Better quality PAL or NTSC?

[dvdsubber]

ok, this is a hard cookie for me..
I know this depends on factors such as which source the master is, how the transfer is done etc. etc.

But in GENERAL, do you get a better "quality" picture when you buy r1 rather than a re-authored r2?

I mean the MASTER is usually going to be a NTSC reel right? so it seems to me that r1 "Should" be the way to go for Optimum quality..

any ideas, etc. would be great! :)

[jggimi]

In general (there are always exceptions), when a major film distributor plans discs for global audiences, each version (PAL/NTSC) will be transferred from film, individually. NTSC transfers are Telecined, and PAL transfers are sped up 4%. As to which is "better" I would refer you to Rule 12. :-)

The exceptions are usually content that was originally video, not film. In that case, the conversion from NTSC to PAL, or PAL to NTSC, can cause trouble. See Hakko504's comments on NTSC->PAL transfers in www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm if you want more info.

[scharfis_brain]

PAL:
pro
- higher Resolution 720x576
- easier to get the progressive video, no IVTC needed
con
- 5% Speedup

NTSC:
pro
- no speedup needed (only slight slowdown from 24 to 23,976 fps)
- higher image frequency (60Hz)
con
- max Resolution is only 720x480
- IMO the IVTC-thing

[Ookami]

Well, as far as I've heard and experienced it depends, sadly, on much more things that the technical level alone.

R1 movies are mostly done from the master directly, PAL aren't (if that's an urban legend then it's a big one, supported by way too much proof). I asume that the situation is getting better in R2, but there are still too many LQ DVDs out there that are maybe comparable to a good SVCD encode so it will take a long time of almost perfect releases to fix that.

And I will not count the crappy "DVDs" (I know why I'm putting quotes here, it's a disgrace in most cases!) from Croatia, but only the ones I saw from other R2 regions/read reviews etc..

Not to mention the whole extras, censoring, release date etc. issues.

But, like always, it depends on your own taste. I mean, some people are claiming that DVD is not much better than VHS (or even VHS is better :scared: ).

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Acaila]

This issue has already been discussed to death here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48687&highlight=quality+pal+ntsc).

[dvdsubber]

AHH sorry, I did look around, but missed that.

anyway, thanks ookami, and rest for providing INFO, thanks.

I know its subjective, but its still interesting, some ppl think its jerky other talk about colour.

I want to know WHAT to look out for, and see if I notice.

and yeah, some ppl "hate" the speed up... others dont notice..

I know its subjective, but we live in a subjective world, and I like hearing those views :)

Thanks, and on to the next thing I guess :)

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>Thanks, and on to the next thing I guess

yes,but after i say my stuff..(hehe)

if film->pal transfer was done right,then it should produce the image with greater sharpness (because of higher resolution of pal system) then ntsc version (you can extend this to pal or ntsc prerecorded vhs tapes too,etc.)

this includes high quality telecined original at very high resolutions
(so called "2k" or even "4k" resolutions...guess how many pixels is that...........for more see this web;
http://www.cintel.co.uk/
cintel is one of THE telecine machine mfr's....and some of those pdf's and sampel images loked pretty stunning to me.....yeap,i dloaded those 4k jpeg images..they are big...)

ie. unlike jggimi said,all film->video (digital video too) transfers are telecined,because telecine is a way to transfer film frames to virtual data on digital systems/video tapes...

some migth claim that PAL flickers more,but if you have the choice,watch one film in both versions,see if any version makes you cry....(if something flickers too much,your eyes will tell you...)

on the issue of dvd quality overall;after watching quite a few top-notch systems here and there,i'm not impressed at all with all dvd hype!for my taste image always looked too soft,too blurred.....i'm acustomed to better sharpness on analog tv (true,dvd tends to be noiseless,but i prefer sharpness with some noise...)....that's for 4:3 releases,and for 16:9 i don't like watching at the 2/3 of the full screen (and they are blurry too..hehe)
also,i ain't buying a system that won't record video in the way i'm acustomed to....

