720p vs 1080i rips

Spice_Rack

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I don't know those of you who have downloaded both... but I did just out of curiosity to see if there was much of a difference. And I found the difference is so tiny I don't think it is worth the extra file size. On top of that you see the interlacing effect on the 1080i which you have to use post processing to help hide. One thing i'm wondering however, and maybe Viper can answer this, is some de-interlacing filter applied to the 720p rips? I am under the impression the BBC broadcast is in 1920x1440 interlaced. Is this correct? If so how are we getting 720 and in progressive?


I have screenshots below, and the smaller video is the 720p rip. They are on my 1920x1080 screen pixel for pixel, so there is no scaling. I was struggling to see any difference, and i'm one of the pickiest people around when it comes to crisp and clear picture quality. The 1080i seemed to be a very slight bit better, but you have to be looking for it.

Now upscaling 720 to 1080 on my screen does affect quality a bit, but I still don't think it is worth the extra 3 gigs or so.

720p_vs_1080i_pic01.jpg


720p_vs_1080i_pic02.jpg



Basically all i'm trying to say is I don't think it is worth your time to make 1080 rips. Just stick with the 720p. Thoughts?
 
One thing i'm wondering however, and maybe Viper can answer this, is some de-interlacing filter applied to the 720p rips? I am under the impression the BBC broadcast is in 1920x1440 interlaced. Is this correct? If so how are we getting 720 and in progressive?

Yes, there is some filter applied. The 1080i BBC broadcast (1440x1080, not 1920x1440 ;)) is converted to 720p by whichever group is doing the release.


I was struggling to see any difference, and i'm one of the pickiest people around when it comes to crisp and clear picture quality. The 1080i seemed to be a very slight bit better, but you have to be looking for it.

A few days ago I was looking for quality differences, and they do exist - scaling or no scaling. But they are really really small. For 99.5% of us it's not worth the extra download.

Basically all i'm trying to say is I don't think it is worth your time to make 1080 rips. Just stick with the 720p. Thoughts?

FG doesn't make the rips, they only distribute them through their own tracker.

The 720 will be stuck with :lol:, it will always be offered (at least in the next few serieseses). 1080i may be there as an added bonus.


PS: Comparing two videos at different sizes isn't really fair.
 
And I found the difference is so tiny I don't think it is worth the extra file size.

Isn't that exactly what I said in the release post?

Note that unless you have a very large HDTV or are an advanced user who specifically wants this rip, I would suggest sticking to the 720p rip. On a computer or small HDTV, it will look better than the 1080i rip and it?s only a 1/3 of the filesize.

The only reason to download the 1080i rip is if you have a large HDTV. Then a upscaled 720p will look a lot worse than the 1080i rip.
 
Ok sorry for my useless thread then... and yes 1440x1080, i'm a bit backwards it seems. I'm trying to figure out why I posted this thread, but I must confess I was a bit drunk. So... Viper, feel free to delete it. :)
 
The only reason to download the 1080i rip is if you have a large HDTV. Then a upscaled 720p will look a lot worse than the 1080i rip.

I have a large HDTV (58" Panasonic V10) and played both files through my PS3 feeding the TV via HDMI. Honestly, there is no discernible difference either way. If I did a blind side-by-side I think I'd be hard pressed to tell one from the other. Sure if the source material was a high bit-rate master filmed at 1080 lines and transmitted at 1080 lines with minimal compression it would be apparent, but these aren't bluray sources they are TV streams and compression is a much bigger factor than lines of resolution.

IMO people downloading the 1080 TS rip are wasting their time unless they have very specific needs (IE: want the source to encode their own rip in something other than H264 MKV without transcoding). The 720p rip is more than sufficient given the source material.
 
A few days ago I was looking for quality differences, and they do exist - scaling or no scaling. But they are really really small. For 99.5% of us it's not worth the extra download.

But for us .5% they are. Because the 720p, while nicely done, doesn't stand up to the 1080i source (even though they are really pushing the bit rate down at encoding time for broadcating reducing the amount of stuffing at encode time the 720p requires).
 
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When I was playing with them, I noticed a bigger difference in the motion. The studio segments in the 1080i ts were oddly smooth, but not the weird smooth that 120hz tvs have. While the 720p had the classic 3:2 pulldown stutter. I noticed similar things between the .avi and .ts when I played them on my 360.

Oh and it is by far way easier to play the .ts using media center on the 360 then it is to get the mkv playing.
 
When I was playing with them, I noticed a bigger difference in the motion. The studio segments in the 1080i ts were oddly smooth, but not the weird smooth that 120hz tvs have. While the 720p had the classic 3:2 pulldown stutter. I noticed similar things between the .avi and .ts when I played them on my 360.

Oh and it is by far way easier to play the .ts using media center on the 360 then it is to get the mkv playing.
 
Sure if the source material was a high bit-rate master filmed at 1080 lines and transmitted at 1080 lines with minimal compression it would be apparent, but these aren't bluray sources they are TV streams and compression is a much bigger factor than lines of resolution.

Yeah, and come to think of it I can't wait for the Blu-Ray Disks to come out, Good good, it's going to be EPIC!

IMO people downloading the 1080 TS rip are wasting their time unless they have very specific needs (IE: want the source to encode their own rip in something other than H264 MKV without transcoding). The 720p rip is more than sufficient given the source material.

Yeah, I'm thinking about downloading the 1080i TS just so I can convert over to the iPhone with CodecSys (a PS3 encoder - Uses the PS3 as the Renderer.)
 
While the 720p had the classic 3:2 pulldown stutter.

