Film Direct to DVD Bad....

[S8 Booster]

Well, I held back on this one because I thought I did not really understand what this was all about.

My first thought was however:

"Never in the face of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."
- Winston Churchill

re-written into:
Never in the face of human filmmakers have I seen so many words describing so little?

If his degrees are for real this work seem all f.kd up if it was meant to be half pro.

R

[Scotness]

I wonder when the blue-ray DVD's come out what kind of files and specs they will support? What is their storage capacity? 24Gigs? That's about the same size as a one and a half hour pal avi movie with dv compression. I wonder if set top players and the discs themselves could support the equivalent data rate of a miniDV tape?

As for that site - it is funny -- to spout on and on about high quality and then have really bad quality pics is stupid! He does repeat himself alot - he spells it out quite clearly though with the data rates - 9.8mbps max dvd to 25(?)mbps with miniDV. BTW does everyone know not all set top players can handle 9.8mbps - something I found out the hard way, quite annoyingly - I read somewhere you should only encode with a max bit rate of 8mbps just to be safe.

Scot

[Alex]

At first I thought there was a lot of repetition on the website but then I thought I was accidentally looking at the same page.

Ironic that on the one hand a mini-dv is better than a regular DVD from a compression point of view, but on the the other hand a "data" file DVD is probably better than either DVD or mini-dv.

The one danger with DVD's, and I haven't tried this to verify it, can a DVD by be ruined by simply taking a magic marker and running it along the outer edge of the disc?

[Alex]

Wasn't going to post on this, but can't resist putting this up. I went back to that site again and started laughing. Yeah, I would never have guessed "workprinter" -- this looks more like a million dollar Spirit or Shadow job. 8O

It's amazing isn't it? "On the left is the unenhanced frame, on the right is the enhanced frame". I'd bet I could film with an old VHS camera off my rotten $5 Baia "reviewer" and digitize some stills and beat this. Who would ever send their films to this guy? Oh, yeah, the lady who threw out her old films after a transfer...

When I scanned the website I thought he had posted a frame with a scratch in it. On closer review I think the guy took the same frame and just softened the left side. I see a couple of aliased lines that run right through both sides of the line of mediocrity.

I suppose the aliasing could be an encoded artifact when uploading to the web but I seriously doubt he could have matched the left and right side of the image so effectively if the left side came from elsewhere. Plus, if that's a picture of himself when he was young, I seriously doubt he sent that image elsewhere.

Maybe I am erring in assuming he is claiming the left side came from elsewhere? Maybe he was simply showing what it could look like? The biggest issue I have with the photo is the lighting is so awful why even use that image to begin with?

[S8 Booster]

The one danger with DVD's, and I haven't tried this to verify it, can a DVD by be ruined by simply taking a magic marker and running it along the outer edge of the disc?

Why would you use the magic marker? Same as they hyped with audio CDs? (Better sound [image] quality?)

As far as I know oxydation inside the disk is the storage problem. The "data surface/layer" detoriates. Surface leak = data detoriation. Finally it disintegrates.

R

[Alex]

I'm thinking rugrats. A kid with a marker and some shiny DVD's in the vicinity.... 8O

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

Well kids sure can ruin DVDs, but this cannot possibly be a suprise for anyone, right?

I mean kids should not be playing with anything that is fragile and valuable, it beeing DVDs or super8 reels. Just store the DVDs far from the reach of kids and they will be safe (if you don´t scratch them yourself that is...)

By the way there is a big difference in good quality and cheapo DVDs, don´t go buying the cheapest shit there is. Check what the manufacturer of these discs is saying about long term storage.


Kent Kumpula

[MovieStuff]

When I scanned the website I thought he had posted a frame with a scratch in it. On closer review I think the guy took the same frame and just softened the left side. I see a couple of aliased lines that run right through both sides of the line of mediocrity.

I could be wrong, but it looks very much like the results one gets with an "Elite" color processing box. They're fairly cheap image enhancement processors you can get off of ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 77162&rd=1

When I was looking into possible accessories for the WorkPrinter years ago, I picked up one of these units and played with it. The tell-tale sign to me is the split screen with the "enhanced" version on the right hand side. This is exactly how the Elite unit is configured and the nature of the movable split even looks the same, which allows you to compare the "before" and "after" signals (neither of which are very good). The Elite unit was a noble idea but their image quality was noticably soft, even without doing a side by side comparison. Considering how rastorized this sample image is, I have to wonder if it has been overly enhanced or sharpened to try and offset the softness of the processor. It certainly looks deinterlaced with half the lines missing.

