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

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

....If these big names rallied to push the idea of faithful and unprocessed presentations on Blu-Ray.......

Actually, an interesting converse to that situation is that some post house tech gurus are beginning to try to enlighten filmmakers that some of the decisions they may make during the principal photography and post production process,
might not translate as well to "unprocessed" high definiton home video as they do for the commercial theater, due to the fact that Blu-ray is so unforgiving, whereas the film out process for theatrical distribution can ‘hide’ certain imaging techniques, which I can expound on later, when I have more time because it is particularly pertinent to all the idiot halo hunters and their speculations.

[Alan Gordon]

Sorry to reply to some several days old comments, but:

Originally Posted by Grubert

That was cjplay. I'd really like it if he still posted on the forum. I'd be asking him some questions.

I believe that Amir did some crowing regarding BB's low bitrate as well... as I remember Amir talking about how great BB looked at those low bitrates... and how they could get movies even lower in time.

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Oliver K., I agree with everything you’ve said above, except, don’t pay too much attention to screencaps as they can be misleading for definitive analysis of the picture quality of a Blu-ray title……..that’s why I dislike *screenshot* science so much with its erroneous conclusions.

I don't believe in *screenshot* science either, but I do like looking at some of the screencaps from various sites as they do give you an idea of what the movie is going to look like... like Oliver later says. For example, I have yet to see a film look good in screenshots, and it look bad on my HDTV.

The problem comes in when you try to use screenshots to "support" your theory, or use it to go looking for problems... instead of using them as a sample of what it could look like. For example, I have yet to see a film look bad in screenshots, that it doesn't look better on my HDTV... well, "Face/Off" being an exception.

"Ghandi" does indeed look good in screen shots, and looks even better on the clip I downloaded from Sony's BD-Live site and viewed on my HDTV. I expect the BD will be even better... though I'm afraid I will have to wait a little longer before I pick it up as I'm trying to save up for some better speakers and I had to use some of the money I had saved up for something the other day.

~Alan

[sharkshark]

trying to parse the argument here - are you all suggesting that bitrates are solely responsible for problems with Amadeus? I think you're misrepresenting what Amir's argument was (certainly not lower bitrates for the sake of lowering them, but to ideally have encodes that were as good at lower bitrates as those at higher, thus saving space in the longer term for use in media server applications...). Heck, making a file bigger and bitrate higher is an easy thing to do, the hard part is to reduce it without f-ing up, no? And this -is- an f-up...

I certainly hope you're not suggesting that simply cranking the bitrate from a bad master would automagically make everything perfecto on a release like Amadeus. Clearly the issues run deeper than that. I think that if one is to piss on screencap procedures as being the determining factor for monitoring the quality of a films transfer, no doubt you must admit that the bitrate "discussion" has brought out more penis wagging than actual, productive argumentation. In the law of diminishing returns, one would think that optimization of a disc would be beneficial if the actuality proved that the discs were indistiguishable on even close inspection. That said, it's equally inexcuseable that such high profile titles are bungled by the likes of Warner.

I see throughout this site "ban warner" rhetoric (and even avatars), and rehashes of the same us/them BS that littered the format divide. Certainly discussions about the problem discs like Amadeus can be traced back to either a faulty master or overly aggressive postprocessing, rather than simply labeling the compression stage a travesty and poking at MS/Amir once again, years after these discussions were taking place.

[Jeff Kleist]

That is the thing though, it is not an encode that could have existed on HD DVD. While most of the encode could have fit quite easily on that dead format, there are moments where the video bitrate reaches the high 30's, an impossibility on the red format. The BDInfo scan (a full readout breaks out each chapter) confirmed that one chapter had a five second max around 34 Mbps, which is over the limits for HD DVD. But many scenes stay in the low teens for extended periods of time. It appears Warner did redo the encoding but still aimed very low on the compression parameters. There is an immense amount of free space left on the BD-50

5 seconds should still within the buffer range. You can go past max bitrate by using the buffer. This happens on Blu-ray as well. 5mbps should be realistic for that short space of time

[sharkshark]

but, again, is the argument seriously being made that higher contant bitrate would have solved Amadeus' problems? Or is it that Warner, "dumbing down" the transfer for dual format support decided to scrub fine detail away (something that they seemed to avoid doing for a wide number of other titles).

I think both arguments are faulty, personally, yet I'm curious what you insiders feel to be the case...

Certainly, as I note above, we can discuss this disc without resorting to the usual whipping boys (anti screen caps, HD-DVD futility, bitrate limits, etc.) if the issues exposed do not warrant it...

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

but, again, is the argument seriously being made that higher contant bitrate would have solved Amadeus' problems? Or is it that Warner, "dumbing down" the transfer for dual format support decided to scrub fine detail away (something that they seemed to avoid doing for a wide number of other titles).

