So You Think You Can Dance Season 5 on DVD
So, I've finally finished making Season 5 DVD's. There are quite a few sets of changes and notes that you might all be interested in reading about (all of which are detailed below) but the most important thing is that this seasons set of DVD's look MUCH better than seasons 3 and 4. This has to do mostly with the fact that I used Badger's videos from IDF for most of the season rather than the usual torrents. The second reason is that I actually did more research into how to encode them better, DVD video is now encoded at 720p at 29.97 fps with AC3 audio at 192 kbps. Before I wasn't encoding progressive video sources correctly, so now it looks much better. Another reason why these look better is because they take up more space, I've put all 23 episodes onto 12 DVD5 discs and encoded all video using CCE Basic using a triple-pass VBR encoding to produce MPEG2 video that's closer to the high quality source videos. Lastly, for the first 5 episodes the DVDs have optional English subtitles that I've created.
As you can probably tell, these DVDs take in incredible amount of time and energy for me to create, you may make free copies for family, friends, or fellow fans as you wish. If you're going to re-distribute the discs online or whatnot, please do it at a reasonable price! At the end of the day, these are just DVD-R/DVD+R discs and they are fairly cheap to purchase. Please don't rip off your fellow fans by charging an arm and a leg to get a copy of this DVD set. I did not create these discs for myself or anyone else to profit off of, and if you catch anyone out there re-distributing these discs at a ridiculous price please contact me.
Now onto some technical information. Due to the audition and Vegas episodes being as long as they are, I decided to not force more than 3 hours onto a single DVD5. Ideally if I wanted to get the absolute best quality out of the high quality source video that I downloaded from Badger, I would need to stick about 60 minutes onto a DVD5 or no more than 120 minutes on a DVD9. DVD9 aren't cheap and a lot of DVD players still have trouble playing them. To conserve space yet retain quality, I decided not to put more than 2 episodes per disc this year, which really only results in having 1 more disc in the set than last year. Sadly, it's the cost of an extra disc but it looks SO much better now. I figure since we're in an age where more and more people are getting high definition tv's, you'd really be able to see compression artifacts if I tried to squeeze this onto 6 discs like I did season 3.
DVD information & Details:
- All 23 Episodes of Season 5 on 12 standard 4.7 GB DVD-R/DVD+R (if you have a very specific preference as to which, please let me know).
- Disc 1 has the first 2 episodes, disc 2 has 1 episode (LA auditions) and a heap of extras which include some Dancing With the Stars clips of past SYTYCD dancers and a few other miscellaneous videos. Disc 3 and onward have 2 episodes each.
- Audio is AC3 encoded at 192 Kbps
- All video is encoded in widescreen and was frameserved with avisynth. Because the original source video doesn't fill 720x480 aspect ratio perfectly, you will see thin black bars usually on the right and left side if you watch the DVD on a computer. These should bars should be blocked out by your TV's overscan. Unlike season 3 and 4, I've decided to be fill the 720x480 pixel with as much video as possible, so instead of seeing heavy black borders like with season 3 and 4 DVDs, you should only see thin black lines on the left and right side.
- Episode 1-9, and 15-23 are encoded from Badger's high quality videos (880w 59.94 fps). Due to fox's issues with episode 10-14 in the area where Badger lives (we so happen to live in the same area so I know this first hand), episodes 10-14 experienced a major quality drop. This was extremely evident when there were strobe lights, you could see heavy pixelation, so for episode 10-14 I used videos that I downloaded using bittorent. For episode 22, part of the introduction (just a bit beyond the opening sequence) was cut off from Badger's video, so I spliced it with the intro from a video I downloaded using bitorrent. You may see and hear a minor pause at the point where they were joined, but this way the video quality is as high as can be for this episode.
- Video is encoded at 29.97 fps 720x480 progressive NTSC.
- Discs 1-3 which contain episode 1-5 contain optional English subtitles. These subtitles are set on by default since there is no subtitle option button on the menu, they can be turned off with your DVD remote. Some DVD players will not be able to recognize that the subtitles are supposed to be on by default, so you may have to use your remote. There may be minor mispellings in the subtitles here and there (sometimes I can't catch them all).
- Menus use some of last years downloadable wallpapers and the backgrounds from Fox's website of the dancers. Menu is 16:9 ratio with main theme music plays in the background.
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- Each episode is meticulously chaptered. Each audition that mentions the auditioner's name has a chapter stop. The dances, judging, rehersals, and such are also chaptered for easy access through the menu.
Refer to a screencap for a visual.
- All discs are Region 0, meaning they should play on any dvd player that can play DVD-R or DVD+R.
- All discs are burned on what I consider reliable brand-name media.
How to Get DVD's:
Price is $36 flat for all 12 discs of season 5 shipped anywhere in the United States. Please e-mail me at siifuthun@yahoo.com if you want the discs shipped out of the USA or if you'd rather pick up the discs from me in person (you'll get a $3 discount). I can accept payment through paypal, check, money order, or cash at your own risk. If Fox ever releases SYTYCD Season 3, 4, or 5 on dvd, please throw these discs away and buy the actual dvds. If your total ends up over $45 you'll automatically get upgraded to priority mail shipping.
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E-mail: siifuthun@yahoo.com