Ask questions to R&B Films, Ltd insider "RBFilms"

[groovyone]

Originally Posted by RBFilms

Thank you. I am a 4x4 fan ... I own two (2) Toyota Land Cruisers which are in the process of being modified and my GF owns a 2008 fully equipped Jeep Rubicon. It is Detonator Yellow and has RBFILMS plates on it ... she loves it...

I keep looking at the new Rubicons. Is hers the 2 door or the unlimited? For now I am sticking with my 98 XJ 4x4 with 4" of lift, but the 4 door Rubi is tempting.

[jd213]

Now that he's been fired from Microsoft and HD DVD is dead, no one cares what Amir has to say anymore, anyways. Except for the few fudders hanging on at AVS, but they're hardly significant.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by RBFilms

CHRONOS was shot with a custom built Large Format 65mm Time Lapse film camera.

A good part of Nature's Journey was shot with a Sony 750 using a good piece of glass (lens).

Richard, would you care to comment on the possible risk of using digital cameras that match the resolution of commonly available consumer display equipment?

With film they can improve the telecine up until the limits of the film (we recently see the Blade Runner FX elements given an 8K telecine) but if you've shot on 1920x1080 digital, that is your maximum for eternity.

We see WQXGA monitors, and the announcement of the 2160p Panasonic plasma. So, the consumer equipment is already starting to exceed 1920x1080p.

I guess, there is also the DI issue too if film is used. If all the FX are done at the resolution of the DI, then that pretty much locks the feature into the DI resolution forever too, doesn't it?

Gary

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Richard, would you care to comment on the possible risk of using digital cameras that match the resolution of commonly available consumer display equipment?

With film they can improve the telecine up until the limits of the film (we recently see the Blade Runner FX elements given an 8K telecine) but if you've shot on 1920x1080 digital, that is your maximum for eternity.

We see WQXGA monitors, and the announcement of the 2160p Panasonic plasma. So, the consumer equipment is already starting to exceed 1920x1080p.

I guess, there is also the DI issue too if film is used. If all the FX are done at the resolution of the DI, then that pretty much locks the feature into the DI resolution forever too, doesn't it?

Gary

We know that this has already occurred for a chunk of older content (Star Trek: The Next Generation television series was shot and digitally processed at 480p, for example), so it's always a risk.

I'll add my voice to those curious about what the content creators feel about the risk of future obsolescence, though!

[RBFilms]

Yes, for anything with "evergreen" potential....meaning it may still be of interest after ne viewing....we are starting to use 4K Cameras for capture whenever possible and shoot using 12 bit color moving forward.

Unfortunately, the limitations of "pro" equipment in the COmpressin & Authoring Labs keep us locked in to 8 bit color at the moment.

I would rather see greater color depth before higher resolution. 4k / 8k at 32 bit color would be nice...but it is not going to be a reality anytime soon.

I belive current HDM Technology is not be utilized to the fullest. Maybe we should start there...

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Richard, would you care to comment on the possible risk of using digital cameras that match the resolution of commonly available consumer display equipment?

With film they can improve the telecine up until the limits of the film (we recently see the Blade Runner FX elements given an 8K telecine) but if you've shot on 1920x1080 digital, that is your maximum for eternity.

We see WQXGA monitors, and the announcement of the 2160p Panasonic plasma. So, the consumer equipment is already starting to exceed 1920x1080p.

I guess, there is also the DI issue too if film is used. If all the FX are done at the resolution of the DI, then that pretty much locks the feature into the DI resolution forever too, doesn't it?

Gary

[RBFilms]

He seems to be losing it to be honest. He went off and started bashing me and my experience and credentials. He has no clue as to what my background is...so I found this to be a rather odd attack. I am not sure what his goal was with that...but I have some ideas..

Originally Posted by jd213

Now that he's been fired from Microsoft and HD DVD is dead, no one cares what Amir has to say anymore, anyways. Except for the few fudders hanging on at AVS, but they're hardly significant.

[RBFilms]

She went for the 2 door .... it is more capable with greater articulation off road...especially with the Electronic Sway Bar disconnect....plus it is smaller, lighter, and more manuverable.

Also, it looks better... The Unlimited 4 door only looks good with the top off...unless it is in silver...then it is almost passable with the roof on.

The new Rubi's are great....and that is coming from a hard core Toyota Land Cruiser fan...it is not easy for me to admit that..!

I am working my 80 Series Land Cruiser slowly...but it is 20K worth of work to do what I want...I have to sell a lot more discs before I will spring for that.

You 98 XJ with 4" of lift should be quite capable off road...

Originally Posted by groovyone

I keep looking at the new Rubicons. Is hers the 2 door or the unlimited? For now I am sticking with my 98 XJ 4x4 with 4" of lift, but the 4 door Rubi is tempting.

[RBFilms]

To be honest, I prefer AVC and so do most of the labs I work with. They are not shy about stating that either. VC-1 is good...but AVC seems to be the choice of most professionals if they are given one....

Many times they are told what to use...but as an indie Producer ... I get to talk the straight talk with them. They prefer AVC in most cases.

Originally Posted by merrick97

Richard,
Im going to ask you a simple question. I hope its simple....

Whats a better codec AVC or VC1?

The general concensus seems to be that AVC is better at higher bitrates, while VC1 is a little better at lower bitrates.

I know you have answered this question before, but I wanted to ask it here without having to shift through all Amir's responses.

[MerrickG]

Believe me, I have tried..

Originally Posted by RBFilms

To be honest, I prefer AVC and so do most of the labs I work with. They are not shy about stating that either. VC-1 is good...but AVC seems to be the choice of most professionals if they are given one....

