Red Dwarf problem - am I mad ?

HDCriticalFan

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OK everyone, please form an orderly clue to tell me I'm an idiot :suicide:

Everything was peace and love in the HDCF household; the Blu-ray player was set up and the Director's Cut of Red Dwarf : Back to Earth was unwrapped for my viewing pleasure.


Within the opening few seconds I noticed that camera movement caused terrible tearing in the background. I couldn't read a sign on the wall. I popped over to my Sky+HD recorder where I still had the Dave broadcast. There is was fine.


It didn't take long to realise that the difference between the two was that the satellite broadcast on Dave was (unsurprisingly) 1080/50i - being a normal UK broadcast. The version coming out of my Blu-ray player seems to be 1080/60i !


Now firstly, I had asked for this present because I naively assumed that the Blu-ray would be very much better than the TV broadcast - expecting it to be a 1080/50p "master". A quick look at the packaging showed that is was labelled "1080i" - with no reference to the frame rate. However, there should still be a benefit, albeit smaller, of being less compressed than broadcast TV.

But the show, being made for UK TV, must surely have been made at 50 Hz (unless they actually filmed it at 24fps or applied a fake filmic effect - which fortunately they didn't). It looked OK on Sky, so I'm guessing they did indeed film it at 50Hz.

Have they actually performed a 50Hz to 60Hz frame rate conversion prior to putting it on the Blu-ray ? This is guaranteed to make it look "flickery" (like US TV often does on UK TV) and can't be be done "properly" no matter how good the conversion equipment (ye cannae change the laws of physics, cap'n !). Why would they ruin the show like this ?!?!?

I had an awful thought that this has allowed them to make one single international disk which will play on US kit (at 60Hz) and international kit (which invariably supports both 50Hz and 60Hz).

Don't get me wrong, it's not unwatchable ... but it continuously shows that it has been "damaged" in the production process when there is any significant movement on screen. As I have already seen (and still have available) the 1080/50i version on Dave then what is the point of watching a worse version on BD ?!?


Or have I foolishly got a setting wrong on my Sony BDP-S360 ?

But I don't think so - because the disk also includes some calibration tools, including a five minute sample of test footage shot in my native London, UK. This footage is excellent - and it plays back in the Holy Grail film format of 1080/24p !!! It is by far the best thing on this disk !

So what is the point of putting out Blu-ray disks of TV shows which look worse than the original TV broadcasts ?

Fair enough, the disk only cost a tenner or so, but there is a principal involved. I asked for this present - and someone kindly bought it for me. Now I have it and am not inclined to watch it - what a waste and embarassment :(





Regards
 
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i think its the player to be fair ive played it on my Pioneer 51fd the other night and there wasnt anything like that

i can now test in that machine has i brought it yesterday :smashin:
 
right ive just tested and watched just past where rimmer is lining up his picture on the wall and the picture was ok and i could read the signs and that
 
If you go into set up you, you can manually change output. I've a no. of US discs which are 1080i 60. PQ is worse if I leave it it on auto as sends the signal out at 1080p, because when it handshakes with your tv the set tells it its resolution (or am I getting that confused with the Ps3, both have the same XBM interface).
 
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right ive just tested and watched just past where rimmer is lining up his picture on the wall and the picture was ok and i could read the signs and that

The first motion problem I saw was earlier than that. In the opening thirty seconds there is a pan as Lister is in the corridor at the drinks machine. The sign saying "Leopard Lager" is clearly legible throughout the pan on my Dave (1080/50i) recording, but breaks up on my BD (1080/60i).

ISTM that the disk manufacturers have transcoded (?) from 50Hz to 60Hz and thus created a whole raft of completely unnecessary motion artefacts for the UK audience. :(





Regards
 
If you go into set up you, you can manually change output. I've a no. of US discs which are 1080i 60. PQ is worse if I leave it it on auto as sends the signal out at 1080p, because when it handshakes with your tv the set tells it its resolution.

I'm pretty sure my TV (which is quite recent) can handle 50Hz, 60Hz and 24Hz.

