Want to check video quality? Take a look at this!!

This forum is for questions/discussions about the now sold out first DVD box set by BMG / AnotherUniverse.
msclfreak
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Strobe Effect

Post by msclfreak » Nov 24th 2002, 1:46 am

First up I want to say I am thankful to have the show on DVD and these are minor qualms I have with the set. Noting that...

When I first received my set this past Monday (I ordered from Best Buy online (after canning AU and placing with amazon and then canning amazon)). I popped in the final Disc 5 and put on "Weekend" quickly in my room on my settop player. I was amazed at the picture quality. I only watched maybe 2 mins though.

That night I put in Disc 1 and watched proper. This time though, as all airings have been thus far, it was viewed on my Dell Windows Laptop using WinDVD4. The picture quality on episode 1 kind of shocked me in the bad way compared to what I saw in "Weekend". I felt the picture was near graytones most of the episode and had minimal color to it. Plus I noticed the backgrounds 'changing colors' to 3 degrees. They'd be the normal color, than darker, then darker yet and then back to the original phase and repeat over and over. Hence it looks like a strobelight effect. It is mostly noticeable in backgrounds and when the background is a good chuck of solid color (like the yellow walls/door in the girls bathroom). It was quite distracting to me. Luckily episode 2 and 3 are much better color wise, and the strobe effect is lessened a lot too, to the point you have to purposely look for it to notice it.

At first I thought "Maybe the first disc is leftover from the original encoding and release in 99 when the transfers of films wasn't as perfected as now?" which would explain the much better quality of "weekend". But tonight I saw "Father Figures" and still same strobe effect, but still minimal. So that shatters my "leftover disc 1" theory.

I'm wondering, and will check tomorrow, if my laptop is bringing out this 'detail' to me more clearly than a TV would. Let it be known my laptop resolution is set to 1600x1200 at 32-bit color depth.

The other issues I've read in here I've not noticed though. But in "Father Figures", and this has nothing to do with picture quality, when Patty and Graham are arguing about Angela leaving for the show and Graham mentions he went to the Dead at 15... right before that line his mouth moves but nothing's heard... it's very noticeable... anyone else have this? Or is my disc/player messing up? I rewinded it a few times and everytime it does it. It's like it was edited (ala Family Channel's airing of the series).

Again... these aren't real complaints about the quality... just pointing out what I see and to see if anyone else see's them (and maybe has an explanation/solution possibly). Thanks!

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banding

Post by smackey » Nov 26th 2002, 10:10 am

Got my discs on Sat. from DDD and have watched the first five episodes so far. The banding on these discs is pretty horrible. I've seen the "music staff" that people have mentioned--seems to be banding coming off of the bright highlights on the hallway lockers. It's apparent in many other scenes too. There are also very noticeable compression artifacts around all text overlays (credits). Plus, on the audio front, I've noticed an annoying amount of reverb on sections of dialog in the Chase house. Not sure if that was original or brought out in the audio remastering. Oh, and these chapter titles are ludicrous ("Tool Time With Graham"?!).

That said, these DVDs have made my year. Flaws and all, they're totally worth the $50 I paid through Deep Discount DVD. (And I just officially got credited for my AU refund by Bank of America! :D ) I'm being reminded with each episode how amazing and unparalleled this show was/is, and I'm happy to have a (relatively) permanent record. I only wish the end product did the show justice.

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Re: banding

Post by Jason R » Nov 26th 2002, 10:19 am

I don't know who made up the chapter titles, but we made fun of them back in September when I had the checkdiscs.

BMG told me they are sending a copy of the DVDs to me, and I will compare to what I saw on the checkdiscs.
smackey wrote:Got my discs on Sat. from DDD and have watched the first five episodes so far. The banding on these discs is pretty horrible. I've seen the "music staff" that people have mentioned--seems to be banding coming off of the bright highlights on the hallway lockers. It's apparent in many other scenes too. There are also very noticeable compression artifacts around all text overlays (credits). Plus, on the audio front, I've noticed an annoying amount of reverb on sections of dialog in the Chase house. Not sure if that was original or brought out in the audio remastering. Oh, and these chapter titles are ludicrous ("Tool Time With Graham"?!).

That said, these DVDs have made my year. Flaws and all, they're totally worth the $50 I paid through Deep Discount DVD. (And I just officially got credited for my AU refund by Bank of America! :D ) I'm being reminded with each episode how amazing and unparalleled this show was/is, and I'm happy to have a (relatively) permanent record. I only wish the end product did the show justice.

