Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 91

Doug Detling said:

TV's Frink said:

Doug Detling said:

Teh paradox doesn't work reliably for many folks

 You clearly don't know what you are talking about.  It's just a forum.

Well, pardon me. 

 You're pardoned.

DTS-HD MA tracks for the mkv have now been uploaded.

Edit: since ABC is responsible for the music restoration in the isolated score, he should be credited in the nfo for this work.

This may be a noob question, but which format has better quality MKV or AVCHD?  My gut says MKV but I don't know anything about these formats really and all the research I did only told me how to convert these two into each other.  So which is the higher quality?

Thanks, you guys do such great work.  I'm going to be watching these with my youth group soon!

First of all, there's no blanket answer to your question - it very much depends on how the formats are implemented (I've seen terrific and awful examples of both).

Generally speaking, though, AVCHD format is limited to 720p video and ~DVD video bitrates (because it's designed to play from DVD media), whereas the MKV container can accommodate pretty much anything you like in terms of video and audio streams.

In this instance Harmy has used AVCHD for the first release, but intends to follow it shortly with a high-bitrate MKV; this will offer higher quality picture and audio (albeit still at 720p), which will be playable either on an appropriate media player or by burning it to Blu-ray disc.

bert41 said:

This may be a noob question, but which format has better quality MKV or AVCHD?  My gut says MKV but I don't know anything about these formats really and all the research I did only told me how to convert these two into each other.  So which is the higher quality?

Thanks, you guys do such great work.  I'm going to be watching these with my youth group soon!

 When it's released, the MKV will be a better quality version of the film.

bert41 said:

This may be a noob question, but which format has better quality MKV or AVCHD?  My gut says MKV but I don't know anything about these formats really and all the research I did only told me how to convert these two into each other.  So which is the higher quality?

Jonno said:

Generally speaking, though, AVCHD format is limited to 720p video and ~DVD video bitrates (because it's designed to play from DVD media), whereas the MKV container can accommodate pretty much anything you like in terms of video and audio streams.

I'd like to make a few corrections here: First of all, both the term MKV and AVCHD don't really say anything about the quality of a video file. MKV isn't a video format per se, in that it's only a so called container format, which can contain a video track in pretty much every conceivable video codec.

AVCHD on the other hand is a disc format, which in most parts is the same as a Blu-ray disc. Contrary to what Jonno wrote, AVCHD discs are not limited to 720p video or a DVD bitrate (I've created AVCHD discs on DVD-DL discs that were both in 1080p and at Blu-ray bitrates), it's just that they are designed to fit a movie inside the capacity of a dual-layer DVD (8.5 GB), so the bitrates are usually lower than those of a Blu-ray.

So the general question whether MKV or AVCHD has better quality can't really be answered, as both of them can contain video at the exact same quality... even using the exact same video track.

In the case of Harmy's TESB release things get even more complicate, as he's intending to release a smaller MKV alongside the "big" MKV, which in turn will have lower image quality than even the AVCHD.

Laserschwert said:

(I've created AVCHD discs on DVD-DL discs that were both in 1080p and at Blu-ray bitrates)

Interesting - so how did that work out for you? There can't be many players that can pull that amount of data off a DVD-R without interruption, and I'd be a bit concerned about the lifespan of the drive concerned!

Works without problems, both on my PS3, PS4 and stand-alone Sony Blu-ray player. Are you sure this could damage a drive? Never heard of that.

Inasmuch as you're stressing a mechanical device beyond its normal operating range - the disc will have to turn 3-4x its normal speed. I just don't see how that can be good for the drive, is all.

Anyway, this has very little to do with Harmy's 720p AVCHD or this project in general, so I'll leave my conjecture there ;-)

h_h, I'm going to run the film through Handbrake to watch on Apple TV. Apple TV (and Mac and iOS) don't support DTS-HD but Handbrake can convert them to AC3. Would I be better served using the soundtracks from the AVCHD since they're already Dolby Digital?

davextreme said:

h_h, I'm going to run the film through Handbrake to watch on Apple TV. Apple TV (and Mac and iOS) don't support DTS-HD but Handbrake can convert them to AC3. Would I be better served using the soundtracks from the AVCHD since they're already Dolby Digital?

 I'm not h_h, but I can answer your question. First off don't use Handbrake as that will compress the video yet another time (and possibly the audio depending on your settings). The best quality for your purposes would be from remuxing the video from the large MKV release and the DD 5.1 audio from the AVCHD release.

davextreme said:

Do we/should we have an official nominee to submit the .mkv to MySpleen? My home upload speed isn't the greatest so I'm probably not the best candidate, but I wanted to bring up the subject.

DavidMerrick said:

I did keep this in mind, but I ran some tests and the drive doesn't have any problem reading CDs or DVDs. When I ran a test using some Windows Fixit software, it just said that the DVD-Rs weren't writable.

 All right, but I will say, I had a drive go bad on me once, and it crapped out in phases, it could read CD's and DVD's, but not write to -R but +R still worked, then no DVDs would write, then CD writing went out, or something like that.  I'd test those discs on another drive before writing them off as bad.

I strongly advise against letting a conversion program make AC3 out of the DTS-HD MA.  Dolby Digital encoding has several user-defined parameters which I specifically set a certain way to optimize the sound quality as well as to maintain the integrity of the mix.  It is quite likely that the results will be subpar if this kind of transcoding is performed, because it won't follow my intentions and the result will not match what it is supposed to sound like.  The level and relative phase of the surrounds and LFE can be harmed significantly if this is done incorrectly.

Also, the official Dolby encoder has a more capable algorithm than any freeware version, so my AC3 will definitely be better.  As has been stated, remux the video and audio into the required format without re-encoding either in order to maintain quality and deliver the proper results.

Hi Harmy, Big fan of yours, but if you don't mind explaining what this newest Empire that's available all about? Please forgive me, cause I don't get a lot of time to read all the posts.

Yes,but the AVCHD v2.0 was available February 17, 2011.  Is the hubbub recently, about this one?  Cause I've seen a new download on MySpleen put up just a few days ago.

The 2.0 of empire was just released this week.

I'm  totally confused. The ESB_DESPECIALIZED_v2.0_AVCHD.iso was released in 2011 according to the original post.