500GB not enough for uncompressed video

[CptGreedle]

Now that Pioneer has confirmed it is possible to make 500GB Blu-ray discs, and fully expect to get these things out within 5 years, several people have suggested uses for the extra 450GB.
Some people mentioned that all movies will be able to support uncompressed video. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but unless my math is wrong, 1 uncompressed frame is 5.93MB.

1920 X 1080 (resolution) = 2,073,600 (pixels)
2,073,600 X 3 (RGB/color) = 6,220,800 (bytes)
6,220,800 ÷ 1,048,576 (byte conversion to MB) = 5.93 (MB)

So for a 24 fps movie that lasts 2 hours, that would make the movie about 1,024GB. If it was in 29.97 fps, it would be about 1.3TB. Obviously uncompressed won't work. Even a 90 minute 24 fps movie would be 700GB, still too large for a single 500GB disc.

There are other technologies that might be able to take up the slack here and obtain uncompressed video however. For instance the next medium people are talking about might be holographic discs, which are capable of storing tens of terabytes of data. So perhaps holographic discs can hold uncompressed images, if it ever comes to out. The HVD format holds 3.9TB, but is still in development. Obviously, 500GB can not compete to that, but is it really worth it?

Sure an uncompressed image is the best image, but does the compressed image suffer that much from artifacts and errors, so much so that only uncompressed images are acceptable? Aren't compressed images enough? What are the limits to human sight and how would that limit the size and compression of an image?
Perhaps there is no answer, but just as with lossless compressed audio formats, perhaps there will have to be a lossless compressed video format that can shrink a lossless image to less than half its current size.
Are there any lossless video compression codecs?

Something tells me that most video will be compressed for a long time still.

[matthewrounds]

Here we go with the video equivalent of:

Is PCM the same as TrueHD the same as DTS HD MA...

I'm staying out of it!

[CptGreedle]

Originally Posted by matthewrounds

Here we go with the video equivalent of:

Is PCM the same as TrueHD the same as DTS HD MA...

I'm staying out of it!

HAHA. That is exactly the point.
Personally, I think that right now, we can't get much better with our compression technology. I don't see how having uncompressed will be an advantage, even lossless could be of little advantage.
I just think we will get more people asking for uncompressed video when this comes to market not realizing it is impossible without a new codec to support compressed lossless, and prolly not worth it.

[Beta-guy]

let me ask you something, if they manage to get HVD released and it overtakes Blu-ray, and it uses uncompressed Audio and Video, when the time comes for UHDTV's and the next format war appears, they'll presumably make upconverters for 1080P movies (and DVD's too yikes) will the uncompressed image handle the upconversion better than the compressed image, I'm not familiar with the deep inner working of the compression technology, however I have to believe that even if today we don't see too many defects in a movie, once it's stretched 16X the resolusion you'll see every distorsion that the compression left in there... granted it'll still be lacking the detail that the next technology can show us, but the image will be presented in as close to perfect image as we see it today in the upconversion process. My hope is that one day we'll get uncompressed image, but I know that we won't get it on Blu-ray, the technology while good is too limited, even if they manage to get the 1.3TB on a disc that'll mean like 52 layers per disc, I can't help but think that is just asking for problem with disc production...

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by CptGreedle

Are there any lossless video compression codecs?

Something tells me that most video will be compressed for a long time still.

First off, your math was right (since I think you asked). Also an uncompressed 24p stream is roughly 1.11Gbps, so even if the storage space was available, there's no way any current optical disc technology could read the data fast enough.

As for lossless video compression, there are codecs such as HuffyYUV that are truly lossless and then codecs such as Apple ProRes and the MPEG-4 Studio Profile (used on HDCAM SR) are often called "visually lossless" at their high bitrates 220 (HQ mode Pro Res) - 880Mbps (double data rate HDCAM SR). None of these has any real use in consumer applications but come in very handy during the editing/mastering process.

Even if you could fit the data on the disc and read it fast enough, there's no way any studio is going to give consumers a "lossless" 1920x1080 MASTER of movies they own. Although the differences between that lossless master and a great Blu-ray transfer are fairly minimal during normal viewing, "giving away" the master essentially amounts to inviting anyone who feels like it to steal the studio's IP. Blu-ray is already a bit too close for comfort -- but giving away the uncompressed master will NEVER happen.

[Arivald Hagel]

Then I think I should remind you of TrueX technology:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Revi...ArticleId=6084

That makes it possible to increase transfer rate ~7 times using available technology (what would it make? 350MiB/s @x12 (2.8Gbps)? or 30MiB/s @x1?)

So there is a technology that enables such transfers, and SATA II gives us as much as 3Gbps so it is a possibility. However Kenwood TrueX CD-ROM wasn't perfect, and NOONE needed such technology at a time... do we really need it?

Personally I wouldn't mind to have 4 CAV DVD drive with 7 lasers for aggegated write/read speed of 28 (~37MiB/s) that would be extremely quiet...

[welwynnick]

I think the maths are right, but just miss out on how the bits fit together.

There are 8 bits per colour per pixel, but this is offset by 8 bits per byte of storage.

The end result is the same. The statistic that I remember is that VC1 and AVC compress video by approx 95 to 98%, which is enormous. It's no surprise that compression is needed given the amout of information, but it's quite incredible that we can still get pictures so good with that degree of compression.

