Archived: Insiders Thread

[Chad Varnadore]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Warner is presently committed to VC-1, but when they open up to using other codecs for their Blu-ray product, things will get better. Their film mastering capabilities are at the top of the industry.

On DVD I would have said the same thing. And they've produced some great looking titles for sure. 16 Blocks, The Searchers are a couple that really stand out. But on BD/HD many of their titles are coming up a little soft. Unforgiven and Lady in the Water were especially disappointing. Both showed considerably more detail theatrically, and we don't have a particularly good theater to judge by in this town. That said, their early MPEG2 titles didn't fair any better. Though they were limited to BD25s and contained all the extras from DVD. Disney has shown more promise using VC1 at high bitrates. But, I'm still partial to MPEG (2 or 4) at the same.

That said, I just worked on GI Jane, and Disney could stand to be a little more selective of their titles. It and Finding Neverland left a lot to be desired. Can you tell me, and this is meant as a legit question, I'm not trying to be the slightest bit sarcastic. But is it practical to expect that all films with older masters that may not live up to current standards be delayed until they can be re-mastered? Is that asking too much of the studios? Sony seems to have become much more selective of the films they're releasing on BD. I remember Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon go up on their press site, just to be pulled back down. After seeing the theatrical trailer on one of their recent discs, I can see why. If the master looks anything like the trailer, it would have been a HUGE disappointment.

Here's an article where Joe Kane basically states that 1080x1920 masters are inferior for a 1080p format, as not nearly that much resolution actually makes it through telecine.

http://www.avguide.com/the-perfect-vision/76/bluray.php

I don't frequently agree with Kane's views. But, what he says here seems to make sense. Just about all of the discs we've covered that seriously came up short, in detail especially, were from films that were released around 2002 or earlier to the DVD format - 2001 or earlier to theaters. And unlike The Searchers and a few others they don't appear to have been remastered since then. Do studios see this? Or is it just too much to justify the time and expense remastering every film that doesn't look comparable to newer ones or waiting until market adoption of BD is selling in large enough volumes to justify the expense?

I imagine it's more complicated than that. It always is. But, it seems to me that films of a certain vintage, and there's no clear indication of an exact cut off point, are the high def equivalent of non-anamorphic (4:3 letterboxed) DVD. If the final result isn't abundantly clear to be superior to DVD even on large 1080p front projection, it's hard to expect someone using a more conventionally sized display or even an FP owner that's restricted to 720p to be able to appreciate the difference.

Vertical Limit and Tailor of Panama are the only ones from Sony this year that left us wanting, but even they looked appreciably better resolved than GI Jane (Disney), The Grinch (Universal), Planet of the Apes (Fox), Lethal Weapon (Warner) and others, just very inconsistent. Warriors of Heaven and Earth, Identity, Layer Cake, Big Fish, all were exceptional for catalog titles - though the bar is a little lower for catalog right now. And Sony's day and date releases have been, like I said, above the previous bar set even for newer films.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Me and Rob and Shadowself and untold legion of the members here (and on another video site too) agree, know it will, and, as my partner in crime just said after she read that: "I really can't wait to see what BD's cooking up for the second half of the year... "

Absolutely!

[AeonFett]

? For The Insiders

Will any Tarantino movies be released on Blu-ray anytime soon?

I'm looking forward to Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2 along with Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown...

Anything happening there?

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by AeonFett

? For The Insiders

Will any Tarantino movies be released on Blu-ray anytime soon?

I'm looking forward to Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2 along with Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown...

Anything happening there?

Lionsgate has already released Reservoir Dogs.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Lionsgate has already released Reservoir Dogs.

And it looks pretty decent too!

[Damon Payne]

Kill Bill are distributed by Buena Vista and have prevoiusly been shown in blue cases, but they don't have release dates right now.

[blublublu]

Originally Posted by Damon Payne

Kill Bill are distributed by Buena Vista and have prevoiusly been shown in blue cases, but they don't have release dates right now.

Who will release Grindhouse?

Dimension (post October 1, 2005 films) is part of The Weinstein Company (HD DVD), but is Dimension distributed by MGM and hence will be on Blu Ray?

Edit: I read elsewhere that MGM's distribution applies to theatrical release only, so I guess this one will be HD DVD only.

