Roller Coasters in the RAW on Blu-Ray Question

[robbalvey]

An UPDATE! If you are reading about this project for the first time, please read the FIRST POST in this thread before reading the following....

 

So I've been doing a lot more tests this weekend on the Blu-Ray vs. DVD and the results are actually VERY interesting! There certainly is quite a big difference in quality of the overall image, even when I get all the segments onto one Blu-Ray to fit.

 

FULL DISCLOSURE HERE!

 

Keep in mind the the original source is NOT in High-Def, and the Blu-Ray versions will still have to be compressed in order to fit. I'm able to increase my bit rate from about 8,000 on the DVD to about 27,000 on the Blu-Ray. So this is significantly higher.

 

There will be some sections, especially when not a lot of action is happening on screen, when the Blu-Ray versions won't look THAT much better than the DVD version. BUT...in areas of high action, or when there is a lot going on (which is the majority of a roller coaster DVD), the differences are quite amazing.

 

I will say that this product would really be for the die hard RAW fan. It will be a 6-disc set, and I will be adding a bunch of full HD footage on the "bonus disc." What this is, I haven't quite figured out yet, but I guarantee it will be some really good stuff!

 

Here's some more screen grabs I took tonight to compare the two. The Blu-Ray images you're looking at would be the "final product."

 

Here's the original test I did with Boardwalk Bullet. The Blu-Ray version is here:

 

And compared to this DVD screen shot, you can see how much more the DVD artifacts:

 

Here's the Blu-Ray version of Ravine Flyer 2. You can see that the wood sections are nice and smooth, and while the stuff in the background starts to pixelate a little bit, it's not too bad:

 

On the DVD version, you can see right away all the pixelation that is going on right at the front of the screen. The background is pretty much a mess.

 

In areas where the action hasn't quite started yet, like hanging over the first drop, the differences aren't *quite* as noticeable. Here is the Blu-Ray version. You can see the track is very smooth...

 

On the DVD version, while it's not as significant as the frame above, you can see it's a bit more jagged and the image in the distance really gets distorted.

 

Steel coasters fair better on the DVD than woodies do, but you can still certainly see the difference between this Blu-Ray version:

 

And the DVD version. The track isn't as smooth, and the "PortAventura" letters are really blockey:

 

On a ride like Atlantis Adventure where there is a lot going on, the differences are much more noticeable. Here's the Blu-Ray version:

 

And the DVD - take a look at the track, the rocks around it, etc. You can make out a lot more detail on the Blu-Ray version above than the DVD version below:

 

Throw in water, some theming and other surroundings and it's even more noticeable between the Blu-Ray:

 

And the DVD version:

 

The woodies really are most improved. Even on a smoother coaster like T Express. Take a look at this Blu-Ray image:

 

Versus this DVD shot - the catwalk is so jaggy, the track is choppy, and so much more detail is lost here:

 

Like I said, FULL DISCLOSURE! I took these screens so everyone can see what the differences are, and where the Blu-Ray versions make a HUGE difference and where it doesn't. You can certainly tell the difference watching it in action, especially if you have watched the DVDs over and over again.

 

I do feel this is for the "RAW die-hard fan" so I'm going to make this a VERY limited release. 25 copies only. I should have it all mastered and completed sometime this week, so keep an eye out for an announcement about it. They will be first come, first serve! Don't miss out!

 

Thoughts? Feedback?

 

Thank you guys for your support!

 

--Robb

Inertiatic.nltrack

Edited January 24, 2011 by robbalvey

[Montu Maniac]

I am in Robb ...

[dwainw]

It looks like I'm seeing an expanded color palate as well. What format was the original source in for most of these recordings?

[mudvayneimn]

It is looking as good as it could right now! I'm 100% sold at this point.

[robbalvey]

It looks like I'm seeing an expanded color palate as well. What format was the original source in for most of these recordings?

The original source for most of it was 720x480 Mini DV format. I do agree the color is much stronger on the Blu-Ray versions.

