Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by darkpoet25

Hello Bill,
I know you have been busy lately and I appreciate the news that you have given us, so far. I have a question about the Back To The Future trilogy being prepared for a Blu release next year. I saw that they will be using the restored digital masters, which is wonderful. Do you think that by the time they come out, Universal will go from using VC-1 to AVC? What about the sound? I'm sure it will be lossless, but do you think it is possible that they will use both True HD and DTS-MA? Thanks in advance.

Bill or Wicky,

Will you please tell everyone that it is NOT the end of the world if the studios use the VC1 codec. When VC1 is not being bitstarved its every bit as good as AVC. See titles like Deja Vu and Santa Claus 3 for proof.

Its safe to say that most encodes now are going to take advantage of blurays extra bandwidth, since one of our insiders commented months ago (I think it was Penton or Max) that that encoding to bluray bandwidth is easier than encoding to HD-DVD bandwidth since the scenes dont require NEAR as much tweaking to get the bitrates down to acceptable levels.

In otherwords, its actually easier to encode for bluray than it was for HD-DVD, which means it saves the studio time and money. The only time it sucks is when they are porting over old HD-DVD masters.


As for lossless, they need to have lossless!

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

I'll do what I can Alan, but it seems that every day I'm bombarding studios with questions about upcoming releases and if you want to get answers, you need to keep the volume down.

Aah! The journalistic equivalent of "Are we there yet?"

Yeah, I'm certainly not interested in having you "bug" the studios and aside from this time, most of the questions I've asked... whether it be the question regarding Magnolia that you kindly answered, or the Universal/BD-Java question (which you must have missed) are more questions regarding things you've heard, but...

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

The people at WB are well aware that everything they announce, or that gets leaked, causes a frenzy online, believe me.

It's very possible that "Batman: Gotham Knights" and "Fool's Gold" simply don't have "lossless" audio, and it certainly wouldn't be the first releases from WB to be without them, I was just hoping in the POST BD exclusive era, WB would embrace lossless more readily. I wouldn't even have thought anything about it (since I'll probably be buying both regardless) had it not been for the fact that the cover art for "The Perfect Storm" had proven to be wrong, and just like "The Perfect Storm", several people have already stated they were going to cancel their pre-orders for B:GK due to the lack of lossless... and I'm asking more for them than myself!

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

I think the problem is that, now that the format war is finally over, all too many Blu-ray fans are demanding EVERYTHING be released RIGHT NOW. And that REALLY isn't very realistic. I wonder how many were around in the first three years of DVD, when it took time for your favorite films to come out. The installed player base has to grow, the replication and authoring capacity has to grow. Give it a little time, folks. That's the dark side of the success of DVD I think - people who grew up with it just expect every film they want to be available right now, at the click of a button from Amazon. Meanwhile, the rest of us remember a time not so long ago when you couldn't even watch most films at home... PERIOD. Patience folks. Good things take a little time.

Bolded the above for effect as I just wanted to comment on it. I'm constantly amazed at the amount of people who keep demanding more films be released. I got into DVD in the Fall of '98, and I'm AMAZED at the output of the BD studios as far as D&D releases and especially catalog titles. An embarassement of riches if you will...

I'm also amazed at the amount of people who complain how little the BD studios are releasing because they don't see any of their favorite films in the list, yet I'm wondering what film(s) I'm going to have to cut out of my "must-buy" list to keep within something resembling a movie budget... as well as those clamoring for more and more when I have enough trouble keeping up with work, TV, chores and what little of a life I have.

Besides, if we had it all now, what would we have to look forward to later?

Sorry for the rant, but whatever you can do let us know about my question is appreciated, and you shouldn't feel rushed by it...

~Alan

[sj001]

Originally Posted by merrick97

As for lossless, they need to have lossless!

This, I certainly hope is true for Universal and Paramount releases when they come out.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Aygie

Bill, Penton, Max, Paid, Wicky any of you care to comment on this comment regarding Red Ray?

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpos...0&postcount=16

The post that you linked is lacking in details as to its final real world application and even viability in regards to consumer home theater…. if that is the implication of the poster.

As an aside in regards to true 4K deliverable content, do you really think the studios will sell 4K digital content of their motion pictures to consumers in the foreseeable future?
That would be essentially like selling the original film elements to consumers for $29.99 or what not. Hell, the digital cinema theatres around the country aren’t even getting 4K DCP’s routinely to show their audiences.

I was actually more intrigued with this tech at NAB, as it's shipping………………
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=313

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

That's definately not counting the optics, and no, I wouldn't count RED as a movie camera either. What it is is a great tool for documentaries or indy films........

Don’t forget commercials.
I really hope that the Red One finds its niche somewhere in the filmmaking world because if anything, it will at least be another viable option for lensers to consider for particular applications and its presence encourages other manufacturers to constantly improve their products or even possibly offer alternatives.

The Red One will sink or swim on its own merits, despite all the internet hype.
What I don’t like is when I get reports of professional cinematographers the likes of Claudio Miranda (his work....."Zodiac", "Failure to Launch", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"), his awards.........
http://www.claudiomiranda.com/awards.html

who are not respected by some members of that forum when they post their opinions regarding the perceived deficiencies of that camera after having had tested it.

[WickyWoo]

Don’t forget commercials.
I really hope that the Red One finds its niche somewhere in the filmmaking world because if anything, it will at least be another viable option for lensers to consider for particular applications and its presence encourages other manufacturers to constantly improve their products or even possibly offer alternatives.

