"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by CraigW

Bitrates going down is not always necessarily a good thing. Just like amping it to the max may not help starving it can be detrimental as well.

I for one was not as impressed with the quality of many DVDs over the mid 2000s and beyond timeframe. I think many studios were starving bitrates to save space for (mostly) useless fluff features that they felt they had to put on the discs to market them.

I agree the encoders will get better, but I don't want to see a repeat of degrading the feature for special features that at most get viewed a once or twice.

I was not that impressed with Warner's new HP6 disc. Just like the original five discs it seems to suffer from the Warner softee syndrome. Come to find out they stuffed a 150m movie into a 27G file space (WARNER we don't need encodes optimized for HD DVD anymore). Just like with DVD, I think many companies are overfiltering titles to save encoding space. Maybe they are fearful of giving near pristine copies to begin with. I mean Warner's is already remarketing the first two HP films in Ultimate Editions and it sounds like they used higher bitrates to improve upon the video quality.

I quit buying HP on blu-ray when the Ultimate Editions started rolling. I'm just going to hold for an 8 film ultimate box set and be done with it.

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by CraigW

I was not that impressed with Warner's new HP6 disc. Just like the original five discs it seems to suffer from the Warner softee syndrome. Come to find out they stuffed a 153m movie into a 27G file space (WARNER we don't need encodes optimized for HD DVD anymore).

All the HP films have been encoded using VC-1. Jeff specifically mentioned AVC because of "speed and quality improvements, which are still in active development."

Besides there was that whole thing last summer with T2 about the difference between AVC and VC-1, and it was theorized that VC-1 due to some filtration resulted in an image which appeared to be slightly more processed.

[sharkshark]

...and lemme guess, they were using screenshots to determine one being better than another? Or is screenshot science only bad when it's not bolstering an AVC vs VC1 divide (which, pathetically, often mirrored the disc format divide).

There are no doubts advantages and disadvantages to both, and both no doubt depend on talented and eagle-eyed compressionists. The move to drop VC1 in favour of AVC will no doubt be the result of a number of factors, often factors well beyond the scope of the encoding of the films themselves.

So, as per my (older) post, I think that things like bitrate meters, or tier threads, or often even codec listings do little more than cause people to become cheerleaders for one "side" or another.

Anybody stand up at their theatre and complain that they used Fuji stock instead of Kodak? Each does things differently, with different characteristics. We, as end users, have next to no connection with the original masters, or the decisions undertaken to encode with one "tool" rather than another.

But, yeah, not going down this road again... I stand by my initial sentiment: I feel that only those licensed and level headed should have the privilege (not right) to have access to bandwidth numbers, bitrate meters, etc. The abuse of these out-of-context stats to draw conclusions about quality are simply rife, and while they generate traffic for given forums, they're at best a complete waste of time, at worst a way of politicizing and ghettoizing a hobby as innocuous as home theatre.

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

...and lemme guess, they were using screenshots to determine one being better than another? Or is screenshot science only bad when it's not bolstering an AVC vs VC1 divide (which, pathetically, often mirrored the disc format divide).

No, Stacey Spears(of Spears and Munsil) used a digital video(from his own source) which he then encoded in both formats himself, and compared the two. It was reported on by The Digital Bits and the video was made available through them. I believe this was around June or July of last year, if you want to go through Bill's archive.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

...and lemme guess, they were using screenshots to determine one being better than another? Or is screenshot science only bad when it's not bolstering an AVC vs VC1 divide (which, pathetically, often mirrored the disc format divide).

If you are referring to the "Terminator" comparison, you apparently missed a lot on this board and others.

Click here and go to the 06/11/2009 update.

Originally Posted by sharkshark

So, as per my (older) post, I think that things like bitrate meters, or tier threads, or often even codec listings do little more than cause people to become cheerleaders for one "side" or another.

So?

Originally Posted by sharkshark

But, yeah, not going down this road again... I stand by my initial sentiment: I feel that only those licensed and level headed should have the privilege (not right) to have access to bandwidth numbers, bitrate meters, etc. The abuse of these out-of-context stats to draw conclusions about quality are simply rife, and while they generate traffic for given forums, they're at best a complete waste of time, at worst a way of politicizing and ghettoizing a hobby as innocuous as home theatre.

