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

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Well, if there are any differences in color between the SD DVD and BD screenshots, lookout! Most of the AVS scientists always hold the older SD DVD version as The Reference in regards to color timing...........

Silly man, don’t you realize that the DVD version of any movie is indeed the quintessential ‘gold standard’ as to the correct appearance of the director intended colors ..................as well as contrast, etc.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

color timing

By the way, it’s now all pretty much become a matter of interchangeable semantics but, does anyone know the historical or traditional definitions/terminology of the words ……………
1. Color Timing
2. Color Grading
3. Color Correction

It does help to understand that some purists in the business still continue to use the terms differently…….which comes in handy to avoid any communication problems during post production of a feature film.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

By the way, it’s now all pretty much become a matter of interchangeable semantics but, does anyone know the historical or traditional definitions/terminology of the words ……………
1. Color Timing
2. Color Grading
3. Color Correction

Colour correction=Fixing the colour balance in post if it looks wrong on the screen because of how it was recorded by the camera (maybe using the wrong settings) or other stuff (like the lighting) that made the colour balance look wrong?
Colour Grading=altering the colours in post to create an artistic effect
Colour Timing=same as grading? (just guessing for the last 2 though)

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Silly man, don’t you realize that the DVD version of any movie is indeed the quintessential ‘gold standard’ as to the correct appearance of the director intended colors ..................as well as contrast, etc.

Actually, I think even some Laserdiscs somehow, by total accident, hit the gold standard. The good ole days. I think maybe many of these "scientists" are 85 year olds living with Lee Stewart.

It's time to hike up the pants, move to Florida, and complain about the transfers full time.

Gary

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

Colour correction=Fixing the colour balance in post if it looks wrong on the screen because of how it was recorded by the camera (maybe using the wrong settings) or other stuff (like the lighting) that made the colour balance look wrong?
Colour Grading=altering the colours in post to create an artistic effect
Colour Timing=same as grading? (just guessing for the last 2 though)

You know that’s purty good, except for your “becauses” of color correction . You see, a raw 2K or 4K scan of 35mm. film shot perfectly (in terms of lighting and exposure) by the DP still looks flat, even worse than this (left side of split screen), just without the slight greenish hue…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiQak3X_J0

I notice you’re from the U.K., so, that’s a perfect lead-in for me.
Historically, the terminology all began with film. In the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, the whole process was called ‘color grading’. In the U.S., it was called ‘color timing’. Then when video came along, it was called ‘color correction’ but, in essence these days the terms are all used interchangeably and mean the same thing.

Some traditional purists within different departments of a post house may refer to ‘color correction’ as the first step of the process in which one makes the colors of the original source realistic – such as the clouds white and the sky blue.
And then ‘color grading’ as the artistic process of giving the particular *look* the DP is striving for, such as applying a sepia tone, accentuating the highlights, crushing the blacks, increasing or decreasing contrast, etc.

To almost all folks in the biz; however, as I’ve said, the terminology is now completely interchangeable because in general, the way the process works in post production is that the colorist speaks to the filmmakers and finds out what stock they plan on printing the feature film on. Then a print density LUT (look up table) for that particular stock is fed into the computer which gives the raw scan the general color appearance the DP is looking for, and then the colorist does his color timing through that print density emulation or template……which can involve all the tweaking I discussed above for “color grading”, as well as other things.

An interesting aside is that for the newest Indy movie which just streeted on Blu-ray, Steven S. wanted to maintain a very traditional color look to the imagery so a LUT for Kodak Vision Premier 2393 was fed into the computer after the 2K raw scan was performed and they stuck with the primary colors for the most part with little secondary color tweaking performed.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Actually, I think even some Laserdiscs somehow, by total accident, hit the gold standard. The good ole days. I think maybe many of these "scientists" are 85 year olds living with Lee Stewart.

It's time to hike up the pants, move to Florida, and complain about the transfers full time.

Gary

Some of the most amusing conclusions are those that involve side-by-side comparison pics of things like the HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the same title.
There was one that was PM’ed to me which showed the BD to be slightly softer than the HD DVD version, thus the *scientists* were screaming *dnr’ed, dnr’ed* at the Blu-ray version.

So, I showed the screenshot pics to the compressionist that did the work on both versions and he laughed telling me that the BD version in actuality had no more digital grain reduction applied than the HD DVD did when it was encoded.
The difference in visual imagery was due to the fact that when he did the HD DVD, he sharpened it up a tad and the *scientists* just haven’t found any halos on that version as telltale evidence because the tools are getting so refined for sharpening and adaptive picture analysis that any discernible side effects are difficult to visualize unless one significantly mags the image.

So, in essence the “softer” BD image was the one with less digital processing applied and truer to the original source.

[Uxi]

Hi Penton, why would Steve Jobs say that licensing Blu-ray is "complex" right now? Or is this doublespeak that he'd just rather have sales go through iTunes or something?

[Jeff Kleist]

Hi Penton, why would Steve Jobs say that licensing Blu-ray is "complex" right now? Or is this doublespeak that he'd just rather have sales go through iTunes or something?

Little from column A and a little from column B.

Apple does not share the hooks for such things with anyone as a rule. Interactual had to fight with them for YEARS to actually do a Mac version of their software. As such, Apple would be the ones to write an Apple Blu-ray playing software. This requires a large upfront investment for access to the spec, patents and such, and for them to contract with a drive vendor.

First and foremost, Steve Jobs wants you to buy from iTunes. Far behind that, he doesn't think that investing the money it'll take to license Blu-ray, and develop the software is worth it at this time

Cyberlink and those guys are selling their software to all the PC OEMs, they have a base to spread the wealth around to.

