What makes a good DVD transfer?

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Question:
Hello Folks,
As a relative newcomer to the world of DVD, I'd like to find out what makes the best DVD transfer. As I've read the various postings on this site, I see references to anamorphic transfers, compression artifacts etc, and I'm wondering how one buys the "best" transfer!
Maybe I should ask the question in another way! Why are some transfers better than others?
Any insight would be appreciated
Thanks
Stephen
:help:
Answer:

Several factors:
- Condition of the source material
- How much space is allocated to the transfer
- Whether or not it is filtered to death, edge-enhanced or otherwise tampered with
And so on...
Answer:

all depends on the mastering. some discs have a too soft pictures, ie you don't get a very sharp picture Some have a picture that is too sharp and you get halos. then of course you have compression fault (ie blocking) or even problems with the master ie scratches and dust. some pictures also shown unintentional grain. to be honest it's very difficult to explain all.
for all sorts of problems see here http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/VideoArtefacts/VideoArtefacts.html
HTH
Answer:

I am no expert in this field and used to think all dvds were very good.
One thing to keep in mind the bigger the TV you watch on the more of the errors on a transfer you will see. Grain is one thing that can ruin a dvd and lower budget movies and TV shows can suffer this.
Avoide non-anamorphoic discs as these look real bad on a widescreen TV. The best example I can give you is the Stargate movie. This has had three releases and the last one is what most people would call refererence quality, before this the picture was washed out and dark.
I am sure lots more people will be by to give you a better explaination. But one word of warning, DO NOT get hung up on this as it can really ruin your enjoyment.
Answer:

It depends on a whole range of factors, and of course on the individual film - although essentially they boil down to two physical factors (original materials and digital transfer quality) and one mental one (reasonable expectations).
When assessing the original materials, I usually take the following into account:
Format: if shot on film, was it 35mm or 16mm or indeed anything else? A well-lit 35mm picture should be virtually flawless (but might not necessarily be), but a 16mm picture will almost always show a certain amount of grain. A digital video picture should be technically flawless, but an analogue video picture may well have various things wrong with it: poor definition, trailing points of light, blurred movement, and so on. Also, was the original video shot on the same system (PAL/SECAM/NTSC) as the final DVD?
Age: - if less than a decade old, it's fair to expect a picture as perfect as makes no difference. Older than that, it's reasonable to expect some minor damage (probably just spots and scratches), which will increase the further back you go. A flawless picture of a pre-1930s silent film would be miraculous, for instance, though there have been some outstanding transfers of 1950s films which have raised the bar in terms of my expectations.
Nationality: - I'm generalising horribly here, but it's fair to say that countries like Hong Kong and India are noticeably worse at preserving their films than most Western countries (particularly France). So I'd expect a 1970s Hong Kong film to look pretty crappy in a way that I wouldn't tolerate if it was American, French or British.
Budget: - again, I'm generalising, but it's largely true that the lower the budget, the grainier the picture is likely to be, because it's much cheaper to shoot on high-speed film in low light than hire expensive lighting gear. So a low-budget horror film like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will inevitably look much rougher than something like The Exorcist, even though both were made only months apart.
Colour: - different colour processes have been used over the decades. Three-strip Technicolor was used before the 1950s, and produces gorgeous but decidedly artificial colours. Single-strip processes like Eastmancolor produces more "realistic" colours, but the film is more prone to fading - so a 1940s colour film may well be preserved better than a 1960s one. Western systems are generally superior to other ones - Soviet colour film was notoriously prone to shifting within shots!
Stylistic Factors: - apparent "flaws" may be entirely deliberate. Barry Lyndon's picture is distinctly grainy, but few would dispute that it richly deserved its Oscar for Best Cinematography. Guy Maddin's films (all made since the late 1980s) look as though they've been decaying for decades - again, this is a calculated effect.
And with the transfer, I assess the following:
Artefacting: - does the picture have digital glitches that clearly weren't present on the original material? Frequent problems include excessive edge enhancement (a crude method of "sharpening" a soft picture), momentary "freezing" of certain areas, isolated outbreaks of digital noise, and so on.
Black levels: - are the blacks truly black or closer to deep blue?
Shadow detail: - can you see anything at all in shadowy areas, or can you make out fine details? (also, do you think you're supposed to?)
Colour fidelity: - do the colours ring true? (always bearing in mind that the film-maker may not have intended strict realism?)
Aspect ratio: (the shape of the screen, shown as a proportional width:height ratio) - does this reflect the original film? As a rule of thumb, virtually every pre-mid-1950s film and pre-mid-1990s TV programme will be 4:3, but after that it could be anything: most common ratios are:
4:3 - pre-1950s films, pre-1990s TV;
1.66:1 - European widescreen post-1950s;
16:9/1.78:1 - widescreen TV
1.85:1 - American widescreen post-1950s (though a lot of European films use this as well)
2.35:1 - optical anamorphic widescreen (CinemaScope/Panavision, etc.)
I'd expect anything wider than 16:9 to have an anamorphic transfer, a 4:3 picture to have a non-anamorphic transfer (believe it or not, anamorphic 4:3 does exist, but I think it's a dreadful idea), and I'm personally happy to accept either with regard to 1.66:1 films.
Video Standard: - if the original material was shot on video, was it PAL, NTSC, SECAM or high-definition? And does this match the DVD standard? In general, it's a bad idea to transfer from PAL to NTSC and vice versa, as imperfections are bound to be introduced at some stage, as each system has a different resolution and frame rate. As a result, I'd instinctively favour a British DVD of a British television programme, and a US DVD of an American one - assuming they were originally shot on video (high-profile shows like Twin Peaks and 24 are often shot on 35mm film, so it's not an issue).
Restoration: - has a serious attempt been made to clean up the picture, and how successful has this been? Some companies go to a huge amount of effort, even to the extent of going through the film frame-by-frame and electronically removing spots and scratches, and if this is done properly the results can be astonishing (Criterion are very fond of including before-and-after demonstrations on their DVDs), but sometimes they can be a little over-zealous. For instance the R1 Citizen Kane generally has a phenomenally clean picture - but one shot features an unnaturally dry window during a thunderstorm, because the software scanning the film for flaws mistook the raindrops for print damage!
But how important each individual factor is depends entirely on the original film - and I absolutely second advice not to get too hung-up about this! With some films (big-budget films renowned for stunning visuals), it can matter - but with others (TV sitcoms whose appeal is almost entirely verbal), it arguably doesn't at all!
Answer:

