You will sleep better tonight
-
Thanks for visiting the Kaleidescape Owners' Forum
This forum is for the community of Kaleidescape owners, and others interested in learning about the system, equipment, services, and the company itself.It is run by a group of enthusiastic Kaleidescape owners and dealers purely as a service to this community.
This board is not affiliated in any way with Kaleidescape, Inc.
For official technical support, product information, or customer service, please visit www.kaleidescape.com
You can dismiss this box forever by clicking the "X" in the upper right corner of this message. -
You are currently in "Guest" mode and not logged in with a registered account.
The forum is free to use and most of the forum can be used by guests who are not registered....
... but we strongly encourage you to register for a full account. There is no cost to register for a full account.
Benefits of registering for a full account:
- Participate in the discussions! You must have a registered account to make posts on the forums. You will be able to start your own thread on a topic or question, or you can reply to other threads/discussions.
- Use the "Conversation" feature (known as "private messaging" on other forums) to communicate directly with any of the other users here.
- Access the Files area. The "resources" area of the forum contains many "Favorite Scene" and Script files that can dramatically increase the enjoyment of your Kaleidescape system. Go directly to great scenes in your favorite movies, created by other owners, and add automation to playback of your system with Scripts.
- You won't see this annoying notice at the top of every screen!😊
This box goes away for registered users.
[Buyer’s Guide] Kaleidescape Quality Compared to Blu-ray & other Digital Sources
- Thread starter Rmarci
- Start date
- Status
Rmarci
Well-known member
Which is a title I confirmed looks millions of times better than the UHD-BD, and everybody liked it. Nobody questioned it...
Now that I've found something wrong, suddenly I don't know what I'm doing, my capture card is wrong, my setup is wrong, blah blah blah...
This forum is such a blast, full of people who think money buy them quality!
Again, please, can someone point out anything I've claimed so far that hasn't been confirmed by Kaleidescape since I started this thread?
Hahaha, Rmarci put me on his naughty list omg hahaha.
Guys, whats going on with Guardians of the Galaxy 2 cinematic file? After about 20 min in, campfire scène with daddy. The whole picture is unwachtable, blacks are crushed and almost no color. First scene ive seen that is no good.
Please KS watch/fix this!
Guys, whats going on with Guardians of the Galaxy 2 cinematic file? After about 20 min in, campfire scène with daddy. The whole picture is unwachtable, blacks are crushed and almost no color. First scene ive seen that is no good.
Please KS watch/fix this!
I was not going to chime in, but I feel compelled to do so:
1. It has been proven that @Rmarci has detected problems with encoding since Kaleidescape made changes to its processes and updated many titles to improve video and audio quality based on his work. So, no one can argue with his expertise, nor his value. And, his objectivity has been proven with his positive reviews of certain titles and many updates. His research, combined with Kaleidescape's support, has led to better results.
2. This does not mean that everyone will notice the differences that @Rmarci describes. I know this because my eyes are not so trained to discern all the disparities. This ignores the effects that may be introduced by different panels and projectors as well as other equipment in the chain used by forum members.
3. This thread has been polluted by complaints, disagreements and other extraneous commentary that defeat its purpose, which is to bring to Kaleidescape's attention purported deficiencies that it may be able to ameliorate. A friendlier and more concise approach to Kaleidescape will increase the likelihood of a better outcome. (The team at Kaleidescape has proven that it is responsive.) And a cordial approach among forum members will preserve the unique community fostered by this forum.
Just my three cents.
1. It has been proven that @Rmarci has detected problems with encoding since Kaleidescape made changes to its processes and updated many titles to improve video and audio quality based on his work. So, no one can argue with his expertise, nor his value. And, his objectivity has been proven with his positive reviews of certain titles and many updates. His research, combined with Kaleidescape's support, has led to better results.
2. This does not mean that everyone will notice the differences that @Rmarci describes. I know this because my eyes are not so trained to discern all the disparities. This ignores the effects that may be introduced by different panels and projectors as well as other equipment in the chain used by forum members.
3. This thread has been polluted by complaints, disagreements and other extraneous commentary that defeat its purpose, which is to bring to Kaleidescape's attention purported deficiencies that it may be able to ameliorate. A friendlier and more concise approach to Kaleidescape will increase the likelihood of a better outcome. (The team at Kaleidescape has proven that it is responsive.) And a cordial approach among forum members will preserve the unique community fostered by this forum.
Just my three cents.
I don't think you understand, inspecting a frame is checking it in motion.
Rmarci
Well-known member
Passenger 2026 DV 422
- Again, the cinematic version has noticeably worse grain retention than the regular 420...
- The only good news is the DV to HDR10 conversion seems right again.
* 422 source btw, so no 444-to-422 excuse...
* Only comps tonight. All those comments today kind of demotivated me.
- Again, the cinematic version has noticeably worse grain retention than the regular 420...
- The only good news is the DV to HDR10 conversion seems right again.
* 422 source btw, so no 444-to-422 excuse...
* Only comps tonight. All those comments today kind of demotivated me.
I'm surprised that given Rmarci has proved to be an upturned rake for Kscape in the past, that they didn't give him a Strato K and some early Cinematic encodes, and ask him to do his worst. Instead, they've trodden on the rake again.
I admit that I'm one of those people who believe that money does by you quality, not least because in this case, there were a lot of experts telling me that it does. I bought a Strato C and 8TB Terra Prime, then sold the Strato C for the Strato K, ran out of storage space and bought a 30TB Terra. Which means I'm into Kscape to the tune of about £28000, which is about 6 times the value of my car. The good news is that the hardware seems good and the film encodes can be fixed.