 

--Robb

[DJeXeL]

Robb,

This may have been asked so I apologize.

Being that the Blu-ray discs have a higher storage capacity than standard DVD-R could you store multiple "Coasters In the Raw" volumes on a single disc?

[robbalvey]

Being that the Blu-ray discs have a higher storage capacity than standard DVD-R could you store multiple "Coasters In the Raw" volumes on a single disc?

Not without reducing quality even further. Even though the Blu-Ray discs store more, there is still a limit. I'm already putting both Wood + Steel DVDs on one Blu-Ray, if I tried to put any more, the Blu-Rays would end up looking closer to the current DVDs, not the source footage.

 

--Robb

[Yamez]

With it being 6 discs in HD Blu-Ray, how much is this going to run us out of curiosity? I know its going to be expensive, but a ball park estimate would be nice. I'd love to pick this up.

[DJeXeL]

^^Understood. Thank you

[Gerstlauer1]

I voted no.. simply because it's not HD... and it is probably upconverted..

[robbalvey]

With it being 6 discs in HD Blu-Ray, how much is this going to run us out of curiosity? I know its going to be expensive, but a ball park estimate would be nice. I'd love to pick this up.

 

I voted no.. simply because it's not HD... and it is probably upconverted..

 

No offense guys, but this has all been posted in the first post of this thread:

 

http://themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57997

 

I've already mentioned how NONE of this is "upconverted" and the reason why I'm doing this is to be able to offer the original DVD version of RAW in a higher-quality format. The box set of 6 Blu-Rays will be no more than $75.

 

I'm thinking that the "bonus disc" would contain a combination of true HD footage that would include:

 

- HD footage of coasters that we previously released in SD, but I've since re-shot in HD and have not released on the first Blu-Ray (Silver Star, Cornball Express, Megafobia, Speed, etc)

- HD footage of a few "2nd tier" coasters that probably wouldn't make the cut on a full Blu-Ray Release (coasters like Knightmare, Troublesome Trucks, some of the Japanese Jet Coasters, or handheld footage I have that was 'good' but not 'great' enough for a full RAW release.)

- A few HD clips of just some fun, random stuff that we've shot over the past couple of years, but wouldn't quite fit on a RAW DVD.

 

--Robb "I appreciate the feedback and questions, but please try to read the thread for information before you post." Alvey

Edited January 24, 2011 by robbalvey

[Across_the_Universe]

I would be very interested in this set....if I owned a Blu-Ray player.

My family might get one soon, but I'm not sure when. I don't own any of the RAW DVD's so being able to catch up, and in HD, would be great.

Like I said, I don't have a Blu-Ray player, but I'd be very interested in this set when and if I get a player.

[MagicMountainMan]

Hey Robb, are you rendering out in MPEG-2 and bumping up the bitrate? If you are, could it be a possibility to render out in .h264 in an .MP4 container? Because you're burning to Blu-Ray, it supports .MP4 files as well as the .h264 codec and it tends to have smaller file sizes then regular MPEG-2. The reason I'm saying this is because theoretically it would be possible to take your SD footage and render it out in .h264 instead of MPEG-2 and you should see a pretty good decrease in file size without seeing any decrease in quality. Then you could possibly fit more files on a single Blu-Ray and reduce the cost of production.

 

This is all purely hypothetical but when I get home I'll test rendering out some footage to a high bitrate MPEG-2 and then compare that file size and quality to a high bitrate .MP4 and see how it stacks up.

 

Hopefully this helps. Then again you might already be doing this...

[la2lvtom]

Robb, like I said at the beginning of the post I am already sold and ready to pre order, the screen shots were great and really show off how impressive SD video looks on BLU RAY. If I had a say on the "bonus" disc (and I don't) I would say all second tier coasters and save "re-shot in HD" coasters for actual future BLU RAY editions. It would be nice to see obscure coasters that one would normally have to venture to seedy sites to check out but thats just my opinion.