For instance the R1 Citizen Kane generally has a phenomenally clean picture - but one shot features an unnaturally dry window during a thunderstorm, because the software scanning the film for flaws mistook the raindrops for print damage!
I'm not questioning your veracity Michael, I'm just interested; do you know the above to be the absolute truth? Have Warners held their hands up to this?
I have no problems at all with the R1 CK, having owned a VHS version for several years that resembled grey mush viewed through a sock in a fog. However, Warner's restoration - which set new standards IMHO for classic movies - does have its critics. One chap on the HTF dubbed it recently 'that bright overly digitized Lowry hack job' (!), and vowed that he would be purchasing the forthcoming R2.
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So many films, so little time...
Answer:

Thanks Michael. :thumbs:
that is very extensive and useful.
Answer:

Hi Folks,
Thanks to everyone who replied to my question. I learnt a lot from the replies and associated web sites.
For anyone else who might be interested I found this site good for a technical overview of DVD transfers
http://uk.imdb.com/Sections/DVDs/dvd-review (http://)
Thanks again
Stephen
Answer:

The Laser Examiner has a good overview (http://www.dvdscan.com/intro-e.htm) of how they rate the image quality of the DVDs they review. I've found that this site is one of the few that I tend to agree with, as I think their criteria for image analysis are a lot more thorough than the typical review sites, which tend to go along the lines of "Well, it looked pretty good on my 21" TV".
Answer:

