Am I the only who feels like the cards that have been released recently (approximately card #1400 and later) are worse in quality? The close up shots also seem noticeably smaller. I'm not toggling any of the new advanced settings or anything. This doesn't seem to apply to the older cards that have been rereleased in 1080p, just the more-recent new ones.

I could be imagining things, but I really feel like the close up shots are smaller and the edges and finer details (like hair for example) are just not as sharp.

Maybe this has been discussed already? Thanks.

I see no worser things. I found it brighter. Maybe but I am not technical enough for it change your settings in the software or maybe your monitor.

It's a suggestion not a request.

The mid 600's through the 1300's cards seem to have the best HD quality - IMHO.

Totally agree. The older cards look better. Also their quality level is consistent.
Some of the new releases are ok, but some of them looks significantly poorer in quality. Seems that there are some kind of lighting problems in studio or they're experimenting with different filters, who knows, anyway the appearance of different cards varies considerably.
As GOliath have noticed, the finer details are not always as sharp and clear, and Girls hair on some cards looks sometimes like cut out of something, doesn't seem like natural hair at all.

@GOliath, you're not the only one, who feels that way. I stopped buying cards for some time till now because of that instability in quality (actually don't like very much the new standard as well), but hoping that things will get better over the time ...

Yes I've noticed it too. At first I was wondering if it was just me, but after seeing this post and other people's responses I'm starting to think it isn't just me being too picky or looking too closely. Come on Totem, lets make these new cards as high quality as they are supposed to be! I really want to be impressed, so please, impress me!

I have to say this - if the quality, or lack thereof, of the newer cards remains the same, I'm just going to bide my time, and wait for the higher HD quality, older cards.

I'll get some of the newer cards - because the gals are just too hot to blow off - but I'm beginning to lean towards waiting ... more and more ... for the mid-level, higher HD cards ... e.g. Marjana and Conny.

I think that we must vote with our credit purchases.

That's not to say that the latest models aren't hot - they're hotter than hell - but the quality is lacking.

Life's a bitch, and I'm just calling a spade a spade.

Okay, it's good to know that I'm not going crazy. :)

I think that they're better than the cards before #650, but there still is a noticeable difference. I don't keep anything before 650, and I'm about to max out my DB and VG collections (this also applies to recent DB cards too by the way). Unless the quality gets back to what it was before, I might not renew my subscription. It'd also be nice if they could update these cards soon, otherwise I'll probably delete them eventually.

More than 1,000 active cards is probably enough after all, right?

There is no noticeable drop in quality as far as I can see
Apart from some mildly dodgy lighting on one of Lilly roses cards (and they are fixing that)

I think there's definitely a drop in quality. The more I look at the cards closely, the more I feel like it's not just my eyes playing tricks. That said however, I think that part of the problem is there is a real variance in the quality in the 1400s as MrBeeKeeper mentions.

As far as I can tell, Melody Powers, Katy Angel and Vanda Lust seem to be the worst of the group. The close up shots look like they've been zoomed out to 80% or so and the edges of everything seem blurry. Armina's cards look to be a little bit better and Jessica Joy's are a little bit better still. Emily Spenser's cards and the one Cayenne Klein card that I have seem to be pretty close to the previous quality.

Anyway, hope it's straightened out soon and we can get back to the undoubted quality of the middle 700.

Could be longer...

I think Totem uses an 'unsharpen edge' filter. It reduces the 'bluescreen' effects around the ladies but has a drawback: it unsharpens the whole image... :-\

Maybe Totem can comment on my hypothesis?

It's not so much the resolution issue, but I've noticed some of the color really seems to be off. 1454, 1455, 1461... the skin color is this strangely mottled orange, yellow and red. This isn't just a monitor problem as most of my other cards look just fine. I've also noticed that some of the newer cards have a ghosting effect, like there's not enough contrast. There were a few DB cards I probably would have purchased if it weren't for that issue.

I remember when HD started coming around on TV, and a lot of the news shows had to rethink their makeup, as the high resolution just made the anchors look garish.

Assuming that the cards reflect chronology (which might not necessarily be the case as we've seen), I wouldn't really think that it's a question about resolution either because there are about 40 or so cards where 1080p was being used and everything looks fine (late Miyuki Son through Bijou, from what I can tell) before issues really start showing up.

Did some circumstance change for Totem? Someone new working? Making different choices?

@elston68

Exactly, some of the Girls seems to be have a "glowing" skin. Noticed it too, but I thought that this is because they are so damn hot ... ];-)

At the same time there is no problem with the republished older cards: Kami, Angel Kiss, Chelsea French ... They look just fantastic in new 1080p!

This thing about the video quality is tricky. And, as a matter of fact, is kinda cyclical.

The first pic, Olga Barz, might be one of the best looking sets ever. It was the product of lot of changes in equiptment, since we had a very blurry and bad quality for months before that. New equiptment needs to be tuned up. Still, that quality didn't last for long.

The second pic comes from a recent show, obviously is inferior in quality. Yet again, new technology and stuff.

The third is very recent. The quality, evidently, is getting better and closer to the first pic. We'll see if in some sets ahead all the stuff gets fixed to look as good or even better.

In any case, this was posted about issues like this one months ago:

"by Rex - 284 day(s) ago


We had several issues. A pretty costly light blew up a few month ago and the replacement one took a while to arrive so we had to film with two smaller lights which had some negative effects on the technical quality of a few shows. Also we noticed that the technical quality of the shows was slowly decreasing. It was becoming more and more difficult for post production to chroma key small or shiny objects. There is no "miss use" of the equipment by the photographers as the lights and camera settings don't change. There is no heat issue as we must use cold lights to avoid fans to be able to record clean sound for DB.
We switched the camera fearing the CMOS censor would be getting old,but with no result. We're now replacing all the lights of the studio (we have a ton) because we suspect their intensity have been decreasing. We also have been working for months now on a new camera to film in 4k. We lost a lot of time try to work with the red scarlett and finaly found another one with a better rendering of the image. All post production chain also had to be upgraded and by the end of january we're filming our first show with new lights and 4k camera. This is just to say we are constantly working on quality but it sometimes takes time to reach your screen. You'll be pleased when you see it."