I think both arguments are faulty, personally, yet I'm curious what you insiders feel to be the case...

Certainly, as I note above, we can discuss this disc without resorting to the usual whipping boys (anti screen caps, HD-DVD futility, bitrate limits, etc.) if the issues exposed do not warrant it...

At a certain point, bitrate has little or no affect on image quality. Double the bitrate on Amadeus, and my bet is that the image would remain as it is.

RAH

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris

At a certain point, bitrate has little or no affect on image quality. Double the bitrate on Amadeus, and my bet is that the image would remain as it is.

RAH

However, the The Godfather BD (running time 177') had an average video bitrate of 27 Mbps.

[DenonCI]

Penton,

Was that really you on stage with Natalie Portman last night pretending to be Ben Stiller ?

In all seriousness, that was one of the funniest bits I've seen in a long time--Hollywood turning on "one of their own."

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by Grubert

However, the The Godfather BD (running time 177') had an average video bitrate of 27 Mbps.

And needed every bit of it for proper reproduction.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris

And needed every bit of it for proper reproduction.

Exactly. Pristine image + sufficient bitrate = bliss

But...

Pristine image + low-bitrate compression = problems

Now, if you had applied some discreet filtering before compression, you probably could have gotten away with 20 Mbps.

Remember what was repeatedly said in audio shops in the seventies? 'The overall performance of a setup is as good as the worst of its components.' You need good film elements AND scanning/restoring/remastering them correctly AND giving them sufficient bitrate.

If WB is doing something upstream, there's nothing bitrate can do. But something is definitely amiss somewhere.

[sharkshark]

we are agree then, bitrate being low (or high) tells us little independent of analysis of a source. So, I hope you'd agree, tired arguments about the capabilities (or lack thereof) of the competing format, or worries about peak rates and so on, mask the real issue here... Namely, there's beein either a poor master made, or manipulation of a good master for the sake of trying to make the think look smooth and shiny.

RAH, there's no way, I'd assume, that Patton looks like it does at the scanning stage. I take it that the telecine does no DNR at capture, that it's -entirely- a postproduction process to fuddle with the image from a clarity standpoint, and that the capture devices have uniform calibration. Or is it the case that certain stocks or formats create unique problems during capture that would manifest as being "DNR-like" (I believe, please correct me, that this was the argument for the 35mm section "anomalies" in TDK's presentation).

At any rate, it remains disingenuous, in my opinion, to be parsing bitrates to try and explain away issues as problematic as those found on the Amadeus disc. This HD format fun has seen lots of knee jerk reactions to PQ and SQ (comparing disparate soundtracks and thinking the lossless is better, regardless of soure, say, basing purchase decisions strictly upon screen caps, AVC vs VC1, lambasting low bit rate encodes because of format preference, etc.) I would hope that the guidance from the likes of the estemed insiders in this thread could do a bit to curb such discourse, and I'm pleased to see RAH's unequivocal remarks above.

The disc is broken, for lack of a better term, and I look with great interest at those of you that can actually shape future production to ensure that we don't see this again. Beating up Amir or "HD-lite" encodes, will all the "M$" pissing around is frankly counterproductive for those of us that just want the damn movie to look good, and left any format cheerleading by the wayside from the very begining...

Highdef isn't a team sport, after all, despite all the jockying for position and often sycophantic braying about us vs. them. Even our beloved BluRay, it seems, can screw it up royally, even without the spectre of the failed shiny discs from the so-called other side...

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Grubert

Exactly. Pristine image + sufficient bitrate = bliss

But...

Pristine image + low-bitrate compression = problems

..sure, but what's low? Certainly it's on a film-by-film basis. There's a sweet spot, and if it's matched, great! No need to inflate the disc for the sake of filling it just so you say you did. The law of diminishing returns has been spoken about often, but it strikes me that worrying about filling the discs for the sake of filling them is as silly as those that complain their TVs aren't being fully utilized because of those damn black bars.

If the best possible encode can be achieved with a slightly smaller file with no compromise, great. The question at hand, then, isn't whether or not a lower encode is fundamentally worse than a higher bitrate disc, but whether the specific film is represented well on disc or not. Frankly, I often wish that the PS3 (in particular) had dropped the bitrate meter, it falls into the lair of framerate debates, worrying more about how fast your screen refreshes than the content upon it.

Given that it's so easy to fall into the trap of worshiping the stats, I'd think that one would want to be far more reticent relying on this one data point to make their claims. All things being equal, the condition of the source, production of the master and extent of post processing are -vastly- more critical to the resulting image than any artifacting caused by the codec employed seen on a frame-by-frame, pixel-by-pixel basis, or what a certain peak bitrate is on a given title. IMHO, of course...

