Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[DaViD Boulet]

Even if the difference is incredibly slight, the aim should be the best the medium can afford. This is Blu-ray, not DVD.

Thank-you Doctorossi.

PeterTHX:
It's not quite that simple (for one thing, analog tape has loss because it's analog).

It is that simple. Lossless always has loss because it discards data.
And since it can never be proven or known at what point that discarded data becomes inaudible to all listeners with all content, the solution for transparency is lossless.

PeterTHX:
However, I disagree that we may be missing anything. AC-3 compression works in bands, and there isn't multiple tracks and bands on these old recordings...usually the frequency response is quite limited too. So out of the available data pool there's enough data.

Yes, Dolby compression affects different types of signals differently based on content, waveform complexity, bit-sharing between channels, frequency response etc. But who's the judge of when "transparency" is acheived with the lossy compression given the variability between recordings and even within the same recording? The five people from down the hall at the mastering faciltiy who said they couldn't hear a difference in the 10 seconds they stopped in to listen? The mastering engineer who just leaves the Dolby encoder set to the default bit rate and setting because he doesn't think that "old recordings" benefit from lossless because he doesn't understand that lossless means it's not adding further degredation, but instead mistakenly things that "lossless" is something special that is reserved for really good sounding recordings that "deserve" it?

Lossless presentation solves the problem by guaranteeing transparency with all content to all listeners.

Again, I would prefer lossless, but lossy audio on a title like this isn't some kind of travesty or crime against humanity.

Is DNR a crime against humanity? Is edge enhancement a travesty?

We're not talking about life and death moral issues. We're talking about the art of film and presenting it transparently on blu-ray Disc... both picture and sound. If we can care about picture quality and take the studios to task for sub-par mastering, we ought to be able to do the same for audio.

[Braktastic]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Bottom line: who is talking to Paramount? Can we get them to answer for this issue? Can we get a commitment for lossy on all future releases?

I think we already have their commitment on that score.

[DaViD Boulet]

Originally Posted by Paul Arnette

I think we already have their commitment on that score.

A sadly ironic typo on my part.

[SpaceDog]

Agreed. You have to push content providers to create the best product every time or they will slack off.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by SpaceDog

Agreed. You have to push content providers to create the best product every time or they will slack off.

To me, it's pretty sad with a title like this, that the idea of a lossy track would even cross their minds.

[Jeff Kleist]

I've sent something to someone on the lossy audio issue that should be able to inject it into the right place. That being said, I can't guarantee I can give a public response on it, but rest assured it will reach proper ears

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I've sent something to someone on the lossy audio issue that should be able to inject it into the right place. That being said, I can't guarantee I can give a public response on it, but rest assured it will reach proper ears

Thanks, Jeff! Keep the pressure on. So sad that this isn't a "no-brainer" to the folks in the booth.

[DaViD Boulet]

Thanks Jeff. Hopefully Paramount's future releases will bear the fruit.

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Thanks, Jeff! Keep the pressure on. So sad that this isn't a "no-brainer" to the folks in the booth.

Agreed.


My bet is that the audio engineer thought "lossless is only something that applies to 5.1 tracks, not stereo"

I'm no longer shocked by the lack of understanding of many industry folks as to the principles of hi-fidelity and how their equipment and mastering choices may work for or against that goal.

The classic example was my conversation with a DVD mastering engineer who worked for FOX about 5 years ago, and when I criticized a particular DVD that had been DNRed and filtered to death, he explained: "well, the 35mm print we got looked pretty good projected on the screen, but when it came time to master for DVD we really had to clean it up by getting rid of the grain and noise".

In other words, this guy was telling me that blown up on a 50 foot screen the print looked great, but that when it came time to watch it on a 32" television the the grain and noise in the print was just too overpowering an artifact for a 32" television that would be watched from about 3 screen widths away.

Some guys know what they're doing and some don't. When you see something as obvious as the omission of a lossless track for a classic film title, chances are that the guy making the decision was in the "don't know" camp.

[Doctorossi]

Hey, Mass Effexperts!

I'm just finishing up Mass Effect, going through all the samey side-quests, and honestly... it's been a bit of a slog. KotOR remains one of my all-time fave games, so I had great hopes for ME, but it's just so flavorless, by comparison.

Earlier, I'd been excited by all the reports that ME2 solves all of ME's problems and then some. At this point, though... I'm so irritated and disenfranchised by ME that I feel like ME2 has got to be ABSOLUTE GOD ON A PLATE for me to ever get it up again. I'm beginning to wonder if the whole ME thing is just not for me, despite all the great expectations KotOR had given me.

Can anyone weigh in for me on just how much better ME2 is? Do you think it'll satisfy me and make me forget ME or is it, at the end of the day, more of the same that I'd better love ME to be able to enjoy?

Thanks in advance!

[Jeff Kleist]

ME2 fixes nearly all of the issues with ME1. My only complaint is that they stripped too much of the weapons/armor management stuff out. ME2 is tight. The side quests definately have meat (aside from the N7 missions, which are secret hidden stuff mostly for item/material gathering), and the overall story is epic.

I played 36 hours in one week. Put in 8-10 hours work a day and another 4-6 on ME2 all week. ME1 took me over a month. ME1 is the tech demo. ME2 is the meat

[Doctorossi]

Thanks, Jeff! That's just the kind of info I'm looking for. Would you say that ME2 features significantly more mission/environment/storyline diversity? For me, that's one of the biggest and most important differences between KotOR and ME.

[Jeff Kleist]

Thanks, Jeff! That's just the kind of info I'm looking for. Would you say that ME2 features significantly more mission/environment/storyline diversity? For me, that's one of the biggest and most important differences between KotOR and ME.