If the people using bitrate meters to jump to conclusions didn't have access to bitrate meters, they'd simply focus all their intentions toward screen shots.

~Alan

[blindcat87]

Shark,

Absolutely descriptive tracks would be best, but AFAIK, while there are a growing number of DVS tracks to describe the video, the concept of sub reading hasn't become a reality in very many countries. If we could get some of those going, the only issue would become how to deal with the presentation of both DVS and sub reading. I think it would be very difficult to use both at the same time. My personal solution would be to do without DVS the first viewing and then to go back and watch the film with the DVS after I have an idea of what the dialogue is. I have a very good memory for description of films, so once I've watched the film with DVS once, subsequent viewings with just the sub reading track would do just fine. And yes, I love film enough to watch good foreign films at least twice to get a full experience. I think the real issue in getting something like this going is budget. As things stand now, studios do not find it cost effective to produce DVS tracks for all new films and to go back and record them for a lot of catalog titles, so I don't think adding a new layer to the process is extremely likely.

I can come up with tons of ideas for things to increase accessibility of all kinds of media and technology if only funding was there. It would be great to use the new trends in networking all HT gear to create an interface compatible with screen readers for controlling AVRs/preamps, players, and all sorts of gear via the PC, with touchscreen devices like the iPod Touch and iPhone becoming accessible, more remote apps for more players would be great and use of accessible touchscreen technology would also be nice in remotes and other devices. One of my dream accessibility projects has always been to form a non-profit that would be available to run free workshops for programmers, webpage designers, and product developers of major corporations in which they would follow the methods of training blind users of technology by using their own products/websites/applications under sleepshades using the most common screen readers. I think that approaches to accessibility would change drastically if those who design products and services spent a couple of hours a day for a few days to a week using their own gear with absolutely no sight. But running such a program without charging companies for the workshops would cost a bundle. All of these things would be great, but I am just not sure how many of them are feasible economically.

We blind movie fans appreciate every bit of accessibility the studios give us. I am still so glad to be getting an increased number of DVS tracks on Blu-ray, and unless and until sub reading tracks become feasible, I will continue to use dubs rather than do without completely. I absolutely agree that, if only one lossless track can be included, it should be the original language, but I don't think that it is likely that having both original and dub as lossless would be an issue with very many titles. I do think it is a travesty that, with the capabilities of BD, there are so many anime titles coming out with the dub lossless and the Japanese track lossy. There really is no reason both couldn't be lossless.

Chris

Originally Posted by sharkshark

...yeah, I found that the general level of English in the Scandinavian countries is miles (kilometers?) better than the general level in France/Italy/Germany (present company excluded, naturally). Hell, in Stockholm I saw Sesame Street with subtitles....

Preferring the dub on aesthetic ground seems anathema, while for the sake of those with compromised sight I'd think a descriptive track would do a better job, no? Once again, I don't begrudge the choice, it's a minor compromise to the grand scheme of the disc, and it's best to give us more rather than less. As one guy that actually watches all the "extra" stuff on my discs, I'm not going to go and piss on somebody who likes to hear and not read their movies.

Still, even those in favour of dubs must admit from the start that the priority would be for the original soundtrack to be presented in the best way possible, and that all other languages should be subservient to the master track.

Wait, that sounds fascist. Ah, well, you know what I mean...

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by kpkelley

No, Stacey Spears(of Spears and Munsil) used a digital video(from his own source) which he then encoded in both formats himself, and compared the two. It was reported on by The Digital Bits and the video was made available through them. I believe this was around June or July of last year, if you want to go through Bill's archive.

Oh, I remember that, and have full and complete confidence in Spears' technical abilities. Hell, I used his disc last night to calibrate my friend's plasma!

I guess my point isn't that there's a difference, but that it's not conclusive that for all sources, for all types of encodes, one tool is necessarily better than the other. Even Bill's article is rife (in a good way) with caveats. People would look at the differences of T2, =assume= that the differences were entirely driven by codec choice (often due to relative positions regarding their affiliations during the so-called format war), and move from there.

