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Napier
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:48 am
Location: The Shire

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#351 Post by Napier » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:09 am

Person wrote:Oh no - not another 'crack pipes at dawn' DVD Beaver mass debate! :wink:
Exactly, It's not like Gary is making vast sums of money. He's doing good work and a service to us. He also happens to be a cinema enthusiast, and all around nice guy. After all, it's not like he's the only site reviewing DVDs. I'm happy to have the Beaver (as well as this Forum) as an internet resource, and applaud all the work it entails. =D>

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Person
Joined: Sat May 19, 2007 3:00 pm

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#352 Post by Person » Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:07 am

Napier wrote:
Person wrote:Oh no - not another 'crack pipes at dawn' DVD Beaver mass debate! :wink:
Exactly, It's not like Gary is making vast sums of money. He's doing good work and a service to us. He also happens to be a cinema enthusiast, and all around nice guy. After all, it's not like he's the only site reviewing DVDs. I'm happy to have the Beaver (as well as this Forum) as an internet resource, and applaud all the work it entails. =D>
Both sides of these infamous debates possess the crack pipe of madness. As do I.

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jsteffe
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:00 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#353 Post by jsteffe » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:07 pm

GringoTex wrote:The 80,000 screen caps don't represent some holy grail of video presentation. How can they? Has Gary been using the same capture process for the past four years? Is that the problem? Technology changes too quickly. It would be one thing to use two different capturing processes within the same comparison (that would be unethical), but other than that his fidelity to his process is nonsensical.
I think the notion of ethics is getting too much emphasis here, or rather the wrong kind of emphasis. These screen caps are not vaccine trials or particle accelerator experiments--they're nothing more than a handy reference point for cinephile consumers. After my own experiences I've learned to take those comparisons with a grain of salt, though I still find them useful and enjoy consulting Gary's website regularly.

But if more than one DVD producer has pointed out to Gary that his screen capture process is flawed, he has a clear obligation to upgrade his technology so that the newer caps are more accurate. Not to go with an improved technology when you know it's available seems perverse somehow. One should always strive for improvement, right?

It's true that comparisons pose a problem, but I would argue that the benefits of seeing improved caps for the newer DVDs far outweigh any so-called ethical problems. There's a simple solution for the "ethics" quandary: Gary can simply state in the comparisons that the caps for the older discs used an older method, so that the reader should take factor that into account. Even Gary himself already acknowledges in many reviews that the caps don't always tell 100% of the story. And as David Mackenzie correctly pointed out, image compression affects different images in different ways that are not always easily predictable. It's mistaken to assume that the comparisons are "scientific" to begin with, since Gary's introduced a relatively unpredictable variable in the form of image compression. His only "ethical" obligation at this point is to be transparent about his methodology.

I do think it's important to represent new discs as accurately as possible, however. Those are what people are most interested to learn about and are most likely to weigh buying for their new hi-def monitors and projection systems. In other words, the value of having more accurate representations of future disc captures outweighs any problems it would create in the comparisons. At least that's how I feel about it.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#354 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:15 pm

I think David M has proposed using images taken directly from the discs themselves, rather than capturing them from a computer screen while they are being played in a conventional manner. I do not know how much more time-consuming the proposed alternative method would be.

ComeUpon
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:43 pm

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#355 Post by ComeUpon » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:57 pm

david hare wrote:I take Michel Kerpan's suggestion on board that it would be interesting for those of us who do caps here and elsewhere to try out Mackenzie's method but Im still totally unclear about what you are supposed to do with the file after capturing the Bitmap image.
Are you referring to the unsquishing of the image? If you are, then, as I understand it, the problem is that taking screenshots of an anamorphic disc will give you a "squished" image, like this:

http://i28.tinypic.com/29f5g5f.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Notice that this screenshot's dimensions are 720x576px, an aspect ratio of 1.25:1, which is obviously wrong. What you have to do is go into a pixel editing program, such as Photoshop, and unsquish the image by resizing it in a way that corresponds to the OAR, like this:

http://i28.tinypic.com/206hcuv.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Notice that in this capture, the image dimensions are 1024x576px, the correct aspect ratio for the film.

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jsteffe
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:00 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#356 Post by jsteffe » Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:32 pm

In reply to David Hare--

After re-reading through the posts on the Mondo Vision thread, I've pulled together what I think are David Mackenzie's most relevant comments about frame grabbing. (With much gratitude for his detailed explanation!) I welcome any corrections or clarifications.
The best way is to grab frames directly out of the MPEG2 Program Stream, these will be representative of what a set-top DVD player 'sees' when it plays back the disc and will mean that any video card oddities are bypassed. Oddly enough, in the captures on that page, the subtitle overlay is nowhere near as blurred. [...] [Y]ou can do it with a program called DGIndex for Windows (it's free and open source). It will only work on unencrypted discs, though[.]
[...]

