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

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Yeah. Hard to imagine it's the wisest deal for the buyee.
Surely a villa-load of pesetas, though.

For me, the only silver lining is I don't think he's even had a chance to ride the thing. Should make things a little exciting/unpredictable, at least. Talk about hangin' it out there, career-wise...

Or the buyer. So much evidence that the beast cant be tamed. He has not even put a cheek on the saddle and they are paying him close to double Stoner....wow. And the first year will all be development. Big risk. It's going to suck if he can't ride it because we will lose the battles that we have been enjoying. Big mistake all around.

[Jeff Kleist]

The scientists are going nuts over gladiator, convinced the low-resolution super35, and the intentional processing are DNR, and because they saw a few pseudo halos under their magnifying glasses on some buildings in screenshots that there is great sin

*sigh*

No, I don't have them yet, yes I wish I did

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Anyone for bundling a barebones copy of it with this baby over the holiday or post holiday season?
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3284

Would that be a good or bad business decision?

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Definately SCE is on the game push, hardcore this year

District 9 is not going to have the long term play with that audience. It's not popcorn enough, and its rated R, which pretty much nixes it right there since junior is going to find it under the tree.

I personally think "District 9" would be a good pick for gamers, and Sony could do different bundles... one more appropriate for the younger crowd, and perhaps a "Uncharted 2" and "District 9" bundle for the older crowd.

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Frankly, I don't think it deserved an R, but you know how those people get

Glad to hear! I'm much more interested in getting it now....

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I see that our News Staff posted a spiel about The Reel Thing XXII on our News Page ….
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3297

For folks in L.A., it will be a great opportunity to listen and learn from some very fine experts in their respective fields as well as catch a few screenings.

"How To Marry A Millionaire" will be a day one pick-up for me!

~Alan<~~~~~~~~Lauren Bacall fan...

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The scientists are going nuts over gladiator, convinced the low-resolution super35, and the intentional processing are DNR, and because they saw a few pseudo halos under their magnifying glasses on some buildings in screenshots that there is great sin

*sigh*

No, I don't have them yet, yes I wish I did

DVDBeaver.com is impressed with the transfers of both "Braveheart" and "Gladiator", and they have the occasional tendency to be overly eager to scream "DNR" on some times.

~Alan

[Jeff Kleist]

I personally think "District 9" would be a good pick for gamers, and Sony could do different bundles... one more appropriate for the younger crowd, and perhaps a "Uncharted 2" and "District 9" bundle for the older crowd.

Well, you haven't seen the movie from your comments. It's too cerebral and deep (I don't mean that it's deep deep) to be a mainstream packin. The way it's shot and presented just isn't compatible

And there's no way they're giving away Uncharted 2 this christmas

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Well, you haven't seen the movie from your comments. It's too cerebral and deep (I don't mean that it's deep deep) to be a mainstream packin. The way it's shot and presented just isn't compatible

I haven't seen a movie in the theater since "Iron Man".

However, it appears you have more faith in people than I do. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to over the years about a "moral" or point made in a movie, and they never walked away from the film knowing about it. They only knew some stuff blew up, the CGI was impressive, etc...

Gamers who saw the movie probably liked that it had CGI aliens and spaceships. Gamers who didn't see the movie liked that the trailer had CGI aliens and spaceships in it.

Far be it for me to defend gamers, BUT there are a lot of gamers out there who are also into scifi and comics, and are, sadly, often more exposed to different points of view than a lot of the rest of society.

I can't speak for the way it's shot or presented though....

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

And there's no way they're giving away Uncharted 2 this christmas

I never said that they would... I said that they could do a bundle with it.

Put a barebones "District 9" in there (ala PM's comments) for free... and I think it will sell well. Of course, I guess they could put a copy of "Uncharted" in there free with the other two...

Also, I never necessarilly said BEFORE Christmas. Note that Penton-Man said "over the holiday or post holiday season".

~Alan

[Jeff Kleist]

I haven't seen a movie in the theater since "Iron Man".