Yes, it's a broad brush, and I don't mean to overplay the alusion. I'm simply optimistic enough to think that both VC1 and AVC can create stunning Blu Rays, and that each tool has its own strenghts and weaknesses. If this is naive, so be it, but it's equally free of the dogmatism that has, you must admit, coloured much of codec (or bitrate, for that matter) discourse. I think AVC=Good/VC1=bad/MPEG2=awful metric ignores a heck of a lot going on.

Thanks for the link.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

I'm simply optimistic enough to think that both VC1 and AVC can create stunning Blu Rays, and that each tool has its own strenghts and weaknesses. If this is naive, so be it, but it's equally free of the dogmatism that has, you must admit, coloured much of codec (or bitrate, for that matter) discourse. I think AVC=Good/VC1=bad/MPEG2=awful metric ignores a heck of a lot going on.

On this we agree! I own some titles in all three codecs which I simply cannot imagine looking any better.

I'm simply pessimistic enough to think that if nobody knew what codec a title is encoded in, or high the bitrate is, some people would still find some reason to fault... as lack of facts have rarely gotten in the way of people wanting to complain about something.

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Thanks for the link.

~Alan

[42041]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Bitrates are also only going to go down as encoders get better, the same that happened with DVD, except that there PQ improved because they were able to get the bitrate down.

You're going to see VC-1 being phased out over the next year or two, I know one major house just dumped it.The speed and quality improvements in the AVC encoders, which are still in active development now have enough tangible benefits to make new purchases financially feasible (faster/better encodes=more projects in the same time=more $$)

Is WB likely to make the switch as well? Their compression work often seems a bit stuck in 2007, an upgrade would be most welcome...

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Vincent Pereira

I'm guessing the "bleach bypass look", which is very expensive to do photochemically and as such is usually reserved for select "show prints" while the bulk of the release prints are processed normally.

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Heh, beat me to it. I prefer "silver retention", it's got a more positive, almost "lucrative" spin to it...

But I always assumed, Vincent, that it was done on the neg stage. I'm sure the digital grading (contrast boost/desaturation of certain high frequency colours) would be a far more refined way of achieving the desired look, meaning the DI would be a better way to go regardless, but I'm not sure that the issue is release versus neg prints.
But, then again, I'm not a filmmaker like some people...

ps. I like how Spielberg uses it (Munich, SPR, MR, etc.), but I -love- how Fincher uses it in Se7en...

^
I’ll put on my Instructor’s cap……..”You're a lot like he was. Only better…..and worse.”
Anyway, it’s good to see you guys don’t mind my Socratic method of teaching.

The *look* of Minority Report (bold contrast with particularly rich blacks but subdued colors) is not really the same exact technique as “bleach bypass” but rather is a proprietary (Technicolor) silver retention process originally designed for Vittorio Storaro, ASC back in 1980 or ‘81? It is a very common over-simplification/error to refer to all the different types of silver retention processes as “bleach bypassing”. It is true that this particular proprietary process yields a final effect similar to “bleach bypass” but, the steps in getting there are different and most importantly, with the former, one can adjust the intensity of the effect (Saving Private Ryan is super ‘intense’, i.e. .70 value) by varying the concentration of the chemistry. With the “bleach bypass” technique, essentially you either bypass most or all of the bleaching function, so it's inherently less adjustable.

Anyway, this photochemical process is a color positive developing technique….which is applied to the positive release print stage. Clint Eastwood’s people found that when they used this on Mystic River, it was difficult to maintain the proper print consistency on all the release prints……not to mention, very expensive, when you’re making a couple thousand or more release prints for a global release with this *look*. Technicolor invented a digital emulation of this *look* which locked in the print consistency and thusly didn’t suffer from chromatic shifts like the photochemical process can. So, subsequently, Clint E. used the digital intermediate process rather than the photochemical on his later films in which he desired to achieve this same *look*, i.e. - Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Changeling and to a lesser extent Gran Torino, as I said above.

So, I believe it is a safe assumption to conclude that the consistency of the release prints for Minority Report around the world also varied quite a bit. The digital re-mastering for the Blu-ray edition should allow all hi-def home theater enthusiasts to see the movie (in terms of contrast and colors) exactly how Steven S. and Janusz Kaminski intend you to……..something that you couldn’t really be guaranteed of unless you saw specially selected answer prints in a private screening or perhaps at an Academy screening back in the day.