Yes and no. It's still 90% "Go here, kill everything that moves", but the journey is definately more creative how's that The environments are drastically improved in diversity, size etc. ME 1 is Star Wars, ME2 is Episode 3 in terms of environmental complexity and richness (not writing/acting/story etc)

[kefrank]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

The classic example was my conversation with a DVD mastering engineer who worked for FOX about 5 years ago, and when I criticized a particular DVD that had been DNRed and filtered to death, he explained: "well, the 35mm print we got looked pretty good projected on the screen, but when it came time to master for DVD we really had to clean it up by getting rid of the grain and noise".

In other words, this guy was telling me that blown up on a 50 foot screen the print looked great, but that when it came time to watch it on a 32" television the the grain and noise in the print was just too overpowering an artifact for a 32" television that would be watched from about 3 screen widths away.

Maybe I'm just not interpreting your paraphrase right, but the engineer may have had a point. It's not really about watching it on a 32" television vs. a big screen...it's about the technical limitations of compressing the images for DVD. Trying to compress lots of high frequency detail (grain) with DVD and MPEG2's severe limitations ends up causing a ton of compression artifacts (noise). The way engineers solve this is DNRing away the high frequency detail.

Thankfully, Blu-ray's superior compression algorithms and higher bandwidth make this much less of a factor for BD mastering engineers.

[Jeff Kleist]

Maybe I'm just not interpreting your paraphrase right, but the engineer may have had a point. It's not really about watching it on a 32" television vs. a big screen...it's about the technical limitations of compressing the images for DVD. Trying to compress lots of high frequency detail (grain) with DVD and MPEG2's severe limitations ends up causing a ton of compression artifacts (noise). The way engineers solve this is DNRing away the high frequency detail.

Thankfully, Blu-ray's superior compression algorithms and higher bandwidth make this much less of a factor for BD mastering engineers.

Bingo, like I said before, "The Look and Sound of Good Enough" was definately in play even on DVD. If DVD had been 6GB layers and a bandwidth cap of 15mbps, it would be an outstanding SD medium

[DaViD Boulet]

Originally Posted by kefrank

Maybe I'm just not interpreting your paraphrase right, but the engineer may have had a point. It's not really about watching it on a 32" television vs. a big screen...it's about the technical limitations of compressing the images for DVD. Trying to compress lots of high frequency detail (grain) with DVD and MPEG2's severe limitations ends up causing a ton of compression artifacts (noise). The way engineers solve this is DNRing away the high frequency detail.

Thankfully, Blu-ray's superior compression algorithms and higher bandwidth make this much less of a factor for BD mastering engineers.

I hear what you're saying, but that's not what he was saying.

What this guy literally said was that "oh it looked great on the big screen when we projected the print, but when we did the digital transfer for the DVD, we saw all sorts of problems in the image that became obvious". He and I basically debated the philosophy of his position for about 5 minutes or so until I gave up since he was brain-locked into a world where DVD pictures have to look "clean" like video to be good.

He wasn't discussing reducing entropy to aid in compression... this guy had that typical of the day backwards DVD mastering logic that what looks good as "film" looks bad on a TV... so it needs to be "fixed".

The lesson from that example is that quite often the guys behind the wheel of the movie discs we want understand less about the philosophy of fidelity-to-the-source than you and I, because that's not how they are trained. Some film lovers go into technical fields, but very often it's the gadget-guy who's interested in dials that go to eleven more so than in replicating a picture and soundtrack that are transparent to the source.

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by kefrank

Maybe I'm just not interpreting your paraphrase right, but the engineer may have had a point. It's not really about watching it on a 32" television vs. a big screen...it's about the technical limitations of compressing the images for DVD. Trying to compress lots of high frequency detail (grain) with DVD and MPEG2's severe limitations ends up causing a ton of compression artifacts (noise). The way engineers solve this is DNRing away the high frequency detail.

Thankfully, Blu-ray's superior compression algorithms and higher bandwidth make this much less of a factor for BD mastering engineers.

I don't get it. How do we explain the many DVDs that have very sharp, detailed images and a lot of film grain which is also sharp?

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

The lesson from that example is that quite often the guys behind the wheel of the movie discs we want understand less about the philosophy of fidelity-to-the-source than you and I, because that's not how they are trained. Some film lovers go into technical fields, but very often it's the gadget-guy who's interested in dials that go to eleven more so than in replicating a picture and soundtrack that are transparent to the source.

• I've encountered so many video guys who don't know much about film.
• It happens in audio, too. I found one individual who had never heard tape hiss, apparently.
• From the comments on the forum, it sounds like they ruined ("overcorrected") El Cid and Patton .... I can't bring myself to look at them to see if I agree ... they were both so big and beautifu in 70mm, with only a little grain visable when sitting close.

[Jeff Kleist]

I don't get it. How do we explain the many DVDs that have very sharp, detailed images and a lot of film grain which is also sharp?

Maybe if you cite some examples

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Maybe if you cite some examples

LOL!!!

~Alan

[DaViD Boulet]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Maybe if you cite some examples

Jeff, are you serious?

There are many unfiltered DVDs that bear proof that you don't need to over-filter out all grain and HF detail even at the SD level to do MPEG2 compression.

The 5th Element DVD is a good example... considered one of the best and most film-like. Even the non-super-bit release looks great, and has natural film-grain.

In any case, I hope everyone reads my follow up post clearing up the confusion: this tech was not talking about filtering to aid in compression: he was talking about wanting to air-brush the film to make it look "clean" as he thought video should look.