However, it appears you have more faith in people than I do. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to over the years about a "moral" or point made in a movie, and they never walked away from the film knowing about it. They only knew some stuff blew up, the CGI was impressive, etc...

I highly encourage you to go see this one, not only because of it's quality, because you'll see what Im saying. Can't really discuss it further without you having context

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The scientists are going nuts over gladiator, convinced the low-resolution super35, and the intentional processing are DNR, and because they saw a few pseudo halos under their magnifying glasses on some buildings in screenshots that there is great sin

*sigh*

No, I don't have them yet, yes I wish I did

lol, we've seen this sort of behavior before, no?
Has anyone on that forum actually seen the Blu-ray movie in motion yet?
I mean, I would assume that all the *screenshot scientists* have purchased Stacey Spears’ test pattern Blu-ray disc to maximize the picture quality of their displays to the highest possible degree, right?

So, I would naturally assume that they put a great deal of credence into what Stacey says or else they wouldn’t have forked over their cash to purchase his excellent disc in the first place, right?

So, I shall quote Stacey (from another professional forum) in response to someone saying that “Blu-ray looks identical to the master” during a past discussion they were having –

Stacey:
“Sometimes it can be visually lossless, in real-time, but once you pause, all bets are off.
The trick to compression is you are supposed to watch it playing in real-time.”

I haven’t seen the Blu-ray of Gladiator, but really, in all fairness to my colleagues at Paramount, I think it would be prudent for people to first actually watch the Blu-ray movie before jumping yet again to possibly false conclusions based on *screenshot science*.

And if you don’t want to buy it, then for God sakes just rent it, that’s what places like Netflix are for.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Stacey:
“Sometimes it can be visually lossless, in real-time, but once you pause, all bets are off. The trick to compression is you are supposed to watch it playing in real-time.”

This quote intrigues me. We're getting into the realm of psychovisual perception here, but while I certainly understand the idea that video codecs are designed around the functions of temporal perception, I have a very hard time understanding how anything could be made to appear *lossless* in real-time and yet not appear so when paused.

In much the same way that claims of the impact of "subliminal messages" hidden in flash-frames have been demonstrated to be bunkum, I would think that any distortions or deviations from the master would either be perceptible or not. Unless a still frame is displaying something that is literally never displayed when the video is in motion (and how and why would it do that?), any artifacts are there to be seen, whether you're viewing them in one 24th of a second or in many 24ths of a second.

Right?

[Jeff Kleist]

This quote intrigues me. We're getting into the realm of psychovisual perception here, but while I certainly understand the idea that video codecs are designed around the functions of temporal perception, I have a very hard time understanding how anything could be made to appear *lossless* in real-time and yet not appear so when paused.

Hence "appear". It's a trick The rabbit appears to come out of a hat that was empty a second ago It has to do with how pixels blend together to simulate objects in motion. Stacey or 2themax might be able to give better explanations behind the science of how it actually works

This might help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_estimation

[Mr. Cinema]

The 2 previous Sony films that appeared in a PS3 bundle were Spider-man 3 and Talladega Nights. Those are 2 PG-13 films with a very broad audience. I don't think an R-rated sci-fi, low budget film is something I'd put in with a PS3. It probably needs to be something similar to the titles we've seen before. Unfortunately, I don't see any choices. Paul Blart fits the broad description, but that's already out. And I think we all can agree that film shouldn't be in there.

Year One fits the criteria, but that probably won't excite anyone.

[Monkey]

Oh man.. Are they already raping and cherry picking bad screen shots of Gladiator at AVSforum?

[syncguy]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

This quote intrigues me. We're getting into the realm of psychovisual perception here, but while I certainly understand the idea that video codecs are designed around the functions of temporal perception, I have a very hard time understanding how anything could be made to appear *lossless* in real-time and yet not appear so when paused.
...

This is the way that the human brain and eye works.

