Eurovision 2011 - 10/12/14 May 2011

Thought so - would have been surprised if it had been originated 720p. Glad they didn't mangle the 50Hz motion - though after the apology some of us got after last year's DVD release and the change in mastering company that was promised I suspect they paid a bit more attention this year. Think we should be grateful for two discs - are they BD25s or BD50s?

Could well be that the original recordings used Dolby-E ? I'm pretty certain that is what the broadcasters will have received live for 5.1.

Dolby E is a compression system used to get 6 channels into the space that a VTR has for 2 PCM 48k/16bit channels (To allow HD Cam to carry a Stereo PCM Pair and a Surround Mix on 4 PCM channels)

Of course if it was mastered and mixed losslessly and recorded to HD Cam SR tape then there are enough channels for 6 discrete surround tracks AND a stereo pair (and loads left over)

My off-air recordings from SVT HD have 640kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 audio I think - though the commentary is usually a bit "ISDN wet sock".

2x BD50s. Disc 1 (semi finals): 41.5 GB used. Disc 2 (final): 40.8 GB used.

It's possible that when my Blu-ray player says the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track is 0.6 Mbps it's actually 640 kbps (640/1024 for kilobits to megabits). Though it shows semi final 1 & the final as 0.6 Mbps, but semi final 2 as only 0.4 Mbps.

448k is a common DVD-quality 5.1 bitrate, and 640k is quite common for the DD track on Blu-rays that accompanies a Dolby True HD track (as True HD doesn't have a 'core', unlike DTS HD MA/HR which does)

640k is pretty good quality for Dolby Digital - and should sound pretty good. After all the Eurovision isn't a particularly complex mix, with very little going on in the surround channels (just crowd and PA effects usually), with live vocals usually steered to the centre and backing track to the front left and right channels. Suspect it compresses pretty well, and more easily than action movies.

For comparison, BBC HD uses 384k Dolby Digital on DSat.

Which is a shame because you can get decent quality down ISDN if you use the right coding. We regularly use AAC-LD, which sounds a world away from G722. The delay isn't that much greater- and for an event like Eurovision wouldn't be a problem- and even if G722 is super robust, on a fixed line circuit it should be fine. (And if your SNR is good enough its fine over satellite too.) You can have your return in G722 to keep the delay down.

For IP circuits where we need to keep the kbps as low as possible we often use AAC-HE. Which sounds fantastic considering its only running at 48kbps.

(Those are for speech obviously.)

And will be live encoded where as presumably they would use multi-pass encoding for the Blu Ray to get the most out of the data rate (for both audio and video).

A couple of weeks ago I pre-ordered the ESC 2011 DVD from Amazon, and received it Tuesday of last week. So far I've only watched bits of disc 1 (semi-final 1), I've yet to try playing the other two.

Multi-pass encoding is routine for DVD and Blu-ray mastering (and in some ways can be implemented for live content using multiple-decision encoding - where the same content is encoded by various routes, decoded and compared with the original - and the best encoding route is the one used for TX!)

Not sure how much multi-pass is used for audio optimisation though. Not sure whether there is a decision tree for Dolby Digital in the same way as for MPEG2/H264 compression - or whether it just follows fixed rules for psycho-acoustic masking?

My Blu-ray finally arrived. (Amazon have stopped shipping it and started cancelling orders so I had to get it from the Eurovision site directly)

Watching the Grand Final. Audio is 640k Dolby 5.1 and video bitrate seems to bounce between 25 and 35Mbs and it's AVC (aka H264). Would say it seems to average around 33Mbs during busy music items. Interesting that the 25p postcards appear to be much easier to compress and sit at around 18-15Mbs. (Much simpler content, less motion I guess)

Also interesting to see that the wide shots where the audience are nearly totally blacked out can drop to 5Mbs! The opening wide shot of Eric Saade's Popular appears to hit 45Mbs as all the screens flash, and again when the glass smashes!

Looking at the semifinal disc, Semi 1 is 640k Dolby 5.1, performance bitrates seem to be nearer 25Mbs average - but still peaks in the 40s, but much wider variations more regularly dropping to the 15Mbs level. Quality still excellent.

Semi 2 is 448k Dolby 5.1 for some reason (which is a shame - but still comparable to a decent DVD and better than BBC HD's Dolby on DSat which is 384k). Eric Saade's opening peaks at around 30Mbs, and the glass smash at 37Mbs (with the strobes!)

Certainly looks cracking. Glad they didn't repeat the awful quality of last year's DVD release... That was an all time low.

Only slight disappointment is that the artists national performances are stereo and SD upscaled (presumably from the DigiBeta that every broadcaster is sent?). Sweden's Melodifestivalen is HD and 5.1 so it would have been the icing on the cake to have had their national performance in HD... Oh - and the information track is a bit oddly implemented. But you can't have everything.

Play.com had it for £14.99 with free delivery (cheaper than Amazon) before Amazon UK had it listed. It was one of play.com's top selling music Blu-rays (or top selling pre-order music ones (4th?)- it's their 12th best selling music one now). Also, it looks like Eurovision.TV have now removed it from their site but kept the DVD & CD.

I still think it might have been even better PQ/AQ with 3 discs instead of 2, and maybe if they added more functions (playlists, commentaries etc.). Also, is it me or is there a bit of aliasing (I don't just mean where the LEDs are - I mean things like the stage as well).

I wonder if they sold enough to keep releasing the contests on Blu-ray (and maybe release the ones before 2011 - probably they won't ).


Probably because they thought they needed to because they were going to use 2 discs instead of 3 (but they had about 8.5 GB free on the semi finals disc so I'm sure they could have used 640k like the other ones).

Though why not Blu-ray instead of DVD?

I'm happy with it. I think even the semi-finals are pretty acceptable in picture quality terms. Nothing obviously nasty in artefact terms caused by the compression that I can see.



Nothing compression related that I can see. The Spider camera is a lower quality than the others and has a bit more detail enhancement, which will look aliasy.



Hope so - and I'd personally love Oslo 2010 to be released on Blu-ray (as the DVD was so poor) but it's never going to happen...



Suspect it is either a mistake - or the audio for Semi 2 was Dolby E encoded at a lower rate and they're using those encodes?

There were audio problems (not just the commentary circuits falling over) during semi final 1 - so maybe that has a bearing?

For your information, I now have a blog, so when I next update my tables after next year's Eurovision Song Contest, I'll be able to put them on my blog, and post links from here.