Close Encounters of the Third Kind

[aygie]

Not sure if anyones seen this:

http://sonybluray.wordpress.com/

This paragraph in particular:

"Steven Spielberg’s critically acclaimed classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind will be released in Europe on Blu-ray Disc™ from 12 November. All three versions of the film are included on one 50GB disc through seamless branching."

Check out the website.

[ReduxInflux]

so this disc will feature seamless branching? this is a new concept to me...what exactly does this mean?

beyond this, these numbers are looking solid. i really hope the actual sales figures show mr. spielberg just how serious we are about blu. this could be the first of many! if we treat him right

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by ReduxInflux

so this disc will feature seamless branching? this is a new concept to me...what exactly does this mean?

beyond this, these numbers are looking solid. i really hope the actual sales figures show mr. spielberg just how serious we are about blu. this could be the first of many! if we treat him right

Seamless branching is the ability to play multiple versions of a film by branching across from one sequence to another.

If it's seamless then there isn't a jump when this happens.

[ReduxInflux]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Seamless branching is the ability to play multiple versions of a film by branching across from one sequence to another.

If it's seamless then there isn't a jump when this happens.

interesting. curious as to how cool this actually is. hmm...

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by ReduxInflux

so this disc will feature seamless branching? this is a new concept to me...what exactly does this mean?

It's been around on DVD from the beginning.

Start with the concept of branching. A movie is usually a continuous stream (although it can appear physically as several files).

Start --> End

Now, say you have a Director's Cut that adds two scenes, but still want to offer the original. You can either provide two seperate encodings, or use branching to provide the alternative. Branching describes the switch points and physical locations of the data to the player.

Start Main -> Scene 1 insert point -> Branch to Scene 1 -> Scene 1 -> Branch to Main after Scene 1 insert point -> Scene 2 insert point -> Branch to Scene 2 -> Scene 2 -> Branch to Main after Scene 2 insert point -> End

Seamless branching is doing the above without a pause in the playback. Like a seamless layer change.

The player builds up a decoding buffer and then changes what it is reading on the drive and must start reading data again before the buffer runs out.

Gary

[ReduxInflux]

fundamentally, i understand. thanks

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

The player builds up a decoding buffer and then changes what it is reading on the drive and must start reading data again before the buffer runs out.

Gary

but dude...how crazy is technology. it blows my mind how people ever engineered this. and i'm not talking about this as in isolated tech case. its probably elementary. but how far we've come along into technology that this is simple. computers are nuts. so are tvs and radios and cell phones and blu-ray discs and blu-ray disc players. the list keeps going on and on. technology is awesome and those who understand it and develop it have my utmost respect. crazy. okay. i'm done rambling.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by ReduxInflux

interesting. curious as to how cool this actually is. hmm...

It's cool technically. But, for the consumer perspective it allows multiple versions of the same film to be offered without the need to add a full encoding for each film. That reduces the storage requirement (and hence generally the number of discs needed), and encourages the studio to offer the alternatives.

One example that is important to a company like Disney is that they could provide foreign language alternatives to any written words within the animation (e.g. signs). So, seamless branching would allow them to have dozens of languages supported in an animation.

[ReduxInflux]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

It's cool technically. But, for the consumer perspective it allows multiple versions of the same film to be offered without the need to add a full encoding for each film. That reduces the storage requirement (and hence generally the number of discs needed), and encourages the studio to offer the alternatives.

One example that is important to a company like Disney is that they could provide foreign language alternatives to any written words within the animation (e.g. signs). So, seamless branching would allow them to have dozens of languages supported in an animation.

nice. so is close encounters the title that will introduce seamless branching?

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by ReduxInflux

but dude...how crazy is technology. it blows my mind how people ever engineered this. and i'm not talking about this as in isolated tech case. its probably elementary. but how far we've come along into technology that this is simple. computers are nuts. so are tvs and radios and cell phones and blu-ray discs and blu-ray disc players. the list keeps going on and on. technology is awesome and those who understand it and develop it have my utmost respect. crazy. okay. i'm done rambling.

It's true, in just a short century we've come a long way from being isolated groups of hunter-gatherer cavemen huddled around our crystal sets to this ...

In a way though HDM is long overdue. Finally you can watch feature film at home and actually see and hear all of what's going on. With DVD whenever the camera moved to a wide shot too much detail got lost between the paltry 480 (or 576) scan lines. I guess I'm weird, but I could never get into VHS or DVD and never really collected either. BD though is irresistible.

25+ years of home video and now at long last it captures the original.

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Teazle

It's true, in just a short century we've come a long way from being isolated groups of hunter-gatherer cavemen huddled around our crystal sets to this ...

In a way though HDM is long overdue. Finally you can watch feature film at home and actually see and hear all of what's going on. With DVD whenever the camera moved to a wide shot too much detail got lost between the paltry 480 (or 576) scan lines. I guess I'm weird, but I could never get into VHS or DVD and never really collected either. BD though is irresistible.

25+ years of home video and now at long last it captures the original.

Have to agree with that. It's been a long time coming. There's a beauty to film that just doesn't come across on previous TV generations.