Oh definately not. It's great that there's an affordable camera (relative scale of course) that has good quality. I just wouldn't call it a "movie camera". Genesis is a movie camera, even though I'm not entirely happy with that either, it's certainly a huge improvment over the ones Episode 2 was shot with.

[horseflesh]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

Turns out it's just a typo on Warner's database. They had the DVD set for 6/17, and the Blu-ray for 6/10... New Line's press release shows the DVD for 6/10, which is the actual street date for both.

So the Blu-ray is NOT being released a week in advance of the DVD??

[WickyWoo]

No. Told you guys it was a concept completely out of line. I came up with the only rational I thought could apply

[horseflesh]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

No. Told you guys it was a concept completely out of line. I came up with the only rational I thought could apply

Sorry Wicky, I'm still a little bit confused.
Are the DVD and Blu-ray both now due for release on June 10th?
Is the news item on the front page incorrect?

[Shinma]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I was actually more intrigued with this tech at NAB, as it's shipping………………
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=313

It's great to see that InPhase is finally shipping. Once the material issues were largely overcome, several of these guys were so close to getting there, but had difficult getting over the hump. Unfortunately the description of the technology in the article is a little misleading. The author obviously understands a little more about holography than the general public, but the technology isn't being used as described. Most are simply using it to store the same type of digital data stream in a volume format. Angular or depth separation give you additional "pages" of data instead of a change in perspective of the same data. The comment about being theoretically unlimited is also completely false. The companies just aren't anywhere near the theoretical limit at the moment.

I find this really exciting though, and am hoping it will pay off for the small companies who have stuck with R&D on this techinology for so long. Hope this wasn't too far off topic, but I'm also kind of excited about this technology.

[WickyWoo]

Sorry Wicky, I'm still a little bit confused.
Are the DVD and Blu-ray both now due for release on June 10th?
Is the news item on the front page incorrect?

There was a typo on the WB press site. Both are coming the same day

[Mr. Cinema]

Just wondering. Is DTS HD MA decoding becoming a troublesome item for the hardware manufacturers? That's sort of what I've been reading around the web.

Also, why does Fox only use that audio? Do they have some sort of contractual agreement with DTS? If they had used TrueHD like everyone else, I don't think there would be any perceived headaches that may be happening now.

[WickyWoo]

DTS HDMA requires massively more processing power than TrueHD, therefore it's much more expensive to implement

Fox, Image and New Line, while no one will say anything officially, rumor has it from reliable sources they're under contract with DTS to use it on all releases

[JAGUAR1977]

Is Rescue Me S4 coming to Blu-ray?

These TV sets are big investments, to release one season and not the follow up isn't really on.

[Musashi]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

DTS HDMA requires massively more processing power than TrueHD, therefore it's much more expensive to implement

Processing power needed to encode, decode, or both?

[Arecsa]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

The people at WB are well aware that everything they announce, or that gets leaked, causes a frenzy online, believe me.

I hate to keep flogging the dead 'lossless' horse here, but I just saw that specs for The Bucket List have been announced, and once again we're only getting a 5.1 DD track. What is going on with Warner and their aversion to lossless audio? Maybe they still aren't getting the very clear message - we want lossless audio, or maybe we're just being ignored.

It's immensely frustrating and, to me, it feels like Warner are quite happy to pump out half hearted releases when compared to every other major studio that offer a lossless track every single time.

[WickyWoo]

Processing power needed to encode, decode, or both?

They probably have a standard hardware encoder where it goes through the box onto a hard drive

Decode

DTHD is 2 seperate streams. The DD 5.1 and the lossless stream. The system decodes one and ignores the other.

DTS HDMA is 3 seperate streams, but they're laid one on top of another by the decoder. Doing this accurately, on top of doing the 3 seperate streams is why you can't just patch a lotof old players. Seriously it's horribly inneficient and majorly prone to decoding errors

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Bill or Wicky,

Will you please tell everyone that it is NOT the end of the world if the studios use the VC1 codec. When VC1 is not being bitstarved its every bit as good as AVC. See titles like Deja Vu and Santa Claus 3 for proof.

Its safe to say that most encodes now are going to take advantage of blurays extra bandwidth, since one of our insiders commented months ago (I think it was Penton or Max) that that encoding to bluray bandwidth is easier than encoding to HD-DVD bandwidth since the scenes dont require NEAR as much tweaking to get the bitrates down to acceptable levels.

In otherwords, its actually easier to encode for bluray than it was for HD-DVD, which means it saves the studio time and money. The only time it sucks is when they are porting over old HD-DVD masters.


As for lossless, they need to have lossless!

I actually have had studio techs tell me that which codec is best for use depends on the particular title in question - each has its strengths. So I do think this issue is a bit overblown. I agree about lossless, and we're encouraging studios to use it always. I think that's where the industry is going overall, but you'll likely continue to see BDs with lossy audio in the meantime.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

The post that you linked is lacking in details as to its final real world application and even viability in regards to consumer home theater…. if that is the implication of the poster.

As an aside in regards to true 4K deliverable content, do you really think the studios will sell 4K digital content of their motion pictures to consumers in the foreseeable future?
That would be essentially like selling the original film elements to consumers for $29.99 or what not. Hell, the digital cinema theatres around the country aren’t even getting 4K DCP’s routinely to show their audiences.

Exactly. Well said, Penton-Man.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by horseflesh

So the Blu-ray is NOT being released a week in advance of the DVD??

No, it's not. They both street on the same day - 6/10.