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

If the best possible encode can be achieved with a slightly smaller file with no compromise, great. The question at hand, then, isn't whether or not a lower encode is fundamentally worse than a higher bitrate disc, but whether the specific film is represented well on disc or not. Frankly, I often wish that the PS3 (in particular) had dropped the bitrate meter, it falls into the lair of framerate debates, worrying more about how fast your screen refreshes than the content upon it.

Well, I was constantly frustrated by the lack of bitrate information on the HD DVD titles. I even asked Ben Waggoner and other insiders and they flat out refused to give that data. Which is by definition suspicious.

I am of the school of thought that information is never bad, even if it is sometimes misused. Abusus non tollit usum.

Given that it's so easy to fall into the trap of worshiping the stats, I'd think that one would want to be far more reticent relying on this one data point to make their claims. All things being equal, the condition of the source, production of the master and extent of post processing are -vastly- more critical to the resulting image than any artifacting caused by the codec employed seen on a frame-by-frame, pixel-by-pixel basis, or what a certain peak bitrate is on a given title. IMHO, of course...

It's so easy to fall into the trap of worshipping the stats - but it's also easy to fall into the trap of brushing them off. Which is what many during the format war wanted to do. If you think BD's bigger capacity and bandwidth were important, you were a spec wh*re.

But then you get insiders like RAH saying that you couldn't have fit Godfather Part II in one disc with the picture quality we have today.

So specs aren't all-important, but they are important. It's like horsepower in a car. It's not the only thing, but it sure plays a role.

And comparing it to filling the screen on an HDTV is a very flawed analogy - compressing less can never damage the picture. It's like criticizing a photographer because he always uses RAW.

All studios other than Warner are using higher bitrates. And their releases (be it day-and-date or catalog) usually look better to me (and other people) than WB's ones.

[GabrielB]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I'd love to get them to do a pre-movie "This is HD" type thing. It's one of those things that looks really good on paper, and gives you a stroke before you even get close to being done I've managed to pull off some miracles in my time, but that one is definately beyond me, and probably beyond almost everyone else.

Yeah I guess. I was waiting to be chastised to even write words of such a thought.
But my thinking was that there must be very high profile people in Hollywood who are just as dissatisfied and discouraged with WB’s BDs offerings as we are. They could use their pull.

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Actually, an interesting converse to that situation is that some post house tech gurus are beginning to try to enlighten filmmakers that some of the decisions they may make during the principal photography and post production process, might not translate as well to "unprocessed" high definiton home video as they do for the commercial theater, due to the fact that Blu-ray is so unforgiving

Of course. Perhaps I haven’t chosen my words properly. Don’t forget I’m french!
Replace "unprocessed" with what... "faithful to the director’s & DP’s intents". or "just plain...." you know...

Originally Posted by sharkshark

The disc is broken, for lack of a better term, and I look with great interest at those of you that can actually shape future production to ensure that we don't see this again. Beating up Amir or "HD-lite" encodes, will all the "M$" pissing around is frankly counterproductive for those of us that just want the damn movie to look good, and left any format cheerleading by the wayside from the very begining...

Well that that’s the whole complex and manifold discussion.

It’s an "entrenched studio policy and procedure".
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=7302
DNR is done at the mastering level
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=7282

And I guess we’ve now understood that WB takes the business route more than anything. They want to spend less and make as much profit as possible. That’s why they may also fear to lose sales from J6Ps clean HD lovers. They’re doing one disc for the whole universe. They’ve never done dual encodes like Paramount. They don’t redo encodes and apparently don’t want to get better with each effort (Batman Begins). Their lack of commitment at first with lossless. Their constant use of BD-25s. etc.

They need to get educated. They egos need to be dialed down. And then they may open their eyes.
They need to adopt new values at the mastering and perhaps QC levels.
...
It appears it’s not just one problem.


What happened with Amadeus is probably something like this. They had decided the release the disc in 2007. Preparation underwent in that year. They had that new master they had spent thousands on in 2001-2002 for the new DVD release. They took a look at it - maybe on lackluster display devices - and decided it was good enough. (That master was of course processed for the DVD release. DNR and all of our friends at the party). Then they scheduled the encode with HD-DVD specs in mind since that format was kicking in those days. Encode was done. Ready to be released. It waited. HD-DVD died, Blu-Ray got better and better. Amadeus was already ready. What could they do?...


Remember this is all words. I'm not Jeff, Max, P-Man, Wicky, RAH,.... I'm Nobody.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

trying to parse the argument here - are you all suggesting that bitrates are solely responsible for problems with Amadeus?

