Paramount Face/Off - Optimized for BD ?

[The Big Blue]

If the back cover scans are to be believed it seems to be confirmed. HD DVD leaves off 3 hi def extras.

Blu-ray

HD DVD

[dialog_gvf]

I'd trade the extras for lossless audio.

[Branden]

looks like they've both got same specs. seems the H-DUD ran outta space.

[haushausman]

Me too

[Lord_Stewie]

at least paramount is taking advantage of BD capacity and having more features on the BD than HD. it made me angry looking at the special features on 300 on both format and seeing that HD has more and tempting to purchase. anyways i still went ahead and bought 300 on BD...

[Scorxpion]

Originally Posted by shadblz

at least paramount is taking advantage of BD capacity and having more features on the BD than HD. it made me angry looking at the special features on 300 on both format and seeing that HD has more and tempting to purchase. anyways i still went ahead and bought 300 on BD...

Remember 300 on BD has two lossless soundtrack one is PCM and the other one is DolbyTHD whereas HD-DUD is stick only with DolbyTHD.

PCM from my experience is still better than DolbyTHD and a real example is The Departed on BD and POTC both of them including Apocalypto

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by Scorxpion

Remember 300 on BD has two lossless soundtrack one is PCM and the other one is DolbyTHD whereas HD-DUD is stick only with DolbyTHD.

PCM from my experience is still better than DolbyTHD and a real example is The Departed on BD and POTC both of them including Apocalypto

i know thats why i went for it.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Scorxpion

Remember 300 on BD has two lossless soundtrack one is PCM and the other one is DolbyTHD whereas HD-DUD is stick only with DolbyTHD.

PCM from my experience is still better than DolbyTHD and a real example is The Departed on BD and POTC both of them including Apocalypto

Yes. The TrueHD encoder used by Warner seems to do dialogue normalization. So, it's not really lossless. Something is mucking with the forward channels and changing the master audio.

The encoder Sony is using apparently doesn't do the normalization, which is why people don't hear much of a difference on The Fifth Element.

Gary

[Scorxpion]

Yes Correct Gary i agree with you.

[BStecke]

Dammit! My girl just got back from Japan, where I was trying to have her find me a copy of Face Off over there, as the Japanese version has lossless audio. Apparently Okinawa isn't that into Blu-ray yet. High definition does and should ALWAYS mean AUDIO AND VIDEO!!!!

[goodstuff]

Sounds good to me, though I thought these were going to be 2-disc sets?

[ProvenFlipper]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

I'd trade the extras for lossless audio.

Put me on that list as well. They had to be using a BD-50, so why not include a lossless track? Another film that will stay on the shelf due to the lack of lossless audio.

[DaViD Boulet]

Yes. The TrueHD encoder used by Warner seems to do dialogue normalization. So, it's not really lossless. Something is mucking with the forward channels and changing the master audio.

The encoder Sony is using apparently doesn't do the normalization, which is why people don't hear much of a difference on The Fifth Element.

Gary

Gary,

All Dolby encoders apply the 4db DN reduction flag by default.

Sony is merely GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY to set it to -31 which basically turns off all DN processing at decoding time... leaving the bit-for-bit accuracy unaffected.

Sony has done this because Paidgeek asked for feedback and AVS and we said we didn't want DN mucking up our lossless audio.

As usual, WB doesn't have a clue about sound quality (remember how long it took them to move from 384 to 448 kbps for DD on DVD???) and probably honestly believes the Dolby party-line about how every feature they can impliment is transparent and doesn't harm the original audio signal fidelity.

[WickyWoo]

I'd be shocked if that was the final cover, and Paramount has started moving to HD audio.

The website isn't ready yet, don't give up hope..

[BLU_scotty]

What is HD audio?

[goodstuff]

A Paramount insider (jiggawhat) says that the covers are wrong and will have the same extras for both, however the Blu-Ray is one disc while the HD-DVD is two disc, again proving that the 30GB HD-DVD is lacking. He also confirmed no lossless for the Blades of Glory HD-DVD.

[DaViD Boulet]

Goodstuff,

thanks for that. Though it would be off if the HD DVD (face off?) was a 2-disc bcs the packaging omits all the HD bonus material that's on the BD packaging. Is that a mistake too and do they both have the same amount of bonus material?

BTW, any word from that source about the rationale behind Paramoung using different video encodes for each format? Are they just experimenting with various ways of compressing video and using the two formats as a testbed to see how it works out or do they honestly beleive that they are giving BD a better video encode per its wider bandwidth/storage (what I was told)?

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Gary,

All Dolby encoders apply the 4db DN reduction flag by default.

Sony is merely GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY to set it to -31 which basically turns off all DN processing at decoding time... leaving the bit-for-bit accuracy unaffected.

Sony has done this because Paidgeek asked for feedback and AVS and we said we didn't want DN mucking up our lossless audio.

As usual, WB doesn't have a clue about sound quality (remember how long it took them to move from 384 to 448 kbps for DD on DVD???) and probably honestly believes the Dolby party-line about how every feature they can impliment is transparent and doesn't harm the original audio signal fidelity.

Thanks man.

Dolby thinks they can change the master data and call the encoded result lossless?! That borders on fraud. Does the -31 fully eliminate the DN, or merely suppress most of it?

Clearly WB doesn't care about audio. Look how long we've been pleading for at least LPCM on all releases.

Gary

[DaViD Boulet]

Gary,

I'm with you. I've even been considering doing an article for dvdfile talking about how lossless isn't lossless on most Dolby TrueHD encodes.

Roger and I talked about this on AVS and he conceeded that bit-for-bit accuracy from the output was negated with DN processing, but he felt that the process was transparent. Well, apparently not to most people compaing the PCM and TrueHD on discs that have both (nor to my ears). It seems that what Amir and Roger would like "lossless" to mean is a process that avoids psychoacoustic masking-processing. If you're not giving bit-for-bit out data from the PCM master out of your decoding engine, then what else can you say? Personally, I like keeping the "lossless" definition what it really means: bit-for-bit recovery *and* accuracy out of the decoding engine.

-31db actually defeats it entirely... ie, an HDCD encoded PCM track that's compressed should survive with the LSB code in tact to trigger HDCD decoding in your d/a converter... in theory.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Personally, I like keeping the "lossless" definition what it really means: bit-for-bit recovery *and* accuracy out of the decoding engine.

Agreed. We know a lot of care an expertise goes into creating the video and audio masters. In fact, we're all learning that they are the most critical element for HD disc quality. These masters represent the best foot forward at the time for representing the underlying elements (film, raw HD, raw audio stems, etc.).

The encoder's job is then then to try to aid the compressionist in matching the master as transparently as possible.

Given that TrueHD can be PERFECTLY transparent to the master and then botches it with the default setting makes you wonder about Dolby Labs.

Did Roger give you any rationale why the DN is there?

Gary