Archived: Insiders Thread

[coolmilo]

Hello PaidGeek,

It's really cool that you are spending your time to answer our questions.

Why did Amazon cancel "Marie Antoinette" on Blu-ray? I had it on order and I received an email today from Amazon stating that the order was cancelled. Did Sony delay or cancel this title on Blu-ray?

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

The Sony AVC encoder is a software product. We run it on multiple high end PC's in networked arrangement.

The encoder takes about 12X realtime in our current configuration.

We have been testing this encoder for over a year. It is ready for production use and it is available to other authoring facilities as a Sony product.

Wow! That's quite an improvement. I was reading AVC encoders were 20x as recent as eight months ago.

Your MPEG-2 encoder is real-time or better, correct?

Probably the biggest surprise is that our division president announced 100 titles over the next year. We are going to be very busy delivering all of that product.

Is that 100 unique titles for North America? Or across all territories?

HD DVD PRG announced 300 titles would be coming, which most speculate is across three territories (lots of repetition).

Gary

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by coolmilo

Hello PaidGeek,

It's really cool that you are spending your time to answer our questions.

Why did Amazon cancel "Marie Antoinette" on Blu-ray? I had it on order and I received an email today from Amazon stating that the order was cancelled. Did Sony delay or cancel this title on Blu-ray?

It is delayed for the time being. We are continuing to work on it.

[b2bonez]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

The Sony AVC encoder is a software product. We run it on multiple high end PC's in networked arrangement.

The encoder takes about 12X realtime in our current configuration.

We have been testing this encoder for over a year. It is ready for production use and it is available to other authoring facilities as a Sony product.

One final question... Are there any thoughts for the AVC SW encoder being ported to a CELL based system (something like the IBM CELL blade servers). It would seem to be a natural use for CELL, but a lot of SW library work would have to be done to make it more easy to develop and maintain. (Please tell me it's based on UNIX and not that "other stuff" )

b2b

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Wow! That's quite an improvement. I was reading AVC encoders were 20x as recent as eight months ago.

Your MPEG-2 encoder is real-time or better, correct?



Is that 100 unique titles for North America? Or across all territories?

HD DVD PRG announced 300 titles would be coming, which most speculate is across three territories (lots of repetition).

Gary

Our MPEG 2 encoder is real time, two passes. One analysis pass, then and encoding pass, then any customization work.

That was 100 titles for North America, mulitiplied by additional version to service all other territories where we have rights to sell those titles.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

That was 100 titles for North America, mulitiplied by additional version to service all other territories where we have rights to sell those titles.

WOW!!

Do you realize that Sony ALONE may release as many titles in North America as the entire HD DVD format in 2007? HD DVD promoters at CES said 300 titles for HD DVD, but that would be across all territories.

Can I add WOW again?

[blitz6speed]

Paidgeek

I have a question regarding sony and the BDA. We all know that Microsofts efforts into HD-DVD were to try and sabotage both formats into stalemate so that the consumer would give up and go to downloading VC-1 encoded HD movies instead. Is this well known in the industry, and if so, is that just another reason why so many companys in the movie industry and CE industry in support of Blu-Ray vs hd-dvd, to "fight the good fight" as they say? As it is now, Microsoft wants all CE companys to go away and its Xbox Live Marketplace service to take over. I am curious to know stances of the major people behind the scenes.

[Zinn]

Paidgeek, thanks again for answering our questions.

When will good movies like Closer and London be on Blu-ray?

[kuklitis]

I'm wondering how you treated the news that AACS is broken an approx. 10 and more movies ripped from HD-DVD and leaked into torrents ? Do you plan to go ahead with some kind of revokation or you plan to defend by other means ? Have your bosses are alreday comfortable with idea that Blu-ray movies also will follow this track and how do you estimate how long it will take some smart poeple to do a rip from PS3 ?!

[Blue]

Welcome,

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I do think the Blu-ray format is better than HD-DVD in key areas and especially for Europe, so you can expect me to be pro BD in my comments.

Can you elaborate on your comment as to why you think Blu-ray is even better than HD-DVD in Europe?

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by b2bonez

One final question... Are there any thoughts for the AVC SW encoder being ported to a CELL based system (something like the IBM CELL blade servers). It would seem to be a natural use for CELL, but a lot of SW library work would have to be done to make it more easy to develop and maintain. (Please tell me it's based on UNIX and not that "other stuff" )

b2b

This is a good question. I don't have any specific information on this, but may learn something in the coming months.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by blitz6speed

Paidgeek

I have a question regarding sony and the BDA. We all know that Microsofts efforts into HD-DVD were to try and sabotage both formats into stalemate so that the consumer would give up and go to downloading VC-1 encoded HD movies instead. Is this well known in the industry, and if so, is that just another reason why so many companys in the movie industry and CE industry in support of Blu-Ray vs hd-dvd, to "fight the good fight" as they say? As it is now, Microsoft wants all CE companys to go away and its Xbox Live Marketplace service to take over. I am curious to know stances of the major people behind the scenes.

I don't know all the history behind Microsoft's activities. What I can tell you is that the movie studios make a large part of their revenue from DVD and that revenue is starting to shrink. They will strategically support whatever format seems to present the best opportunity to maximize revenues and to sell our movies to the public. The logical choice for most studios is Blu-ray.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Zinn

Paidgeek, thanks again for answering our questions.

