B5 seasonDVD specs, pops, scratches problems

[KoshN]

7th frame after they switch to Talia, after Ivanova says that her mother took her own life:

And here's the same frame from the Laserdisc:

Granted, the DVD image is sharper, but the LD has none of the scratches and dust that are present on the DVD image. Just incase you're wondering, on the odd chance that the frames wouldn't match up perfectly (7th frame on DVD to 7th frame on LD), I checked all the LD frames in that Talia segment, and none have any dust, scratches or hair marks. None.

 

[jman]

KoshN:
thank you for posting a vid example. this is EXACTLY the scratches,pops, etc I'm talking about. I'm in US. Toshiba50"16x9HDTV with older Pioneer DVD (good machine but a few years) and Monster M500 component video cables. never seen ANYTHING like this on ANY other DVD or DVDTVboxset. this is NOT an equip issue I'm referring to. these ARE in the video. this is not a disc issue. discs are clean. I went frame by frame in several places of MOTFL and these video scratches cover several frames, inititally fading in, then fading out. I would really like to hear from people that definitely CAN NOT see ANY of these, especially in MOTFL. perhaps there is a newer batch of shipments with this corrected (although I doubt it if it's pre-MPEG-compression video source issue). I read several US reviews online that mentioned these video scratches in the film/video. said that they were worse on first few discs. if anyone is interested, I'm going hunting for a Warner complaint/inquery line/address. stay tuned...
/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[Kribu]

Yikes. I haven't actually watched any of the episodes yet, so I had no idea the scratches were that bad.

At least the image in general is sharper. /forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

 

[KoshN]

That's the worst scratch I saw. However, I haven't watched all of the DVDs yet, and I'm not going through them frame-by-frame, with a fine tooth comb. That scratch just jumped out at me, and was the one that broke the camel's back, prompting me to do a screencap.

Why is it that we can never seem to get a great product or catch a break? There's always some glaring fault:
<ul type="square">
[*]Laserdisc Collection: 45% of Season 2, 100% of Season 3, and 73% of Season 4 were never released. However, no dust scratches or hair marks.
[*]DVDs: Cropped CGI. Dust, scratches and hair marks. However, sharper picture (except for the CGI issues). 5.1 surround on Season 1.
[*]Crusade: TNT meddling. Sci-Fi passes (just goes for the reruns). Three great scripts unfilmed.
[*]Rangers Pilot: Warner Brothers loses CGI. Nice, new model of Liandra. Some good characters. Some really bad parts, some awful dialogue, and lack of QA/QC (e.g. Nials flying backward).
[/list]

/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[jman]

try this link to Warner Bros message board for B5. this particular discussion is the same going on here. ultimately, we are stuck with the scratches... /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I have not found any comments by JMS or references to any comments JMS has made regarding these scratch problems. I doubt he had much say in the DVD releases as WB barely put an effort into it anyway. I wish he'd speak out or if he already has commented on them, I wish I could find reference.

http://boards.warnerbros.com/web/wbus/messages.jsp?board=Babylon+5&topic=17638086&so=a&pageOffset=3

 

[KoshN]

He probably doesn't want to say anything negative and possibly dampen sales, and hurt the chances of Seasons 2 thru 5, the rest of the movies, and Crusade coming out on DVD. Neither do I, really. There's a fine line between trying to get Warner Home Video to shape up (and clean up the picture), and dampening DVD sales.

Damned if you do (criticize), and damned if you don't. /forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[jman]

excellent point. well, enough of this topic for me until someone gets some inside info on what happened. I think I'll just go enjoy the show!!! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

orak_uk, the reason why the Doctor Who DVD releases (sans the Region 1 only Key to Time boxset) look vastly superior to the B5 S1 DVD episodes is due to the enormous amount of effort that the DW Restoration Team puts into the projects. After a gentle digital video noise reduction (DVNR) pass, the team uses a Scratchbox machine to manually remove most of the film dirt and scratches along with videotape dropouts. This is a long and involved process (2000 corrections for one 25 minute episode from Tomb of the Cybermen took 6 hours of effort). They do much more than that as well (including bringing in a 3D and Video Effects artist to reconstruct via CGI several damaged frames of The Time Meddler episode 1 for a VHS release!). Because of all this effort, BBC Video only has the time and money to release 5-6 stories each year.

