Why aren't Professional DVDs cleaner?

[poopity poop]

I just made an SVCD @ 0-4708Kbps average 3650Kbps. I encoded from a DVD which I used,

2-d cleaner thr=3
SSHQ defualt amount=175
warpsharp depth=10
picfix thr=8 qual=1

to get rid of the noise, then encoded it to a huffYUV .avi.

Then I used TMPEGenc on highest motion search precision, and the m2v file made has less noise than any DVD I've ever seen, and is almost pixel for pixel accurate to the extremly clean uncompressed .avi. In darker areas and in large expanses of color there is very slight noise. But overall its the cleanest m2v file I've ever seen. at 7500Kbps at 720x480 you get ~.927 bits/(pixel*frame). My SVCD was only .677 bits/(pixel*frame). Now grant it, my star war episode 2 DVD is in the mail, and I'll prolly creme myself when I look at that..but I pose this:

If me -- an amateur encoder (amatuer by definition of not getting paid) can clean up a DVD source(and not ruin the backgrounds or detials) from a lossy source(the original DVD), and create something that acctually has LESS noise, and with less bits for each pixel on each frame, then why can't big name studios create perfect DVDs?

Now the analog transfer has noise is it of course, but I bet if they used some of virtualdub's(yeah not professional, but who cares I bet they DO! :) ) noise reduction filters, like smart smoother HQ defualt settings amount=100, then picfix or something, they could clean up the noise, not harm the picture, and encode it correctly.

The other reason I'm posting this is because I own all the R1 Berserk (anime) DVD's that are out so far, and they are HORRENDOUS! I took that and used 2-d clenaer thr=6, SSHQ amount=200, warpsharp=15, picfix(on above settings) and cleaned it up and made a DivX file that is 3x's cleaner than the DVD it was ENCODED FROM, and the painted backgrounds/detial was not lost at all. I'm sure encoders who have done this know what I'm talking about, the DVD is about as noisy as you can possibly get! Its quite possibly the noiseiest DVD out there! Why aren't DVD makers taking the time to do it right?

Someone who works in the industry please tell me why DVDs aren't being produced with less noise? IS it a cost thing because no one can see the noise when watching it on a TV (no one can see DVD noise on a TV, I don't care if you have the best eyes in the world, unless you are talkign abotu the Berserk DVDs which are hourendous, or some other old ass, or bad anime DVD)? I can't see how it would cost much money to run a couple filters over a movie, to do all those filters over 480x480 took me about 3 hours on a dual 1900+, then just 2 hours to encode(for 27min).

I apologize for spelling errors, I type and don't care, I'm sure you can understand if when you find the mistakes

[auenf]

one question i have for you (before i try to work out an answer to your question), you are 'smoothing' the frames to remove the noise, this would make the whole movie slightly blurry, which may lead to 'out of focus' effect. it may look 'cleaner', but you may miss out on some of the detail that was in the slight grainyness ;)

of course anime is a slightly different case, you wont lose as much detail with a smoothing.

Enf...

[poopity poop]

not really, it looks a lot cleaner, I'll post up some screenshots with links to my site with zoomed views when I get the chance --

2-d cleaner slelectivly smooths only large expanses of color, it doens't even touch anytrhing that has an edge/detail, due to the nature of the filter. A setting of 3 is also pretty much the lowest smoothing possible. thr=2 can't accurately determine anything, so its set to the absolute minimum.

SSHQ works in the same way -- it will smooth out the picutre but detail and edges because the colro difference betwtween the pixels is so great it has a weighted everage. so if the color difference is too great ti either doens't smooth or smooths VERY little. In the case of anime defualt settings are fine except for amount which I bring anywhere from 150-200. For real movies if you were to use these settings it would smooth it out a little too much. I ussed a setting of amount=100 + all defualts for a clockwork orange because of the graininess.

Then warpsharp after all the noise has been reduced is free to "warp pixels to the edges." as the filter says :) This filter is great for sharpening without messing upt he picture, and anyone who's worked with it knows that a setting a 10 barely does anything, this is just to fix the smoothing that SSHQ does.

Then picfix is jsut a temporal cleaner, it gets rid of all the temporal noise using pixel lock, but is 10x's btter than temporal smooth/cleaner filters because a lot of times those leave traisl because it can't figure out thresholds very well. but picfix is pretty much a PERFECT temporal cleaner



Anyway I hope this answers your question. The detial and edges do not look smoothed AT ALL, in faqct they look sharper and tighter after the filter set if you can believe that, and I'll post before/after zoomed in screenshots when I get the chance