Looking at the same disc, parts of it (in the calibration area) come through as 1080/50i and the sample test video comes through at 1080/24p. I can't see why my player would suddenly decide to treat the main feature differently and convert it from 1080/50i to 1080/60i :eek:

As for set up. I've trawled through the menus several times (and even scrutinised the manual !) and there is no reference to frequencies. All the set up options simply talk about 480i/p, 576i/p, 720i/p and 1080i/p ... as if 50Hz and 60Hz variants didn't even exist !

My BD player is quite recent (Sony BDP-S360) and fairly well reviewed ... so I'm inclined to think that this is a disc problem rather than a player problem.


Does anyone else have any comments/observations ?





Regards
 
The red dwarf special was flimed using the RED ONE camera so i would assume it would of been filmed the same as a film so should be in 1080/24p
 
It could be your TV settings. I had tearing on my TV until I turned off DNR.
 
The red dwarf special was flimed using the RED ONE camera so i would assume it would of been filmed the same as a film so should be in 1080/24p

That's what I have assumed/hoped. But the packing says "1080i". :(

The sample video in the calibration section comes across as 1080/24p and looks superb. The "main feature" comes out at 1080/60i and looks (relatively speaking) dreadful.

Don't get me wrong, if you aren't looking for motion artefacts and/or haven't recently seen the version on Dave, then you might think that it looks "more than OK". But there's no getting away from the fact that (on my set up) I'd be better off watching my Sky+HD version (which, IIRC, I got from Anytime in one 70 minute piece with no adverts or on screen channel logo). :(



Unless someone can tell if I am doing something wrong with my Sony BD-S360.


Has anyone else got this Blu-ray and played it on their set up ? What does the TV report the incoming signal to be ? 1080/50i or 1080/60i ?





Regards
 
It could be your TV settings. I had tearing on my TV until I turned off DNR.

I religiously turn off every piece of processing on my TVs - especially ones called something beginning with "digital" ;)

The problem when playing this disk stems from the fact that both the TV and the BD player are reporting the input/ output respectively as 1080/60i. As this show played just fine on Dave/Sky at 1080/50i then clearly it isn't going to work as well when converted to 1080/60i.





Regards
 
This disc does indeed seem to be framerate converted. My TV reports 1080i60 and I have my PS3 set to send natively whatever is on the disc, without any deinterlacing.

It seems to me that the original show was shot at 1080p25, so as to conform with the UK 50Hz broadcast standard. The frames on the blu-ray disc do appear to be progressive, so I would guess they have converted the original 1080p25 to 1080p30 using some kind of pulldown and then stored it on the disc as 1080i60. (Does the blu-ray spec allow for native 1080p30 storage on the disc?)

I am not seeing any tearing on the Leopard sign you mention, so I think it may be a case of your TV having trouble locking on to the film cadence and showing complete frames, so it's doing video based deinterlacing instead. This may be because the TV is getting confused by the framerate conversion. If you pause and step through the video, you can see that some frames are a blend of two different frames. However, there is no combing or jaggies, which suggests that the frames on the disc and the original source are progressive.

I'm pretty sure the PS3 shows complete frames when in pause mode (as opposed to showing the top field and doing a quick bob deinterlace for the bottom field), so it's easy to tell if the original source is progressive or not, as material which was originally shot interlaced will show combing when paused.
 
The first motion problem I saw was earlier than that. In the opening thirty seconds there is a pan as Lister is in the corridor at the drinks machine. The sign saying "Leopard Lager" is clearly legible throughout the pan on my Dave (1080/50i) recording, but breaks up on my BD (1080/60i).

ISTM that the disk manufacturers have transcoded (?) from 50Hz to 60Hz and thus created a whole raft of completely unnecessary motion artefacts for the UK audience. :(





Regards


right tried again and that is perfect as well :smashin:
 
It didn't take long to realise that the difference between the two was that the satellite broadcast on Dave was (unsurprisingly) 1080/50i - being a normal UK broadcast. The version coming out of my Blu-ray player seems to be 1080/60i !


Now firstly, I had asked for this present because I naively assumed that the Blu-ray would be very much better than the TV broadcast - expecting it to be a 1080/50p "master". A quick look at the packaging showed that is was labelled "1080i" - with no reference to the frame rate. However, there should still be a benefit, albeit smaller, of being less compressed than broadcast TV.
Blu-ray can't decode 1080/50p.

