10000 DVDs is enough to make a good
quality DVD. The main reason for
the bad quality is that the film
makers don't give a damn what the
DVD right owners do and these are
as clueless as the mastering houses
they use about what quality is and
how to achieve it with the means
available (you don't need the latest hardware to make a decent
DVD, but some basic knowledge about
film and video technology and the
products you are using).

Hollywood quality, definitely a no. To acheive that full restoration of the source is required. This process in itself costs thousands of dollars. As in BEI and Shemaroo quality, perhaps with a narrow profit margin!



Absolutely, they are more interested in selling the rights to the highest bidder!


Remarkable! just as I was saying, no restoration! :lol
Which brings us back to restoration, basic processing knowledge is not enough, the willingness to do some degree of restoration is an important factor here again and the costs determines the qualitly.Cost also includes properply trained technicians and time.

quote]
Which brings us back to restoration, basic processing knowledge is not enough, the willingness to do some degree of restoration is an important factor here again and the costs determines the qualitly.Cost also includes properply trained technicians and time.
[/quote]
The last thing I want from Bollywood DVD mastering houses
is to do any restoration. I want
to see the film as is. They are
incapable of that. I really don't
want to see the film 'as is not' plus an additional layer of problems due to 'restoration'.
Restoration is well beyond the
capability of these shops. Before
you restore learn to render
properly what might later need
restoration. If DEI had not tried
to 'restore' all the time with
primitive DNR they would have
produced DVDs that look film like.
And they were the best of the bunch. The rest should be taken
away their 'restoration' tools.

Audio restoration, is making pseudo 5.1 out of every thing!

I really don't think you want that. The telecine would be worst than VHS although their restoration method is primitive it's still above VHS transfers. Unless of course you mean original and pristine condition then I have to agree with you that they are incapable of this!



Again a matter of opinion, I would not be in a rush to do that. I have seen signs of improvement. Take shemaroo for instance they have this fandangle gismo that corrects the colors. Its a start in the right direction! DEI had other problems plaguing them besides over use of DNR, they had squished problems and as I can see a smattering of audio problems and picture stabilzation. The only edge I would give them over others is that they seem to get the sharpness ok in some cases

They did proper progressive NTSC and it looked like film when the
DNR was minimal. It also had detail beyond the current offerings and
compression was ok. Color correction is ok if you know what you
are doing. But do you if no director or DOP is present? Stick to the
color of the print as this is the reference lacking something better.
No guess work, please. Older faded titles are another issue.

The use of the word VHS was for referrence only in regards to visualization of the end product only; didn't realised I have to spell it out! If no degree of restoration is done on older prints then this is what you will get and what you will not want! On newer prints I still say some degree of restoration is needed if you want Hollywood quality.

I have yet to see an Indian dvd that is faithful to the film's original cinematography. Ayngaran, Eros, yashraj, dei, whatever company may produce the dvd it's not even close to the original film's color palate. The image is either washed out or over saturated and dark. The dvds of Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions and Kill Bill (even with its problems), they are extremely faithful to the original cinematography. So it is possible to produce an image similar to the original presentation on a home video format like dvd. The Indian movie fans are screwed if they want to see a good presentation of their favorite movie on dvd until the damn Indian dvd companies get their sh!t together.

If there was no piracy, I'm sure Indian DVDs sell in plenty quantity to afford to pay the director, as well as, afford restoring a Film properly.

Under the present circumstances, forget about restoring a film, even stocking charges are left unpaid and the films burnt/ disposed off as Fire Hazard.

Rana

Spike very true! If you are in US, visit couple of Indian stores and see how many movie lovers care to wait till originals are released. Most of them don't even know that someone else will soon release originals. They just want to watch the movie as soon as it releases on DVD. So, the original rights holders as well as pirates have to rush to get the DVD on shelf. LOL!

Even when originals are released many stores want to buy 1 DVD and make DVD-R from it! If the movie lover changes, I can bet at least some of the DVD companies will work to make things better.

When do these companies start working on the transfers? Right after post-production and censoring? After the release?



I wouldn't call people who regularly rent pirate copies "movie lovers." For them a movie is probably just a timepass and nothing more. I don't even rent originals unless it is a highly recommended film like Maqbool or a classic that I must see. I have no burning desire to watch poor transfers of marginal films. I hope I get to see Meenaxi on the big screen so I can skip the PAL to NTSC, fuzzy YRF DVD

First of all, the Indian dvd market won't change. People will still buy their 2 in 1's and pirates no matter the quality of original DVDs. Second, the DVD companies will NOT work harder to "make things better" if "the movie lover changes". Are you telling me that Prasad and YRF decide whether or not to do a PAL to NTSC transfer depending on sales? Why is it that Superdigital can do progressive transfers like K3G, KKHH, and DTPH and Prasad can't seem to do anything but PAL to NTSC transfers? IMO, the quality of Indian DVDs will only go up when DVD authoring companies and those who hold the rights to the films start caring about the quality of their transfers. I don't buy it when they say "If we were selling more, we'd care more". If they were selling more they'd probably just charge higher prices.

Some latest SuperDigital DVD are very good because they obtained negatives to US. SuperDigital rents Telecine equipment (search on google and you can find many places in LA) at studios and does their work. In fact, they advised me to go with Indian studios like Prasad and Mantra as the costs are too high for regional DVD market.

Coming to Prasad and PAL-NTSC. They do that only when they receive the source on tapes in PAL format. If they are given negatives, they ALWAYS will do direct NTSC. With Hindi movies, they almost always receive source on Digi-Tapes in PAL format unlike Tamil and Telugu movies which they usually get negatives. So, it's not prasad's problem. It's Yash Raj's problem!

How much you can spend to make a DVD directly depends on how many you can sell. I agree Hindi DVDs can be done much better. At least all good movies need to be as good as K3G! But with Tamil and Telugu, it can happen only if Prasad or some other studio in south see a reason to improve their system as I don't see any easier or cost effective way to do it.

I've done lot of research on this to make best possible Telugu DVDs. In US, it costs almost 5-8 times more than in India (if negative is clean) to author the DVD with simple menus using an Indian company like SuperDigital and no subtitles. Add to that the costs of transfering negatives back and forth from India! Even if you want to take chance and lose money on making a DVD, you may never be able convince producer to get negatives out of India for new movies unless you are someone big like Yash Raj or doing old movies.

What I found after experincing all this is you can save almost 25% of DVD cost, if you skip on subtitles, Digital Audio, use single light telecine instead of Short-by-short correction, avoid animated menus, etc, etc and still do at Prasad or Mantra! Still you don't see anyone company who wants to improve skip on those just because they want to get better.

If you can research and find a better solution to improve the quality please provide details and costs and sure someone will try to implement them.

What about Ayngaran? Their menus are too animated, and they surely pay quite a bit for the DTS licensing fee, since DTS is on every other release these days. The video quality has slid down since Kaaka Kaaka, but they're still better than Hindi DVDs. Surely they can't be doing any better financially than Eros, VS, YRF.

Telugu DVD market must be a nightmare, Kits, since the DVDs I've seen are even worse than Hindi DVDs, and piracy appears to be a bigger problem.