It looks like they've decided to grain-reduce it. The edges remain sharp, but the textures look to be softened.

Par for the course with Polish restorations - like the Italians, they do seem to be a tad fond of DNR.

But it's very safe to say that if you're happy with Second Run's Polish Classics box, Arrow's Ashes and Diamonds and Mr Bongo's The Saragossa Manuscript and The Hourglass Sanatorium, you'll be happy with this - the restorations were done by the same people on the same equipment at more or less the same time.

And if you've only seen Second Run's 2005 version, you'll be ecstatic!

MichaelB wrote:One compositional point is that the entire image appears to have been pulled down a fraction - i.e. there's a bit taken off the top of the frame, but a fair bit more visible at the bottom. But since the new restoration was supervised by original cinematographer Jerzy Wójcik (credited explicitly at the end) and God knows who approved the old analogue transfer, I'm more than happy to accept the new version as more authoritative.

It also looks like there is slightly more picture information on the right side of the frame as well. What a great updating of the previous edition!

David M. wrote:Ah, that's too bad.

Thank you, but the only credit I can take is for careful treatment in the upstream stages, and for CCE Assist (which I really wrote to save my own time, I don't know if any other compressionists are using it). The guys in Japan at Cinema Craft deserve the credit for designing an encoder of this quality, that isn't confused by film grain and other random patterns.

I think there are parts of the "upcoming title" could pass for Blu-ray on television sized screens.

I bet I know what this is...



I am very excited to see it. You might even say "obstinate"ly so, but only if you had your thesaurus nearby...

You can Count on Cinema Craft to push MPEG-2 to the limit!

DVD Beaver have posted slightly compressed (understandable given their need to save bandwidth), but overall very accurate screen grabs of Countess Perverse. Thumbs up to them for a job well done!

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/dvd_revi ... everse.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here's some more from me. I did this one with CINEMA CRAFT SP3 (of course) and my own add-in utility which helps improve the compression quality, "CCE Assist".

Edit: disregard compression artefacts. Photobucket is now squishing the file sizes down.

The burning question, though, is: Does pubic hair present the same difficulties for a lowpass filer as a tweed jacket?

Yes. Yes it does. No in-encoder de-pubing has been done.