Have they actually performed a 50Hz to 60Hz frame rate conversion prior to putting it on the Blu-ray ? This is guaranteed to make it look "flickery" (like US TV often does on UK TV) and can't be be done "properly" no matter how good the conversion equipment (ye cannae change the laws of physics, cap'n !). Why would they ruin the show like this ?!?!?
Because they are being totally cheap, and releasing one bad quality disc instead of doing it properly
I had an awful thought that this has allowed them to make one single international disk which will play on US kit (at 60Hz) and international kit (which invariably supports both 50Hz and 60Hz).
Yes, that's what I'm sure they are doing, and people should complain and not accept it (and most US BD player models seem to support 50hz anyway).

Or have I foolishly got a setting wrong on my Sony BDP-S360 ?
I don't know, but like I think somone else said, check the de-interlacing settings and whether it thinks it's film or video. I don't know how good or not the de-interlacer might be, if you can, try outputting in 1080p and then 1080i if it can, to see which gives the best de-interlacing - the player or the TV.

But the people who have encoded the disc have still wrecked it and consumers shouldn't accept this.
 
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right tried again and that is perfect as well :smashin:

Just to clarify (to SeeleyBooth and others) I'm not talking about when the Leopard Lager sign first appears (at time code 53 seconds). The tearing occurs as Lister walks towards it and the camera is tracking across into the window. This takes place a few seconds later ... between about 1:00 and 1:02.

I say this because not everyone is sensitive to frame rate issues and may think that what they're seeing is perfect, when it isn't. I myself am mercifully free from sensitivity to lip synch issues (unless SWMBO points them me - and ruins the rest of a show !).


To everyone ...

I've had a good rummage around in the menus (and manuals) of my BD player and TV.


BD Player

- has a film/video option - which presumably has something to do with cadence detection during the de-interlacing process.
- has an "i" or "p" output option - which determines whether to deinterlace or not


Screen

- has a "film mode" which only seems to appear when the input is "i" - which suggests that it too has some sort of cadence detection algorithm.



Now I'm pretty sure that I've tried all (8 ?) combinations, with consistent results. The "display" option on the BD player and the status screen on the TV all report what I would expect at each stage (i.e. "i" or "p" as appropriate) ... but the same stuttering still occurs at the same point.

I could write this off as "one of those things" which occurs at the limit of resolution/performance of any of my kit (or the HDTV system itself). But when I watch my 1080/50i recording from Dave it doesn't happen.

I tend to agree with those that have commented here that the makers have messed this disk up somewhere in the production process.

My "proof" is that if you step through the BD in slo-mo you can easily see that some frames are OK ... but some are clearly a combination of two separate images. Whilst I must concede that it is possible that some people have kit that can detect and correct this, I would have thought that would require a very expensive video processor (e.g. Lumagen). I'm sure that most others here are using kit similar to my current model Sony S360 and current LG 50 inch plasma.



Finally, I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable "geek" in these matters. How on earth does an "ordinary" person hope to fully enjoy their home cinema experience if they don't know to read the (very) small print on a BD which shows 1080i thather than 1080p - and what to do to get the best from it. This disc doesn't even show 60Hz on the packaging (and how many people would know what that meant). And even if you understand everything ... do you really have to try up to eight options to find out where to best do the deinterlacing (in the BD player or the TV) :eek:





Regards
 
Most TV's have a fairly big settings menu however. there are other things to look out for...

Iris settings
Contrast Settings like Dynamic, and Normal

And these all are associated with processor speed. when the processor speed can't cope you get tearing.
 
Well, I've upgraded my Sony BD S360 firmware (from 11.1.006 to 11.41007). Needless to say this made no appreciable difference (as I expected).

I've now looked more closely at the picture. I have stumbled across the undocumented "Frame Advance" and "Slo-mo" functions. Holding down "Pause" for a few seconds causes the player to enter slo-mo, but there appears to be only one speed (which is a bit lame IMHO). When in pause mode, tapping FF advances one frame (but there is no equivalent to step back one frame - see my previous observation).

I can clearly see that the programme is composed of a series of groups of six frames. Three (consecutive) frames are pin-sharp and presumably from the master, then there are three blurry ones (blurred when there is motion). Of the three consecutive blurry ones, the "first" and "last" are just a little soft ... but the middle one looks like the superimposition of two adjacent frames ! When there is any movement this frame looks abysmal. They have clearly taken five frames from the 50Hz master, shown three "cleanly" and then used the next two to create three more frames to create a total of six frames which can then be shown at 60Hz. It's clever, but it explains why (if you are sensitive to it) movement just looks "wrong".

