Ask questions to Blu-ray Special Features Producer Cliff

[4K2K]

Why are many special features, eg. making of documentaries now encoded at 24p when 60i would be much better?

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Cliff

It gives you more of a 'you are there' vibe, which I guess could be beneficial

That's why. Because when viewing a behind the scenes making of documentary, you don't want the film look then, you want the 'you are there, live look' that's why it's beneficial. Better, more live motion. Better motion resolution - a special feature making of probably won't be shot in the same way as the film so the 60i rate will cope better with the more hand-held style used in making-of docs than 24p.

Same with concerts and Sony using 24p for a live concert. 24p doesn't look live, and has lower motion resolution than 60i or 30p.

24p is obviously best for a film that has been shot that way, but I don't think it is the best for the real/live look that I think is best for special features and live concerts (that Sony lately wants to make 24p).

24p=Better for fiction
60i/p=Better for more real/live/you are there.

If behind the scenes features were supposed to be works of fiction, I think 24p would likely be better, but they're not supposed to be fictional.

[rosejallie]

Really very nice info, and thanks for sharing this info,

[Q?]

Hello Cliff, I have a simple question and forgive me if you've already answered, what work are you most proud of?
You mentioned Rambo earlier?

[Q?]

Thanks, sounds like a great job you have.
I did see Gamer on BD, but unfortunately never got around to see the special features, I will next time when it borrow it again.

Anyways, this is awesome, provides great insight to an aspect of the movie industry, thanks again!

[Mark Malmstrøm]

hi cliff - a question about encoding format for special features

special features in 480p ON VERY OLD FILMS or just older film where the original dvd features are included - does it always have to be like that or will film that does not have so much special fettures not be better suited with 720p features.

?????????


I like the fact even if it's not much then it's still a bit HD allthough low HD - but it's certainly better than standard defineition and the player don't have to change back and forth between SD and HD

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Cliff

the chances are almost 100% that the features were shot and completed in SD (480i usually). Presenting these in 720p or 1080 would give you no increase in quality and do nothing more than waste space on the disc.

Why wouldn't encoding an upscaled version allow an increase in quality? There are Blu-ray titles with upscaled SD footage (eg. upscaled to 1080i). Surely that allows you to use a more efficient codec like Mpeg4/AVC instead of mpeg2, as well as allow you to use a higher bitrate than DVD allows (if necessary), and probably do a better job of up-conversion, and the picture that ends up on the display can be made using a lot more (ie. smaller) macroblocks, and allow you to use higher bitrate audio?

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

Why wouldn't encoding an upscaled version allow an increase in quality? There are Blu-ray titles with upscaled SD footage (eg. upscaled to 1080i). Surely that allows you to use a more efficient codec like Mpeg4/AVC instead of mpeg2, as well as allow you to use a higher bitrate than DVD allows (if necessary), and probably do a better job of up-conversion, and the picture that ends up on the display can be made using a lot more (ie. smaller) macroblocks, and allow you to use higher bitrate audio?

As he said: an upscale is a waste of space for those features. As Cliff noted, NO increase in quality is gained.

Some use higher MPEG2 video, and sometimes special features in SD are re-encoded in VC-1 or AVC plus have slightly higher DD 2.0 rates (224 vs 192 kbps), but higher bitrates would be overkill for talking head interviews and raw production audio.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

As he said: an upscale is a waste of space for those features. As Cliff noted, NO increase in quality is gained.

Why would NO increase in quality of SD footage be gained when you upscaled before encoding with mpeg4 and (if necessary) a higher bitrate, since SD footage at DVD bitrates is not uncompressed or using lossless video?

Surely it would also allow better integration (eg. wouldn't it allow HD pop-up menus, perhaps faster menu operations (if the source content within the SD was 24Hz?), HD subtitles or other text/graphics as well as better audio? And save the player/TV zooming low bitrate macro-blocky video to full HD resolution where you will probably be watching it so it's bigger in your field of view (because of screen size & viewing distance) than if you just had a standard def TV - since the original low bitrate SD mpeg2 files will have been originally made & intended for viewing on SD CRT screens smaller in your field of view than encodes specifically made for watching on a HDTV.