If there is an anomaly in one pixel (or a cluster of pixels) in one place in a frame and if that particular anomaly is not present in next few frames in the same place, the human brain smoothes it and significantly suppresses the affect of that anomaly when viewed in real time. However, if that frame is viewed in isolation, the brain picks up that anomaly very easily.

Edge enhancement is somewhat different to missing information in isolated frames. If edge enhancement is applied, that can be seen very easily in real time since it is repeated in the same place in subsequent frames. Perhaps single pixel edge enhancement is tolerable but when multiple pixels are used for edge enhancement (which is used to artificially counter DNR), it looks ugly on larger displays.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think it's interesting how video compression ratios on DVD, Blu-ray, HD broadcast, etc. can surpass 100:1 levels and still look pretty good.

But look at what happens with audio. With good playback equipment, and assuming the listener has decent hearing, data lossy compressed audio can start revealing flaws at ratios of only 3:1 or 4:1. The compression becomes more obvious at 10:1. Double it to 20:1 and the audio will sound like swirly, harsh garbage.

We perceive sound and vision in very different ways. Vision is anchored in the time domain. Our eyes show us only so many images per second and "persistence of vision" blurs in the gaps (and helps give compressionists a little more leeway in how they encode video). Our ears work more in the frequency domain. Other creatures hear sound better than we do, but our sense of hearing is quite powerful and developed. We just don't appreciate that sense quite as much as we do our eyesight.

[DenonCI]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

I think it's interesting how video compression ratios on DVD, Blu-ray, HD broadcast, etc. can surpass 100:1 levels and still look pretty good.

But look at what happens with audio. With good playback equipment, and assuming the listener has decent hearing, data lossy compressed audio can start revealing flaws at ratios of only 3:1 or 4:1. The compression becomes more obvious at 10:1. Double it to 20:1 and the audio will sound like swirly, harsh garbage.

We perceive sound and vision in very different ways. Vision is anchored in the time domain. Our eyes show us only so many images per second and "persistence of vision" blurs in the gaps (and helps give compressionists a little more leeway in how they encode video). Our ears work more in the frequency domain. Other creatures hear sound better than we do, but our sense of hearing is quite powerful and developed. We just don't appreciate that sense quite as much as we do our eyesight.

"Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them." - Obi Wan Kenobi

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by syncguy

This is the way that the human brain and eye works.

If there is an anomaly in one pixel (or a cluster of pixels) in one place in a frame and if that particular anomaly is not present in next few frames in the same place, the human brain smoothes it and significantly suppresses the affect of that anomaly when viewed in real time. However, if that frame is viewed in isolation, the brain picks up that anomaly very easily.

I agree it might make it smoother and less noticeable but people have said "compression artifacts won't be visible when viewed in motion", ie. at 23.976fps. I don't see how any anomalies will automatically be invisible when viewed in motion since we see are able to see at higher than 24fps. Eg. sports & live TV at 50-60 fps (fields/frames), TVs that interpolate to 100, 120, 200, 240Hz or more. So if a particular artefact is present in a screenshot, and we can see at 60fps or more, though I can see how it might be less visible in motion, how can we say that artefact won't be visible when viewed in motion at 23.976 or 24fps?.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by syncguy

This is the way that the human brain and eye works.

If there is an anomaly in one pixel (or a cluster of pixels) in one place in a frame and if that particular anomaly is not present in next few frames in the same place, the human brain smoothes it and significantly suppresses the affect of that anomaly when viewed in real time. However, if that frame is viewed in isolation, the brain picks up that anomaly very easily.

That sounds logical enough, but it runs fairly contrary to the information I've seen about these eye/brain processes.

Originally Posted by syncguy

Edge enhancement is somewhat different to missing information in isolated frames. If edge enhancement is applied, that can be seen very easily in real time since it is repeated in the same place in subsequent frames.