Cinephiles who like the *look* of these various silver retention processes always comment about the deep, rich blacks and the desaturated colors it produces, but something which is rarely mentioned and should be recognized is that the silver retention process used on Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan, etc. makes the colors (and stuff in the shadows) appear sharper and more detailed than they would be without it…..sort of like a photochemical edge enhancement, if you will. It is believed that silver physically in the film provides a tad of an edge effect around/along the textures of the image. Hmm, I wonder if this type of EE would be considered kosher by ‘screenshot scientific videophiles’ because it is au naturale (photochemical) rather than EE produced synthetically (digitally).

Anyway, this is one heck of a long post so I'm bleached out on this topic for awhile.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by woodspoon

Penton, can you tell us if Sony is planning on adding more dinamic themes for Ps3 users for other movies apart from Zombieland? http://playstation.joystiq.com/2010/...theme-for-ps3/
It seems like the guys at Sony read my mind...I thought about it two months ago...and here it is!

“So, you’re the one.”
The guy who is interviewing for Kevin’s job, that is ……..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGtv7I_-IGM

[Jeff Kleist]

I hope someoen warns them in advance, otherwise I"m sure they'll go crazy on it. After reading what you posted I tossed in the DVD, and I definately see the "natural" EE vs the sharpening that was added for the DVD. There's a much softer, more organic nature to it

There's also a nice homage to MR in Mass Effect 2, when your character is offered a....unique product (keeping spoilers down) by the advertising kiosk that scans his DNA

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

^
I’ll put on my Instructor’s cap……..”You're a lot like he was. Only better…..and worse.”
Anyway, it’s good to see you guys don’t mind my Socratic method of teaching.

So, Socrates taught Plato, Plato Aristotle, and Aristotle Alexander...

What the hell did Alex do with his life?

Thanks for the rundown - I guess I had assumed that they'd make some sort of inter-negative (neg>pos>neg) to scew with to ensure consistant colouration on answer prints, rather than needing to ensure consistancy in the "f'ing with" process of the retention/bypass through thousands of prints.

But, I guess, the quality loss from a 2nd gen negative is worse than managing to replicate a unique development process thousands of times.

Which leads to a funky thing - with DI, you can of course have as many negs as you want. I wonder if anyone is doing anything crazy, like doing some photochemical process on the laser-output neg before release prints, AFTER digital colour grading. I mean, it's unlikely that it's necessary, but somebody must be screwing with such things...

[Cinema Squid]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

But, yeah, not going down this road again... I stand by my initial sentiment: I feel that only those licensed and level headed should have the privilege (not right) to have access to bandwidth numbers, bitrate meters, etc. The abuse of these out-of-context stats to draw conclusions about quality are simply rife, and while they generate traffic for given forums, they're at best a complete waste of time, at worst a way of politicizing and ghettoizing a hobby as innocuous as home theatre.

Obviously I completely disagree that they're "at best a waste of time" as the current maintainer of codec stats thread on AVS.

The main point in my mind is to help identify points of difference between various international releases, since it's relatively easy and sometimes even more economical to import, and also to compare reissues as these continue to appear to see if changes have been potentially made to the main feature encoding.

For example, one can use detailed video/audio codec and bitrate info to see whether two given releases are byte-for-byte identical at the disc level, identical in main video and/or audio encodes but differing in their dub/sub language inventory, or providing somewhat different video/audio encodes. In the latter case, more detailed and subjective user experience reports are required for decision making, but in the first two cases pure numbers are incredibly useful and convenient. They also happen to be a heck of a lot more reliable than anyone's eyes and ears in stating with some certainty that two streams are *absolutely* identical.

It's your prerogative to dislike the sometimes misguided extrapolations made from raw and context-free information, but it seems fairly wrong-headed and short-sighted to me to oppose the information itself.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Eternal_Sunshine

But there are a few markets that are big enough to justify the cost for very professional, sophisticated dubbing. I'm from Germany and over here all movies in cinemas or on TV are dubbed. While I also watch lots of Blu-rays in the original language, I must say that german dubbing is mostly fantastic. Very in sync and with very appropriate voices for most actors. There are some actors where I actually prefer their german voices! Robert De Niro's german voice is just amazing

same here with dubbing in French. It is an art that many don't understand because they never seen it done by people that know what they are doing. Now I tend to watch most films in English, but slapstick is one movie I refuse to watch in English. The writing and the performance of the Dub was done so well that it is a much better film with it.

