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

[iwanttobeabmoviestar]

hey Bill did you get my emails about the MGM Grand vegas with the pics ?

[Jeff Kleist]

Bill hardly ever stops in here, it's my dept. I'll ask him if he did though

[iwanttobeabmoviestar]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Bill hardly ever stops in here, it's my dept. I'll ask him if he did though

thanks your a gem

[MerrickG]

Jeff,

Its a damn shame in regards to what happened to Corey Haim. Unfortunately when you make the stupid decision to do drugs such things are not uncommon.
He was always my favorite of the two Coreys.

[Mythos]

Jeff, are you aware of any sign of the Red Riding Trilogy heading to Blu in the foreseeable future ?

LA Times Review.

[Jeff Kleist]

Sorry no on Red Riding.

Anyone who watched The Two Coreys pretty much saw he was toast. When Haim couldn't hold it together long enough to shoot a simple scene in Lost Boys 2 (which was better than what ended up being there, mostly because vamping him and getting a few lines was easier than shooting something dramatic) , it said to me his big comeback was pretty much toast, and with it any walls he had between him and relapse

[Mythos]

Thanks Jeff, I'll keep an eye out on international developments with Red Riding.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Sorry no on Red Riding.

Anyone who watched The Two Coreys pretty much saw he was toast. When Haim couldn't hold it together long enough to shoot a simple scene in Lost Boys 2 (which was better than what ended up being there, mostly because vamping him and getting a few lines was easier than shooting something dramatic) , it said to me his big comeback was pretty much toast, and with it any walls he had between him and relapse

Thats ashame. It really is. I didnt really know how he was cuz I typically stay away from reality TV BS. Hopefully it will help motivate Feldman to stay sober.

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

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.

Yeah, The 5th Element. Since I rent many more than I buy, I'd have to go back and rent again to double check ... but ... DVDs (not Blu-rays) that left the impression of allowing a fair amount of grain to show, but also had a sharp image (good resolution for their era and sometimes surprising acutance) were often black and white films, like the restored versions of Dreyer's Joan of Arc, Sunset Blvd, and even Mr. Smith goes to Washington. For color, The 5th Element, and, perhaps Luther

• Is there a technical reason (some) Black & White films are allowed to retain more clearly visible grain?
• Is there a test/demo disk, or something I can download, that shows what a movie looks like when it is transferred without grain reducing processing v.s. various degrees of DNR?

[Jeff Kleist]

Is there a technical reason (some) Black & White films are allowed to retain more clearly visible grain?

Usually because they have a lot more to start with, and there's only so far you can dial them down without doing damage

Is there a test/demo disk, or something I can download, that shows what a movie looks like when it is transferred without grain reducing processing v.s. various degrees of DNR?

Not really. There's some demo footage on the Star Trek TOS Blus that show the raw feed off the telecine but that's about it. Don't forget also that often (NOT ALWAYS) what people thought was grain was actually video noise and artifacting

[DaViD Boulet]

Is there a technical reason (some) Black & White films are allowed to retain more clearly visible grain?

Adding to what Jeff said, another reason that B&W movies can look sharper is that both DVD and BD use 4:2:2 YUV, which means that the BW luminance (Y) channel gets full resolution, but that the color information is actually 1/2 resolution. The video decoders use the Y information to try to guide the "upscaling" if you will of the color channels so that the final uncompressed signal is full resolution for all channels, but there are always losses and true 4:4:4 encoding looks sharper to anyone's eye. Since B&W material basically has no lower-res color to obscure the detail, you see the native full-res Y channel.

BTW, aside from better compression etc, one reason that down-resed HD signals looked better on 720 x 480 displays than native SD content is because you were getting full (SD) color resolution with the downresed HD signal, where as native SD signals like DVD were short-changing the color resolution and so they looked less sharp.

Sony had a 480p projector out way back when in the early days of DVD that was native 480p. Yet downresed HD still looked *significantly* sharper than even the best compressed/mastered DVD signal... even though the end result was still an SD image on the screen. Back in the age of standard-def 480p DLP projectors, consumers with those sets noticed the same thing. They were seeing the added sharpness of what SD can really look like when all 3 color channels: Y U and V all got the maximum resolution possible rather than downgraded color sharpness.