I have a Blu-ray with PAL bonus footage upscaled to 1080/50i and while it's obviously not HD, I think it looks better than similar footage on similar 'PAL' DVDs (because it's free of upscaled low bitrate mpeg2 blocking and other upscaled low bitrate mpeg2 artefacts).

There's a series on BD (that don't have) that someone who works at the BBC (and on various sites) says is an upscale (because it was only mastered in SD) yet some amazon reviewers don't even know but think it's just lower quality because it was shot on 16mm and looks grainy etc., but I'm sure it would be better than the DVD (apart from being encoded in an incorrect way).

[fitprod]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

Why would NO increase in quality of SD footage be gained when you upscaled before encoding with mpeg4 and (if necessary) a higher bitrate, since SD footage at DVD bitrates is not uncompressed or using lossless video?

Because if the source is 480i - 29.97, there's nothing that can be done to improve it, without considerable expense... And that is no guarantee it will work. - I've recently seen some attempts to upscale an old SD broadcast piece for HD, and it had issues with dropped frames and stuttering.

Throwing extra money and bits into a supplement that will not gain anything, is a complete waste of money and time on the studio and post-production facilities. And why the hell would you want to take extra bits away from the encoding of the film? That's the primary reason for the disc. Sorry Cliff, I know supplements are you're bread and butter, but...

fitprod

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by fitprod

Because if the source is 480i - 29.97, there's nothing that can be done to improve it, without considerable expense... And that is no guarantee it will work. - I've recently seen some attempts to upscale an old SD broadcast piece for HD, and it had issues with dropped frames and stuttering.

Sorry that's totally wrong since SD video on DVD (whether 'PAL' or 'NTSC') is not lossless or uncompressed, and so would obviously improve in quality (as I have seen on a Blu-ray with PAL content upscaled to 1080/50i) when encoded as up-scaled if you have access to the less compressed SD versions to upscale and encode, when viewed on a big HDTV instead of your player/TV upscaling a very low bitrate SD DVD version full of macroblocking and other low bitrate mpeg2 artefacts to 5 or 6 times its original size.

The authoring house (if that is what it was) that produced the upscale you describe above obviously authored it very badly if the version encoded upscaled has issued with dropped frames and stuttering but the source didn't. Just because a bad authoring house can't upscale properly doesn't mean there aren't any advantages in doing it properly.

Throwing extra money and bits into a supplement that will not gain anything, is a complete waste of money and time on the studio and post-production facilities. And why the hell would you want to take extra bits away from the encoding of the film? That's the primary reason for the disc. Sorry Cliff, I know supplements are you're bread and butter, but...

fitprod

I don't want to take bits away from the main content, but since the source for the upscale is standard definition footage, without a lot of spatial resolution, and mpeg4 is about twice as efficient at lower bitrates than mpeg2, and they have the option to use more than one disc (eg. put the extras on a second disc if it would lower the visible quality of the main content), I don't see a problem with using upscaling for SD footage when that will lead to a lot less visible mpeg artefacts in that content, and allow other benefits, like those I've stated in the previous posts.

[fitprod]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

The authoring house (if that is what it was) that produced the upscale you describe above obviously authored it very badly if the version encoded upscaled has issued with dropped frames and stuttering but the source didn't. Just because a bad authoring house can't upscale properly doesn't mean there aren't any advantages in doing it properly.

It's the source, I've seen the master.

"Lossless" or "Uncompressed" is not the issue. If the source is edited and stored in 480i, it can not be upscaled to HD, with the push of a button. PAL is easier to convert to HD since it is actually slightly higher resolution (720x576 vs 720x480) and stored at 25 frames vs 29.97.

fitprod

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by fitprod

It's the source, I've seen the master.

I thought you said it was on conversion to HD that it got the "dropped frames and stuttering". If that was the cause that's bad conversion. Obviously if there are problems like that that are present in the source those sorts of problems could also appear in an encoded upscale but they could also appear in a version of that with low bitrate mpeg2 upscaled by the player/TV as well as lots more mpeg2 compression artefacts.