I consider myself something of an expert here, so allow me to pontificate ...
In order of priority, in a DVD I am buying I look for:
(1) Mastered for DVD - a few unfortunate DVDs are just straightforward ports of an old TV broadcast master or even a VHS-quality master - the UK release of The Eagle Has Landed being the worst example I can think of; the UK release of David Lynch's Dune would be another example although the R4 is taken from a broadcast master and is not too bad.
(2) No obvious 'known' errors - these will usually be picked up by reviewers. Examples would be the BTTF Trilogy misframing, or the DD soundtrack problems on Wings of Desire - both corrected by the studios with a facility for returning faulty disks (commendably fast in Anchor Bay's case with Wings of Desire, not so fast in Universal's case but they got there in the end.)
(3) Anamorphic transfer - essential if a widescreen film is to make best use of your widescreen TV, a non-anamorphic disk basically loses 25% of the vertical resolution and will therefore look softer
(4) PAL disk - a R1 disk (NTSC) even if it is anamorphic loses 17% of the vertical resolution and will therefore look softer. Yes, that's right folk, R1 is (in theory) nearly as bad as non-anamorphic R2. Non-anamorphic R1 loses 38% of the vertical resolution and will look very soft indeed - to be avoided if at all possible.
(5) Good sound quality - DTS preferred, followed by DD5.1 high bitrate (484 kbps), followed by DD5.1 384 kbps, followed by the rest. It is usually quite hard to discover the DD5.1 bitrate from reviews or info on the box, but it makes the difference between thinking "that DVD had great sound" and "that DVD sounded OK".
(6) Colour accuracy (including greyscale accuracy) - in my experience quite often DVDs, even recent ones and even big budget films, do not have accurate colour transfers as compared with the film. Obviously an older film from the 70s or earlier will not have good colours anyway, due to the way that different colours in the film stock have faded differently (this can be partially compensated for by expert restoration). But a newer film can also have poor colour, just because DVD and film handle colour in different ways. The mastering house needs to use proper colour calibrating equipment (and the guy working it needs to know what he is doing). I think 'wetgate' or 'drygate' telecine also makes a big difference here - wetgate being better. A DVD with poor colour accuracy will typically look 'murky' especially with browns/greys/greens, and bright red and bright blue areas will stand out too much and look artificial. The big studios' back catalogue disks from the late 80s and early 90s tend to be worst in this area, e.g. Practical Magic, Interview with a Vampire, Dangerous Liaisons, also many transfers of British films are bad in this department for some reason.
Reference disks for good colour accuracy: At the Height of Summer, The Emperor and the Assassin, Howard's End, Amelie, Spiderman
(7) Shadow detail - this is similar to point 5 above, but some DVDs have accurate colours except for blacks and very dark colours, which all get washed out to the same dark grey (or dark blue, green, brown etc if you are really unlucky). Withnail and I would be an example.
(8) Softness - some transfers appear 'soft'. This is usually due to detail having been filtered out at the mastering stage, either to remove film grain or more usually just to enable a transfer to DVD at a low bitrate as explained here ('www.videophile.info/Review/TFE/TFE_01.htm'). Another possible cause (particularly with older releases) is that the UK PAL DVD has been mastered from an NTSC resolution master - in that case, 17% of the lines of the PAL disk have been artificially created by interpolation as they are not there in the NTSC master, and as an exception to point 4 above you would probably be better off buying the R1. A "single layer" disk (DVD-5) is a sure sign that the image is likely to be soft, as there is so little space on the disk that a low bitrate transfer is compulsory - therefore always look for "dual layer" disks (DVD-9 also called RSDL).
(9) Black level - on many many DVDs, what should be pure black is recorded as very dark grey. This can be corrected for by a slight change to the Brightness setting on your equipment, but it is still a pain.
(10) Accurate use of DVD frame - the majority of DVDS do not make full use of the DVD frame size (720x576) probably because the authoring guys do not even notice this fault, as a slight amount of the edge of the frame is not visible on a standard TV or studio monitor ("overscan") the amout being variable depending on TV and depending on settings. Maybe even the authoring guys deliberately do not fill the frame because their own monitor has a lot of overscan. If a DVD has this problem, and you view your DVDs on a digital display device (PC or plasma screen, or well-calibrated modern TV) then you will see thin black bands to left and right of the screen, maybe a blurry edge or other edge artifacts. On a PC this can be corrected using the excellent Zoom Player software, but it is still a pain to do as it is different for each disk.
An example of one which correctly uses the full DVD frame: Aliens and one which does not: Keeping the Faith.
Some DVDs have 1 line at top and/or bottom of the visible image which is faulty, either with a 'notch' in it (see this thread ('www.Here.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=188344')) or a different brightness level (Ocean's Eleven (2001) would be an example).
(11) Lack of edge enhancement. It's ugly, it's cheap, but it's there on most UK and US DVDs (not so bad on French ones, I don't know too much about other regions). If you sit far enough back from the screen (presumably like the guys who authored these things) you won't see it and it will not spoil your viewing pleasure. Here's a link to the Ultimate guide to Edge Enhancement ('www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm').
