DWW has always been looking to provide you the best video quality available at the time a wrestling match was filmed or distributed, for you to enjoy the fighting action in full detail.
Starting from 2019, most videos have been recoded from the original masters, in order to increase video size and quality compared to the downloads we offered in the previous years. Video enconding details are displayed at the bottom of each product page.
The following description is for technical people interested in encoding details.
Standard Definition vs High Definition
Newer videos are filmed in High Definition using professional video cameras and are distributed either as 1920×1080 or 1280×720.
Older videos were filmed in PAL Standard Definition, since HD was not available in those days. On the other hand, DWW has always been using professional-level video cameras for filming matches. An excellent SD PAL video can indeed show more details than HD videos filmed with a cheap camera.
2019 Restoration
In previous years, we published for download most of our Standard Definition videos as low resolution WMV files, for keeping the file size small and allowing a smooth download over a slower Internet. More recently, thanks to improvements in video codecs and faster Internet connections, it became possible to distribute videos in much higher quality.
Starting from 2019, each video on this website has been recoded starting from the best master source available in the DWW offline archive. For example:
- some videos were recoded from digital DV or DVCPRO tapes, containing the original unedited version. DWW offices are still filled up with memory chips, hard drives and digital tapes containing all the raw shootings done in 30 years of activity
- some videos were recoded from DVD or higher bitrate edited copies, that were created even for videos that were never distributed as a DVD. For example, most matches in the “FOM” series existed in the past as low-resolution downloads only, but DVD-quality copies were kept in our archives. “DWW” series were sold as physical DVDs too, but online downloads had a lower quality until today
- some other videos were originally filmed with an analog video camera, but we digitized the raw shootings long ago, for example some older “DWW” series. You can still recognize them for the markers at the top or bottom of the screen and some minor video defects
- unfortunately for some videos only a low resolution version was recovered and it’s being distributed today as is, like some 480×360 videos
50 Frames per Second
Videos with a master available at 50i (25 frames per second interlaced) have been recoded and are now distributed at 50p (50 frames per second progressive) by deinterlacing and doubling the number of frames, for keeping both high speed motion and fine details. Deinterlacing was done for improving player compatibility and getting rid of interlacing troubles for the future.
Why is DWW selling videos at 50p instead of 25p ?
- 25p (or 24p) represents a dream and it has a “cinematic” look. Movies and TV series are shot at this framerate
- 50p (or 60p) represents reality and it has a live look with smooth motion. Live studio TV and news are produced at this framerate
Poor/lame/fake wrestling action can look good at 25p but it looks terribly fake at 50p. This is why most wrestling material on the Internet is distributed at 25p, so you can watch a dream rather than the real (poor) action. In many cases producers don’t even know the difference though.
DWW uses 50p since the action is so good and real that we want to show you what happened in full detail, hiding nothing, giving you the impression of sitting next to the mat while enjoying the live action !
Download Video Format
- container: MP4
- video: H.264/AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10), High Profile
- bitrate: varies a lot for each video for keeping the quality constant. For example, SD videos can range from 1.3 Mbps (indoor on blue mat with static action) to 5+ Mbps (catfights in the grass with a lot of motion and details)
- audio: AAC
- for improving player compatibility, any original video with a Pixel Aspect Ratio different from 1:1 has been slightly resized for getting square pixels (e.g. 768×576 or 1024×576 for SD PAL). Resolution 1440×1080 is a FullHD cropped for a 4:3 display aspect ratio, in order to avoid pillarboxing (black bands)