"Lossless" or "Uncompressed" is not the issue.

Yes it is, it means a higher bitrate and/or using a more efficient codec like mpeg4 instead of mpeg2 means a better (more accurate) representation of the source (assuming the source is not the mpeg2 DVD encode).

If the source is edited and stored in 480i, it can not be upscaled to HD, with the push of a button.

Okay, it takes someone who knows what they are doing to press the right buttons.

PAL is easier to convert to HD since it is actually slightly higher resolution (720x576 vs 720x480) and stored at 25 frames vs 29.97.

fitprod

Yes, PAL is higher resolution so should look better upscaled, but converting 29.97 fps content to HD shouldn't really be a problem either since Blu-ray supports 29.97 fps HD content, as well as 720p59.94 which can also store it.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Cliff

NOW... the point of all of this is that the detail present in both the 480i and the 1080i is going to be exactly the same, so why would you waste higher bitrate to present something in essentially the exact same quality? I'll put it to you this way- If you have 10 $5 bills and you Xerox each one once, you now have 20 pieces of paper, but you still only have $50 dollars. Why would you waste time and energy, not the mention the extra space in your wallet to hold double the amount of pieces of paper when it's still just $50? It's never going to be more than $50.

for extras and stuff I agree with you (probably since I don't care that much about them and when I do watch them I don't realy cares how good they look) but to answer your question of

why would you waste higher bitrate to present something in essentially the exact same quality?

I can think of a few (assuming main feature where I do care)

1) my display is 1080p, that means either my display will up scale it, an upscaler will up scale it or the player will upscale it, or it is 1080p on the disk (upscaled at the studio) at some point in time it will be upscaled to 1080p, a studio can have a much better upscaler then I have at home

2) DVD is compressed (I know so is BD) but a studio might have an uncompressed version. When I upscale at home the device is working off of the DVD which is compressed and the compressed image which has compression artefacts and it upscales not only the image but also those artefacts. If the studio starts off with an uncompressed image then the scaling won't be affected by the artefacts.

3) in theory if a studio sees upscaling artefacts and they want to, they can touch up the images in order to fix them, I don't have that luxury when I am watching it at home and it is upscaled on my side.

I get your point that BW is wasted and if the detail was lost because it is 480i no amount of upscale will bring it back (which is why I don’t watch upscaled DVDs and I am re-buying on BD) so why waste the little extra space needed for the 1080p instead of 480i (i.e. I use little since this is upscaled and so much more easily compressed since it has less detail then true 1080p) but just pointing out that sometimes it might be worth it.

[Mark Malmstrøm]

well i must say that i don't mind that the difference in quality is non-exixstence - even if is't just upcaling there is ´to see in a HD featurrette


i understand the trouble with space but then again 2010 only have one featurette and a trailer and since this is very little i would say such film with very little special fetures should present them in HD (also to sort of fill out disc space) if that's possible



And actually i think the quality of SD on a PS3 is fine - nothing wrong there but what do i know.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Cliff

But are you willing to bet that? I have an Oppo and it produces fantastic upscaling. Why would I want to have the quality of the upscale 'baked' into the disc? If it's not as good as what your player or display could do, you've now got a worse upconversion and with more of a chunk taken out of the overall disc's bit-budget.

Because the SD version that the studios have access to should be less compressed than the low bitrate mpeg2 version that is on a DVD/copied from the DVD version to a Blu-ray version. The Oppo would have to upscale a low bitrate compressed SD version, containing mpeg artefacts, where the artefacts will be upscaled too. Also, the studio's version that they are encoding as upscaled could upscale in non-realtime - a bit like how the quality of mpeg encoding on Blu-ray can be better than broadcast TV even at the same bitrate because they can use non-realtime encoding.

Originally Posted by Cliff

NOW... the point of all of this is that the detail present in both the 480i and the 1080i is going to be exactly the same, so why would you waste higher bitrate to present something in essentially the exact same quality?

Because it should display less visible mpeg artefacts, and may show the source better.

