HD version of en Concert

[lilly]

Originally Posted by The Cap

See, the reason I said that downloading 12+GB - even via torrent - is borderline insane is because I'd NEVER do such a thing. Over here in the U.S.A., we just don't have the digital infrastructure to support such things. Our "hig speed" service providers have a tendency to throttle and delay large uploads and downloads, all the way to the point of stopping the transmissions completely. Only a tiny percentage of internet users even have access to bandwidth that would sanely accomodate huge file transfers.

And, more to the point, re-encoding the original wouldn't remove or reduce the "grain" problem you claim to see. I have a legitimate DVD of En Concert from France and I can tell you that the original 720x576 video isn't grainy at all, and that's when displayed on high quality equipment that would make such "grain" very easy to see. I suspect what you're looking at is a bootleg copy with an inferior video conversion or transfer.

Unless you buy a legit copy from Europe, you'll never get the quality you're looking for. When I did my own re-work of the DVD to make it fully NTSC compatible, I used the original French release as my raw data source, and the output I got still has a few occasional digital artifacts and some small amount of color noise (what you might call "grain"). However, for the sake of native compatibility with my video equipment, it was very much worth the effort.

Originally Posted by The Cap

Just realized I screwed up on the frame rate conversion explanation. I didn't actually change the native data source's "real" frame rate at all. I re-flagged all frames of the final re-mapped (scaled, new color space, etc.) video output internally to tell the player firmware that it should use 2:3 pulldown during playback, which eliminates the "judder" and skip effects that often happen during PAL to NTSC video conversion. The net effect is 25fps native PAL video (converted from interlaced to progressive) playing perfectly on 29.997fps (progressive) NTSC equipment.

Actually both of my en concert dvds are legit copies, one from amazon.fr and the other bought in Europe itself, the thing is I didn't have this problem with my old tv, this is happening only on the newer hd compatiable one. Probably because lcd/plasma technology of today does not support true black may be the problem. Even I used the original as raw, but I used it to convert it to an .avi(xvid encoding) so that I could convert it to ipod format (I brought it down to a li'l more than 1Gb with li'l loss in quality, not bad huh!?)
My prob is the NTSC conversion, as all the en concert dvds ever made were native PAL, so could you tell me what you used for conversion.
Coz my conversions mysteriously have lossy bitrates, and I would prefer to have it in 16:9 if possible!


Anyway what's the point in having 'high speed' internet if your throttled!?
Where I live, I can sue my ISP for not giving the promised bandwidth, P2P itself is not illegal on its own!

[Tchaikovsky]

Originally Posted by lilly

14 days......

You my friend, have A LOT of patience.

[The Cap]

Originally Posted by lilly

... my conversions mysteriously have lossy bitrates, and I would prefer to have it in 16:9 if possible!

If you can target to a double-layer DVD, you might be able to mostly avoid the "lossy" data problem. I had to use some data compression in order to fit the entire concert portion of the disc onto a single-layer DVD - a little less than 20% compression - and the results are some compression artifacts here and there, but still very acceptable. The re-encoding process also introduces a tiny amount of data compression and a few small video artifacts all on its own as well, so nothing is completely perfect.

Real 16:9 is a little trickier but if you set the right flags during the re-encoding process and during DVD re-authoring steps, things work out exactly as you expect : you get a true anamorphic output with flags that trigger the DVD player and your TVs to display TRUE widescreen video.

All I can tell you about what I used to do the job was that it took more than half a dozen different pieces of software costing, in total, less than $1000 retail (U.S. dollars, 2006-7), plus a few freeware utilities and at least one program some people here in the U.S. might consider to have "illegal" capabilities. I can't discuss in any more detail because (1) even though the NTSC conversion process is technically legal here in the U.S. in order to make a back-up copy of material for which I already own a license, there are people who think I should be horrifically punished for even thinking such things; (2) from time to time, folks here in the forums have similar feelings, for some irrational reason. So, for the sake of maintaining the peace, let's not discuss such things.

I will say that I wish there was a one-program, one box, one button solution to this problem, but I've never encountered such a solution that actually does the job correctly, and none that produce very good quality output.

Originally Posted by lilly

Anyway what's the point in having 'high speed' internet if your throttled!?
Where I live, I can sue my ISP for not giving the promised bandwidth, P2P itself is not illegal on its own!

Exactly. That's why we're all so upset about the situation here. Our high-speed ISPs make all sorts of promises in the headlines and then disguise their true intentions way down in the fine print. They say "unlimited internet" and then fine-print "but if we need to manage traffic on our network, we can slow you down anytime we want to". They promise a certain speed, but then the fine-print says "oh, no, sorry, only UP TO that speed, not ACTUALLY that speed". And then they wonder why their customers hate them so much - ot maybe they don't wonder why, just as long as we write the checks every month.

[lilly]

Thanks! 'The Cap' for your help! I think I know what type of softwares you're talking about! I am using dual-layer dvds so size is almost not a problem..almost. I think I'll give it another shot. And yeah, those one button conversions are pure BS, whether its a paid software or freeware.I think my mistake was trying to keep it interlaced.I think progressive should work fine.Thanks anyway for your help.

Originally Posted by The Cap

Exactly. That's why we're all so upset about the situation here. Our high-speed ISPs make all sorts of promises in the headlines and then disguise their true intentions way down in the fine print. They say "unlimited internet" and then fine-print "but if we need to manage traffic on our network, we can slow you down anytime we want to". They promise a certain speed, but then the fine-print says "oh, no, sorry, only UP TO that speed, not ACTUALLY that speed". And then they wonder why their customers hate them so much - ot maybe they don't wonder why, just as long as we write the checks every month.

Even we have the 'upto xxx mbps' thing. But you can sue them if they go below 70% of the promised bandwidth except in special circumstances. And these 'special circumstances' include only serious stuff like terrorist bombing, national internet backbone system crash,etc...Thankfully we never had one of those!

[ZachLovesAlizée]

i got most of my lili stuff from demoniod, but it got shutdown

[Max]

Originally Posted by lilly

Also, where can I get high quality videos of alizée?

Buy a big harddrive, and...

http://vdb.alizee.cz/browse.php

[lilly]

Originally Posted by Max

Buy a big harddrive, and...

http://vdb.alizee.cz/browse.php

I have a big HDD......this may sound a li'l noobish, I visited that site,it has all the info about the video,but where is the download button!??

[Nicolas]

Cool site!
And, just for warning: You really need a big HDD!

[RadioactiveMan]

Originally Posted by lilly

I have a big HDD......this may sound a li'l noobish, I visited that site,it has all the info about the video,but where is the download button!??

http://vdb.alizee.cz/browse.php?nid=264

Near the bottom of a video's page, there are links to download. On that particular page, it is a link to the rapidshare website where the video is hosted.


edit- nevermind. I guess that a lot of videos don't have downloads anymore. :/

[Emmanuel]

The stuff you guys are talking about sound pretty complicated. Especially with that encoding thing. They should have just filmed it in HD and done all that stuff.


Emmanuel