School me in the art of HD reviewing.

[Cieljek]

Thanks Kali!
Gonna move your posts into this one so people can get the good stuff right off the bat

Originally Posted by kali

I am a big proponent in having people learn by watching, observing and developing their own critical eye. But first here is some background stuff you can read to learn some of the key concepts:

Here is a good article covering the basics on what reviewers do and look for when evaluating images: DVD File - How We Assess Discs

Here is an excellent site that contains a detailed description of a wide number of video artfiacts: Video Artefacts [sic] Guide

A good write-up of Edge Enhancement and why it is an issue (mostly for SD DVDs but sometimes you see it on High Def discs) is here: http://www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm

Please note that this stuff is mostly DVD oriented but if you understand the stuff here, you will be well ahead of the curve for understanding what kinds of things to look for in a digitally compressed image.

Finally here is some interesting detailed info on how the stuff works for both video and audio. This gets pretty detailed and technical but some might find it interesting: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/

Look especially The Ins and Outs of Video Compression

After doing some background reading I'd recommend the following:

• Get your display calibrated. At minimum get a copy or Video Essentials of Avia (the SD DVD version works great) and use it to calibrate brightness and contrast.
• Use DobyBlue's spreadsheet (I'm seeing if I can get this stickied) or look at the following Tier System posts on AVS The Tier System For Blu-ray PQ and The Tier System for HD DVD PQ
• Use your Netflix I would obtain several (like five or six if you can) of the Tier 0 discs and some (up to 5 or 6) of the worst discs and play them. With your new knowledge of video artifacts and other issues see if you can observe the differences between the Tier 0 and Tier 4 discs.
• If you feel inclined as you watch other movies look them up on the Doby's spreadsheet or on the Tier thread and see if you agree.

As you do this you will likely find that your eye develops pretty quickly. But I warn you that if you go down this path, forever will it affect your viewing experience as things will likely annoy you that most people simply don't see

HighDefDigest - How they review!
http://www.highdefdigest.com/reviewmethodology.html
By Peter M. Bracke



-------------------------------------------------
-Original Post-

K, so I come here primarily to read the reviews of BluRay movies, mostly for the PQ quality and whatnot...(a lot of the time I disagree with the movie scores, I guess tastes differ ) anyway, sometimes, I'm totally lost..

I guess what I'm looking for, is for someone to explain to me what the reviewers are talking about when they say there's "noise", things look "washed out" and all the other technical things they talk about in the Picture quality parts...

The only parts I really understand are when they talk about contrast and jaggies.

When I watch movies, I try to look for what the reviewers are talking about..

I only own 2 BluRays at the moment, KungFu Hustle and Kindom of Heaven (gonna get more soon), but I have netflix too and get a lot of BluRays from there to check out the quality...

can anyone explain what I should look for?

[Godstar]

Send a PM to Kali, that is my recommendation.

[illegalprelude]

its an interesting point though

[kali]

I am a big proponent in having people learn by watching, observing and developing their own critical eye. But first here is some background stuff you can read to learn some of the key concepts:

Here is a good article covering the basics on what reviewers do and look for when evaluating images: DVD File - How We Assess Discs

Here is an excellent site that contains a detailed description of a wide number of video artfiacts: Video Artefacts [sic] Guide

A good write-up of Edge Enhancement and why it is an issue (mostly for SD DVDs but sometimes you see it on High Def discs) is here: http://www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm

Please note that this stuff is mostly DVD oriented but if you understand the stuff here, you will be well ahead of the curve for understanding what kinds of things to look for in a digitally compressed image.

Finally here is some interesting detailed info on how the stuff works for both video and audio. This gets pretty detailed and technical but some might find it interesting: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/

Look especially The Ins and Outs of Video Compression

After doing some background reading I'd recommend the following:

• Get your display calibrated. At minimum get a copy of Video Essentials or Avia (the SD DVD version works great) and use it to calibrate brightness and contrast.
• Use DobyBlue's spreadsheet (I'm seeing if I can get this stickied) or look at the following Tier System posts on AVS The Tier System For Blu-ray PQ and The Tier System for HD DVD PQ
• Use your Netflix I would obtain several (like five or six if you can) of the Tier 0 discs and some (up to 5 or 6) of the worst discs and play them. With your new knowledge of video artifacts and other issues see if you can observe the differences between the Tier 0 and Tier 4 discs.
• If you feel inclined as you watch other movies look them up on the Doby's spreadsheet or on the Tier thread and see if you agree.

As you do this you will likely find that your eye develops pretty quickly. But I warn you that if you go down this path, forever will it affect your viewing experience as things will likely annoy you that most people simply don't see

[Godstar]

So Kali, then how does opinion of production methods, film story, acting affect ratings then? I mean you could use a numerical formula to assign a value to all the defects/flaws in a film and rate it accordingly based on set standards. However, when you start saying....I think this part should have been less grainy, even though it was intended, or this part should have been brighter or the colors were wrong, isn't that just personal preference? Seems reviewers confuse personal preference, mixing in opinions like they're movie critics, with rating the quality of the encoding, which is what I think most people here care about. Unless, they are rating everything and just arbitrarily assigning a value to the result.

