DVD on Blu-ray

[FraggedLocust]

I was looking through the Blu-ray racks at Wal-Mart the other day, and I noticed that a lot of the titles on Blu-ray wouldn't have been released on the format because it wasn't out or standard yet.

Is there any quality difference in these titles to a regular DVD? How do they make up for all that extra space on the discs if there's no content? Are the "special features" stored off in a vault somewhere waiting to be added to a format that can hold all of them?

[blueshiftoverwatch]

I've often thought the same thing myself. Maybe the original film was shot in a very high quality and the quality was reduced to get it to fit onto VHS and later DVD formats. But with the advent of Bluray they can put the entire thing uncompressed onto a disc.

Probably not though.

[azagaros]

I love it when I see people who don't understand technology difference when they ask questions.

Blu-ray 20gb standard introduced by Sony for the same physical size disk.

DVD standards are for 4gb/8gb data capacities for the size of a cd.

They are just the difference in how the lasers see the disks.

The difference in quality isn't really there it is the amount of extra things like the number of languages in 7.1 surround sound that makes a movie quality and weather its in 1080i or 780i in 300x600 pixels or 1024x1024 pixels. They just take more room to store and that is the only differences in the technologies.

[gordintoronto]

Most movies are on film, and they scan the film to produce a DVD. When they produce a blu-ray disc, they should re-scan the film in higher resolution, so, yes, the quality is better. For details about a specific movie, you should go to a web site which specializes in HD and blu-ray.

[gsmanners]

The codecs they use are far better, as well. If you do any serious amount of encoding like I do, the difference in quality is pretty apparent. A blu-ray source is so much cleaner that I can count on a 720p encode of a blu-ray being *less* bitrate than a DVD (480p) encode.

[pwnst*r]

I love it when I see people who don't understand technology difference when they ask questions.

Blu-ray 20gb standard introduced by Sony for the same physical size disk.

DVD standards are for 4gb/8gb data capacities for the size of a cd.

They are just the difference in how the lasers see the disks.

The difference in quality isn't really there it is the amount of extra things like the number of languages in 7.1 surround sound that makes a movie quality and weather its in 1080i or 780i in 300x600 pixels or 1024x1024 pixels. They just take more room to store and that is the only differences in the technologies.

The quality isn't really there? Really?

[Lightstar]

AT the moment blue rays can hold 25gb per layer. It's common to have single and double-layers. There's a possibility to add more also, going to 100gb, 4 layers.

Movies on film (the original bands used by filming camera) can go up to 4000x2300 resolution if I'm not mistaken (maybe even higher now).

So blue rays of old movies are either:

1) Just a copy of the old movie, with added extras (languages, subtitles, behind-the-scenes stuff)

2) A remastered version of the movie, where they took the original film and re-digitalized it.

With the new movies it's a bit different, since studios started to use digital cameras instead of the classic film bands. But I'm sure a copy of their original recording would easily go over 25gb per film.

This is what I was told, hopefully a professional movie guy can come correct us.

[LowSky]

You need to realize that older movies that are produced on analoge film are of very high quality. So good that when the turn the film into a digital copy it loses much of what you see. The best example is old film cameras, and newer digital camera's.
When digital camera first came out they just couldn't compete with real film, now that digital camera are now becoming so good we can't tell the difference.

A great way to think of analoge and digital is the following

A= filmed imaged
B= Blackness

Anolgue film catches both
ABABABABABABABABABABABABABAB

Digital only saves the A's, the lower the digital resolution the more A's it will miss
A A A A A A A A A

The higher the resolution the more A's it will save

A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A

[FraggedLocust]

Great answers, guys. One question though, LowSky. What do you mean by blackness? Like black/colour levels? I'm not a filmography buff or anything, I thought it would all be filmed image. :o

[lisati]

Great answers, guys. One question though, LowSky. What do you mean by blackness? Like black/colour levels? I'm not a filmography buff or anything, I thought it would all be filmed image. :o

Perhaps LowSky can correct me if I've misunderstood his post, but here's my $0.02:

Film and TV create the illusion of movement by presenting a sequence of still images in rapid succesion. If I understand LowSky's post correctly, he's referring to physical characteristics of the film medium that don't actually exist in the digital equivalent.