No matter how big discs get though, I'm sure video will always be compressed. There are so many worthy ways to use the bit budget, that another way to fill up a bigger space will always be found. When discs get bigger, there will undoubtedly be a push to move to deep colour (10 or 12 bits per colour, rather than 8). Chroma sub-sampling could also be dropped. Lossless audio added to every soundtrack. In due course, the video format itself will change to one with more resolution.

All these changes may give better improvement to PQ than going for uncompressed video. Thinking about it a different way, if lossless video was worthwhile, we would be using it now - we could have say 480i60 uncompressed video. This would be better than NTSC on DVD, sure, but it would probably only be an incremental improvement, and compressed HD video is presumably better?

That suggests to me that future, bigger discs won't move towards uncompressed, as there are proabably better things to do with the bits.

BR, Nick

[ngkf7]

Although this is slightly off-topic, the holographic storage reminded me of something I read last week.

Apparently, Nintendo is in a joint-research program into the field of holographic storage. I doubt it's a solution for the Wii's storage issues, and maybe it will be something with their next system? However, that'd be a huge jump from a "fridge is full" attitude to a "let's blow away the competition in terms of storage capacity."

[TheJesus]

I think before we see uncompressed video, we will see a display and source that can do 2k or even 4k resolution.

They could use blu-ray 50GB discs to give us a less compressed 480p picture, but I think we benefit more from the increase in resolution.

[Lucy Diamond]

They will most likely come up with a lossless compression technique.

[dadkins]

See here:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=59298

Specifically this post:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...7&postcount=12

No, uncompressed video isn't going to happen - not yet at least.

[Anthony P]

will the uncompressed image handle the upconversion better than the compressed image

yes, garbage in garbage out. Think of upconversion as looking at the surrounding info and trying to guess what that pixel should be. The better the source the better the guess would be.

[Clark Kent]

I think we might see uncompressed video one day, but only when the studios feel the platform's security is untouchable. Blu-ray is already a broken format in that sense. I think extensive digital rights management would have to be built into this hypothetical future format from the studio side.

[Anthony P]

"giving away" the master essentially amounts to inviting anyone who feels like it to steal the studio's IP.

I don't get that thinking. Who cares what the quality is, the studio is not iving away more or less.

What I mean is that there are three scenarios
1) Studio A likes movie from studio B, just because they got their hands on a "good enough" copy it does not mean that they can legitimetly sell the movie (or even parts of it) under that studio name without express permission from B
2) pirates want to make copies to sell to people, then they don't need a premiere copy, they just steal and sell the exact copy from the studio (be it VHS/DVD/BD or something better)
3) a person DL or rents and copies a movie for personal use, this is a lot like the pirating case, if the studio released a better quality movie it would either make his copy better or not, but the guy does not expect it to be better then the original.

So in the end $ lost is the same if the original is VHS quality, DVD quality, BD quality of lossles or uncompressed. So the studio does not lose anything more, the minute it is released (where released could be anything) the IP is lost to people who want and can take it and not to people who don't want or can't.

The funny thing is that it could actually be the opposite, what I mean is that if each movie was many hundreds of GB or even TB stealing it at that quality would be real hard with today’s tech.

On the other hand once you get to lossless or uncompressed video then you can't resell the same “movie” using compression as an excuse for better quality. On the other hand increasing resolution (new format) or changing content (extended edition, directors cut, unrated....) would still apply

[zor]

Originally Posted by CptGreedle

Now that Pioneer has confirmed it is possible to make 500GB Blu-ray discs, and fully expect to get these things out within 5 years, several people have suggested uses for the extra 450GB.
Some people mentioned that all movies will be able to support uncompressed video. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but unless my math is wrong, 1 uncompressed frame is 5.93MB.



So for a 24 fps movie that lasts 2 hours, that would make the movie about 1,024GB. If it was in 29.97 fps, it would be about 1.3TB. Obviously uncompressed won't work. Even a 90 minute 24 fps movie would be 700GB, still too large for a single 500GB disc.

There are other technologies that might be able to take up the slack here and obtain uncompressed video however. For instance the next medium people are talking about might be holographic discs, which are capable of storing tens of terabytes of data. So perhaps holographic discs can hold uncompressed images, if it ever comes to out. The HVD format holds 3.9TB, but is still in development. Obviously, 500GB can not compete to that, but is it really worth it?

Sure an uncompressed image is the best image, but does the compressed image suffer that much from artifacts and errors, so much so that only uncompressed images are acceptable? Aren't compressed images enough? What are the limits to human sight and how would that limit the size and compression of an image?
Perhaps there is no answer, but just as with lossless compressed audio formats, perhaps there will have to be a lossless compressed video format that can shrink a lossless image to less than half its current size.
Are there any lossless video compression codecs?

Something tells me that most video will be compressed for a long time still.

there are lossless image compression of course but none for video that I know of that any player could effectively play.

The computation involved in decompressing it (a lossless compression) is probably too much for today's processors

[Blu-ray Fanatic]

No wonder many of you can afford to buy all this technology stuff; so damn technically smart! (knock on wood). Any of you related to Bill Gates?