[aygie]

Originally Posted by Uxi

Hi Penton, why would Steve Jobs say that licensing Blu-ray is "complex" right now? Or is this doublespeak that he'd just rather have sales go through iTunes or something?

man that comment p***ed me right off.

I dont care about Blu-ray in a laptop, just give me the damn software to burn onto a BD. I have a £2500 computer and a £4000 HD camera which gives me beatuifiul shots and then my end product is just cut off cause I can't export to a HD medium.

SUCKS B*LLS APPLE.

Rant over.

[Joseph Goodman]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

The difference in visual imagery was due to the fact that when he did the HD DVD, he sharpened it up a tad and the *scientists* just haven’t found any halos on that version as telltale evidence because the tools are getting so refined for sharpening and adaptive picture analysis that any discernible side effects are difficult to visualize unless one significantly mags the image.

So, in essence the “softer” BD image was the one with less digital processing applied and truer to the original source.

Is there any chance that you could let us in on which title this was?

[Mystery Clock]

Originally Posted by Aygie

man that comment p***ed me right off.

I dont care about Blu-ray in a laptop, just give me the damn software to burn onto a BD. I have a £2500 computer and a £4000 HD camera which gives me beatuifiul shots and then my end product is just cut off cause I can't export to a HD medium.

Rant over.

I agree, it stinks. Could the "complex" issue be the VC-1 encoder licensing? While technically an open standard perhaps the various implementers are unwilling or want too much $ to license an implementation to Apple for "BD-Studio Pro"? I think they already have MPEG and AVC implementations in place (something about being able to author a 720p AVC HD-DVD, IIRC) but I'm not so clear on VC-1.

Clearly, M$ would be...um... unmotivated to port their Windows-only code, and I suspect since Sonic's Scenarist is probably extremely not-inexpensive that licensing its implementation is a non-starter.

Grasping at straws here... little help?



-John

[Mystery Clock]

...and on a completely unrelated topic, I hope everyone out there in SoCal is safe from the fires. The pictures and videos I've seen are pretty alarming!

Having been out there for one natural disaster I'm just glad to be in Tennessee right now (even though I'd rather be out there during tornado season.)

Be careful!

-John

[Jeff Kleist]

I agree, it stinks. Could the "complex" issue be the VC-1 encoder licensing? While technically an open standard perhaps the various implementers are unwilling or want too much $ to license an implementation to Apple for "BD-Studio Pro"? I think they already have MPEG and AVC implementations in place (something about being able to author a 720p AVC HD-DVD, IIRC) but I'm not so clear on VC-1.

All of the above is part of standard packages anyone can purchase from the BDA. AVC is a QuickTime based container, and therefore of course Apple would prefer to use that. There would be no problem, especially since Apple is now on Intel to port the code.

Bottom line, this is all an issue of cost/benefit ratio and pushing iTunes.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Joseph Goodman

Is there any chance that you could let us in on which title this was?

Sorry, no………….as this was told to me in confidence. I don’t need another Chris the compressionist situation somehow occurring with another compressionist in town.

I will say; however, that since I know the screenshot *scientists* absolutely abhor even the thought of noise reduction or detail sharpening applied to a movie and we all know that they read this forum and this thread religiously (despite never acknowledging it)……………

Journey to the Center of the Earth, which streets in a couple weeks, had both types of digital image processing applied, so happy artifact hunting all you magnifying glass types out there………….while the rest of us film aficionados enjoy the movie, in real time.

[Penton-Man]

B.T.W.
The Sherlock who magnified a logo on this pic, which I posted awhile back, while it was drying out in the sun…….
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=5570

and subsequently found this pic online..well, you can call me Mister Brown.
https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg...upId=144760517

Yes, you’re sly with dem magnifying glasses but, not as sly as I.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by Aygie

man that comment p***ed me right off.

I dont care about Blu-ray in a laptop, just give me the damn software to burn onto a BD. I have a £2500 computer and a £4000 HD camera which gives me beatuifiul shots and then my end product is just cut off cause I can't export to a HD medium.

SUCKS B*LLS APPLE.

Rant over.

..

[Brain Sturgeon]

Originally Posted by Rob Tomlin

It's rumored that the next update to Leopard will have support for Blu-ray.

When did Steve Jobs make the comments in question?

I believe he made this comment in response to a question regarding Blu-ray at the unveiling event for the new MacBooks today:

Jobs said "Blu-ray is a bag of hurt. I don’t mean from the consumer point of view. It’s great to watch movies, but the licensing is so complex. We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing."

Bummer... I don't need Apple to include the hardware in their computers, I just want them to support it in the OS.

SJ was behind the curve with CD burners, as he later admitted, and I think he is behind the curve on adopting BD.

[CAB]

Originally Posted by Aygie

man that comment p***ed me right off.

I dont care about Blu-ray in a laptop, just give me the damn software to burn onto a BD. I have a £2500 computer and a £4000 HD camera which gives me beatuifiul shots and then my end product is just cut off cause I can't export to a HD medium.

SUCKS B*LLS APPLE.

Rant over.

Yikes! Toast supports burning and authoring. Sorry it isn't included in the $100 OS.

Edit: When does SJ or Apple announce anything before it's ready to order or ship?

[Uxi]

Sure. The biggest problem is that Apple has been on the BDA for how long and have done squat to promote Blu-ray. If anything, they're as bad as Microsoft with HDDVD in that they have their own agenda to push downloads.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by Brain Sturgeon

I believe he made this comment in response to a question regarding Blu-ray at the unveiling event for the new MacBooks today:

..

Bummer... I don't need Apple to include the hardware in their computers, I just want them to support it in the OS.

SJ was behind the curve with CD burners, as he later admitted, and I think he is behind the curve on adopting BD.

..