Bourne Ultimatum HDVD being downsampled to 720x480

[Jong]

This has got be stumped. Other HDDVDs I have are being played fine in 1920x1080. The Bourne Menus are also in 1920x1080, but when it switches to the main feature everything drops to 720x480i!!

My system is HDCP compliant 1920x1080, 3850 card running cat8.2. As I said other HD DVDs eg. Blade Runner are fine. Of course I have checked the downsampling settings in PowerDVD and they are all set to HD.

How can this happen? I am playing an iso rip. AnyDVD was loaded when the iso was made. I have tried playing with and without AnyDVD running.

Any tips please!

Jon

 

[eclipse98]

This has got be stumped. Other HDDVDs I have are being played fine in 1920x1080. The Bourne Menus are also in 1920x1080, but when it switches to the main feature everything drops to 720x480i!!

My system is HDCP compliant 1920x1080, 3850 card running cat8.2. As I said other HD DVDs eg. Blade Runner are fine. Of course I have checked the downsampling settings in PowerDVD and they are all set to HD.

How can this happen? I am playing an iso rip. AnyDVD was loaded when the iso was made. I have tried playing with and without AnyDVD running.

Any tips please!

Jon

Just a crazy idea, but was it a combo disk (with both HD and SD version) ? Is it possible that menu is somehow screwed up so you end up playing SD DVD version ? I will try to play mine tonight and let you know tomorrow morning what I get out of it. What you can try to do is play HD version of the movie directly (by modifying .XPL file) rather than through menu.

HTH, Davie.

 

[Jong]

I have a pretty good feel around .ifos but have yet to get up to speed on xpls etc. I did wonder if it was an error that crept in when "renaming highest xpl file".

It is the UK version of the disc, if that makes a difference. It is most definitely the HD version playing. It is not a combo disc and PowerDVD shows VC-1 and bitrates circa 20Mb/s in the OSD when playing.

Thing is, being the kind of film it is with a lot of gritty handheld stuff, honestly, I probably would not have noticed. It still looks very good. The only way I knew is because I use Reclock and in its tray app it reports the resolution and frame rate. For all my other Blu-ray and HD-DVDs it reports 1920x1080 @23.976fps, but for this it reports 720x480 @29.970fps. The menus and the universal logo at the start of the disc (not the logo at the start of the movie) are all 1920x1080 according to Reclock. Seriously odd. I did briefly wonder because of the style of photography if it was actually 20Mb/s but 720x480/30fps on disc. Crazy I know, but I am otherwise baffled.

Maybe the process of rewriting the xpl has caused this. Or is it simply a bug in PowerDVD as it does offer the option for HD-DVD to downsample, although that option is certainly not selected? Or could it be a bug related to U-Control - downsampling and changing frame rate so it can overlay the PiP content, even though no U-Control content is selected?

Any ideas on how I can easiest get to the movie guaranteed without any programming nonsense?

Thanks for any help.

Jon

 

[Jong]

Wow, this is interesting!!

Following up on the U-Control idea I found this post on AVS:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=10190772&postcount=1534

I disabled UControl in the first few xpls in the BU subfolder of the AnyDVDHD folder. Did not really know what I was doing to be honest. First I made a backup copy of the ADV_OBJ folder. I am guessing the first xpl is the first play and there is one for each title on the disc, but almost all seem to have the info for all titles in them. Knowing the main title was title 3 and getting bored with editing identical files I stoped and tried it after I had redone the first 6 xpls.

Now I play the movie and hey presto Reclock shows 1920x1080@23.976!!!

Just to check I was not going mad I renamed my edited ADV_OBJ and restored the original. I started the disk and once again 720x480!!!

Changed back to my new folder and I'm back to 1920x1080 again.

So it really does look like PowerDVD is downsampling the video and using NTSC frame rates to allow U-Control PiP even if all those features are turned off! Staggering and not very easy to spot, since jsut about the only way to find out is to use Reclock or have a very attuned and confident eye!

I would be very interested in some independent verification of this with the same disc or other U-Control discs. I am going to start another thread as some may miss this in this Bourne specific thread.