Ask questions to BD authoring and compression insider "2themax"

[DaViD Boulet]

Richard Casey has said he believes the sweet spot is currently between 24-26Mbps ABR for VC-1/AVC. So, LOA would be nicely in today's sweet spot, but ROTK-EE well below it.

Is this a problem? Today, possibly. But how about when ROTK-EE is released? Will the encoders have improved to the point where 18-19Mbps ABR is the sweet spot (beyond which there are serious diminishing returns for increased ABR on the PQ).

This ignores other issues, like the amount of effort needed by the compressionist to deal with segment re-encodes. With a title like LOTR, I think we can assume that whatever effort is reasonable is likely to be justifiable.

Great point. LOTR is not coming to BD today; probably a few years out.

Amir has said the same thing, I believe. Does that have an effect on how we view this opinion?

The principle of improving compression over time is true.

Amir quoted much lower numbers: Amir's starting point for "sweet spot" right NOW was already below where realistically might be 5 years out with Gary's prediction... and Amir's final numbers for a mature VC-1 codec were pushing downward towards SD DVD levels... probalby as a pre-justifiction for downloading bandwidth requirements. Indeed, most of MS's VC-1 compressions on WB titles maintain an ABR below 18 mbps. This isn't to say that they are transparent, but rather to illustrate what MS (Amir) want to suggest is transparent.