Let's say the authoring house has the option to either:
1) copy over the versions that are on the DVD version (which are encoded using mpeg2 at DVD bitrates)

or
2) Get the less compressed SD source that was used for the DVD version, and put that on Blu-ray at a higher bitrate than could be used for DVD. They could also upscale it to full HD. For this example, let's assume they do.

---
With option 1, lets assume the video is at 6 mbps (and none of that bitrate used for audio) in widescreen NTSC (720x480). Here's a frame of such a video, that has been encoded at 6 mbps, NTSC widescreen, loaded into a full hd comp, scaled at hq to full hd, and a frame exported as an uncompressed png, and cropped to give the image below:

[note the above text is from a video where text is in motion but not fast]

Option 2) The following image is from a frame of the same video, where the text is in motion, but an uncompressed version of the video was used. That video was imported into a 1920x1080 comp, scaled to full HD and compressed using H264 at about 35 mbps. A frame of that h264 compressed video was exported, and cropped in PSP:

(the image does look blurry etc because of motion/upscaling etc, but it lacks a lot of the mpeg artefacts visible in the first image, and the people authoring it could adjust the video settings to make it look better).

So the above is what the difference may be between encoding as an upscale and allowing your player/TV to upscale an mpeg2 video that was encoded to DVD bitrates - one contains a lot of visible mpeg artefacts, the other doesn't. The first video used 6 mbps, and according to the wikipedia article on "DVD video":

Professionally encoded videos average a bitrate of 4-5 Mbit/s with a maximum of 7–8 Mbit/s in high-action scenes

Note: I uploaded these as uncompressed .PNG files, but for some reason uploading them to the forum has converted them to .JPG, but the difference is still visible.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Cliff

But are you willing to bet that? I have an Oppo and it produces fantastic upscaling. Why would I want to have the quality of the upscale 'baked' into the disc? If it's not as good as what your player or display could do, you've now got a worse upconversion and with more of a chunk taken out of the overall disc's bit-budget[

don’t see where a bet needs to be made. Let’s assume Richard has an extremely good upscaler in his set-up better that is better then the studio, Joe does not. If there is an upscaled BD release Joe can buy it and enjoy it better then his DVD version on the other hand if Richard can do better at home then he has the choice to stick with DVD.

But if you're worried about compression artifacting from encoding SD video, isn't it just as likely to see compression artifacting from encoding HD video.

yes but a studio does not need to start with a faulty file, that is my point. It is mathematics. If I say (2+3)*2 the result will be different then 2+(3*2) if you buy stocks and the next day they are worth ½ and the next day after that it doubles you are back where you started but if you double the first day and ½ the next their value is 150% where you started from. The same here. Let’s say somewhere on your screen there is a square area with a 45degrees diagonal division (i.e. ½ black, ½ white) at 480 that would mean 1x1 pixel steps, if it is 1080 then it would mean 1x1 pixel steps but if the 480 is compressed and the encoder removed some detail the steps in the 480 will be more erratic maybe some steps will be more then 1x1 and worst case scenario it could go all the way to 8x8 steps. Do you agree? If you have a brilliant scaler it will take the uncompressed 480 see the uniformity, decide (In this case correctly) it is a diagonal and continue that idea when it tries to determine what the lost detail should be and you end up with good 1080p which then can be compressed. On the other hand if it is starting with the compressed 480 and that part of the image has blocking artefacts due to compression it would be unreasonable (especially if there are 8x8 pixels steps) for the home scaler to assume it was supposed to be a diagonal and guess at the missing detail. Further more if we assume that the 1080p is way over compressed at that point then the worst case scenario for blocking will be 8x8 pixel blocks/steps, while if we started with over compressed SD that was 8x8 and it just got scaled accordingly (assumed it was steps) you would get 18x18 steps. Furthermore if we twist the example above a bit and it was not a diagonal but it was supposed to be 1x1 steps of a 480 image, then the 1080p compression will add a bit of step like appearance to it which the 480 would not have had.

