mhafner I would like you to comment new YRF DHOOM 2 Prog, field averaged transfer, in apropriate thread Indian dvd authoring authorities will never fail to and there you want us to buy these high quality dvds!

I am no buying no indiand dvds period!

mhafner,

thanks for the explanation, glad i wasnt the only one to notice that effect

because apart form that, like oyu say, it's quite a good smooth transfer.

I don't want you to buy bad quality DVDs, Indian or other. I won't buy Dhoom DVD myself as is because of that. I'll wait for a decent version, preferably HD. Or rent it at the video shop some time. I guess there will be a German edition coming. Don I have borrowed from a friend. I did not buy and would not given what I saw. I ask people to buy Indian DVDs that are good and have no big issues (to insist on perfection is silly, though), if the film interests them and the alternatives are pirates and illegal downloads. Quality is equally promoted buy not buying bad product and buying good product. Both components are important, not just one or the other.

I was not defiant!! but if quality in name of prog dvds is like kabul express, or dhoom 2 I would rather not buy!

But I'll always patronize orig by renting originals!

If you happen to rent or buy, then please stop by and comment on the thread.

Re German, orig Dhoom German was not much better, that we should expect Dhoom 2 will be, but we will wait and see!!

BTW, I do buy hindi dvds authored in France, UK or Germany, or Australia though

show me a quality transfer, I'll be all up for it! and import it from whatever part of the World I have to

but for whatever limitation, I did find Don 2 sharp enough but due to colors screwed up, was not much to my likening!!

Colors should be right. It's coming directly from the HD which is from the DI. While unwanted color manipulations are possible the direct digital approach basically makes sure colors are correct.

mhafner any news on the hd/blu ray version of don? or any idea when it will be out?

I'm not aware of any plans for a HD release although longer time it's inevitable it will be released in HD. This is one of the finest masters available for any Indian film right now. I watched the whole DVD and apart from the awful frame repetition and sometimes some compression issues this is technically as good as a good Hollywood quality DVD. The direct digital DI->HD->DVD approach has paid off big time. The problems are silly and easily fixable with a good standard MPEG2 encoder using 2:3 pulldown.
PS There is a disco scene early in the film which used music from the disco scene in DCH. That was funny.

All Indian companies use the crappy (1-passrate) optibase card for video encoding.

What do you think is the best 1080p capture/encoder (for VC-1, MPEG 2 or AVC formats) in terms of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format?

Prime Focus are building a HD-DVD encoding system via a Blue Fish 4:4:4 HD Fury capture card and using the Edius Canopus Pro Encoder 2 software.

Professional encoders are far better than PC based cheap solutions. With more or less immature implementations of VC-1 and AVC (giving great results but not close yet to theoretical limits of the codec) software based encoders are better than hardware since they can be easily modified. Progress happens monthly. State of the art is Microsofts PEP VC-1 encoder and some AVC encoders. MPEG 2 is mature and delivers great quality with high bit rates, but it's inefficient compared to VC1 and AVC.

Professional encoders are far better than PC based cheap solutions.

I hope you're talking about Hi-Def encoding, because that's certainly not true of encoding for Standard-Def DVD. Maybe hardware encoders of the kind that Hollywood uses. But I have yet to see an Indian DVD that I couldn't do a better job with encoding on my computer. Just as an example, I reencoded Don as 23.976fps progressive with 2:3 pulldown and did away with those stupid duplicate frames. And aren't you the same fellow who said this about the Don DVD before ever having seen it:

Your statements are meaningless. A lot can happen (and did) between the master and the retail DVD. Here are a couple of frames from the DVD I happened to come across:




Those are from 1:29 and 1:55 of the song Mourya Re.

And that's demonstrably false. As long as Indian DVD production companies use cheap and/or obsolete encoders, with nothing available except the Standard and MPEG Standard quantisation matrices (Don uses the Standard Matrix), then there's not one Indian DVD that can be mentioned in the same breath as even a mediocre Hollywood DVD. Don, with those dupe frames, is so far below even average Indian DVDs, that the less said in its defense the better.

Brother!! can u give us large shots, as we cant see through!

it would be nice to see some screenshots from your re-encoded version aswell..

Copied images to zulm server. Should be able to see them now.

Thanks manono for the shots.

Ali

Are these really images ??

HD was the issue in the context.

? What's your point? I did not say Indian DVDs are (not) encoded with professional encoders.
Your statements about color are meaningless as long as you don't have the master for reference. Yes, a lot can happen. But where is your evidence that the color is wrong except that you think it is wrong?

What do you think I was referring to when I said "compression issues"?? I also saw that this song looked noisy, but the whole film does not look like this. And I already said the duplicate frames are very bad. My point was that when you ignore the duplicate frames and the compression issues during some fast motion this is one of the best Indian DVDs and it is comparable to good Hollywood DVDs. The reason is that it is direct digital from the HD and DI. I can't see what is wrong about that statement. But since you seem to have such a strong opinion about the issues why don't you tell us where you are coming from? Do you work in video compression?