You can take reliable screen shots with the later versions of PowerDVD if it's configured properly. Here's the instructions for PowerDVD version 8, your version is probably similar. [...] Right click the video window (while the PowerDVD logo is showing, I don't think you can change the settings when there's a disc in). Choose Configuration, go to the "Player" tab, click "advanced", click the Capture tab, make sure "Original Video Source Size" is selected.

That will give you 1:1 pixels exactly as they're stored on the disc, so the image on an anamorphic widescreen DVD will be squished. To scale this in a very similar way to how a digital TV or DVD player would scale it, load the image in Photoshop and resize using the Bicubic or Bicub Sharper algorithm (these have a very similar scaler response to the chipsets in most TVs and DVD players). Change the size to 1024x576 to "unsquish" a PAL disc or 854x480 to unsquish widescreen NTSC.
[snip]

Compressing a screen grab from a DVD at 90% quality JPEG is basically going to do little or no damage to the quality of the image, especially if it's from a P-Frame or B-Frame in the video stream.
So if I understand this correctly, the main area where problems can occur is in the computer's software player and/or video card and how they scale or render the video. Also, it seems as if what kind of frame it is in the MPG video stream may make a difference.

He's specifically recommending the two algorithms in Photoshop for the unsqueezing of anamorphic frame grabs, rather than doing the unsqueezing (i.e., scaling) on a software player like PowerDVD. The trouble is, Photoshop is quite expensive and many people don't have it at home. I wonder if the Gimp (a free Photoshop-type software) has similarly reliable scaling algorithms.

It's worth noting that he doesn't see a problem so much with the 90% quality JPG compression. Based on what he says, it's more the earlier steps where the biggest problems can occur. That's encouraging, because it means we can see reliable improvement simply by focusing on the initial capture method.

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Der Spieler
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:05 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#357 Post by Der Spieler » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:59 pm

How come neither Beaver nor DVD Times has posted any review of the Mabuse box set yet?

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reaky
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:53 am
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#358 Post by reaky » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:23 pm

Perhaps Gary at the Beaver has misrepresented MoC once too often in the past. I certainly don't take Gary's grabs at face value any longer.

doc mccoy
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2009 8:07 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#359 Post by doc mccoy » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:41 pm

Nick did say that critics would only be reviewing from final checkdiscs, as the distribution packages came in late. It's possible that reviewers waited until they saw it in its finished form.

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Der Spieler
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:05 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#360 Post by Der Spieler » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:32 pm

reaky wrote:Perhaps Gary at the Beaver has misrepresented MoC once too often in the past. I certainly don't take Gary's grabs at face value any longer.
You must be kidding. His reviews of MoC discs have always been laudatory to say the least.

He even has a whole section of his website dedicated to them.

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reaky
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:53 am
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#361 Post by reaky » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:35 pm

Off the top of my head, there have been issues about the grabs on Nosferatu and Tete Contre Les Murs. if you look at the threads, I think you'll see that Nick has been fairly pissed off and posted his own grabs for comparison.

doc mccoy
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2009 8:07 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#362 Post by doc mccoy » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:47 pm

Although there have been disagreements over the screen captures, I don't think that it has reached the stage where Gary will no longer review MoC or Nick will no longer supply discs for review. There seems to be too much respect there, particularly when you bear in mind that Gary has praised most, if not all, MoC releases.

For instance, Phantom/Grobherzogs had the same release date as Mabuse, yet Gary reviewed it and recommended it highly. Considering the delay in the distribution of Mabuse, I suspect that he probably wanted to see everything in its entirety before he cast final judgment.

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Florinaldo
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:38 pm
Location: Canada

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#363 Post by Florinaldo » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:13 pm

reaky wrote:Perhaps Gary at the Beaver has misrepresented MoC once too often in the past. I certainly don't take Gary's grabs at face value any longer.
"misrepresented" seems rather unfair. I know there has been some (picayune?) disagreements over screen grabs and I have mentioned elsewhere how edition details are not always correct in the reviews, but I have lost count of how many MoC reviews on Beaver have led me to part ways with my money for many of their excellent DVDs.

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manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#364 Post by manicsounds » Fri Oct 23, 2009 1:30 am

the site has been revamped a bit. http://www.dvdbeaver.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Quite Texty....

hangman
Joined: Tue Sep 29, 2009 8:33 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#365 Post by hangman » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:57 am

In all honesty the caps at DVD beaver don't really concern me as much as what was written about the disc, if its writen that the disc looks good then I have no qualms (even moreso when the extras come into play). While there have been qualms about the caps in the past it never really appears jarringly different, they are different but not so different that I'd be repulsed good example would be A Time to Love A Time to Die (which I still hardly see a difference from). In any case considering the amount of extras this set has, and considering how Gary is a fan of Lang, pretty sure he's taking his sweet time on this.

