manono wrote:
Hi-
My point was that anyone on a home computer can do a better job reencoding a retail Indian DVD if they know what they're doing. Of course, not everything can be fixed, but such things as PAL2NTSC ghosting, chroma interlacing, interlaced encoding of what was originally 24fps film, screwy luma of B+W movies, etc., can be fixed, screwups that shouldn't have happened to begin with, were Indian DVD Production companies the least bit competent, used some sort of quality control, had access to decent encoders, and cared even a little bit about their product.
We agree here. Lots of issues on many DVDs.
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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?
I try and I try, but I can find no reference to color in my previous post. Are you perhaps thinking of something or someone else?
Looks like a mix up. Sorry.
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I showed the pics not to point out any color flaws, but the very serious macroblocking, something that's inexcuseable, in my opinion. It was your reply to harry_rasul that originally prompted me to respond in this thread. I tried to register and got no response, and then the thread kind of died down, but then you piped up again recently with your impressions, with which I also disagree. I logged in, and it accepted me, even though I had received no response after registering a while back. Harry had said that Lakshya was a better looking DVD than is Don. You, without having even seen the Don DVD said, based entirely on how the master looked, that you doubted his statement. And, in my opinion, Lakshya does have the better looking DVD - by far. And you were wrong to judge the Don DVD without having seen it.
That's why I said "doubt" and not "is" or "I know". After seeing both the situation is that the Don DVD uses a far better master but the Lakshya DVD has no repeated frame problem and has no places where compression breaks down so badly than on this song in Don. So it's a mixed bag for both DVDs. On average I think though that Don DVD looks quite some better if you ignore the repeated frames. If you don't Lakshya is likely preferable.
And yes, I agree that such macroblocking is not acceptable at all, same as the repeated frames.
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But then you still say that except for these things, this is a Hollywood-grade DVD. But what goes into making a good DVD, if not avoiding these kinds of basic things?
First the use of a very high quality master. And Don has one of the best masters in Bollywood, which is comparable to masters used for Hollywood DVDs.
Then the mastering of that source to DVD. Here Don is not Hollywood quality at all. We don't disagree here. That's why I said if you ignore... The good news is that it's rather easy to go from here to a Hollywood quality DVD since the whole bad source on bad telecine with bad transfer issue has been eliminated. And that used to bring almost all Bollywoods DVD down in addition of mastering the source to DVD.
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This DVD has serious problems in addition to the things already mentioned, problems shared by many other Indian DVDs. It has chroma bleeding.
Could you post some shots please that show the issue?
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I'm just an experienced video encoding hobbiest. And since you seem to enjoy defending the indefensible, maybe you can tell us if you work for, or have any connection at all with, these UTV people?
I'm not defending the compression of the DVD. I'm defending the approach of going from DI to HD and then DVD. The critique of the DVD as is by you is justified. But you have to admit that the blocked shots you posted are not representative of how this DVD looks most of the time. Compared to other Bollywood DVDs it looks quite some better most of the time (again ignoring the frame issue). Concerning my connection with the house who did the mastering (not UTV) I happen to know them, yes. But I don't defend their actions when I see a problem with the quality. I applaude them though for using the HD as it is the right approach.