With much more material to peruse in each season and some uncertainty about sales figures on their part, I can't blame WHV for not going to that much work. I do expect them to put a little more effort into the future seasons since they know that the audience is here. The scratches have been a little annoying, but the use of the cropped 4x3 material just to keep a fancy scene change effect intact (no CGI present) is really frustrating to me. Many episodes are heavily marred by this (see "Believers" at 16:48, 26:34, and 35:07 for examples). It cannot imagine that it would take more than a few days per season to recompose those short sequences using the original film stock to minimize the number of low resolution moments in the episodes.

 

[Kribu]

Hm. I came to the realisation yesterday that I don't think I would notice any scratches anyway.

I was sort of watching Chrysalis (well, mostly listening to the commentary and taking screencaps) and didn't notice any problems at all - until I started looking at the screencaps, and it was only there that I noticed the scratches and specks and stuff. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif Even some quite long scratches... just didn't see them at all when watching the episode.

I guess that lousy eyesight and concentration problems are useful sometimes. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I haven't watched them on the standalone DVD player/TV yet though, maybe they'd be more noticeable there.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Even some quite long scratches... just didn't see them at all when watching the episode.

Exactly. There are similar pops, scratches, etc. in almost every film you have ever watched in a theater unless you caught the first show at a given location. Theaters chew up film prints. Yet most people never see them because they are actually paying attention to the story instead of obsessively scanning each frame for possible flaws. (Which seems to be the standard modus operandi for most DVD critics. I think they all live in fear that some fan is going to point out a flaw that they missed in the presentation of a film, so they do at least one pass where they are virtually going through the picture one frame at a time and cataloging all the problems they didn't see the first time through.)

Apart from a couple of fairly big scratches (which involved maybe 12 frames at a time) I didn't notice any problems my first time through the set, and still haven't seen most of them except in frame-grabs on the 'net.

JMS has posted some comments on the DVD quality, which I'll put up in a new thread.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Kribu]

I guess it makes sense to miss such scratches unless one has a trained eye just for that sort of thing - it does seem that it's mostly 1-2 frames that have the scratch, which is why they turn up nice and clear on the screencaps but which just go by so fast when I actually watch the film/episode that my eye just won't catch it.

Heh. I'm glad I'm not a DVD critic in this case. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif (Although I wouldn't mind that part of the job where one gets the DVDs well before the release date.)

 

[KoshN]

So, Joe, do you think I'm being too picky about that scratch? Come on, don't you think they should have caught it, especially since they did for the Laserdisc release??? Like I said, that one just jumped out at me (after I let slide all the dust I noticed in previous frames, like when Ivanova and Sinclair are talking about the election), and I'm not comparing every frame TNT Run #1 to those same frames on the Laserdiscs and DVDs. However, after what JMS said, I'm tempted to make a couple of three way comparisons.

 

[Kribu]

The one in your example looked *very* big and noticeable. I haven't watched that episode so I have no idea whether I'd have spotted it without freeze-framing it, but I'd tend to agree - at least those huge ones should have been removed if at all possible. I'm willing to forgive the ones that only appear in 1-2 frames though, as I wouldn't personally notice them. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Still, just because I don't see the scratches without freeze-framing the picture, I wouldn't call the people who *do* notice them picky or fussy - if you have a good eye for such stuff, then of course it's annoying if it kind of jumps at you from the screen, even when you're not actively looking for flaws.

I'm just someone who misses even most of the important details anyway (I never catch stuff such as newspaper headlines, Nials flying backwards etc /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif or any other small stuff that's not the centre of attention), so I guess I'm just the opposite of fussy in such things. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

So, Joe, do you think I'm being too picky about that scratch?

No, I think it is both evident and annoying - the first time you watch the episode. Then it's a surprise. After that it's just "there". Nothing you can do about, lasts two seconds, there's no way to fix it.

Come on, don't you think they should have caught it, especially since they did for the Laserdisc release???