(12) "Lack of digital artifacts" - actually, all DVDs have digital artifacts in every frame due to the way MPEG2 compression works, it's just you normally don't notice them. 'Mosquito noise' is always there (especially in dark parts of the image) and there is not much you can do about it - a high bitrate transfer such as most 2 disk releases and in theory 'Superbit' releases will have less of this. If the DVD has been mastered properly (most have been), you will not notice this kind of thing unless you freeze frame or take a screenshot.
If a review cites blocky areas it may well be a problem with the reviewer's particular equipment. Similarly, 'rainbow patterns' are definitely an equipment problem rather than a DVD problem (e.g. one house reviewer on DVD Reviewer.co.uk saw rainbows in Danny Ocean's tweed jacket in Ocean's Eleven, but they are not there on the DVD it's just his player couldn't handle the complex pattern ... which makes you wonder about the accuracy of the rest of his reviews).
Rarely, there is a digital artifact of greater concern, such as during a scene change or where a rapidly moving object crosses the screen, or some kind of colour glitch. Normally, even something bad like this will not spoil your viewing experience as it is a brief thing, unlike points 1-11 here which apply to the whole disk. Unless it's your favourite scene, to be concerned about it is a bit :dork:
(13) Lip synch - some DVDs have a soundtrack that is badly synchronised with the video, either throughout or developing at particular points in a film. Withnail and I and Star Wars Ep 1: The Phantom Menace would be examples.
(14) Original aspect ratio - some otherwise good DVDs are 1.77:1 (16:9) when the OAR in the cinema was 2.35:1 - an example would be Gosford Park. This really bothers some people, personally I don't really mind and in some ways its better this way as you get more vertical resolution at 1.77:1. It also depends greatly on the film - films shot using the Super 35 process may be 'correctly' both 2.35:1 and TV aspect ratio. Bear in mind also that even in a cinema, each cinema masks slightly differently and thus the masking may not be 'as the director intended'.
(15) Position of layer change, side change or disk change: a dual layer disk will usually have a very slight pause roughly half-way through the film while the player changes layer (the length of the pause varies from disk to disk and player to player); it is best if this comes at a quiet moment in the film and precisely at a scene change. Some films span 2 sides of a disk (the older 'flipper disks') or 2 disks. In that case, the position of the break is extremely important as you have to get up and go to your player to change sides/disks. In LOTR: FOTR EE the disk change comes at a sensible place. On the new 2-disk R1 Superbit Das Boot the disk change comes at a very stupid point right in the middle of the best scene in the film; it is hoped that the forthcoming UK release will avoid this basic error.
Other points:
The way I see it, there is not a lot of point in complaining about 'film grain' as it is there in the original material. Indeed, if the film is grainy then I want to see that grain on my DVD too.
Scratches and other marks on the original print are similarly there in the original material. Although they can be removed digitally, for me a few marks like this are not a problem as it makes me feel like I am in a cinema.
Obviously the source print used is very very important - for a modern film this is usually not a problem (it is most consistently best for New Line Cinema DVDs, e.g. LOTR: FOTR, as they make a good digital master of the film at some early stage in the film duplication process, and then the eventual DVD is based on that). For an older film it can make a huge difference, depending on how well the print has been stored; it may be better to go back to interpositives etc. This is a separate topic of its own, however.
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There! It's a wonder I buy any DVDs at all, really!
(All references to DVDs are to R2 UK releases. Viewed on a PC using Zoom Player with WinDVD 4 video filter and PowerDVD audio filter, on a calibrated, colour corrected NEC VT540 projector optimised for 1024x576; audio system based around EAD Theatermaster Ovation pre/pro :luv:, Acoustic Reality ('www.acoustic-reality.com/') power amps and Neat ('www.britnett.net/neat/') speakers :luv: :luv: handbuilt in Durham, UK)
Answer:

Good stuff cm-9 - good thread :thumbs:
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So many films, so little time...
Answer:

Originally posted by John Hodson
Good stuff cm-9 - good thread :thumbs:

yes good stuff but ultmately completey flawed.....
Good sound quality - DTS preferred, followed by DD5.1 high bitrate (484 kbps), followed by DD5.1 384 kbps,
DD high bitrate is 448Kbps and not 484:D
Just kiddin, was a good read:thumbs:
I assume not every dvd you buy has to withstand those criteria other wise your selection will be pretty small.;)
Answer:

If anyone's concerned about the poor sync in Withnail & I... well, you're stuck with it: it's part of the original film!
(The first time I saw it in the cinema, I was laughing so hard at the "We've gone on holiday by mistake" line that I simply didn't notice that the whole scene was incredibly badly post-synced - but I certainly noticed second time round!)
Answer:

Aha - thanks Michael, is there anything movie-related you don't know? The first time I saw Withnail I didn't notice, but just watched it again recently on DVD - that's why I assumed it was the transfer that was at fault. Incredibly funny film - my wife and I laughed at so many bits. I think I like 'Here Hare Here' best!

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