[3rdalbum]

If you'll permit me to get on my high horse for a moment, there's only one thing about Blu-ray that I hate more than the DRM. And that's those directors who insist on keeping the "film grain" rather than digitally removing it.

I bought a Blu-ray drive and Blu-ray discs so I could have a crystal clear image, not so I can see some artifacts brought on by the limitations of the film media. On some movies, the graininess of the picture completely ruins the experience - you'd rather watch it on DVD, because the film grain is removed in order for the movie to compress down to DVD size.

It makes me reluctant to buy some kinds of movies on Blu-ray, because I don't want to possibly waste $30-$40 on a disc that has terrible picture quality because the director insisted that the poor quality was "part of the art".

[gsmanners]

It makes me reluctant to buy some kinds of movies on Blu-ray, because I don't want to possibly waste $30-$40 on a disc that has terrible picture quality because the director insisted that the poor quality was "part of the art".

So, all the blocking, banding, dot crawl, rainbows, and other MPEG artifacts you get on DVD don't bother you?

[pwnst*r]

So, all the blocking, banding, dot crawl, rainbows, and other MPEG artifacts you get on DVD don't bother you?

Lol, not to mention some films' grain is there on purpose. Leave it, I say.

[ratcheer]

Great answers, guys. One question though, LowSky. What do you mean by blackness? Like black/colour levels? I'm not a filmography buff or anything, I thought it would all be filmed image. :o

One thing it means is the contrast ratio between the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. Another thing it means is true blackness with no color cast. And, yet another thing is how many distinct levels of black can accurately be reproduced. Good old film was excellent at all of these factors and digital is now catching up.

If they take an excellent old film movie and re-digitize it to top quality Bluray, you can bet your sweet butt it will be far qreater quality than a DVD.

Tim

[ramblinche81]

Movies on film (the original bands used by filming camera) can go up to 4000x2300 resolution if I'm not mistaken (maybe even higher now).




Not a pro movie guy but a real 35mm guy...this web site has technically accurate info even though it is a little dated in some of the references...
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm


Small differences in pixel count, between say 5 MP and 8MP, are unimportant because pixel counts are a square function. It's exactly like calculating area or square footage. It only takes a 40% increase in linear dimensions to double the pixel count! Doubling pixel count only increases the real, linear resolution by 40%, which is pretty much invisible.



ektachrome/kodachrome, depending on ASA rating was in the 25-30 megapixel equivalent rating. our about 6000x4000....for all intents, that yields DPI about 5500 or about 5x better than 1080p

Filmakers in 70mm format are 4 times for total pixels, almost 100Megapixels equivalent but still 5000DPI. Film has no difference in horizontal and vertical DPI unlike our monitors.

The only problem with film is degradation. The color dyes shift with time and grain (dye crystals) tends to grow...that's why old films look like old films sometimes.

I can't speak to why when converted from film to digital (Blu Ray resolution or otherwise) they don't try some color corrections other than expense and they want the look of an old almost faded film. Studios would have to answer that for us.

But in general...you can't put sharpness back in and sharpness is what is lost when dyes fade or change and grain grows. Edge boundaries begin to change or blur...which is sharpness.

[bobbob1016]

I love it when I see people who don't understand technology difference when they ask questions.

Blu-ray 20gb standard introduced by Sony for the same physical size disk.

DVD standards are for 4gb/8gb data capacities for the size of a cd.

They are just the difference in how the lasers see the disks.

The difference in quality isn't really there it is the amount of extra things like the number of languages in 7.1 surround sound that makes a movie quality and weather its in 1080i or 780i in 300x600 pixels or 1024x1024 pixels. They just take more room to store and that is the only differences in the technologies.

1st, standard blu-ray is 50gig. They are working on 100gig and 200gig that are compatible with current players.

2nd, DVD is 9gig or so.

3rd, Blu-Ray is about 6x sharper. DVD is 704x480, basically 337920 pixels. Blu-Ray at 1080p is 1920x1080, basically 2073600 pixels.

Lastly, most movie cameras since the 70/80's have been shooting in HD, just there hasn't been HD players. They usually go back to the master copy and just release the Blu-Ray. However, they can also "remaster" older movies which is a pain to do, but can produce great looking HD (see Gone With The Wind on Blu-Ray).