Archived: Insiders Thread

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

Any insider gained any ground in getting Lionsgate, Fox and Disney reps to participate here?

fuad

faud, I tried.........no takers.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

I believe latest figures are about 5x for AVC, realtime for MPEG2 and 3x for VC-1 using MS's PEP.

I could be wrong though.

Thomson’s H.264 Encoder (AVC), once affectionately known around Technicolor as “the Tiger” can complete its first pass on a typical 2 hr. feature in six hours (the version that is, that I saw awhile ago).

Paid, can speak about Sony's AVC encoder, once he takes his feet off his desk.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

I hang out (work really!) around EC1, but Piccadilly Circus isn't exactly far . I live in N21, so again a 30min train journey into Piccadilly is all it takes .

I think you will find that Loserpool are top of the table, God forbid Arsenal ever do that!

Apparently God’s been napping for the past week or so.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

faud, I tried.........no takers.

Thanks Penton. Maybe you can try again in January. Hope you'll get better quick.

Insiders: How significant is the press release of the Home Theater Specialist of America's official and exclusive support of BD? That came out of the blue (ahem) and surprised everybody.


fuad

[WriteSimply]

To the geek in the pink: Any reason why The Legend Of Zorro gets a release date first than The Mask Of Zorro? Why not release them both? (puts a tenner in the coffer)


fuad

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

Thanks Penton. Maybe you can try again in January. Hope you'll get better quick.

Insiders: How significant is the press release of the Home Theater Specialist of America's official and exclusive support of BD? That came out of the blue (ahem) and surprised everybody.

fuad

I think it is another feather in the cap of Blu-ray when it can pick up a solid endorsement from a respected professional AudioVisual organization.

I think it is significant in the fact that, as fellow Techies, they apparently don’t hold much credence in Alan Bell’s biased prognostications whether he is speaking as a chief Techie for WB………………..

(scrowl down for an old picture of Alan while he was employed at WB, working on standards and such……………
http://digitalhollywood.com/%231DHFa...Tuesday13.html)

or as a chief Techie for Paramount in the wake of the Toshiba pay-off

or most recently as an expert on the retail sector ………..
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/11139.cfm

Plus, I don’t think they care too much about his patents…………
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,214849,00.html

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

Maybe we need a Dracula: Coppola Digital Color Grading Discussion thread.

I got two questions specific to paidgeek: This is the director-approved digital color graded transfer, right? How hard would it be to create a font set for BD for all subtitle languages that looks like the original theatrical fonts? (puts in $20)



fuad

Yes, this is the approved transfer. It is possible to use whatever font that's out there, but customers tend to prefer fonts in the style and size they are most familiar with.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by H9k_

So this is where the party is

Any chanse we get to see The bridge on the river Kwai this year?
How about any other classics?

Look for several classics early next year.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Uxi

Are they timid in making enemies (either in the industry and/or with consumers), generally indecisive, or is there internal/corporate conflict over which path to take that's making them toe that line?

I can well understand the motives of Toshiba, Universal, and even Paramount.... Or is it perhaps the cost of production that's making a separate master prohibitive, as has been implied before? Is the cost of mastering for Blu-ray / HDDVD significant? My general understanding has been that the costs was that it was something being done for DVD anyway...

I don't think it is a cost issue. Probably more politically motivated.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Slapper

Agreed. But, if they say they are trying to keep parity between the formats then why are they giving us (Blu-ray) lossless audio?

Now, about the encodes... Paidgeek, is this doable: If WB were to make a high bitrate VC-1 encode specifically for Blu-ray, couldn't they pull a lower bandwidth encode from the BD encode specifically for HD-DVD without having to go back to the master? It would seem that if this was possible then the expense would be minimal.



I'm not completely up-to-speed on the whole process of the actual encoding and if my idea is way off base could someone point me in the right direction.

Again, I don't think cost is the driving issue here. Until very recently, they did not use lossless audio on Blu-ray. It's a big step in the right direction that they started doing this on a case by case basis. To get a new encoded file for HD-DVD, they would have to use the same file capture over again and let the encode machines grind out the new version.