I also find the anti dub attitude funny because in many films there are parts that are re-dub afterwards because of audio issues or changes (i.e. scene added/deleted and original presentation does not make sense with the edit) should those instances be lossy or subs because it was not the original thing that was said and might not be perfect?

[Jeff Kleist]

I also find the anti dub attitude funny because in many films there are parts that are re-dub afterwards because of audio issues or changes (i.e. scene added/deleted and original presentation does not make sense with the edit) should those instances be lossy or subs because it was not the original thing that was said and might not be perfect?

ADR is not dubbing, and is done, except on incredibly rare occasion by the original performers under direction from the original creative staff

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

However, as excellent as they can be and as much as they can contribute, they will just never be the original actors' performances- even when they're re-performed by the very same actors.

agree, but it misses the point. There are two reasons to watch a dub, right

1) (most often) you don't understand the original language, so the performance is lost anyways, you might understand someone is whiny or here the joy in their voice but you won't know why. So in the end you don't lose much with the dub (plus if the dub actors are good they will do their own interpretation of it so it is not as lost as you might think.

2) (rarely) the people doing the dub are doing a better job

I think the problem happens because many markets and especially the US dubbing does not exist in a real way. Most movies are Hollywood and English and the few international movies that do make it to market are low budget and don’t have the $ to be spent for dubbing. In markets where dubbing is a common occurrence (like here and from what Eternal_Sunshine) said dubbing is perfected. Every Hollywood movie (more or less) is dubbed here, many shows like House, Lost…..) are dubbed. So people working in the dubbing industry have all the state of the art equipment, the actors do just that, they are trained for the job and picked because the voice is right for the character. If you ever watch Jesus de Montreal (it is a movie about a bunch of actors that are hired to portray the way of the cross at St-Joseph’s but their view and portrayal is a bit too modern for the Church) there is a small clip where the actors are dubbing for a movie so you see a bit of how it works.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

ADR is not dubbing, and is done, except on incredibly rare occasion by the original performers under direction from the original creative staff

Right. It's part of the original movie, regardless of the particulars of the production/post-production techniques that put it there.

[Jeff Kleist]

1) (most often) you don't understand the original language, so the performance is lost anyways, you might understand someone is whiny or here the joy in their voice but you won't know why. So in the end you don't lose much with the dub (plus if the dub actors are good they will do their own interpretation of it so it is not as lost as you might think.

Of course you will. You have subtitles, which inform you of what they're saying, and context takes care of the rest.

The last thing anyone should be doing is their own interpretation of it. Their job is to replicate, as closely as possible the original performance in another language, not "make it their own"

If they were shooting a remake of the piece, then they'd have more latitude.

And the French Candian dubs are pretty terrible. Seriously, and yes I have plenty of French exposure to make that determination. All of the other dubs are done on "state of the art equipment" too, pretty much no matter where you go, but a 5 million dollar studio won't help poor acting/directing etc. They aren't trained for the job, like most people in that line of work they are willing to come in and say the lines as cheaply as possible so they use them. Casting sessions are whirlwind affairs where you're auditioning on tuesday and you're in the booth on Wednesday. While you certainly will have experienced voiceover artists, there are no dubs on this earth that are the artistic endeavor you describe. Disney are the only ones who habitually put a lot into their foreign casting for their animated features, and for those only.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

agree, but it misses the point.

Misses what point?

Originally Posted by Anthony P

(most often) you don't understand the original language, so the performance is lost anyways, you might understand someone is whiny or here the joy in their voice but you won't know why.

I very much disagree. I think there is a monumental amount of information expressed to an audience by an actor performing in a language that audience doesn't understand. Take it from a guy who often feels misheard around here, literal verbal meaning is a very small part of language and, especially, of human expression.

Originally Posted by Anthony P

(rarely) the people doing the dub are doing a better job

It's art, not competition. How can someone be "better" at entirely subjective expression? A dub actor may give a performance that you, as an audience member prefer to the original actor's performance, but the filmmakers chose to create and present that original actor's performance, not the dub actor's performance. Helen Mirren might be a better actor than Drew Barrymore, but she's not a better Drew Barrymore than Drew Barrymore.