And again, it's much more likely for you to see scaling artifacts when the upconversion is done on the encoding end than it is to see them from your player or display. Trust me, if you see a badly encoded SD feature, it stands to reason it would have been as poorly upconverted/encoded in HD.

maybe, but I think you are over thinking this. The upconverter is the upconverter. Obviously it can have extremely complicated algorithms and do a good job or crappy ones and do a crappy (i.e. the equivalent of line doubling) job, but past what the studio (or person) buys there is no involvement and upconverting is not that expensive (you said your oppo is fantastic, how much did it cost). So I agree with badly encoded SD can mean badly encoded HD but I think the upconversion is a bit out of their hands, and like I pointed out before I think an upscale of badly encoded SD will be worst then a badly encoded upscaled SD. Also it is not as easy as saying “poorly” in the end there is no losslessly compressed BD or DVD there is always loss no matter how much time and money a studio puts into it. Neither DVD or BD have the BW and capacity necessary for content to be perfectly compressed.

But if the SD content is properly encoded and played back on a good display or player, you shouldn't see any real upscaling artifacts anyway.

there are always upscaling artefacts, in the end that is all upscaling actually is. Like you said “1080 lines of resolution that contains 480 lines of resolution is only EVER going to contain 480 lines” only 480 of those lines of details are real, the rest is made up by the upscaler, maybe it will guess right and help the image in those areas look a bit better, maybe it will guess wrong and it will look worst, but what ever happens it will be a guess. Also my point was simple but maybe I did not explain myself right, if the upscaler guesses wrong based on the 480 info it has I, as a user, can’t change anything but a guy at the studio can to make the 1080 lines look more like 1080 lines. Let’s go back to my example above, if the diagonal was meant to be small steps that where 1x1 480 pixels in size instead of a diagonal then the studio could correct it if they see it as worth it to make it ~2x2 in 1080p. Will they, won’t they? I am sure it would depend

So I have to ask again, why should you forfeit a substantial portion of your available bit budget to pre-upconverting SD content when the end result will be, all things being equal... equal?

it is all a game of give and take, if we are back at talking featurettes and it takes away from the film, then I agree with you the cost is way too high IMHO. And I would rather see the BW go to the film. But I don’t think that things will be equal and so I hope that studios don’t decide not to offer upscaled SD material (like TV shows/movies filmed on digital camcorders) just because there is an idea that all things will be equal.

1080 lines of resolution that contains 480 lines of resolution is only EVER going to contain 480 lines

agree 100%

I think what people are questioning is a) more a matter of convenience (not having the resolution change on their display) b) they think that upconverting is magically going to make this SD content look better because, hey, it's 1080... it's GOT to look better, or C) they think anything ever created is done at a resolution closer to HD than to SD and therefore including in HD finally allows these ten year old documentaries to be seen as they were shot. Well, A might be true, but B and C are definitely not.

I agree with you on this, but where we disagree is that everything is upconverted. a 1080p displays shows everything in 1080p and if something exists in SD then it is SD but at some point it will be upconverted to 1080p. So I see it as you are missing D) is the final result better (closer to what was originally taped in SD) if scaling is done on the TV, external scaler, on the BD/DVD player at the studio. I think we can all agree that TV/scaler/player will be impossible to answer since it would depend on the scaler included in the device (a particular TV might have a better scaler then a particular BD player and vice versa for example). But personaly I think that studio will win out over the other three and I gave my reasons above.



Now if they should do it or not, that is a different question and it is their choice. My issue is more with the assumption that it cannot be higher quality. Just like when people assume that a higher resolution master won't help with compression.

[CineMarketFounder]

Cliff

I was hoping given your specific background in the field, that you would be able to recommend a number of good BD-J/Special Feature menu development studios (or even recommend yourself).

This is a very specific skill set, and it seems these folks or studios are a bit difficult to find.

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

Regards,
CinemarketFounder

[CineMarketFounder]

Originally Posted by Cliff

I've got 2 I could recommend. I'll PM you.

Cliff

Thanks for offering up the suggestions. I am new to the forum. I do not see a PM from you yet.

I am hoping at least one is in Los Angeles, but anywhere will do!

Thanks again!
CMF

[JacobJeans]

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