My impression is that generally Cinematic seems better, but it certainly isn't the knockout of say going from 2K to 4K, so I would admit that I could be wrong.
I admit that I'm one of those people who believe that money does by you quality, not least because in this case, there were a lot of experts telling me that it does. I bought a Strato C and 8TB Terra Prime, then sold the Strato C for the Strato K, ran out of storage space and bought a 30TB Terra. Which means I'm into Kscape to the tune of about £28000, which is about 6 times the value of my car. The good news is that the hardware seems good and the film encodes can be fixed.
My impression is that generally Cinematic seems better, but it certainly isn't the knockout of say going from 2K to 4K, so I would admit that I could be wrong.
Passenger 2026 DV 422
- Again, the cinematic version has noticeably worse grain retention than the regular 420...
- The only good news is the DV to HDR10 conversion seems right again.
* 422 source btw, so no 444-to-422 excuse...
* Only comps tonight. All those comments today kind of demotivated me.
Yeah, super easy to toggle between and see the issues. Disappointing. Thanks for sharing these. Has K said anything to you directly yet?
It would cost them far less to just look at their encodes themselves. I think the hour or two max it takes is not worthwhile to them, they'll just fix it if someone complains. As you can see here, people seem fine with the issues and they think it looks better than the encodes without the issues.
Interesting how different these encodes are. Grain seems to be one of the hardest things for consumer video compression not surprisingly. IMO neither of the spider-man encodes look natural to my eyes. When the grain structure is retained on the 420 K encode it comes with a lot of noise that's probably not really in the film. That can be distracting in some scenes especially with large screens/viewing angles. When they try to scrub the grain on the disc, detail is lost. Most of us seem to prefer the noisier grain with detail retention, myself included. I was hoping that with the higher bitrates of cinematic the grain would be more natural appearing.Which is a title I confirmed looks millions of times better than the UHD-BD, and everybody liked it. Nobody questioned it...
Now that I've found something wrong, suddenly I don't know what I'm doing, my capture card is wrong, my setup is wrong, blah blah blah...
This forum is such a blast, full of people who think money buy them quality!
Again, please, can someone point out anything I've claimed so far that hasn't been confirmed by Kaleidescape since I started this thread?
I looked at the Passenger compare. I see what you mean and at first glance it looks like there is less grain retention on the 422 encode but it doesn't look like it's at the cost of any detail (unlike some of the other encodes like Supergirl). Due you think some of what we are calling grain on the 420 encode is actually just grain related noise in the encode and the 422 may be more natural grain?
Rmarci
Well-known member
1–2 hours??? It’s much, much, much easier and quicker than that.
It took me less than 30 minutes to make that Passenger comparison, and I had to capture both videos, which run at the same speed as the actual film playback.
Once you’ve done the encoding and have the mezzanine, it literally takes less than 5 minutes to do a 10-screenshot comparison.
I havent contacted them, I know they read this thread.
That's because the movie has barely any details and is very dark. But you can still see the softness in some of the shots with numbers
I know the difference between compression noise and film grain(Again, I have 25 years of encoding experience). This is not compression noise in any of the comparisons I’ve shown. This is source grain missing from all these cinematic encodes due to poor encoding settings.
Look at the Movies Anywhere screenshots from the Mutiny comparison I posted if you want to see the difference between compression noise due to low bitrate and actual film grain.
I was being generous with the 1-2 hours 
. This type of issue shouldn't be hunting through frames to see a problem, presumably they can randomly select a few frames and issue should be apparent.
Yeah just wondering if they at least messaged you that they were looking into it. I'm sure they're aware of it, while they don't want to spend a few minutes on quality control they are very much on top of their brand and social media.
. This type of issue shouldn't be hunting through frames to see a problem, presumably they can randomly select a few frames and issue should be apparent. Yeah just wondering if they at least messaged you that they were looking into it. I'm sure they're aware of it, while they don't want to spend a few minutes on quality control they are very much on top of their brand and social media.
Rmarci
Well-known member
Right, an automated script like mine that extracts random frames within a 5-minute window and checks whether any encoding issues are present.
It also doesnt take much more time than just selecting a few frames manually though. I actually do that for most of my comparisons and im not even cherry-picking frames; I just make sure they are not out of focus..
The script even build the comparison in HTML like the slowpics comparison website... literally nothing to do manually.
Rmarci
Well-known member
I'll probably stop checking the Cinematic encodes soon, though, because it's a waste of time. There is no doubt in my mind now that they are all poorly compressed. I'll only check the latest encodes to see if they've changed anything in their settings.
I have Talladega Nights downloaded, so I'll check that one. After that, if someone can give me a short list of movies they think have a significant difference, and if I own them, I can check those as well. Otherwise, I'll just wait for newer encodes or news from Kscape, because I think my point has been made and I'm very confident in my claims.
Edub
Well-known member
Can I make a couple of suggestions just on the bigger titles. Maybe like Dune Part 2, The Dark Knight and Tron Eres?
Rmarci
Well-known member
Sure, I own all of these. Will check them out tomorrow or this weekend.
Edub
Well-known member
Awesome. Thanks man!
I just watched the Cinematic version of "Karate Kid: Legends" and thought it looked fantastic. I usually download the HDR10 Cinematic (when I have a choice) as the DV version seems softer to me. Long shot that you own it, but if so, would you mind checking?
Last edited:
- Status