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to Bluray or not to Bluray

baileym43

baileym43

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this question wasn't a big issue to me until the 16th this month.
i've had a finished treatment of The Big Lebowski that was inspired mostly by a buddy of mine.
for some insane reason, he doesn't care for the film.
i loved it the first time a saw it almost 12 years ago now. it's brilliant. how could i sit and watch a movie where nothing happens for two hours and be completely entertained? The BL accomplishes that.
but my buddy didn't like it so i decided that The BL would be my first effort into this art form.
after devouring everything i could on this site, joining the forum, watching film after film after film and even contacting a few members with private questions, i got my hands on some software (had to upgrade my compy; which was due anyway), watched a ton of youtube tutorials and a few months later . . . i'm still learning cool stuff to do.
but anyway, i digress.
august 16th rolls around and The Big Lebowski is released on Bluray.
but now i'm faced with that question, do i redo my edit with a Bluray rip?
is the video/audio quality really that much better when they "up-convert" something for a Bluray release ?
(i haven't bought it yet and don't have anything that studios have "up-converted". the only blurays i have are movies made after the HD revolution. i'm not very keen on replacing my DVD library just quite yet.)
so i want to see what everyone thinks. i've noticed some people do straight-up bluray rips and edits. and i've also noticed people re-releasing their edit in HD.
cheers.
 
do i redo my edit with a Bluray rip?
Click to expand...

I say release the version that you have already produced. You've worked hard on it, so release it on DVD. You can always make a second version later in higher quality, taking into account feedback.
 
Captain Khajiit said:
I say release the version that you have already produced. You've worked hard on it, so release it on DVD. You can always make a second version later in higher quality, taking into account feedback.
Click to expand...

That's good advice. You've got your edit already done, put a lot of work into it, and it would suck to basically just throw it all away just because the movie is released in Blu-Ray. Release it as you had planned, and take any feedback that may be offered. If there's any problems with the edit you can fix them when/if you plan on upgrading your edit to HD. Better to know about problems now, than after you've put even more work into creating an HD edit of an edit you've already put so much time and work into on DVD.
 
I'd say quality for Blu Ray transfers varies just like VHS or DVD transfers do/did. The best you can do is check reviews and look for anything other than stellar, and decide for yourself.

Most films made before the HD era were actually (god this sounds redundant but is grammatically correct) filmed on film. This is, believe it or not, higher resolution than 1080p, so unless they really effed something up in the transfer, the Blu Ray should look and sound great. Keep in mind that it is The Big Lebowski, which would be great at any resolution. I don't mind worse quality transfers for comedies, personally. I really want the high definition stuff for the fast-action heavy SFX movies. But really it's up to you.
 
I think people have provided good advice so far. Release the resolution you have, if you are happy with the cuts and the quality of your final product.

If starting a new edit, then I might suggest someone to jump straight into HD editing, as long as their computer is half-way decent. I actually find HD editing to have fewer complications than SD editing. DVD ended up being a weird format that contained a lot of relic issues, like interlacing, pulldown flags, anamorphic video, etc. With Blu-ray, most of that nonsense is gone.
 
Well now you tell me :p
 
As stated above, there isn't (well, there shouldn't be, but that's another discussion altogether) any "up-conversion" done. It's really just less of a "down-conversion" than DVD is. I don't know if that sentence made any sense.

You can be fairly certain that any catalogue title (a movie older than, say, ten years) will not be the exact same transfer as the original DVD. That means that you'll probably not be able to just switch your old source files with HD ones and it'll be fine. You'll most likely have to go through the entire edit and adjust each cut. There will most likely be random extra or missing frames throughout, as well as a new audio mix.

My suggestion is to try the Lebowski BD video and see how much extra work it entails. If it looks too much, you can be satisfied with what you've done on DVD and move on to a new project in HD. Also, if your edit uses deleted scenes and stuff like that, you can be pretty sure the bluray won't have them in HD anyway
 
I'd ask DwightFry since he seems to have managed to replace his entire project with the Blu Ray version and keep his project intact and running
 
he was incredibly lucky then. As cactus said, most older films have a completely different transfer for Blu-ray. The frames will not be perfect. I have experienced this myself.
 
There's no wrong answer here. This should be a hobby, not a job. Do whatever will make you happiest.
 
TV's Frink said:
There's no wrong answer here. This should be a hobby, not a job. Do whatever will make you happiest.
Click to expand...
^ This. Bottom line is you should always do this for yourself.
 
Well...I do it for you, Throw...

:peep:
 
I've given this a little thought and have an addendum to my suggestion:
If you work with HD your audience is limited, to an extent. You can pretty much assume everyone who has the internet has a DVD burner, but Blu Ray players are still fairly rare, let alone burners. Even then, many people who have Blu Ray use composite or component cables, rather than getting full HDMI quality, and several probably just have SD TVs anyway. And Blu Ray players play DVDs up-scaled (which is the only instance in which I've heard Blu Ray and up-scale in the same sentence) which basically meets Blu Ray in the middle, quality-wise. So really your main audience will probably not ever notice the quality difference. Sourcing, editing, and releasing Blu Ray discs will take more time in every way, especially the mixdown and the upload processes. As long as you don't include too many extras, the DVD video file should still be very high quality.

If you do choose to go the HD route, what I'm really saying is at least also release the SD version.
 
Don't forget about AVCHD - almost everyone with a Blu player can play those, and no Blu burner needed.

EDIT: :lol: @Throw
 
Sunarep said:
I'd ask DwightFry since he seems to have managed to replace his entire project with the Blu Ray version and keep his project intact and running
Click to expand...

I've had to do this with both my Indy 4 edit and my Twin Peaks edit. While it's possible to do there are quirks you have to work with. I had to go through both and re-synch everything because every few minutes the video would get off a few frames. If you don't mind spending an hour or two cleaning this up I think HD is the way to go. The main reason is because even when down-converting to DVD the quality is still higher than working with DVD footage. At least, in my experience this is the case, but I'm a stickler for high quality video.
 
Sunarep said:
I'd ask DwightFry since he seems to have managed to replace his entire project with the Blu Ray version and keep his project intact and running
Click to expand...
No such luck, I'm afraid. No magic trick. I had to start over and do all the cuts from scratch. However, since I had each cut written down (in order to sync the subs later), I was able to reproduce the whole edit in less than one hour.
 
thunderclap said:
The main reason is because even when down-converting to DVD the quality is still higher than working with DVD footage.
Click to expand...

This is completely true.
 
Dwight Fry said:
No such luck, I'm afraid. No magic trick. I had to start over and do all the cuts from scratch. However, since I had each cut written down (in order to sync the subs later), I was able to reproduce the whole edit in less than one hour.
Click to expand...

Damn your post in the batmanthread read like you had discovered the sorcerer's stone
 
Sunarep said:
Damn your post in the batmanthread read like you had discovered the sorcerer's stone
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I just wish! I don't think it's possible to just replace a DVD source with a BD one and have everything magically fall into place, because DVD had this pulldown thing that would skip counting one frame every once in a while, and BD doesn't have that. Thus sometimes stray frames will appear, and needed ones will disappear.
 
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