No 3:2 pulldown happened in the making of the 720p release.

If you knew what 3:2 pulldown means, you'd know it has no place in the euro world.


I live on my netbook, the screen is tiny, so everything looks like same to me anyways.

Posts Per Day: 39.87

Try living outside your netbook for a day.
 
Basically all i'm trying to say is I don't think it is worth your time to make 1080 rips. Just stick with the 720p. Thoughts?
If I may speak in defense of the 1080i rips:
  1. Granted, you do get the obnoxious comb effect on the 1080i rips; they run at 50 FPS interlaced. This doesn't matter for the "film" segments since they're just pulled back to 25 FPS in the broadcast, but for the "live" studio segments, you get motion that is twice as smooth, just as if you were watching the actual broadcast. The higher framerate applies to the in-studio shots as well as the SiaRPC Lap and Power Laps. This is great if your home theater PC can handle it, and you don't care about interlacing.
  2. The file size is bigger for a reason, and it's not all down to the higher resolution. The 1080i rips have a much higher bitrate per pixel, which translates to subtle detail that makes all the difference. When you go with a low bitrate, small detail goes right out the window. See some comparison screen grabs; pay attention to James' skin details:
    http://www.anim8.biz/tmp/TGS14E01/720pvs1080i.1.png
    http://www.anim8.biz/tmp/TGS14E01/720pvs1080i.2.png
  3. The resolution increase makes a little more of a difference in the motion graphics bits, direct-feed photos, and side-by-side laps. Some comparisons:
    http://www.anim8.biz/tmp/TGS14E01/720pvs1080i.3.png
    http://www.anim8.biz/tmp/TGS14E01/720pvs1080i.4.png
  4. If you want a 1080p rip, you can run the 1080i rips through a slow deinterlacer and retain pretty much all of the quality without the crappy combing artifacts. Side-by-side, this time with 1080i vs. 1080p:
    http://www.anim8.biz/tmp/TGS14E01/1080pvs1080i.5.png
To be perfectly frank, though, the 1080i TS rip is for videophiles like myself. If you can't see the difference, it's just not for you. Simple as that.
 
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What he said ^

Please release them, compared to the 720p mkv, the 1080i ts looks better on my Xbox, is easier to play on my Xbox, and for most people this is the only place to get it. :(

On my TV the interlacing isn't an issue and on my computer VLC has the awesome yadif deinterlacer.
 
Basically all i'm trying to say is I don't think it is worth your time to make 1080 rips. Just stick with the 720p. Thoughts?

My thoughts?

The 1080i transport stream looks way better, and is without a doubt worth the longer download time.

You need to play it back using proper deinterlacing to see the biggest difference. The studio scenes were shot at 50 frames per second, and half of that is just gone in the 720p scene rip.

They could have done i right, and used 720p50, but they didn't. That's why we need the 1080i TS.
 
The 1080i transport stream looks way better, and is without a doubt worth the longer download time.

I take it from your reply in another forum, you are watching this on a Mac. What is the display size of your machine?

I'm using a MacBook Pro 15" with a 24" 1920x1080 external display.
 
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The studio scenes were shot at 50 frames per second, and half of that is just gone in the 720p scene rip.

They could have done i right, and used 720p50, but they didn't. That's why we need the 1080i TS.

The BBC doesn't broadcast 50 frames per second, so encoding it at 50 frames per second would introduce frames from nowhere. "They" usually know what "they" are doing.
 
Honestly, while they've still got their shitty lenses, I don't particularly see a point in downloading the extra 3gig or however much it is for the 1080i stream.

Plus, I can only really watch 1080i on my plasma which is in a shittily bright room...I'd much rather watch the 720p version on my laptop (which fits the screen almost perfectly) in the dark.

When they do get nicer lenses though, I'll be grabbing the 1080i streams.
 
The BBC doesn't broadcast 50 frames per second, so encoding it at 50 frames per second would introduce frames from nowhere. "They" usually know what "they" are doing.

You need to learn what interlacing is, and how it works.

The studio footage is shot at 50 frames per second. Interlacing is used to save bandwidth. Why do you think it looks so much smoother when watching it on BBC HD? It has nothing to do with post processing like the "100Hz" modes on some TVs. Turn it off and see for yourself.

Your TV has built in deinterlacing that switches between "film" and "video" mode automatically.

Video = 50 frames per second, stored using interlacing (as 50 fields). The downside of using this method is that the resolution will decrease when there is motion in the scene. That is why 720p50 is better for TV broadcast. You get 50 frames at "full" resolution.

Film = 25 frames per second, stored using interlacing, but they can be restored to full resolution when the two fields in each frame are combined.

Top Gear uses both of these methods. The studio footage is 50 fps, and the films are shot at 25 fps. You can clearly see the difference when watching it on BBD HD.

This is how interlacing works:

One interlaced frame:
attachment.php


Two deinterlaced frames:
attachment.php
attachment.php


As you can see, the two deinterlaced frames contain different information. If you display the frame without deinterlacing, you will get the infamous combing effect. If you deinterlace the two fields to 25 fps, the resulting frame will be a combination of the two. Proper deinterlacing like the example above will result in 50p video. The vertical resolution of the two resulting frames is 1920x540 (or 1440x540 on broadcasts like the ones on BBC HD).

take it from your reply in another forum, you are watching this on a Mac. What is the display size of your machine?

I'm using a MacBook Pro 15" with a 24" 1920x1080 external display.

I'm using two displays, LG 1080p HDTV (42") and Epson TW700 projector.
 

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^- I could reply to that, but i'll just get me some popcorn and wait for narf to come home.
 
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