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justeleblanc
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:05 pm
Location: Connecticut

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#366 Post by justeleblanc » Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:58 am

manicsounds wrote:the site has been revamped a bit. http://www.dvdbeaver.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Quite Texty....
This is comically bad. I'm guessing this is a mistake.

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: DVDBeaver Comparisons

#367 Post by Matt » Fri Oct 23, 2009 11:14 am

I actually find it more readable than it used to be, but it could definitely be cleaned up. I'm guessing Gary went the all-text route on the front page because it's easier on bandwidth. I remember when we had those rotating pictures of directors at the top of every forum page; that ate up a month's allocation of bandwidth in, like, 3 days.

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Oedipax
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:48 am
Location: Atlanta

Re: DVDBeaver

#368 Post by Oedipax » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:51 pm

It's an improvement on the old page, IMO. Not to say there isn't room for more of a redesign...

Anyway, my DVDBeaver bookmark still points to http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/new.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

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Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: DVDBeaver

#369 Post by Tommaso » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:52 pm

I also think that starting page is an eyesore. There's a reason why I bookmarked the "What's New"-section instead, like Oedipax.

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fdm
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:25 pm

Re: DVDBeaver

#370 Post by fdm » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:54 pm

What I liked about the layout before was that you could readily access several weeks worth of reviews from the home page. Now it's just a few days.

(Guess I'll go look for that "What's New" section.)


Edit: Oh, that "What's New" section. Not really that easy to browse. The old home page I could pretty readily see what I might have missed if I hadn't visited the site for a week or two. The new home page doesn't provide that capability.
Last edited by fdm on Fri Oct 23, 2009 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mikkelmark
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2009 10:00 am
Location: Denmark

Re: DVDBeaver

#371 Post by mikkelmark » Fri Oct 23, 2009 3:05 pm

fdm wrote:What I liked about the layout before was that you could readily access several weeks worth of reviews from the home page. Now it's just a few days.

(Guess I'll go look for that "What's New" section.)
I was just the opposite before. Started on the "whats new" and often was on the "release calendar" site. I will probably stay on the frontpage now. Its nice they have stopped that moving thingie that was ontop on the page.

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domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#372 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:52 pm

Florinaldo wrote:
reaky wrote:Perhaps Gary at the Beaver has misrepresented MoC once too often in the past. I certainly don't take Gary's grabs at face value any longer.
"misrepresented" seems rather unfair. I know there has been some (picayune?) disagreements over screen grabs and I have mentioned elsewhere how edition details are not always correct in the reviews, but I have lost count of how many MoC reviews on Beaver have led me to part ways with my money for many of their excellent DVDs.
Uh, read the La Vie de Jesus thread. "Misrepresented" is generous

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Der Spieler
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:05 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#373 Post by Der Spieler » Fri Oct 23, 2009 7:11 pm

Well, I know that Beaver is the site that convinced me to buy MoC products from now on. However, Tooze does come off sounding like an asshole sometimes. I wrote to him on a few occasions and when I had the chance to receive an answer it was always kind of haughty.

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tajmahal
Joined: Mon May 11, 2009 11:10 pm

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#374 Post by tajmahal » Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:08 pm

Der Spieler wrote:Well, I know that Beaver is the site that convinced me to buy MoC products from now on. However, Tooze does come off sounding like an asshole sometimes. I wrote to him on a few occasions and when I had the chance to receive an answer it was always kind of haughty.
If I copped as many personal insults as Gary does, I'd get my back up, too. He has been criticized for writing crap, or incomplete 'reviews', when his main aim is to provide screencaps and comparisons. If he doesn't like a film, or feels the edition is not perfect, he has every right to say so. If a distributor disagrees, they have the right to challenge. He has made corrections, and stood firm if he believes he has given a fair representation.

DvdBeaver has done much to promote niche publishers, and has championed Masters of Cinema and Secondrun, and of course Criterion. Secondrun, in particular, have been given access to a much wider audience, and Gary has been an enthusiastic supporter, even when the image leaves a little to be desired.

Personally, my introduction to MOC was through Beaver reviews. I have no doubt Nick and co. have benefited greatly from the exposure and strong support from Gary.

Calling the man an asshole for doing his job, for which he is extremely passionate about, is really out of order.

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Der Spieler
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:05 am

Re: 089-091 The Fritz Lang Mabuse Box

#375 Post by Der Spieler » Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:28 pm

I said: he SOMETIMES comes off SOUNDING like an asshole. I didn't say he was one. I know I myself come off sounding like a douche but I can assure you my intentions are good. If you read this thread carefully you'll find that I stood up for him many times. :wink:

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