if i add to that that i have VHS machine that perfectly satisfies me and can trick me into believing i'm watching live-tv and not a mere vhs recording (and i have tricked some other folks into believing that they watched live-tv while in fact they watched vhs recording...
ie. my OTA recording of analog satv stations,not some lousy pre-recorded vhs tapes...as they tend to be lousy..and yes,i have some screenshots that will probably be published on my web space...) and with the prices of dvd-r systems........no,not yet..perhaps i'll wait for hdtv..it looks promising...(hehe)

does the dvd look differently in different countries?obviously,pal should always look slightly sharper if proper conversion was done...
any company that produces dvd's should deal only with high quality masters (probably 2k or 4k or perhaps already "encoded to mpeg2" streams that only need to be placed to disc (printed))

does it always work this way?well,you tell me...for folks that have same dvd's in ntsc and pal format it shouldn't be to tough to hook them up to some capture card,and do some huff capturing.......not to relevant or absolute test,but as some orientation.....
(and i mean gettin in touch with some people overseas as one probably won't have same dvd in both pal and ntsc...usa people capture ntsc version and pal poeple their version,results are compared etc. the more comparisons the better overall illustration of dvd market quality you have....if every pal dvd looked better than ntsc (variables in the test are included in considerations etc.) then some conclusions may be drawn....vice-versa results can be expected if indeed PAL dvd's are mfr-ed to lower standards.........)

but as i still regard this tech pretty unusable because of price etc.i won't be doing such tests...(otherwise i would find some usa folks to rent same movie as me here,we would capture with bt device on huff,compare the results (both resized with same resizer to some standard display size etc.).... not very reliable test,but decent orientation value to it....)
if you did such test so far,then there wouldn't be the need for such questions........
(ohh,and btw. neo-neko's test (if still published) is highly questionable one.......his graphic didn't look like video source at all,and who knows what resizing he did.....he probably made PC graphics image and then tried resizing etc. however,it looks like cheap trick to me,as 576 lines MUST be visibly better than 480!also bare in mind that that image won't be resized (as he did) and will stay 576 for pal or 480 for ntsc tv playback...more lines means beter image most of the time)

so,if you ever get a hold of both version of one movie,let us know,as YOUR subjective views will be appreciated too........
your eyes are just as good as the eyes of folks that devised mpeg standards....so use them........

>any ideas, etc. would be great!

there,now you really got some ideas...heheh

[ppera2]

This was at least 5 times here in last 1 year...

I just want to say that there is no some big difference in quality between 2 standards. You will have very good picture if DVD is made well, from good source. If it is not case it's irrelevant which standard is it, picture will be bad, and you'll feel cheated.

I saw DVD's which were obvious VHS copy for example.

Ookami complained on Croatian DVD's, I rented recently 2 Croatian movies on DVD, and quality was really bad, although movies weren't bad. It looks that they have bad equipment for film transfer.

[dvdsubber]

"very good picture if DVD is made well, from good source"

thats what I was asking indirectly,
IS NTSC using direct transfers while PAL sometimes uses re-encoding?

those are the questions I wanted to touch upon, :)

I really didnt simply ask for "Best" but just the circumstances in which this should be seen.

Thanks for the input nonetheless..

[Ookami]

@ppera2

Nope, I think you've misunderstood me. I don't mean croatian movies on DVD (I never watched any until now), but movies that are "mastered" in Croatia and around it (ok, I could count in Hong Kong too but only quality wise it's not quite the neigbourhood). The ex-Yugoslavia (nice how all countries are still thrown into the same pot, but this is not the place for politics) release of Shiri still counts as the best VCD quality DVD I ever saw :D .

The main reason is that most DVDs here are DVD-5 and I highly suspect that they are reencodes of other DVDs (the unremovable ads etc. are driving me crazy, too). Sometimes I wonder if I should send them a hint or two about MPEG2 (re)encoding.