[kali]

Originally Posted by Godstar

So Kali, then how does opinion of production methods, film story, acting affect ratings then? I mean you could use a numerical formula to assign a value to all the defects/flaws in a film and rate it accordingly based on set standards. However, when you start saying....I think this part should have been less grainy, even though it was intended, or this part should have been brighter or the colors were wrong, isn't that just personal preference? Seems reviewers confuse personal preference, mixing in opinions like they're movie critics, with rating the quality of the encoding, which is what I think most people here care about. Unless, they are rating everything and just arbitrarily assigning a value to the result.

This is also an important point. Every reviewer has biases. Hopefully once you learn some of the technical subjects and learn to recognize true video playback artifacts then you will get a better sense of what is a stylistic choice or artifact in the source vs what is an artifact introduced during the encoding process.

A good example of a source artifact is the opening credits in Superman Returns. When you see the sweeping blue titles you will see some poor anti-aliasing artifacts as the words fly through space. This is something I noticed in the theater and it almost made me cry because the 1978 version (Superman the Movie) had perfect titles and the effect is one of the most beautiful title effects I have ever seen.

If you didn't know the jaggies were in the source it would be easy to mistake it for an artifact introduced in the encoding or playback process.

Obviously the goal is to be as true as possible to the original source. The problem is virtually all reviewers don't have the source side by side to compare with the video version so we go on memory and a general sense of what we expect film to look like, which is gained from experience with photography and/or a lot of critical viewing of film.

When I have more time I may try to find some similar resources to discuss the tradeoffs in film production.

It is very easy for a review to let subjective reactions to things that are present in the original to bleed over into the technical evaluation of the transfer.

Witness the recent discussion over the Casino Royale review:

'Casino Royale' - High-Def Digest Review

You can find some comments I wrote about reviews and reviewers there as well, starting on this page:

'Casino Royale' - High-Def Digest Review

IMHO, the bottom line is you need to develop your own critical eye and then evaluate reviewers to see which ones agree with your opinions on discs that you have seen. Then use those reviewers to help you suggest other discs to try.

[illegalprelude]

like they say in pirates 2, "their more a set of guidlines"

I see reviews, it can be for games, a car im going to purchase, movie reviews on reviews on here. I take them all, get what they have to say and then form my own opinion. I never judge things by what others have had to say

[Cieljek]

http://www.highdefdigest.com/reviewmethodology.html

adding the above link to the first post. what great timing!

[Godstar]

Originally Posted by illegalprelude

like they say in pirates 2, "their more a set of guidlines"

I see reviews, it can be for games, a car im going to purchase, movie reviews on reviews on here. I take them all, get what they have to say and then form my own opinion. I never judge things by what others have had to say

Only problem with that is when people start looking at stars and numerical values and assigning some sort of meaning to them, as some sort of statement of quality. Hey that brand sucks, hey those movies suck, etc. Most of it is subjective opinion. I've seen people rate games in the high 80's or 90's and I wouldn't have given them more than a 70. But if someone were to come along and say, hey how do the games on that system rate, they immediatly point to the 80's and 90's as vindication that the games or the systems are good.

[HomeTheatreFreak]

I for one think the entire review process has gone down the toilet with most of the HiDef websites as most of them no longer factor in director's intent, artistic vision, or any of the technical methods used in making the film like cross processing etc. What they do, and this site is no different, is find the best looking HD DVD that has the absolute clearest picture and use that title to set the bar and then rate all of the other films on how well they match up against that bar.

I am sorry but its a terrible way of reviewing films and this process of reviewing only started to rear its ugly head after the launch of the HD formats. SD DVD's, Laserdiscs, VHS or films in the theatre for that matter have never been reviewed like this before. Take the whole grain situation as a perfect example. If a SD DVD film was gritty and grainy and done so on purpose then the look of the film was rated on how well it went together with the film itself and if the look was successful and helped set the proper mood for the film then it was not marked down for having such grain and on some occasions, se7en anyone?, would actually get a higher rating because the look of the film was in fact so successful at helping create a mood that perfectly meshed with the films story. With HD its not like that at all. If there is grain then it gets marked down and if its a clear picture then it gets a high score.

I am sorry but when you take out the Director's intent along with the Director of Photography's intent along with the artistic vision and the processes used to make the film then what your left with is a review that has absolutely no merit or substance and in the end such a method has but one purpose and that is to reduce the entire process of reviewing into nothing but an attempt to rate a film based on somebody's inherently flawed vision on what a perfect HD DVD should look like.