When will good movies like Closer and London be on Blu-ray?

I don't recall seeing these on the schedule or in production yet. Please excuse me, but unless the titles have been announced, I can't spoil the marketing departements official press releases.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by kuklitis

I'm wondering how you treated the news that AACS is broken an approx. 10 and more movies ripped from HD-DVD and leaked into torrents ? Do you plan to go ahead with some kind of revokation or you plan to defend by other means ? Have your bosses are alreday comfortable with idea that Blu-ray movies also will follow this track and how do you estimate how long it will take some smart poeple to do a rip from PS3 ?!

We are paying close attention to this situation. The AACS organization would have to call for a revocation and I know there is a flurry of activity going on over there. We do think that Blu-ray is vulnerable to the same sorts of attack, so it does not make sense to sit back and take any comfort that it happened to the other format. I'm not all that worried about the PS3 being any more vulnerable than a set top player. Those guys are pretty sharp about protecting content because it is as important to them (to protect games) as it is to us.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Blue

Welcome,

Can you elaborate on your comment as to why you think Blu-ray is even better than HD-DVD in Europe?

MS recently responded to a post that I further responded to in the AVS forum that summarizes the advantage of Blu-ray in Europe clearly. Please have a look at the pasted exchange I had with MS on this.

This is on the subject of audio configurations on HD-DVD versus BD...

Originally Posted by benwaggoner
I very much doubt the peaks would be as high as you suggest, especially with some new mux technologies that can smooth out those peaks. You'd really only hit that worst case peak if you had white noise in all channels sustained for a couple seconds. And you can certainly drop a few LSBs from white noise without causing any problems . And as paidgeek suggested, lossless compression becomes more efficient the higher the bit depth and number of channels.

FWIW, the PCM rate @ 48 KHz 24-bit 7.1 would be 9.21 Mbps per channel.

Assuming 4:1 for the TrueHD and a three hour movie, the capacity used would be:
TrueHD=9.33 GB
PCM=37.3 GB

So, in the above, the HD DVD 30 would have 8 GB MORE for other assets compared to BD-50.

Now, I don't know how realistic a scenario the above is (it's been cited by format "advocates" but not any insiders I'm aware of).


Yeah, they say "up to 4:1 for movie soundtracks." Soundtracks are easier, since there's often not much going on in some of the channels lots of the time. Efficiency will go up with the number of channels and number of bits, as long as there isn't some misapplied dithering (in which case >16-bit isn't that useful anyway).


Ben,


You don't have to have white noise to have peak bit rate problems. All the soundtracks will get loud and complex at the same time (likely at the same moment the video is getting very dynamic as well)

In real world encodes of Dolby True HD and DTS HD on two different typical films, the encoded file size ranged from a best case of 47% to a worst case of 40%. This puts your assumption off by an order of magnitude.

Working your calculations with a real world best case of 47% data reduction, and ignoring the peak bit rate issue for the sake of the argument, you will have 10GB left for your movie netting a video average bitrate of 7.6 Mbps, not so good...

With the same audio payload on a BD50, we can support a video average bit rate of 22.4 Mbps, more than acceptable...

Calculations


3 Streams X 8 Channels X 48K sample rate * 24b coding * 10800 seconds /8 Conv2bytes * .53 lossless coding /1000000 conv2 megs = 19,782 (audio payload)

50,000 BD50 - 19,782 audio storage = 30,217 for video and other
30,000 HDDVD 30 - 19,782 audio storage = 10,217 for video and other

[GoldenRedux]

paidgeek,

What are your thoughts on the idea that VC-1 transfers may be using some sort of pre-processing to remove or 'smoothen' film grain in an effort to either make a more 'pristine' looking image and/or keep bit-rates down to fit on HD DVD?

[dialog_gvf]

^^ Great question!

Paidgeek: Am I right that you mentioned "grain beats" on the revered King Kong release?

Gary

[Casey]

welcome paid:

Just wondering if you have any info on future PS3 system updates? Mainly are there any plans to fix the scalability problem (720p games only play at 480p on older hdtvs). Is this even possible to fix in a software push?

Also any plans for dvd upconversion? These are my only two complaints.

These have been rumored for the big software update in March to go along with the Euro launch...

[Garconis]

In the future, will all of the Blu-ray cases be the same design? Currently, it seems that each studio has a slightly different case design. Granted, they're the same overall dimensions, they aren't the same. I'm not sure if thats a cool thing, that each studio is different, or if its an annoying thing...

It also seems like they are more cheaply made than DVD cases. They have a much more difficult time closing securely and seem more flimsy and weak (probably due to the transparent type of plastic being used).

Lastly, I'm not sure if it has been announced yet or not, but is there a solid release date for Cars? I heard this June, but was just curious is there is a date floating around that I've missed.

Thanks, and welcome!

[shug7272]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Probably the biggest surprise is that our division president announced 100 titles over the next year. We are going to be very busy delivering all of that product.

Thats great!!! I take it you just mean Sony, so that means a ton of titles this year. Thanks for taking the time to answer.