But, a few months ago I've bought the Monty Python and the holy grail SE and it's much better than the average release (altough the second DVD is still a DVD-5 :) ), but only to see a few days after it a horrible (is there a word that can top "horrible"?) DVD by the same distributor. I even wanted to mail them, but why bother, if they can make money with such low quality crap then more power to them.

Anyways, who cares at all...

Cheers,

Mijo.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>It looks that they have bad equipment for film transfer.

do you really think croatian distributers are doing film->dvd transfers?
like getting quality prints from hollywood and doing them?
yeah,right....

the only explanation for poorer image (if it is....it should be compared directly to "western" versions) would be the use of 1 layer dvd instead of 2 layer ones;
probably 2 layer mfr-ing costs more,so perhaps indeed they reencode and destroy the image.......

also,i believe no dvd production is done here too...(at least not that i know of...)there are no dvd plants in croatia....
so perhaps the plant that did it should take responsibility and not distributor alone.....who's making those lousy dvd's anyhow?
and more important;ARE THEY LOUSY INDEED?

if they indeed do mpeg2->mpeg2,then now i see the reason why i'm unsatisfied with all those dvd's i saw here.......
(but i have seen some 2 layer discs that are not sharp too,so...)

why should one re-encode unless he needs to save disc space?
there's no other logical explanation (hmm or he really doesn't have money for dvd production businnes anyhow so reencodes existing discs)
(because they should have access to masters directly......and those regions issues....seems like another thing to keep me away from dvd's)

>IS NTSC using direct transfers while PAL sometimes uses re-encoding?

if you find a user that has both versions,he should be your reference...the talk that "pal dvd's suck" without seeing ntsc version is useless...perhaps ntsc version looks like crap too?

[ppera2]

Well, I think that bad encoding with lower bitrate is not main problem for lot of bad quality DVD - for example in Ex-Yu countries.
It could be also problem, but as I see there is lot of noise in video, bad colors, low contrast and similar.
I read article how make (authorize) DVD's in Hungary, and I think that it goes similar in other countries in region:
They get masters on some (pro.) Beta tapes and digitalize that.
Noise on video confirms it. And if capturing equipment is not top quality, we get bad picture.

I saw even dual layer DVD's with very bad, noisy, low contrast etc. picture - for example Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, german edition. It looks that it's made from bad master on some kind od video tape.

Perhaps some PAL DVD's are made from NTSC DVD source, but it is not the way (resize to higher, recompress...). I saw many top quality PAL DVD, what is probably made directly from FILM source.
Actually for get very good quality, FILM should be scanned at higher res. than DVD's, and so distributed video can be resized later to fit PAL or NTSC res.

[Slogra]

I'm fairly sure that Army of Darkness R2 UK has been streched from 480 to 576. You can see it quite clearly on a computer screen. I've also got the R1 version so i could compare them very well. I'm not saying though that they just converted the R1 DVD to R2. But i think they used the 720x480 uncompressed source to make the R2 DVD.
This is the first DVD where i've noticed this though.

I can post some screenshots if you want...

[Ookami]

@ppera2

Agree with everything you've wrote in your last posting.

After all, it all depends on the individual DVD release...

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

i believe this would be appreciated...
(at least by me..heh)

>They get masters on some (pro.) Beta tapes and digitalize that

YAIKS!
if the source was video,this is understandable,but doing this to film source....huh....

[dvdsubber]

hehe NOW we are getting there.. :)
We are talking Sources used, encoding etc. etc.
and see? nothing bad with a "personal view" to it :)


Are there ANY European countries which actually get a "FILM" reel from America when doing their r2 releases?

That would not be TOO difficult to do would it?

I mean FOX and Warner etc. can easily afford sending a few reels here and there... The cinemas have them in a way, so why the HELL cant a whole production of DVD use it ???

