Could 'The Animatrix' end up being another 'vertically filtered' disappointment?

[Darth Lavender]

Just occured to me; apparently Warner used to have a real problem with creating a sort of 1080i (with, for technical reasons I don't fully understand, a real resolution of 960x1080 (instead of HD's 1080x1920)) masters, which were used for some of their worst received early HDDVDs (Lethal Weapon 2, the earlier HDDVD version of A Perfect Storm, Willy Wonka, etc.)
Anyway, if this was just their standard practice at the time (a relic of creating masters for just PAL and NTSC dvds, with no thought to the possibility of High Definition) then isn't there a good chance that The Animatrix (being originally produced just for PAL and NTSC dvds) might only exist in that '1080i' state?

btw, I'm guessing from the specs that The Animatrix will get only a 640kbps DD+ soundtrack (the specs only mention TrueHD for 'all three films' and Gotham Knight only got 640kbps)


On a loosely related note; I recall reading somewhere a while ago that Warner's former policy of creating 1080i transfers is the reason 'Heat' has been delayed (they need to create a new master for 1080p)

[neo_reloaded]

Highly unlikely. There were only a few 'vertically filtered disappointments' in the early days of Blu-ray / HD DVD, and none in recent times. WB even made a new master for The Perfect Storm just because of this issue, making it the only HD DVD catch-up title that they performed more work on for its Blu-ray release. Surely the deliverables for the Animatrix segments are in a form other than 1080i, so there is definitely a way to create a proper master if they did not already have one. I wouldn't worry.

As for soundtrack, no idea.

[Mobe1969]

Mmm. Will be interesting to see what Heat is like.

[Clark Kent]

While I will criticize many of WB's standard BD practices, this is not one of them. They haven't done anything like the problem you describe in a very long time.

[Darth Lavender]

My point here, though, is that they may not have a choice.

In the other cases, to create superior masters, they've had to go back to the original film-stock and strike a new master.

But, for The Animatrix, there is no 'original film' Somebody, at some point, had to make a decision to render 'Flight of the Osiris' in, say, 1080i or 1080p or NTSC (obviously not the case, since there are PAL dvds) or 4k or whichever.
And this was right around the time that Warner's standard practice was to create masters in 1080i (you'll probably find that most of Warner's 1080i vertically filtered releases are identical to DVDs released within a few years (either side) of The Animatrix.

That sort of thing happens all the time with anime, with just about every anime released in the 90s and early 00s mastered directly to NTSC (which is why, aside from studio cheapness, pretty much every PAL release of anime is an NTSC>PAL conversion)
Then, there was a similar instance with 'Babylon 5' (the CGI scenes were only rendered and stored in 4:3 NTSC, so when it came time to release 16:9 DVDs, the cropped and enlarged CGI scenes (specifically the ones that also included live actors) looked absolutely terrible.

I'm actually not really 'concerned' (had this on order from Amazon.uk, but in the process of trying to add something more to my order,* I lost 'The Animatrix' and the price went up before I could re-order.) But, I am pretty curious. The actual state of the Animatrix is something I've been wondering about since getting the HDDVD.

*In case anyone's wondering how I 'accidentally cancelled' an item from Amazon... For some strange reason it's impossible items to a pre-order. It's necessary to cancel the whole pre-order and then reorder all those items (and the added items) at the same time.
Irony is, of course, when I saw the price change, I didn't end up ordering anything.

[neo_reloaded]

The original rendering of a CG work would never be interlaced. The deliverables, regardless of resolution, would at least be progressive. Given how recent a project this is, there is absolutely no reason to be worried about the quality of the original rendering. A home video master is completely different than the "master copy" of a digital feature.

[DarkClown]

Originally Posted by Darth Lavender ...

Then, there was a similar instance with 'Babylon 5' (the CGI scenes were only rendered and stored in 4:3 NTSC, so when it came time to release 16:9 DVDs, the cropped and enlarged CGI scenes (specifically the ones that also included live actors) looked absolutely terrible.

Yeah, the CGI stuff for Babylon 5 was all created on an Amiga 2500 using Lightwave 4 on the Video Toaster. While it was cool for it's day, the output was barely SD broadcast TV quality. The point being that the original source was not really good enough to to much with it, and to zoom it up to fill a widescreen only made it look worse. Which is a completely seperate issue from cropping off the heads of people and stuff to make the height of the zoomed video fit the screen. It was a horrible idea all around.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by Darth Lavender

But, for The Animatrix, there is no 'original film' Somebody, at some point, had to make a decision to render 'Flight of the Osiris' in, say, 1080i or 1080p or NTSC (obviously not the case, since there are PAL dvds) or 4k or whichever.

"Flight" was released theatrically as a short preceding Dreamcatcher. Highly unlikely that less than 720p video was used. Even if the master used to make the film was 1080i, they would have to employ a video processor to get interlace into progressive.

The animation files for The Animatrix can be re-rendered to 1080p/4K if a 1080p master does not exist.


fuad

[Sith]

Warner should of worked at not making Matrix 2 and 3 suck...

[Bobby Henderson]

Considering the high price WB is wanting for The Ultimate Matrix Collection I think the studio should do more than simply port over the previous HD-DVD VC-1 encodes to Blu-ray. They'll catch some flak for doing it.

Additionally, studios like Paramount are raising the bar for "catch-up" releases on Blu-ray. It's obvious Paramount ditched the previous HD-DVD encode for Beowulf and put together and entirely new one for Blu-ray, judging by the high bit rates seen on the disc. Transformers is another movie getting a unique, high bit rate encode for Blu-ray.

The animation files for The Animatrix can be re-rendered to 1080p/4K if a 1080p master does not exist.

"1080p/4K?" I'm confused by how that is written.

1080p and 4K are two entirely different levels of image resolution. 1080p and 2K are more closely related.

[Darth Lavender]

Actually, Paramount has always used different encodes for Blu-Ray and HDDVD.
Some comparisons which said the 50gig AVC of M:I3 Blu-Ray and the 30gig VC1 of M:I3 HDDVD look absolutely identical, is one of the reasons I initially chose HDDVD despite the lower disk-space.

At this point, Warner's behaviour strikes me as being not so much contemptuous (VC1 of the first Matrix really is excellent) but utterly strange. There's a lot of uninformed people out there who will run to re-buy the Matrix if they re-encode, or even if they just increase the bitrate slightly (which is probably pretty cheap to do)

Lossless audio is an even more extreme case. Although some movies really won't benefit (however, I don't have much trust in Warner's ability to decide which movies) it seems to me that it would make a lot of customers a lot happier if movies like Casablanca got an uncompressed PCM soundtrack. Just another useless feature like "digital copy" and "Blu-ray Live" that they can brag about, and maybe sell a few more Blu-Rays...

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Darth Lavender

Some comparisons which said the 50gig AVC of M:I3 Blu-Ray and the 30gig VC1 of M:I3 HDDVD look absolutely identical, is one of the reasons I initially chose HDDVD despite the lower disk-space.

The VC-1 encode of MI:3 on a dual layer (30gb) HD DVD had an advantage over the MPEG2 encode of MI:3 on a BD25 (25gb)!

~Alan

[Darth Lavender]

Good point, making that a pretty lousy example.

But there were several cases of Paramount AVC 50gig Blu-Rays identical-looking to VC1 30gigs...
This was a while ago that I read this, so I'd have to go back and scan through a few reviews to find other examples.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

1080p and 4K are two entirely different levels of image resolution. 1080p and 2K are more closely related.

I know. If 1080p master does not exist, Warner can opt to re-render a 1080p master or opt for 4K master and downrez that to 1080p.


fuad