Blu-ray crews on PIRATES 3 set capturing footage for BD. Disney Tech VP interview

[Tekman]

By ANTHONY C. FERRANTE, Editor in Chief


While most consumers are still newbies at this format wars, iF Magazine decided to gather more knowledge from Walt Disney Studios V.P. of Technology Benn Carr, who gave us a little insight into the company’s decision to favor Blu-ray as their format of choice and what it has to offer consumers over competing technology.

iF MAGAZINE: What do you feel makes these PIRATES discs stand out?

BENN CARR: The unique thing about these titles, these are the first titles we’ve done that have midi-java programming. We’ve done it on our discs before, but usually with Blu-ray discs, the navigation was not java, but this was from start to finish. Every feature, all the navigation, is midi-java programming which allows for extremely high interactivity.


iF: What made Disney decide to support Blu-ray over HD-DVD?

CARR: Disney has been involved in this effort for the past six years. We were very early on the scene with presenting our wish list of what the next generation high-definition package, medium and format would look like. It was made public and we went around the world presenting format developers, saying, "you build it, this is what we would like." We watched both formats advance and at some point, we knew we had to make a decision. We had invested a lot in the machinery of launching a format. Our decision was made on capacity, the programmability potential of Java which is offered in this format and the sheer number of companies behind it. If we’re going to sell content to consumers, it’s really good to have a lot of hardware.

iF: What other important factors made you sway in the Blu-ray direction?

CARR: One of the top items, was "more intuitive navigation. Let’s not pull the viewer out of the moviemaking process to select something or a scene and when they look at these titles and watch the movie." Menus come up as a very unintrusive bar at the bottom. So you can change languages, go online, play another feature, skip ahead. You can do that. It’s not modal. DVD is very modal.

iF: With newer titles, it seems like a natural to bring them out on Hi-Def, but as the format progresses, will it be harder to get that crystal clear clarity with older titles that are non big-budget action/fantasy films?

CARR: That is an age-old issue. Film is film and old film is old film. What you’re talking about is a high-definition video issue. It’s not a format issue. Your question is about the origin of the content. What we’re trying to do with every case possible is we have a massive archive of film and video and more and more, archives of digital files and wherever possible, we will go back to those digital files. The other step of the process is to go back to the original film masters which are very well preserved and experimenting with various new transfer processes. Right now, we have a library of content that exists in High-Def video and film and we’re using it, but while we’re doing it, we’re looking at new technology and going back as far back as possible as the originals and we’re learning a lot. We want to make sure what shows up on the Blu-ray screen, is the best we can do. If we have something produced in 1940, there is a limit to how much you’re going to get out of that, but if you saw some of the restoration we did on DVD, where we went back to the original SNOW WHITE film and did some restoration in the transfer -- it’s just remarkable and we’re going to be able to do the same kind of things with Blu-ray. Once you have the original holy grail master of whatever that content was, what you want to be able to do is encode it as efficiently as possible and end up with a video file on the disc that is the highest quality.

iF: Are more filmmakers planning special features specifically with Blu-ray in mind?

CARR: If you look at the Liar’s Dice game, you’ll see footage in there from the film that was shot specifically for the Blu-ray title. Guys like Jerry Bruckheimer are way into Blu-ray. PIRATES 3 for example, there were people from our Blu-ray production crews on the sets, capturing footage for the title. The answer is yes, directors and producers are considering these high definition releases during the making of the movie, more than they ever did.

iF: What do you think will be the deciding factor in Blu-ray or HD-DVD winning this format war?

CARR: What would cause one format to prevail over another is titles and hardware. And you go down into that, what’s going to drive titles? Studio participation. What’s going to drive studio participation? Many things, but the least not of which is the interactivity, the quality you can achieve, and the capacity is huge. Look at the fact that there is 75 gig in PIRATES’ two-disc package.

iF: And what do you think will convert people who are simply happy with the regular DVD format?

CARR: There are a lot of different people in the world. There are people who want to sit down and watch a movie and there are people who want to get more out of that tile whether it’s learning how a movie was shot, whether it’s playing a game like Liar’s Dice. There’s a myriad of reasons, but no technology survives or prospers by offering the same or less than an earlier generation of technology. We’re all looking for something newer, hipper and neater. Technology like Blu-ray offers that and like any new technology, it rides the cost curve. We’re already seeing cost of players and discs drop, and we’re seeing higher penetration of hardware. Studios are really throwing their best stuff at it. It’s going to a combination of what DVD was to VHS. You can’t even buy a pre-recorded VHS tape anymore because DVD’s are the standard.
http://www.ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=2114
Funny the editor wrote midi-java instead of BD-Java.