DVD transfers from film
As an answer to: DVD transfer problems? written by Bonzo am 11 Apr 2001 02:15:25:
Good god! I am SO unused to knowing more about any topic than Bonzo, who in my experience knows virtually EVERYTHING! :o)
Most everything I know about DVD transfer comes from reading reviews of DVD releases. See the link below and read some sample reviews, and you'll see what I mean.
Sorry for the gratuitous HJO picture. I somehow figured you guys wouldn't mind too much.
From what I've gathered from reading reviews, the first hurdle is the condition of the film print that is used when scanning the digital images. Any flaws in the print will be transferred to the digital version, which may or may not then be corrected as part of the DVD development process.
The next tricky step is the compression. Obviously, a great deal of compression is needed to get all that digital info onto them shiny little plastic disks. There are different levels of compression possible, and various choices of "bit depth" that the technicians must select: it's always a compromise between rendering the best possible image that is faithful to the original, and fitting the digital data onto the disk. Keep in mind that there are various audio tracks that must also be fit on the disk, and often some extras. Oh, and evidently different sections of the same film on the same disk can be compressed at different ratios and have different bit depths. The DVD player doesn't skip a beat at detecting the differences and rendering the images.
When a reviewer complains about digital transfer, sometimes they mean that the DVD transfer simply has some inherent compression flaws (visible artifacts because of the high compression that can be seen more easily on super-hi-resolution equipment), and sometimes they mean that the DVD image is not faithful to the original intent of the filmmaker. In the case of David Letterman's complaint, it might have been that David Lean had INTENDED that the faces be shadowed and blue looking. Who really knows?
I imagine that a cheap and dirty DVD transfer would be fairly apparent. Frankly, I doubt that anyone would somehow transfer a laser disk's digital info to DVD instead of scanning the film anew, but I really don't know.
The best thing is, I will be able to see these things first hand soon, since I ORDERED MY DVD PLAYER YESTERDAY!!!!! YAYYYYY!!!!! I still have about another week worth of painting and fixing up to do, but I figured I'd put the order in to keep a fire lit under myself. You are all invited over for the first movie!!!!!
--Sensitive Stephen