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

probably better prints are needed for the "real-job" than cinema copies can provide....although even that must be much better source than video tapes....that's for sure.....

[oddball]

I think when they master DVD's from FILM in the US they make a PAL MPEG2 encode at the same time which ships abroad to be re-authored. Of course with censoring and such it might be that sometimes they have to re-encode using a different source in the UK perhaps.

[Atamido]

Speaking theoreticaly:

Lets assume that both the NTSC and the PAL versions were made seperately from the same source. Because the PAL version will be scanned at a higher resolution, it will have about 17% more video data. When recording the audio, they both have the same KHz samplerate, but because you speed up the PAL, you actually loose 1/25th of the audio data, or 4%. Note that 4% of the audio data probably isn't enough for anyone to actually notice.

The PAL will have a better picture because of the resolution.

The NTSC will have better audio because there is more audio data.

So, taking this information, to get the best possible quality from a DVD, you take the PAL video source, slow it down from 25fps to 23.976fps, and then use the audio from the NTSC copy.

Of course this would be a bit of work for such a marginal improvement. Also, if any of the above situations occur where the two versions weren't made from the same source individually, your results could vary greatly.

[Atamido]

As far as DVD's being better than VHS, they are technicaly. Using SuperBit, a movie can be encoded with basicaly a 2-pass technique for MPEG-2. Using this, they can more or less max out the bitrate of the video on a DVD. This is good because the picture can more accurately be described when there are more bits available. For instance, if a video stream is encoded at 5mbps on a DVD, the picture probably wouldn't be nearly as good as if you had devoted 8mbps to the video stream.

Also, you can have a progressive picture encoded on a DVD. I don't believe that you can have progressive video encoded on VHS. Is there anyone that knows for sure that could comment on this.

I would be willing to bet that a SuperBit DVD would look better than any VHS copy of the same movie, especially a high action one.

One thing to be aware of is that the DVD player itself can (and does) offer varying quality as the decoders on different types of DVD players can be different and offer different amounts of built in post processing.

I feel it is important to comment that as an analog medium, you could theoreticaly have an almost infinately higher resolution in VHS. Unfortunately no consumer grade equipment or tapes are going to be able to do this, and I only mention this for the sake of completeness.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>I don't believe that you can have progressive video encoded on VHS. Is there anyone that knows for sure that could comment on this.

this is offcourse true;VCR records FIELDS only (each field gets it's own video trace on the tape...there are two heads that record,ie.2 alternating fields as the tv systems need...)

interesting thing is that if the vhs tape is properly mastered,then the fields click on their places(2 fields that make one frame are projected in succesion..this makes it look progressive to human eye....progressve mpeg2 is doing the same thing...your tv is always interlaced as it happens....),and there's no jitter in freeze frames on high motion...dunno if anyone noticed this(?)
(ie. motion gets smeared(like with progr. dvd playback),but it's not jitter of 2 different fields that you get if you record for example sports which are normally shot on video cameras...(not film cameras).....they must "field-jiter" as there's no progresive frames there to start with...)

let's call this VHS quasi-progressive mode (as VHS will never captire pure progressive stream to tape...only separate fields!)

(i hope you understand all this interlacing talk..if not,there's always capturing forum..search button too...hehe)
on the issue of quality,i believe premastered VHS' suck big time (when compared to my OTA recordings ..as i said) and DVD should have no trouble inbeating it..(even poorly mastered dvd's...)

btw. i have found recently a thread on NG's where simillar stuff is discussed but for LD's (pal vs. ntsc quality of film sources) and let me tell ya->there are both good and bad transfers on BOTH systems...i think it can be said for dvd's too!

here it is;
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=hr&lr=&ie=UTF-8&inlang=pl&th=769af90b7b9a9c16&rnum=8

(jump to the end of the thread ie. "Skoèi na [ Kraj niti ]" link....in a case you have croatian characters on this page etc.)

/ivo