[onyxx]

Paidgeek

With all the talk of the remake of The Fifth Element, is there any chance of seeing remakes of other early titles like Memento? I know that it is not as big in the sales department as The Fifth Element was and therefor not high priority, but is there a plan of remaking more than one of the messy ones?

Do you feel that other titles like Memento could have looked better?

[BTBuck1]

memento looked great on my set, i'd check your calibrations.

[degas]

Yes, I agree - Memento looked really good!

[onyxx]

Originally Posted by degas

Yes, I agree - Memento looked really good!

I was having higher hopes for it, people are complaining about video noise, compression artifacts, macroblocking and a sometimes very soft picture. I really don't think that it compares well to Sony's later transfers and of course it shouldn't because of the fact that it is low bitrate MPEG2 on BD25.

So for me it didn't look more than a 3 PQ wise and that is why I am asking paidgeek if he thinks that it can look any better and if we can expect newer versions of those early discs?

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

Can you tell me, and this is meant as a legit question, I'm not trying to be the slightest bit sarcastic. But is it practical to expect that all films with older masters that may not live up to current standards be delayed until they can be re-mastered? Is that asking too much of the studios? Sony seems to have become much more selective of the films they're releasing on BD. I remember Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon go up on their press site, just to be pulled back down. After seeing the theatrical trailer on one of their recent discs, I can see why. If the master looks anything like the trailer, it would have been a HUGE disappointment.

Here's an article where Joe Kane basically states that 1080x1920 masters are inferior for a 1080p format, as not nearly that much resolution actually makes it through telecine.

http://www.avguide.com/the-perfect-vision/76/bluray.php

I don't frequently agree with Kane's views. But, what he says here seems to make sense. Just about all of the discs we've covered that seriously came up short, in detail especially, were from films that were released around 2002 or earlier to the DVD format - 2001 or earlier to theaters. And unlike The Searchers and a few others they don't appear to have been remastered since then. Do studios see this? Or is it just too much to justify the time and expense remastering every film that doesn't look comparable to newer ones or waiting until market adoption of BD is selling in large enough volumes to justify the expense?

Chad,

You are asking some very good questions.

The short answer to your question is yes, in most cases, I think most studios will elect to retransfer films if they think the current HD asset can be substantially improved.

The reason that a less than ideal HD transfer might exist in the first place are more interesting.

I started working at Sony Pictures in 1995 when HD transfer work was already underway. A few other studios were also getting started with HD, and built up considerable libraries of HD titles.

Of course the best available tools were used for that day and there were only a couple of choices, flying spot scanners or the Sony CCD array telecine. More importantly, then and up until present, CRT based displays are the common reference display in use for telecine and color correction work. These displays are expensive and have stable color reproduction, but they are dismal in comparison to a current 2M pixel display where pure resolution is concerned. I won't try to give a long explanation here, but CRT direct view monitors and projectors are limited in the resolution they can reproduce by beam spot size and picture level. If you are interested in the details, I suggest researching papers on the MTF of CRT based systems. The result of all this is that we have been doing transfer work for years without being able to see everything that is being captured. Worse, Joe average consumer can now buy a 2M pixel display for a modest price and resolve more detail than can be seen on industry standard displays. This is starting to change. Sony Pictures requires its post facilities now have a 2M pixel display available for QC work and I suspect these displays are going to start popping up in the telecine suites with time. This is already leading to better results.

There are also picture quality differences that result from the way films are shot today. Not so long ago, it was industry standard practice to look at film out dailies in a screening room. This allows the film maker to judge if there are grain, focus or other technical problems that should be taken care of. Today, dailies may be viewed in a number of ways, but not necessarily with the resolution required to discriminate technical problems.

You also mentioned the article that Joe Kane contributed to. His assertions that we can magically get a better picture using a 2048 or 4096 DI and converting to to 1920 are wrong.

The DI process was not started in order to make better video masters. It was a response to the desire of film makers to have a toolbox of electronic methods to manipulate color, sharpness and a range of other parameters for film prints. Once a film out master is complete, it is used to source the HD video master with corrected color space. The DI always requires scaling to the final 1920 resolution and this leads to a loss, not gain, of picture sharpness. You can also appreciate this fact by looking at some older or lower budget titles that have not gone through a DI process. As the saying goes, less is more and in the case of a title like "Volver" you can appreciate this first hand. By using traditional methods of color timed IP and telecine, we can get an outstanding looking master that might otherwise have achieved a result with more specific color adjustments, but not a sharper image through a DI process.