[Rob Zuber]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Look for several classics early next year.

Oooh. Anything that was made before 1950?

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by MatrixS2000

Interesting paid.

I also find it interesting that WB has decided to leave BR out when HD DVD releases have the "advantage". For example, The Matrix. I know this is not your question to answer, but why would they not follow the same policy and release the Matrix at parity (ie forget the IME and PiP) on both formats?

Considering that approx 2/3 of their sales are BR, they are artificially holding HD DVD numbers up.

Since BD has not supported PiP to date, WB has held back titles like the Matrix triology from Blu-ray. "300" was the first exception to this rule as far as I know.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Neftoon

Hello I have a question for paidgeek, Legends of the Fallhas just been announced for release in Australia in November on Blu-ray, I was wondering if you had seen the master or the encode for this? And if you have any comments on the quality?

I have seen the master and it is okay. I like the movie and I like it better in HD. It is not reference quality, but few titles are...

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by qwer1304

Hi,

I was wondering whether any of the insiders has information on what the royalties for BD/HD actually are?

And what are they for media (disks) and players?

Thx,
D

I don't know, and to the best of my knowledge, they have not been finalized. It took several years to deal with this for DVD.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by mainman

I have a question about xv.color (aka deep color). I opened a thread about this in the general discussion forum, but I wanted to ask a professional.

I read on a different forum, a guy saying, that Blu-ray and HD-DVD will never use 'deep color' because it isnt in the spec. This cant be true right?

It was my understanding, that in the near future, Blu-ray movies (and games) would make use of deep color.

I guess my question is:
Will we ever see this feature on Blu-ray? Meaning, will movies ever use deep color? How about videogames?

Thanks

There are no provisions in HD-DVD or Blu-ray for 10bit video encodes. Players may use 10bit processing from 8bit decoded signals and gaming consoles can certainly generate 10bit graphics. I won't say that 10bit will not ever make its way into Blu-ray, but I don't know how or when...

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Aygie

Paid, could you kindly explain why the US and UK versions of Underworld are different, (Uk Mpeg 2, US mpeg 4)? The UK version is quite poor where as the US version is stunning. Whats the score?

I checked with the authoring center and these are supposed to be the same MPEG2 encode.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Azumi

Paid, I have a few questions as well on Underworld localizations...



M6 is releasing in December in France the two Underworld as a double feature (both films on one BD-50). The first one is the director's cut and is apparently encoded in AVC. I have no idea for the codec used for the second one.

Did France use your video encodes, or they did them on their own?

Is it possible to have two main features with two different codecs on the same disc, or the licensing agreements for the codecs and other technical issues would discourage such an option?

Which leads me to the final question: when you do video encodes in the US for pictures for which you do not have worldwide rights (for instance the Resident Evil movies), do you contact local distributors and pitch your encode for a reasonable fee -- assuming the allocation is correct and there are no censorship issues?

Can it also happen the other way around? I don't have to remind you that the Blu-ray of Starship Troopers is already available here (through BVHE), do I?

Can you please share the press announcement with me regarding the M6 release?

It is possible to use different codecs on the same disc.

We don't usually get asked to provide an encoded for a licensee that has rights to a title in question in another territory. It has happened maybe once or twice that I can recall..

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by TheLion

Dear paidgeek,

I just received "Surf's Up" and found it to be the first title to feature an icon for PS3 users to see on their menu.

This is a very nice little touch and highly appreciated.

btw outstanding PQ and SQ with Surf's Up - Kudos to SPE once again...

Thanks for the comments, I'll pass them along..

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by ottscay

Paid: I just watched my copy of A Few Good Men; I'd forgotten how great the movie is, and it looked fantastic. Thanks for all the hard work!

I'm glad you liked it. I'll pass on your appreciation to the people that actually should get the credit for it.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Papi4baby

Hi Paid, like another member asked, any news on PS3 supporting other codecs with newer firmware, like xvid divx? Thanks.

No news at this time...