What makes you think they did catch it for the laserdisc release? You're assuming that the scratch was always there. I don't think it was. I think it (and some of other nicks and scratches) are the result of the negatives being careless handled when the widescreen masters were created. (Remember, several of the episodes had to be remastered more than once, because the company Warner Bros. Television - not Warner Home Video - hired to do the work screwed up repeatedly. Remember the Teapot?)

The LDs were created from the old NTSC broadcast masters. They did not go back to the original film elements and create new masters from scratch (no pun intended.)

I think WHV made a judgment call, based on their still-real questions about how the set was going to sell, that they couldn't afford the expensive process of digitally repairing the scratches and the dirt. (And it is an expensive, tedious and time-consuming process.) I think they made a mistake, as the sales have indicated. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Back in July when they were working on the discs, nobody at Warner Bros. knew how many copies of this set they'd sell, and therefore how much they stood to make from it. So they budgeted conservatively. I think they'll do better on the subsequent sets.

Do I think the DVDs are as good as they possibly could be? No. Do I think they're as good as Warner Home Video could make them given the realities of budget, production and sales projections? Yes.

Regards,

Joe

 

[KoshN]

You'd notice that scratch, because it's light on a dark, smooth background. This is the same reason why I caught the ones at the start of "In the Beginning" to the side of Delenn's head (but in those cases, it's dark mark on a light, smooth background, IIRC). Well, add to that the fact that these scratches are not on my Laserdiscs, and you can see why I notice them.

 

[Kribu]

I don't remember noticing any scratches in In the Beginning. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Although I didn't actually watch it properly all through, so it may have been in one of the parts I fast-forwarded.

 

[KoshN]

In Delenn's narration at the very start of the movie.

After that, I got sucked into the story and may have missed them. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[Kribu]

Ahh. In that case I must have just missed them or didn't really pay any attention to them even if I did notice them... I do think I watched the very beginning at least.

 

[jman]

I dont EVEN know why I came back to read more on this. I knew I would get sucked back into it (it IS fun isn't it? Oh that's right; I started this one...). OK. Just for the record in MY case, I did not go frame by frame...initially. I sat down to see what they looked like so I could tell a friend about the quality so he could decide if he wanted to buy them too. I only made it 2 minutes into MOTFL and I had to stop the DVD and try to determine what the heck these flashes and flecks were!! I'd never seen anything like it on a DVD before. I know I am discerning when it comes to picture quality, but nothing like these scratches and flecks on the picture have ever caused me to stop the disc!! I am definitely more sensitive to geometry and color adjustements on my sets than cgi effects and other high end impurities. I had never had to deal with SCRATCHES and FLECKS and crap all over the screen before! Also, I am watching this on a 50" 16x9 HDTV from a older mid-BestBuy-quality player and Monster m500 component cables (worth more than the deck now). So, MAYBE just MAYBE I'm seeing these very clearly and annoyingly b/c of my set. BUT, I can say, I was truly amazed at the frequency and size of these scratches in MOTFL, just in the first 10 minutes!! Some of you guys that dont notice these unless you freeze frame or really squint hard must either be viewing them on a 12" screen or MAYBE THERE'S 2 PRINTINGS OUT THERE AND I'VE GOT A BAD ONE? This would be hard for me to believe b/c I buy the film scratch theories and WB would not have gone all the way back to fix them so soon (if ever). So, my assumption is that we all have the same discs. I've been calle d picky by my wife before on audio and video problems but this is so bad even my dog started whining while trying to watch them!! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[Kribu]

In all reports I've seen, Midnight on Firing Line is said to have the worst problems. I haven't watched it yet, so it's quite possible they'd jump out at me too.

And FYI, I don't watch stuff on a 12'' monitor. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Since the scratches/whatever are on the original film print itself, I very much doubt there's two sets of DVDs out there. It's more likely that there are two kinds of people out there - those who notice problems (either a good eye or a TV set too good for the DVDs /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif ) and those who are so involved in the story or just have bad eyesight that they don't notice the problems.

Or notice the problems but just don't pay attention to them, i.e. notice them but forget them the next moment, if you see what I mean.