[the wolverine]

Personally, I wouldn't...

 

My PS3 is my Blu-Ray player, and with the way it's set up, it upscales all standard definition things by default. So I'd personally be satisfied with just the DVDs.

[MagicMountainMan]

^Sure, it upscales. But that actually doesn't matter because all it's doing is making the picture bigger to fit within the 1920x1080 pixels instead of the 720x480 that an SD display is. There's no real "upscaling" going on that I'm aware of other than the fact it's just making the picture fit. What Robb is doing is giving us a higher bitrate which in turn gives out a higher quality picture. The absolute MAX bitrate you can squeeze out of a DVD is 9.8 Mb/s and that's without any audio. Basically Robb making the bitrate almost 3x higher (because the Blu-Ray format allows it) which in turn makes the picture a heck of a lot cleaner (as seen by some of the pictures Robb has shown). So to sum it all up, upscaling doesn't matter if the source isn't too great, it just makes the flaws more noticeable. However if you feed the upscaling player a really nice source then it will naturally look a lot better.

 

Random side note: I find it really funny when people make a huge deal over the frame size of video. People think that if it's not in "HD" it's garbage, but in reality I've seen SD videos look better than HD ones because the HD ones had an absolutely terrible bitrates. The instant streaming video off of Netflix comes to mind...

[robbalvey]

Hey Robb, are you rendering out in MPEG-2 and bumping up the bitrate? If you are, could it be a possibility to render out in .h264 in an .MP4 container? Because you're burning to Blu-Ray, it supports .MP4 files as well as the .h264 codec and it tends to have smaller file sizes then regular MPEG-2. The reason I'm saying this is because theoretically it would be possible to take your SD footage and render it out in .h264 instead of MPEG-2 and you should see a pretty good decrease in file size without seeing any decrease in quality. Then you could possibly fit more files on a single Blu-Ray and reduce the cost of production.

 

This is all purely hypothetical but when I get home I'll test rendering out some footage to a high bitrate MPEG-2 and then compare that file size and quality to a high bitrate .MP4 and see how it stacks up.

 

Hopefully this helps. Then again you might already be doing this...

Yes, I've already done all of this. I wouldn't have posted about this or made an announcement about doing this if I haven't already done all the research. I appreciate your comments and your offer to help, but you'd only be wasting your time doing "tests" that I've already conducted.

 

I've messed around with different outputs from the original source, but the reality is comparing the original source AVI compressed at 24bit DV AVI versus high quality MP4, then compressed on the Blu-Ray, the differences are not even noticeable, and it doesn't buy me that much more room because unless I can put 4 DVDs on one Blu-Ray, it just gets a bit confusing.

 

It's much easier to saw "Roller Coasters in the RAW Volume 1" is on Blu-Ray Disc 1, instead of having the files all over the place. It's just a cleaner break that way.

 

--Robb

Edited January 24, 2011 by robbalvey

[MagicMountainMan]

Oh alright just thought I'd ask to be safe.

 

But actually I just remembered about some an open source codec that's actually the best of the .h264 codecs and it's called x264. It can render right from Premier I believe and it compresses the crap out of files but it still holds the same quality. I'm actually editing a video right now so I'll do a few renders and compare just because I'm interested now!

 

And are you using AVI files and putting them on the Blu-Rays?

Edited January 24, 2011 by MagicMountainMan

[DJeXeL]

^^I've burned plenty of DVD-R/CD-Rs but never a BD-R. Any differences in the burning process?

[robbalvey]

and are you using AVI files and putting them on the Blu-Rays?

Yes, the source is high quality, uncompressed AVI files.

[MagicMountainMan]

Oh well in that case you could definitely render out in .h264 and you'd get a lot smaller file sizes with minimal quality loss. AVI tends to be really big, especially uncompressed. I just rendered a 10 second clip at 720x480 uncompressed and my file size came out to 240mb and then I rendered the same 10 second file using a .MP4 container at 720X480 and it came out to 8.46mb.