And indeed, it was a better quality, but then again new technical stuff should be playing a big part on this, cameras, software, etc, but, as said, subpar video quality is something that just happens now and then and well, the company tries to improve it as fast and as they go, so the stream girls keeps on, as everybody likes.

Thanks for the Post Oquijan.

I was working on something the same..
Totem has been updating their equipment.
New, better cameras, New Studio Management, New Processing Software,
New Encoding Software, New Filming process - Camera is fixed with no zooming.
New Lights..

There is always a learning curve with new stuff..

during a week of production up to 30 cards might get filmed.

so if there was a setting a bit off.. it affects that batch of production.

Since Not All cards are released At one time..
these issues will seem like they persist for a long time..

It takes a while to release the 30 cards affected, right..

So we members scratch our heads, and say, wow, another card not perfect, it's been a couple months now, what's going on??

When actually, it was one batch of cards, but released a card or two a week...

Thanks, Oquijan and Wyldanimal for these thorough explanations!

There is no doubt that filming is not an easy task, especially in a tight studio conditions, with the new equipment, and with the different Girls, with the different personalities ... The Team is doing a great job, but aren't they taking some test shots first, for the each card, before releasing the final versions? Do they have time for this? Just to make sure that the lighting and camera settings haven't changed in the meantime, during the filming. That everything is OK, as it supposed to be and the quality level for all of the published cards would be the same - equally high.

These observations and comments here are not just complaints, I think, they show that members really care about this program and the Girls, and this is a very positive sign at any rate, isn't it? ];-)

So I thought I would put this graphic and post together to keep the discussion going on the visual inconsistency of recent cards.

Before I go any further, I want to point out that I'm not trying to give Totem a hard time. I'm just trying to provide some evidence in the hope that it will help to identify and solve the problem.

Some basic info:
I'm running a Mac Retina Display Macbook Pro 15" with an Intel HD Graphics 4000 and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M. Resolution 2880 x 1800.

For my comparison, I'm using the following cards:
691- Melisa: Happy Sunday (720p)
1421 - Melody Powers: Coral Bay (1080p)
1435 - Katy Angel: Mojito (1080p)
1462 - Tracy Gold: Country Fair (1080p)
895-Cindy Dollar: Delightful Time (720p)

I picked all "Close Shots" but I did not try to correct for model height or anything like that. These are straight images. My VG software is set to display at 38%.

It's my opinion that the general overall quality of these cards, rates in the following order:
1- Melisa
2 - Cindy Dollar
3 - Tracy Gold
4 - Katy Angel
5 - Melody Powers

To me, Melisa and Cindy are fairly close in quality. Melody and Katy are close in their poor quality (and a low point in the post card #650 era) and things are getting a little bit better with Tracy Gold and some of the other models that have come lately (like 1479-Sicilia: City Chic, which was released today), but it's still not the quality of Melisa's card, which I think represents the peak of Totem's shooting quality.

You'll notice that Cindy's Close Shot comes in at a height of 462 pixels while Melody comes in at 360 (again, not correcting for model height). This is a pretty substantial drop. For what it's worth, Totem lists Cindy at 5'2" and Melody at 5'1", so it's not likely this difference in image size is due to model height anyway.

Also, for what it's worth, to me, there's a noticeable difference in the sharpness of these images. Melody's image looks very blurry compared to Melisa's, particularly if you look at their faces and Melody's right arm. Even Tracy Gold's card looks blurry compared to Melisa. Reading other posts on this topic, it seems that Rex and others have mentioned that there were some technical difficulties due to aging equipment, but I'm unclear which cards were most affected and if Totem now thinks that the cards being released today should be back to normal quality.

I want to mention again that I am not trying to give Totem trouble. It just seems to me that there's been some doubt from some people here that there is any real noticeable drop in quality, so I just want to provide my perspective.

Hum. This is peculiar. Melisa's card is one of those very bad video quality cards. Is very fuzzy, specially at the close-ups. Not only that, is one of those cards with very noticeable black and jagged edges. That card was made during a period when the camera settings were not calibrated properly, so the close-ups were slightly out of focus. That was admitted by Stanze, the photographer at the time.

That period started after Angel Kiss's set and affected the sets of Sara, Melisa and Satin Bloom, and the problem was not corrected till the Kami's set.

Not to argue, but Melisa's set is a very poor video quality one, so I really dunno what are you taking into account to say is the top of the video quality. Lots of sets are way better than that. Even in your pic she looks clearly blurry.

Well, I admit that I haven't spent a lot of time closely examining every card, so maybe there are others out there that are better than Melisa's cards, but the point isn't really to determine if Melisa's is the best.

The point is to determine if the recent cards are noticeably worse than Melisa's (or others'), and it seems to me that they are. It just underscores that cards like Katy Angel and Melody Powers are even relatively worse than I originally said they are.

On casual observance, I think that Melisa's later cards are significantly better than what we're seeing lately.

If Kami is closer to the agreed upon standard (thank you for pointing that out, Oquijan), then let's overlay her card #709 Peppermint (my personal fave out of her cards) over the Melisa image from before. Looking at the result, I think my premise still holds. The more recent cards seem both blurrier and smaller than Kami's.

1435 - Katy Angel: Mojito was only released in 720p and unsharp due to technical problems like Totem informed us.
Think this one should not be compared to others because it's not a regular production.