Consider. These groups of frames (5@50Hz or 6@60Hz) are shown in one tenth of a second. Whereas the 50Hz original shows each of the five frames for the same (correct) period of time, the 60Hz creation shows three original frames for 20% less than their original time (so, artificially speeded up) and then the next two are used to create three frames which show in a period 25% longer than the original two where shown (so, artificially slowed down). It's no wonder that it looks flickery/juddery to me. What's amazing is that it doesn't look far worse !

As for "correcting" this ... I was kinda hoping that I would find five original frames and one (artificially created) blurry one. If that was so, then I could imagine a process which stripped out every sixth frame and played the five good ones at 50Hz. But with half of the frames "damaged" in some way I find it hard to imagine correcting the frame rate conversion damage without a supercomputer and a month of processing :(

What's really annoying is that the three "good" frames from each group are excellent (even when there is movement). They are really pin-sharp and look as good as digital camera stills. If only they had "done nothing" to the master then we would have a brilliant Blu-ray release. Instead, for whatever reason, they have really messed it up. :mad:





Regards
 
If more people complained (to 2Entertain or BBC Worldwide or whoever is responsible) they might stop releasing format wrecked titles and release them in the correct format instead.
 
If more people complained (to 2Entertain or BBC Worldwide or whoever is responsible) they might stop releasing format wrecked titles and release them in the correct format instead.

I have already got the address for 2Entertain and I really am considering writing to them (on a piece of paper ... with a stamp !!!).

Have other TV shows been "damaged" this way ?

It would really put me off buying TV titles on BD. :(





Regards
 
I have already got the address for 2Entertain and I really am considering writing to them (on a piece of paper ... with a stamp !!!).

Have other TV shows been "damaged" this way ?

It would really put me off buying TV titles on BD. :(





Regards
Yes quite a few, like Planet Earth, dramas, concerts. Though there are some that are right, like Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (50i), and the BBC's Life documentary series (50i).
 
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Yes quite a few, like Planet Earth

Thanks for the heads up. I'm a big fan of the BBC Natural History output and Planet Earth on Blu-ray was very much on my radar. I would have been devastated to buy the box set (specifically for the slight enhancement to picture quality of this landmark HD series) only to find that it had been ruined by an unnecessary 50Hz to 60Hz conversion. :eek:

By comparison I can (literally) laugh off the Red Dwarf fiasco. i.e. the jokes are just as funny at 60Hz as 50Hz :D





Regards
 
....I would guess they have converted the original 1080p25 to 1080p30 using some kind of pulldown and then stored it on the disc as 1080i60. (Does the blu-ray spec allow for native 1080p30 storage on the disc?)

I'd imagine that's what they have done. As others have surmised, it's just a budget thing: they produce one master for release across 50Hz (ie Europe/ Australia etc) AND 60Hz (N.America, Japan etc) territories.

Contrary to another reply you had, the Blu-ray spec will show 1080p30 (or 29.97fps) to be precise. However it does NOT (very shortsightedly) support 1080p25 which is why many discs of UK-made TV shows are released interlaced i.e. 1080i50.
 
Blu-ray can't decode 1080/50p.

And it's not used in any consumer level kit in fairness. We tend to get interlaced 50/60 fields per second i.e. 1080i50/60 OR 25/30 (or 29.97 to be precise) frames per second i.e. 1080p25/30(29.97). But Blu-ray doesn't support the progressive version of 50hz so 1080p25 isn't supported (see earlier post). I've never seen any content at 50p or 60p.

Because they are being totally cheap, and releasing one bad quality disc instead of doing it properly

That's true enough!

Yes, that's what I'm sure they are doing, and people should complain and not accept it (and most US BD player models seem to support 50hz anyway).

Actually, many 60hz (ie. former "NTSC") zone players don't and even if they do, the problem is most TV sets in those territories such as USA, Canada etc don't support 50hz content, hence the reason for single one-size-fits-all discs of 1080i60 or 1080p30 since those are supported on all players and display devices.
 

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