I am confident that film makers and studios are going to make changes based on what is now readily apparent on a moderately priced full resolution display. Some of what is in our library looks very good already, some titles need new transfers, but at least we are coming to grips with the fact that consumer display technology is driving the quality bar higher than it has ever been.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by onyxx

Paidgeek

With all the talk of the remake of The Fifth Element, is there any chance of seeing remakes of other early titles like Memento? I know that it is not as big in the sales department as The Fifth Element was and therefor not high priority, but is there a plan of remaking more than one of the messy ones?

Do you feel that other titles like Memento could have looked better?

"Memento" is a fairly grainy title overall and if we were doing it today we would probably use our AVC encoder to help mitigate that. I don't think the potential improvement will justify a new BD title in the near future. A special edition with some interesting Java content might be worthwile, but not in the short term.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Not good news for SACD, but good news for those that appreciate great sounding audio.

Sad news indeed. This means that it'll take at least two years for BD-Audio to be ratified and the music labels would still be IFFY about it. And it is not like the labels are just going to hand over the music videos made for a particular album; they'll release that SEPERATELY!

Like I said in another post, a BD-A approach would only work if it is a hybrid CD/BD-A layer (so that you can just pop in the disc on any CD player and it'll work) and that you can turn off menu navigation and just press play if you put it in a BD-A player.

If BD-A comes true, I'd sorely miss the sound of SACD. Thanks for the reply, paidgeek!


fuad

[Razter]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I was involved in SACD before coming to work for Sony Pictures so I am very interested in it. Even so, things look bleak at the moment for SACD and DVD-A.

I think the music industry is looking forward to leveraging Blu-ray as a readily available format for a large base of consumers. The LPCM capabilities are very good and the tools to master audio in a compatible format are available.

Not good news for SACD, but good news for those that appreciate great sounding audio.

What is "profile 3"?
Is it possible we could see a audio only BD format in the future?

[Chad Varnadore]

The short answer to your question is yes, in most cases, I think most studios will elect to retransfer films if they think the current HD asset can be substantially improved.

I hope your're right. Based on the rest of your post - much appreciated btw, great info. - I guess we could assume that the reason titles like GI Jane are still slipping by is a lack of suitable displays for QC at present.

If Volver didn't come from a 2k or 4k DI that would certainly seem to debunk Kane's theory and explain why some older titles hold up better than others.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

They are also aware of the desire for DTS HD MA, but this is not trivial and will take longer, if it can be done at all. The Cell processor is powerful, but using a CPU to do the work of a DSP is not so easy.

Converting SACD (DST) to PCM takes 5 SPEs. I think MPEG-2/AVC/VC-1 decoding takes about two. Do you figure that it'll take about 5 SPEs to decode DTS HDMA?

How is TrueHD decoded on the PS3 then? Does it have a dedicated DSP? Can the DSP be firmware upgraded?

I realize that you're not speaking on behalf of the SCE or its engineers. Maybe Talk or kjack can enlighten us.


fuad

[Talkstr8t]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

How is TrueHD decoded on the PS3 then? Does it have a dedicated DSP? Can the DSP be firmware upgraded?

I realize that you're not speaking on behalf of the SCE or its engineers. Maybe Talk or kjack can enlighten us.

While paidgeek may not speak directly for SCE, he's surely in a better position to obtain most PS3-related information than kjack or I!

- Talk

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

The result of all this is that we have been doing transfer work for years without being able to see everything that is being captured. Worse, Joe average consumer can now buy a 2M pixel display for a modest price and resolve more detail that can be seen on industry standard displays.

I blame that company Sony and there damn inexpensive and utterly spectacular consumer LCD and SXRD displays and projectors.



Spectacular post, BTW. In fact, an amazing set of posts this weekend.

Gary

[Zinn]

Paidgeek Will sony start to use DD TrueHD as well PCM from now on?

And will we soon/ever see a movie in 7.1, 24/96?

Thanks!