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SanDeE*
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Re: banding

Post by SanDeE* » Nov 26th 2002, 2:40 pm

Jason Rosenfeld wrote:BMG told me they are sending a copy of the DVDs to me, and I will compare to what I saw on the checkdiscs.
It's too bad they didn't do that before releasing the set to the pubic.

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Re: banding

Post by Jason R » Nov 26th 2002, 2:42 pm

They did. It is called check discs. That is why I said I am going to compare them.

Once they are manufactured, it's too late to check them, so they had to send the prototype.

Kristin wrote:
Jason Rosenfeld wrote:BMG told me they are sending a copy of the DVDs to me, and I will compare to what I saw on the checkdiscs.
It's too bad they didn't do that before releasing the set to the pubic.

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Post by so-called customer » Nov 26th 2002, 5:40 pm

It's just too bad they didn't bother to fix the problems you found.

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Post by Jason R » Nov 26th 2002, 5:45 pm

i think any echoey effects might be the result of the surround sound processing equipment. they didn't fix the episode name typo or the layer change, but i did not see major artifacts. also, i am not on an lcd or laptop. i have a cathode ray monitor and my tvs are cathode ray.

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ymmv

Post by smackey » Nov 26th 2002, 11:59 pm

Basically I think everyone's mileage is going to vary depending on their particular equipment. I mean, Jason, I totally believe you saw what you said you saw on the check discs; and I also believe those who are seeing things in a more pronounced fashion on their own equipment.

For those whose equipment isn't as forgiving with the video quality, I think the results also have a lot to do with how much you are looking for something wrong. I admit I was looking mighty closely while first watching these discs. Before long though, I was drawn into the plot and no longer noticed the banding, etc. There were only one or two occasions so far (through 5 episodes) where my attention was actually distracted by a flaw.
they didn't fix the episode name typo or the layer change
I could've sworn I saw a layer change during a fade to black between scenes (where a commercial would be) in episode 2, but thought the check discs had the layer change in the middle of a scene. So I was surmising that this was perhaps changed before final production. Guess not though... maybe my DVD player just handled the layer change smoothly, because I didn't see it happen otherwise.

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Post by DoubleBilled » Nov 27th 2002, 12:06 am

Yeah layer changes are so far an imperfect science, but go hand in hand with DVD. Those are expected. Multimillion dollar studios put layer changes on multimillion dollar movies in the weirdest places, sometimes in the middle of someone speaking.

But I can safely say that I was not scouring the video looking for problems. I expected none. Never did I think it would turn out the way it did. I am very happy that alot of you are happy with your set. You deserve it. We all deserve it. We paid the price.

db

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Post by andrewgd » Nov 27th 2002, 1:09 am

I'm taking down the images for bandwidth/privacy issues. If anyone wants to host them, PM me and let me know, and I'll send them to you so you can stick them back up here.
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Minerwerks
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Comparing the video...

Post by Minerwerks » Nov 27th 2002, 4:16 am

So I get back from being out of town and what do I find in my mail pile...

I have been eager to pop the My So-Called Life DVDs in and see what's been stirring up all the issues over picture quality.

I have not had a chance to watch all the episodes in their entirety, but I have had an opportunity to look at material on all five discs. I inspected the scenes that have been cited for specific problems, and I do see the artifacts in the picture. I do have strong opinions on these and the quality overall.

As I said, there are intermittent horizontal light and dark patches, as described by Double Billed, but I am going to second phelix and suggest that these are indeed analog artifacts. When these lines appear on screen, they are usually in connection with a high contrast portion of the image. In the noted scene with Graham and Patty in bed, for instance, there is a bright spot on Graham's shoulder, and the light/dark lines shift position with it. I have seen similar artifacts in situations where analog connections are faulty or when a piece of video equipment (ie. switcher, router) introduces some problems.

How could this be if the show masters are in DIGITAL Betacam you may wonder. Well, Digital Betacam was introduced in 1993, and technology adoption curves would lead me to question if all phases of production on My So-Called Life would have been on a format so relatively new in 1994. (And since the MSCL pilot was completed in early 1993, there is almost no chance it ever touched digital tape - unless an edited master was transferred at a later date)

Also, I have to say that I can't see these lines in any episode past "The Zit" (If anyone does see them in later episodes, please post a time to look for them). I'm leaning toward the idea that the first few episodes on the regular run of the show were either edited or transferred in an analog environment that caused these problems.

I will comment briefly on the appearance of the pilot. Many have mentioned the "washed out" colors. I would think that AIX could have adjusted the color level up when working with the tape, though. The scenes from the pilot that appear in the title sequence of the remaining episodes appear correctly adjusted, so I would THINK there was a possibility of adjusting the color.

