Hard Core Video and Audiophiles, Please

[beaumont]

Is anyone a fan of Faroudja line doublers, 16:9 HD monitors, progressive scan DVDs, Vintage Mark Levinson monoblocks, Audio Research tube amps, state of the art CRT projectors etc?

I am trying to understand PC video available today within the context of audio/videophiles. And then to determine my needs for associated PC hardware and memory requirements.

For example, I know the whole world uses MP3s know and some people suggest that higher sampling rates etc create "virutally indistinguishable" copies.

But any serious audiophile will tell you that even the best MP-3 is still an undesirable medium for music. WAV files better, SACD and DVD-A better still and super high end super big bucks analogue still the best.

For PC video, where do things stand? Are we approaching Faroudja territory or are we watching the video equivalent of low sampled MP-3s on cheap headphones?

Can I rip the equivalent of a video "WAV" file and keep that uncompressed on my hard drive?

1) How much memory would be required for, say, a 2 hour movie?
2) How big are the compressed files?
3)Is video degradation from compression more or less severe than the audio degradation from CD to MP-3?

I would like to have my library of DVDs ripped in highest quality on a desktop and then travel with compressed files on my laptop?

Thank you and good luck.

[killingspree]

Originally posted by beaumont

For example, I know the whole world uses MP3s know and some people suggest that higher sampling rates etc create "virutally indistinguishable" copies.

well almost everybody uses mp3 right now, especially for one cd rips but i think it is commonly known and accepted that keeping the original ac3 track from the cd will result in the best quality possible. (provided you have the right hardware for playback of course :)) if your dvd contains dts it is even better and if it contains uncompressed PCM, i'd also just keep it in that format


But any serious audiophile will tell you that even the best MP-3 is still an undesirable medium for music. WAV files better, SACD and DVD-A better still and super high end super big bucks analogue still the best.
see above... in addition it is the best to leave the audio as is... every conversation results in a degradation of quality, (the only exception might be something to wav - but it won't result in better quality anyway)

For PC video, where do things stand? Are we approaching Faroudja territory or are we watching the video equivalent of low sampled MP-3s on cheap headphones?

it depends totally what you are going for... i'd say the "low sample MP3s would be an equivalent to VCD. so properly done SVCD and DIVX/XVID movies will sure be in the range of high quality mp3 tracks, maybe even in the range of a normal audio CD... if you have a properly mastered DVD i think you are approaching the high end scene. (just approaching it, not quite getting there though) but to a point where you have to think twice if you really need anything better as a standard user.


Can I rip the equivalent of a video "WAV" file and keep that uncompressed on my hard drive?

1) How much memory would be required for, say, a 2 hour movie?
2) How big are the compressed files?
3)Is video degradation from compression more or less severe than the audio degradation from CD to MP-3?

you sure can (see above)
1) uncompressed PCM wav for a two hour movie (stereo) will be around or above a Gig for 2 hours.
2) a normal 5.1 ac3 file will have around 400 MB, a dts file up to twice as much...
3) depends totally on the compression ratio... if you do it the right way and do not care about the final file size you'll get almost no noticable degradation (try 1 pass quality based at quant 2)


I would like to have my library of DVDs ripped in highest quality on a desktop and then travel with compressed files on my laptop?

if you'll have a few hundred gigs to spare why not... still as i said, uncompressing compressed files will not result in any better quality... the best quality you can get is if you do 1:1 iso file copies of your DVD collection to your hard drive... this will result in absolutely no quality loss (imo at least)
you still have to be aware of the fact that you have around 6-9 gigs per DVD... so you'll need quite a bit of HD space...

hope this was what you expected
steVe

[smiller667]

Just one little thought: when you deal with DVD, you always deal with already-compressed media. The video compression on a DVD is lossy (mpeg-1 or mpeg-2), the audio is almost always compressed (ac3, dts, mp2 are all lossy compression methods). Keeping those in an uncompressed form on your HD won't give you any better quality.

Of course attempting to reduce the size of the material (as you would do for VCD, SVCD or the various avi formats) means a further loss in information and thus image quality.

Uncompressed av material of movie length on a small-size disc is sadly impossible with current technology.

[Hiro2k]

If you would like to encode your DVD's into very good looking avi's I suggest using DivX or Xvid to create your videos. Make sure you use the original resolution 720x480 for Anamorphic Wide Screen or 640x480 Full Sceen (only for NTSC Material, sorry I don't remember the PAL ones). Then to get the best quality and almost no loss, you need to encode your whole movie with Quantisizer 2. Both Xvid and DivX allow you to do this. I suggest keeping the original soundtrack. Doing this you can make movies that are signicicantly smaller in size and almost the same as the original.