Perhaps this is part of the key. Maybe the 'subtraction' of information (especially low-contrast, "secondary" information like chromatic texture detail within an otherwise uniform color-field) is more subject to this psychovisual effect than is the 'addition' of information (such as a contrasty edge-enhancement halo). This would jibe well with factors like the relatively minimum perceptibility of certain kinds of chromatic-resolution reduction (as in 4:2:0 video).

Seems like a matter of degrees to me, though. I mean, if the only thing distinguishing a 'subtracted' element from and 'added' element is relative contrast with the surrounding pixels... of course the higher-contrast artifact is going to be the more perceptible one.

When you couch this in an escape-clause word like "appears", it makes a lot more sense to me. Otherwise, it's either lossless or it's not, right? We need to be careful with definitions here because I think most people are familiar with the term 'lossless' from the audio domain, in which the common usage means that the source is measurably indistinguishable from the uncompressed original, regardless of perceptibility of differences. I think, to most people, to call a video source 'lossless' would imply the same thing.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

....I don't see how any anomalies will automatically be invisible when viewed in motion...

4k2k,
If you freeze frame the HD master and freeze frame the Blu-ray movie, it is not difficult to pick out the master when viewed side-by-side, staring at the screenshots from a couple feet away.

When you run them side-by-side in real time and the compression is done well, it can be very difficult to choose which is the master and which is the Blu-ray with certainty, even with MPEG-2 video codec.

Example……..
http://www.avforums.com/forums/blu-r...on-eklund.html

Additionally, Rich Peterson was invited to the Sony Pictures Authoring Center in Culver City back in the days of the format war when he was reporting on the goings on.
This is an excerpt from one of his reports……….

Demo Equipment
The demos were done using two side-by-side 46” 1080P Sony LCDs, one fed by an HD-CAM SR, the other by a standard BD player. I sat no more than 3 feet away from the displays so I could carefully scrutinize the images. Mr Eklund stressed how important it was to turn off all the video processing in the displays to insure a direct mapping from the 1080P source to the display. He also mentioned the displays were carefully adjusted (contrast turned down, brightness turned down, etc) for the best possible picture clarity and he hoped those making quality assessments on AVS also have high-quality well-calibrated displays. He also had a 50” 1080P Pioneer Plasma set up, but I concentrated on the LCDs.


Demo 2
The second demo was the most impressive to me. Mr. Eklund took a fully digitally encoded non-compressed (i.e. full I-frame) digital Master recording of the opening outdoor scene of “Casino Royale” and played it on the first display. Then he put in the AVC-encoded “Casino Royale” BD on the 2nd display and manually synced them up to play together. He challenged me to look for differences created during the encoding.

I studied the two displays carefully from just a couple feet away as they both played. I could see absolutely no difference from the Master to the AVC encoded copy no matter how hard I tried. I kept shifting my view back and forth between the displays looking for some difference and never was able to see anything. This dramatically illustrated to me how perfectly the AVC encoded BD captured the full fidelity of the Master in this scene.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Monkey

Oh man.. Are they already raping and cherry picking bad screen shots of Gladiator at AVSforum?

No matter.
Paramount doesn’t read what they say…… and by now, reviewers all over the internet take what they say with a heavy grain of salt and think for themselves in terms of critiquing the picture quality of any Blu-ray movie.

Wait for the movie itself , then watch it in real-time, then decide.

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

No matter.
Paramount doesn’t read what they say…… and by now, reviewers all over the internet take what they say with a heavy grain of salt and think for themselves in terms of critiquing the picture quality of any Blu-ray movie.

Wait for the movie itself , then watch it in real-time, then decide.

Haha, I did venture over there to check out the thread. Sure enough the people who said Baraka look like crap are saying Gladiator looks like crap (which means it probably looks pretty dam good ).. Not surprised these are some of the same supporters who'd give the highest praise to heavily DNR'd HD DVD's. Good old reliable avsforum members.

I can only imagine Xylon's intro after he receives his copy "stay stay far away...while this may not be Patton it is close enough to avoid at all costs... just like Baraka the only thing worth praising is the soundtrack" followed by 100 HD DVD groupies parroting him.