Many times they are told what to use...but as an indie Producer ... I get to talk the straight talk with them. They prefer AVC in most cases.

Thanks.

Now if we can convince Warner to use that encoder for high bitrate encodes.

[PaulGo]

What ever happened to the demo you were going to have in the Washingtonian, DC area?

[PaulGo]

Richard I thought you would be interested in these very well written comments about VC-1 since I have been following your comments about the superiority of AVC over VC-1 on AVS.

Originally Posted by Neo65

VC-1 is very similar to AVC (h.264) but simpler, and mathematically, can be easily shown to underperform AVC starting from entropy coding (CABAC) direct mode codings. But trying to pin down which mathematical metric (measure) to use is hard since mathematical accuracy to original is not necessarily same as quality measure.

You can read the bulk of what lossy video coding is about, but a quick summary is that :
0. A video stream is a series of pictures (field or frame). A picture is made up of a color bitmap of pixels (eg : 1920x1080 wide). A macroblock is typically a 16x16 matrix of pixels.
1. There are reference/anchor/key pictures that are encoded as I picture in intra mode. They are mostly like jpeg, but there's also intra prediction, which uses last row/col/etc from previous macroblocks to approximate the current macroblock.
2. There are reference pictures obtained from the delta (after motion compensation) with previous reference pictures (which starts with I, the first one in each Group of Pictures [GoP]).
3. There are B pictures that are made by taking approximations with two reference frames.
4. In cases of 2 & 3, the step where macroblocks are built from motion vector offset(s) in pictures is known known as motion prediction. If a good match does not exist, it will try intra prediction (which looks at differences between current macroblock and previous col(left)/row (top) or other modes). If Intra prediction does not work, then the maroblock is compressed jpeg like.
5. The next step is to encode this delta with a transform. Each uses slightly different implementations of DCT (also jpeg like). Think of this as small 4x4 or 8x8 matrix multiples on both sides.
6. After the transform, you get the quantization --- this is the lossy step where each post-transform element is divided and truncated with a number (the bigger the number, the more the compression, the bigger the loss). In theory, if you divide by 1, then the compression is lossless, but 1.0 is treated differently in each codec, and this gets complicated. Usually VC-1 encoded streams on HD DVD are divided with bigger numbers than higher bitrate AVC streams on BD.
7. When dividing by quantization numbers that are too big, in order to hide macroblocking at boundaries of the transform, VC-1 and AVC will use in loop filters or deblocking filters to smudge these lines --- in effect hiding the artifacts. Hence, the lower the bitrate, the bigger the quantization numbers, and the more smudging occurs in stress streams.

After that, it gets complicated.

---

From a business standpoint, VC-1 is a dead codec. Dead from getting funding to do encoder hardware, Dead from lack of support within MSFT, Dead from interest in building new software tools to process the streams produced by the codec. Dead because h.264/avc is already adopted as the next codec to replace mpeg2 in all broadcast specification stakeholders (eg : FCC and international equivalents).

But there are BD disks out there with VC-1, and that's why VC-1 will never truly die off. It's like some phantom legacy compression format (eg : .arc) that never truly goes away, but sticks around forever even though the technology is already 'done' and orphaned by the inventors.

Ok, it's not DEAD dead, but it's as close to being a zombie as you can characterize any technology out there today.

[RBFilms]

Yes, it is. We are in development now. Expect to see this sometime around 1st / 2nd quarter of next year.

Originally Posted by HDJK

Richard,

You once mentioned a test disc with all kinds of clips that allow comparing between codecs and test patterns (on 'that other forum' ).

Is something like this in the works?

Thank you very much.

[RBFilms]

So I guess I was not the only one who knew AVC was superior?

No doubt it outperforms VC-1 in our tests.

Originally Posted by PaulGo

Richard I thought you would be interested in these very well written comments about VC-1 since I have been following your comments about the superiority of AVC over VC-1 on AVS.

[RBFilms]

I am putting some audio CODEC and Bit Rate comparisons on my new disc. It will be easy to hear the difference in any decent listening environment. We will also put a few A/V test tools and evaluation tools on the disc so AVS folks can go to town attempting to prove their theories.

I still firmly stand on what I said.

48/16 is inferior to 48/24 which is inferior to 96/24 which is inferior to 192/24. However, I will be the first to admit you start splitting hairs and it gets more difficult to hear the difference between 96/24 and 192/24.

Video encoders and rates make a big difference as well. We will have those test on the same disc.

If the debate gets heated, we may decide to re-visit the idea of a listening test in the Washington DC area.

Originally Posted by PaulGo

What ever happened to the demo you were going to have in the Washingtonian, DC area?

[Penton-Man]

Welcome back Richard!

This is kinda like Old Home Week with Talk
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...54#post2550854

and now you, showing up within days of each other.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by RBFilms

So I guess I was not the only one who knew AVC was superior?

No doubt it outperforms VC-1 in our tests.

Great to hear from you again, Richard!

Can you elaborate more about the differences you see? Are they relatively marginal at typical Blu-ray bitrates (25Mbps+)?

Also, are there any substantial differences in licensing between the two?

[Anthony P]

welcome back, sounds like an interesting project, let us know when it is available.

[blindcat87]

Yes, welcome back, and most definitely let us know when this project is available. Great timing on your return, there was just some discussion on audio bit depth and sample rate on Penton's thread concerning the BD release of Leon: The Professional which has 96/24 audio.

Personally, I dream of a day when all releases with sufficient source material and that can have it done without compromising video quality have 96/24 tracks. I also dream of more BD audio only and concert material in 96/24 or even 192/24 when possible.

Again, welcome back,

Chris

Originally Posted by Anthony P

welcome back, sounds like an interesting project, let us know when it is available.

[vukanan]

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