Hardly, I would suggest you carefully reread my past posting on the last page……
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=7317

What I am “suggesting” is that whenever one sees significantly low bitrates for a live action feature shot on film (esp, in this case which contains a lot of indoor imagery all shot on Kodak 5293, if memory serves), it should be a red flag to further investigation that not nearly as much detail as possible was reproduced in the Blu-ray product, in other words, the low bitrates may be either the symptom or even the direct cause of an illness.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Certainly discussions about the problem discs like Amadeus can be traced back to either a faulty master or overly aggressive postprocessing, rather than simply labeling the compression stage a travesty and poking at MS/Amir once again, years after these discussions were taking place.

Well, the reason why I brought up Amir is not so much related to the “format divide” as it is because I believe as a *scientist* - Amir was the primary instigator in putting this low bitrate philosophy into the minds of people at WB to begin with.

And regarding this philosophy, I’ll quote Michel directly because even though I have had my reservations with his hypersensitivity to grain reduction techniques (sometimes inaccurate) and the tactics which he has employed in the past on the internet to rile up the common folk, he made one of the most astute comments regarding the dangerous territory that the low bitrate philosophy can lead some content providers…………

“The low bitrate philosophy is simply a dangerous development since it easily gets stuck in some vicious circles:
- Hooray, we can encode now at average x Mbit/s! and it looks 'good enough' -> We have more free space! -> Let's put more supplements and additional soundtracks on the disc! Cool!
- We have actually some problems now with all the material -> tweaking takes too long and is too expensive a process -> let's remove some entropy -> let's apply DNR (our customers hate grain anyway, don't they?), let's low pass filter some -> looks now a bit soft and plastic -> let's pep it up again, let's add some clever sharpening, and maybe some nicer noise too? -> iterate as required
- Still not that hot looking now -> let's redefine 'good enough' since 'most people' don't see the differences anyway -> iterate as required.
- Hooray, we can encode now at average x-1 Mbit/s! Cool! (goto beginning and iterate as required).”

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

RAH, there's no way, I'd assume, that Patton looks like it does at the scanning stage. I take it that the telecine does no DNR at capture

Wrong.
Even back in the days where everything was telecined, digital grain/noise reduction was possible via “DVNR” hardware, as was sharpening for that matter (i.e. aperture correction).
And in some cases, with some equipment, one would have to bypass virtually all that circuitry in the actual telecine gear in order to produce a completely unfiltered telecine.

P.S.
Also, please get something straight, “scanning” is not the same as telecine. People throw out these two words on the internet WAY too often as if they are completely synonymous.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

Penton,

Was that really you on stage with Natalie Portman last night pretending to be Ben Stiller ?

In all seriousness, that was one of the funniest bits I've seen in a long time--Hollywood turning on "one of their own."

Maybe I should try that cinematography thing.
Did anyone recognize the music that opened the Awards show?

Gotta run, no time to read more.
Carry on.

[GabrielB]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

P.S.
Also, please get something straight, “scanning” is not the same as telecine. People throw out these two words on the internet WAY too often as if they are completely synonymous.

Yes telecine is a transfer to video format.
Scanning is a transfer to digital files. DIs, restorations, etc.

[Bobby Henderson]

I know the American Society of Cinematographers gave Slumdog Millionaire its 2009 Motion Pictures award for cinematography. Nevertheless, it really bothers me that this film won the Oscar for cinematography. Are the voters really that blind?

Even out of movies shot on video, this certainly was NOT nearly the best looking/most artistic of that group. The quality was bad enough I found it distracting. If I had to vote for a "digital" sourced movie for a cinematography award I would have felt much better picking The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I think Wally Pfister got robbed for The Dark Knight. At least the ASC gave Christopher Nolan their Governors Award. I can't help but wonder if some voters actually deduct points if you shoot in 65mm.


IMHO, Ben Burtt also got robbed. He should have won both Sound Mixing and Sound Editing awards for Wall•E. I can understand the logic in The Dark Knight winning the sound editing Oscar. I don't get how Slumdog Millionaire is worth the Sound Mixing award. The big thing about that movie's audio was its music -of which it snared two awards: Best Score, Best Song. That should have been enough.

I'll also say Lee Smith did an excellent job editing The Dark Knight. I was disappointed it lost out to Slumdog Millionaire.

Originally Posted by GabrielB

Yes telecine is a transfer to video format.

The major problem I have with telecine methods is they typically draw the movie print through the system in real time. It basically works on the same principals as a movie projector -and is subject to all the same problems as a movie projector. If the telecine system is the slightest bit out of adjustment image detail won't be very sharp/in focus. Side weave and all sorts of other stuff can come into play. Specs, dirt and debris is more commonly seen in HD masters created via telecine.

Modern film scanning systems work more slowly, but are far more accurate in how they acquire the images. Most new movies have their camera elements scanned as part of a digital intermediate process and take lesser telecine systems out of the equation.