Help, I think I am going crazy

[pfxz]

Seriously... I've been messing with AVISynth and encoding stuff for only 2 weeks and I am starting to see things I didn't see before. Like I am watching videos and...
"Ha! There is some residual combing here"
"Gosh look at all the blocking there..."
"This would look so much better with a bit more saturation"
"The jagged edges here are a deinterlacing artifact"
"This encode/codec sucks, it just slaps noise all over the place"
Among countless others.

I remember when DivX came around back in the days and I thought those videos had very high quality.
Now I can't help but to notice imperfections everywhere, every time

[guns1inger]

It's like learning how a magic trick works. Once you know the secret, you spend the rest of time criticizing the magicians technique.

[pfxz]

Wow I am starting to notice all kinds of artifacts present in encodes that seemed previously fine to me. One that is especially disturbing is jerkiness caused by decimation... I can't believe I never saw that before.

[Midzuki]

pfxz wrote:

Wow I am starting to notice all kinds of artifacts present in encodes that
seemed previously fine to me. One that is especially disturbing is jerkiness
caused by decimation... I can't believe I never saw that before.

I recommend that you do NOT start listing the imperfections of
a Blu-Ray video on a 1920x1080 screen ---
unless you really want to confirm to yourself that "everything sucks".

[thecoalman]

How true, I see interlacing issues on lot of programs and especially on commercials. Even very expensive ones. I guess it comes down to knowing, a lot of hese probaby aren't noticeable at all to your average Joe.

[Webster]

Wow I am starting to notice all kinds of artifacts present in encodes that seemed previously fine to me. One that is especially disturbing is jerkiness caused by decimation... I can't believe I never saw that before.

Oh, come on, just STOP IT!!

Just watch the movie and enjoy the content, not the quality of its video, 'cause it'll drive you NUT.......

[vhelp]

Morning guys.

Egads.. his eyes wide open

This is not uncommon. Sooner or later you'll figure it out and your eyes will be opened, finally. Many of us have been there already. It finally comes when you work with video long enough.

Just some examples of how it comes..

separating the frames;
analyizing the color channels;
converting to different color spaces and sampling/sub-sampling formats;
converting to different compression scehems.. ie, mpeg; avc/h264; divx; xvid; flv; etc etc
observing through video editers and their timelines;
going through different graphcs cards and displays and their respective setups -- prob correct for the 1st time;
viewing screens.. ie, tvs vs large screen.
.
.
and more.. .. .. ..

With the advent of larger screens, (or HDTV) you are becoming aware now of the issues with the video quality aspects. The first thing that most people see now are the artifacts or macroblocks or pixelations. These are the easiest things to spot. And its *this* that is the dead give away, and consiquentually peoples eyes are becoming opened, though sooner. So now, you become more contientious about every asepct and detail of a given video -- specially when viewed on an LCD/plasma/dlp etc large screen tv.

Lets face it. No matter how much they "fancy" it, (ie, HD; new codec; BluRay; etc) they will NEVER release anything in its true full quality when converted to these new formats from their original origin. Never!!
That is why you see all these artifacts. Because they don't want you to have the highest quality. They compress the hell out of it through *their* compression (for broadcast) standards, whatever that might be.
The other side to that is the issue with trying to squeeze more channels into one though tiny tube (wire/fiber or transponder, etc) and/or they reduce the bitrate enough in order to transfer/stream the video through the narrow transport mechanisms out there today that brings video to our homes in whatever avenue or medium they and we use. I don't know.. its all a consperiicy to me, when you look right down at it, through the barrel

But, for most average people new to all this and that do not work in video, *to them* they only see high quality. Its mainly these group of people that the consortiums target their "High Quality" hype BS. And when you get enough, "ohhh.." and "Ahhhh", is where you get the popularity of these new formats.

Here are 2 parts to poor quality ...

1-- In all honesty, these so called new HD this and that, and BlueRay this and that is BS. Because the picture is full of macroblocks and/or pixelation, not to meniton their "format" errors.. much like MPEG's.

2-- You also have to consider the TV set.. be it LCD, plasma; Dlp; tube; etc. Each one has their pros and cons. They entail their own decoding engine *and* their NR and sampling resizing scaling upsampling downsampling and so on, methods. Its because of this and their poor craftmenship in these filters that ultimately result in the things you see as artifacts in these large screen tv sets, today. And lets face it, they'll always be there. If you don't want to see them, then you have to go full tube. Forget lcd and plasma and Dlp's and all. These are completely different technologies that still continue to take too long to progress better than tube tv's.

-vhelp 4791