Is Warner changing to DTS-HD Master Audio too?

[Rik1138]

Originally Posted by BozQ

The basic Dolby Media Encoder SE is the cheapest of the bunch, and it costs a whooping US$2900. That's a whole US$900 more than full featured DTS Master Suite. That's a huge difference and its perhaps the reason why more studios going over to DTS? Anyone's guess I suppose.

Well, for a small facility with a limited budget, that could affect what they purchase in the beginning... But all major studios and authoring facilities have both encoders. It's a one-time cost, so once you have both encoders, it doesn't cost any more for one format over the other... Considering that the authoring software is in the range of $30,000 and the video encoding software is also $20,000+, the cost of the audio software is down right cheap.

Originally Posted by BozQ

By the way, did the software allow additional extensions on top of the DTS-Core? What I meant is, in a DTS MA track, there is the DTS-Core, which is plain ol' DTS 5.1 in 1536kbps, right? Is it possible to have further extensions like DTS-ES Discrete 6.1 or DTS 96/24 on top of the core? I'm quite sure ES Matrix is possible. But I'm not sure about the rest.

Different setting are available depending on the channel layout. If it's 7.1, you can't do 96/24 or ES Matrix. The ES Phase-shift and Pre-Mixed settings are available on some 6.x settings, and a 96/24 core is only available if the sample rate is 96kHz or higher, and only with a 6.1 ES Matrix, 5.1 or 2.0 audio setup.

Either way, the encoder will still create the legacy 5.1 DTS stream that's compatible with every DTS decoder out there, and will add an additional extension for the extra ES or 96/24 data...

The legacy DTS core can be 1509, 1344, 1152, 960 or 768 kbps, but it's usually left at 1509. I encoded a feature file with 1509 and 768 settings, and the difference in size was negligible compared to the size of a Blu-Ray disc... It's a very efficient storage algorithm. It's not just muxing in a complete 5.1 stream, it's more a difference stream (it will use what it can from the HD MA streams, and only store what additional data is needed to create a legacy stream...). That's part of what keeps DTS files smaller than THD files, in general... It's not a huge space difference, but it's there, and could add up if you are putting 2, 3 or more lossless tracks on a feature.

Rik