I will also point out that there is another misadjusted parameter in the pilot. The brightness of every part of a video image can be measured in levels called IRE's. The brightest portion of the image should be no higher than 100, and the darkest part of the image should be no lower than 7.5 (don't ask me why 7.5. Many other parts of the world set this more logically at zero). Even without checking with measuring instruments, the lowest IRE levels in the MSCL pilot appear to somewhat higher than 7.5. When this level is improperly set, it allows a lot of noise and unintended distortion to become visible. This is particularly a problem in MPEG video, used for DVDs. The rest of the episodes appear to have this level set properly.

As for the visible garbage at the top of the frame grabs, I can see this on my monitor, but only during still or step mode. By slowly going through some video, I could tell that a) the "garbage" in question IS closed captioning and b) there is no Macrovision encoded directly to the video signal (note that the player itself encodes Macrovision for output on DVD, unlike tape formats which must have this already in the video "blanking").

Even though the signal appears to have closed captioning somewhere, it is evidently NOT where it should be, because my monitor would not decode it into captions.

As for OVERALL video quality, the presentation is just below average but very, very acceptable. I have DVDs of over ten different TV series, and I looked at several in comparison to My So-Called Life. The best comparison can be obtained from, of all things, Friends - Season One. Friends debuted the same season as My So-Called Life (surprising, no?) and was initially shot on film but edited on tape, just like My So-Called Life (for the video geeks, the giveaway is the 3-2 pulldown you can note by stepping through video frames).

The video on MSCL is overall a bit softer, but shows less film grain. I'm suspecting somewhere along the line, MSCL was subjected to noise reduction of some sort, or the MPEG encoder (of which there are many different models with many potential settings) caused the softness. The amount of MPEG artifacting was incredibly similar on both releases, however. Friends has a very busy image overall, with few solid backgrounds. MSCL has lots and lots of solid backgrounds, such as single color walls, which make the artifacting more obvious, unfortunately. The amount of ringing around text titles was remarkably similar. Note that I am viewing DVDs on a Sony monitor calibrated with Video Essentials test patterns. Almost all televisions stay the way they came, out of the box, where brightness and contrast levels are set WAY too high, making MPEG artifacts on DVD much more obvious (incidentally, all DVDs have a little artifacting of some sort). Computer monitors are also going to reveal more picture junk because of the different brightness/contrast settings.

A final note on the sound...

The 5.1 mix is an interesting fakery. If you play any of the episodes on a 5.1 system, you can easily tell that the dialogue is in all three of the front channels, where it should ideally appear JUST in the center. (So the front channels turn out to be just a 2-channel mix after all, with a lighter combination of left and right in the center) The rear channels have ALL the sounds from the front intact - except for dialogue. How did they do this? The common practice with 4-track broadcast program masters is to have a 2-channel stereo mix on 1&2 and an "M&E", or Music and Effects mix on 3&4. This would enable the DVD mastering folks to manipulate the soundtrack without dialouge for use in the rear channels.

You may be curious why my opinion on this should carry any weight whatsoever. I've been working in video for about eight years, and have experience with several video formats, including BetacamSP, D2, DVCam and Digital Betacam. I worked in an editing/duplication facility for two years. For the past three years, I have worked at a network uplink facility and have worked with broadcast masters on a daily basis for about half that time.
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Ben
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Re: Strobe Effect

Post by Ben » Jan 2nd 2003, 3:57 am

msclfreak wrote: But in "Father Figures", and this has nothing to do with picture quality, when Patty and Graham are arguing about Angela leaving for the show and Graham mentions he went to the Dead at 15... right before that line his mouth moves but nothing's heard... it's very noticeable... anyone else have this? Or is my disc/player messing up? I rewinded it a few times and everytime it does it. It's like it was edited (ala Family Channel's airing of the series).
Hey msclfreak,
I think that scene has always been like that. I remember getting that impression during the show's run on MTV. Maybe something edited or rerecorded before the original airing?

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Dark Picture

Post by toosa » Aug 17th 2005, 5:58 pm

I know that you all are talking about the poor quality of the dvd, but I remember watching the show when it was on the Family Channel and thinking that the picture was REALLY dark! Sometimes you can't see anything! I cannot remember if it was like that when it originally aired on ABC. That was a long time ago! Anyway, did anybody else notice that?

Who knows if you all will respond...it looks like this thread has been inactive for a long time. Oh well. :D

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Post by Gilly » Aug 21st 2005, 12:29 am

ya, it is really dark on family channel. I always have to turn the brightness up to see some of the scenes. I don't remember if the original airing was dark, our TV was pretty crappy back then so I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed!

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