[MerrickG]

Jeff,

I know anything related to Sir Lucas pretty much is subject to change, but I did want to know if there is ANY possibility of Willow seeing a bluray release before too much longer?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by garyrc

[*]Is there a test/demo disk, or something I can download, that shows what a movie looks like when it is transferred without grain reducing processing v.s. various degrees of DNR?

For public illustrative purposes, I know of nothing available at the HDCAM SR (in 4:2:2 recording, the compression ratio is 2.7/1, in 4:4:4 recording, the compression ratio is 4.2/1) mastering level or the Blu-ray encoding level.

At the post production level, here you go -
Probably, the most “DNR’ed” movie of 2009…….
http://www.digitalfilmcentral.com/english/index.html

If you can’t access the above demo, then try this –
http://www.digitalfilmcentral.com/do...MagFeb2009.pdf

[Doctorossi]

Hey Jeff,
Please give Bill a tip-of-the-hat for me for the nice details on the Toy Story extras.

Gonna be a tough time deciding whether to keep my Toybox.

[Clark Kent]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

At the post production level, here you go -
Probably, the most “DNR’ed” movie of 2009…….
http://www.digitalfilmcentral.com/english/index.html

If you can’t access the above demo, then try this –
http://www.digitalfilmcentral.com/do...MagFeb2009.pdf

That is really interesting stuff. It makes me want to check out Alien Trespass on Blu-ray, and see the results.

[Jeff Kleist]

BTW if you love Tron as much as I do, you'll want your very own ENCOM employee badge free of charge

All you have to do is ID all the games here

http://www.arcadeaid.com

cheaters can get the answer key

http://shogungamer.com/news/arcade-a...lutions-poster

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Tron

What do think of the trailer, Jeff? I'm not a fan, myself (for any but nostalgic reasons), but I was right there with it- loving every moment- right up until the... AAARRRGG!!! ...very final moment/last *ahem* "line". Why'd they have to go and do that and leave a terrible taste in my mouth after an otherwise very fun ride?

[Jeff Kleist]

You mean the stinger?

I thought it was an orgasmic bit of fanwank. No wonder the mainstream audiences aren't reacting to it. If you don't know Tron then there's nothing there for you to latch onto. If you do know Tron, it looks like exactly what it should be. A modern SEQUEL, moving the clock forward, no re-imagination, just evolution with the full cooperation of the original creator.

And everyone loves lightcycles, I'm more of a fan of the enclosed look personally, but I'm willing to deal. I have a pretty good idea right now of the angle they're taking with the story I think from putting together the pieces there. Either way, it's a long wait for December

[Doctorossi]

Not the whole stinger... just the dialogue...

Cheesy as Tron was (in a fun way), I don't think it ever would've made such a generic move. I don't know- maybe it's just me, but everything up to that bit felt fresh and then that one monosyllabic utterance just capped it with 'brainless-Hollywood/seen it a billion times'.

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

For public illustrative purposes, I know of nothing available at the HDCAM SR (in 4:2:2 recording, the compression ratio is 2.7/1, in 4:4:4 recording, the compression ratio is 4.2/1) mastering level or the Blu-ray encoding level.

At the post production level, here you go -
Probably, the most “DNR’ed” movie of 2009…….
http://www.digitalfilmcentral.com/english/index.html

If you can’t access the above demo, then try this –
http://www.digitalfilmcentral.com/do...MagFeb2009.pdf

Thanks! I played it.

Call me crazy, but the smile wrinkle on the left side of her mouth (our right side) looked sharper before the grain redution and enhancement. Better than some I've seen, though.

I would like to see details in the pores, even on a beautiful woman like that. Since BDs aren't generally made from Super 16, but 35 mm, or digital, or even 65/70 mm, perhaps their process would allow more detail through than when they are starting with super 16.

Here are some dumb questions:

1) 3K is nice, but why don't transferrers and restorers master at 8K (Baraka, the new Lawrence restoration), so they will have a very HD master for when Blu-ray is obsolete?
2) How would you rank order for sharpness (resolution & acutance &____) the following media, as seen through HDTV sets or in the theater:

Live cable
Live sattelite
Live broadcast
Blu-ray (decently transferred)
might as well throw in:
Digital projection in a commercial theater
35 mm projection (recent, e.g. Super 35)
70 mm projection (fairly recent e.g. Baraka, or The New World, if it was everprojected in 70)