Whatever the process, it's sort of odd considering it tops a very long page about preserving image quality. For all I know, he may produce terrific transfers but you'd never know it from his website. I do have an issue with his standard (and much bragged about) practice of providing two video frames for every film frame, regardless of format. I guess he only accepts footage shot at 15fps! 8O

Roger
http://www.moviestuff.tv

[Dave Anderson]

I bet his "Virgin Masters" are videotaped off his bathroom wall or something, he sure writes a lot of crap.


Kent Kumpula

I think you're exactly right. When I visited his web site, I almost fell off my chair. About 4-5 years ago, my Dad sent him a 400' reel to transfer. He got this guys name from my aunt who lives in Florida and used him as well. She absolutely loved his work (as would your average non-techical customers). To them, they haven's seen the movies in 20+ years and are just happy to see something that remotely resembles there footage.

Anyhow, what we got back from him was laughable! It was footage that was shot in the 50's and 60's. The transfer was very contrasty and had a brighter spot in the center, not real noticable though. Also, there was a noticable amount of flicker. What was funny about it is that throughout the movie, you could see the edge of the movie frame move around. Sometimes it would be on the top, then the side, then the bottom. It was like he was zoomed in, but panning around the movie area!??! Also, the hokey music was over the top!

One of the sequences in the movie was a man diving in a lake. My Dad shot the sequence twice, then editied the film so it looked like them man dove in the water, and then in slow motion, dove back out of the water in reverse. Pretty cool Dad. Anyhow, Mr. Mayfield somehow edited it so that the man dove in the water twice. Also, my Dad claims that portions of the movie were in the wrong sequence...

I called "Bruce" to talk to him prior to my Dad's reel being transferred. At the time, I asked him if I could get a copy on mini-DV as I had just gotten a new mini-DV camera and wanted to work towards archiving the footage on DVD. Bruce had just gotten into using DV for his transfer process himself and had no problem shipping my a VHS for my Dad, and a mini-DV for myself. It was the type of cartridge that had the gold contacts in it, so I suspect it was a DVCam. I asked him if he did anything with archiving footage to DVD and his reply was that he hadn't really gotten into the computer aspect yet. That is why I believe at the time, he was telecining off of the wall and at a premium price as well!

The long and short of a site like his is that sadly, many people will be in awe of the 'knowledge' that he appears to have on the subject. However, if even your average reader looks carefully at what he writes about and how he writes, his site will be more of a liability to his business. When I spoke to him, he gave me a long disertation about the psycological nature of preserving memories and how he used that to drive sales. His old web site did a better job than the new one...

I'll have to bookmark his site to keep tabs on it...

Good thing this is only a hobby for me, otherwise I might want to contact him to tell him that the fellas over at filmshooting would like to "chat" with him :twisted:


Dave

[Alex]

Roger, do you mean the Elite does "field" processing instead of "frame" processing?

That would entirely defeat the purpose of doing two "video frames" per film frame since they would actually be "video fields, aka half the resolution.

[Dave Anderson]

Just found this statement on his site:

"We capture directly to the Virgin Digital Master YOU will own."

Before this statement, he makes it well known that the Virgin Digital Master format of choice, is mini-DV. Not the computer (he says that capturing to the computer and makeing masters from that gives you third generation material), and not DVD's.

Therefore, one could conclude that he is still shooting from a projected image.... Wonder what's proprietary about THAT?


Dave

[MovieStuff]

Roger, do you mean the Elite does "field" processing instead of "frame" processing?

No, I'm fairly certain that the image we are seeing is more the result of pilot error than anything the system produces. This particular photo has been on his site for a long time and many cheap consumer frame grabbers from years past would only grab a single field. That's what this looks like to me. But, hey, what do I know? I don't have a B.S. in B.S., which is apparently required if working as an "expert" in this field..... ;)

Roger
http://www.moviestuff.tv

[Scotness]

Not the computer (he says that capturing to the computer and makeing masters from that gives you third generation material), and not DVD's.

Isn't that the whole point of miniDV - direct data stream transfers back and forth between camcorder and PC?? Are there re-compression cycles in that?

Scot

[leighp]

From his page....

DVD stands for "Digital Video Disc" -- EVERYONE KNOWS THAT --
BUT
what you know -- but don't realize
IS
because the abbreviation DVD has the letters "DV" in it
AND
because "Digital Video Disc" has the words "Digital Video" in it,
YOU
have been set-up to be exploitive by the "film transfer mills"
AND
their slick use of these words and letters on their websites!
BUYER BEWARE!

I dont mean to sound think or nout but I always thought DVD stood for Digital Versatile Disc

[S8 Booster]

Could be

Meaning of DIGITAL VERSATILE DISC

 
(DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the Compact Disc. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users.

R