[robbalvey]

Oh well in that case you could definitely render out in .h264 and you'd get a lot smaller file sizes with minimal quality loss. AVI tends to be really big, especially uncompressed. I just rendered a 10 second clip at 720x480 uncompressed and my file size came out to 240mb and then I rendered the same 10 second file using a .MP4 container at 720X480 and it came out to 8.46mb.

Please don't take offense to this, but I really don't need someone to tell me how to do my job. I've already done these tests and I know exactly what I'm doing. I've been producing roller coaster videos for over a decade now. I do not want to render out to .h264 because it's stupid to compress the video TWICE when I don't need to.

 

I'm not trying to cram 5 hours of programming on 1 BDR I only need to fit two hours.

 

If I compress the original AVI's to .h264, there will be some quality loss, even if it's minimal, and then there is quality loss again when I author the Blu-Ray. I have already run this test! I don't need you to do it for me! The results where not as clean as going from the AVI to the Blu-Ray. I totally realize they are bigger files, and I totally know that I can't fit as much onto 1 BDR by going with the AVI files. That is "by design", meaning that is how I've chosen to proceed because it produces the absolute best results on screen. I have already blown through 40-50 Blu-Ray discs with different tests that I've done. Been working on this for quite a while now. It's not like I just woke up one morning and said "Hey! Today I'm going to compress some DVD stuff onto Blu-Ray, and I ain't got a freakin' clue how to do it!" Trust me, I've done many, many, many tests.

 

I told you in the last post please do not do any tests and tell me about the outcome. I've already done this!!!

 

Going from the high quality source AVI directly to the Blu-Ray is the best possible solution for what I'm trying to do.

 

Please do not try to "help" me any further. I know exactly what I'm doing and I'm getting exactly the results I'm looking for.

 

--Robb

Edited January 25, 2011 by robbalvey

[MagicMountainMan]

Sorry, I had no idea that you had tested so thoroughly and you had already predetermined what you wanted. Please don't think I'm trying to question your professionalism, I was just trying to suggest ideas but I now see that you already got all your bases covered. Video is a huge part of my life and I always try to help out others in video related matters, it's in my nature. I also think that sometimes I'm more knowledgeable than anybody else... I guess sometimes my nature goes too far and jumps the gun in helping, so sorry about that. No offense taken what-so-ever, I'll be looking forward to the final result.

[ernierocker]

The difference in quality is pretty amazing. I am sure a limited run will sell out fast! If the die-hards don't buy them them all up though, I would consider buying it.

[robbalvey]

Just so you can see I've done my tests and due diligence, here are two Blu-Ray images back to back.

 

Blu-Ray 1 - High Quality DV AVI going directly to Blu-Ray:

 

Blu-Ray2 - High Quality DV AVI converted to MP4 with H264 (highest bit rate setting possible) and then converted to Blu-Ray (again with highest bit rate setting possible):

 

As you can see, they ARE very close... But you can see where the top image has more detail. Look at the metal strip on the wooden track. The top picture you can clearly define where it rests on the wood, and on the bottom picture it gets muddy. If you look at the wood slats in-between the tracks, same thing, you can see them blur together more on the bottom image.

 

The compressed, and then re-compressed version, while very close in quality, is just not as clear. But for this project, I do not want to sacrifice any more quality than I have to. The whole POINT of this project is to make the original DVD source footage look as good as it possibly can. Hell, at one point, I really considered even releasing wood and steel of each RAW volume on a separate Blu-Ray just to get back a little bit of quality!

 

Also, just so you can see, here is a screen grab of the original source AVI playing on my computer. You can see that the Blu-Ray is very close to this, and if fact, I think it actually looks much BETTER playing off the Blu-Ray on a television screen versus the screen grab from my monitor:

 

Again, I do appreciate your input, but I've done my research, and I've got my pipeline down.

 

--Robb

Edited January 25, 2011 by robbalvey