Warner authoring facility, selects Scenarist BD-J authoring CineVision AVC encoding

[Tekman]

Global Digital Media Xchange (A WANER COMPANY) Increases Blu-ray Disc Production Capacity With Sonic

Global Digital Media Xchange (GDMX), a key Hollywood authoring facility, has selected Sonic’s Scenarist HDMV and BD-J authoring and CineVision AVC video encoding systems to increase its Blu-ray Disc (BD) production capabilities.

The expansion makes GDMX one of the largest high-definition production facilities in the world and enables the company to address the increase in BD title releases from its major motion picture clients.

Sonic’s world-renowned Scenarist authoring systems offers a unique workflow that combines automated tasks and precision manual controls. This workflow approach enables professional content creators to automate standard authoring tasks, such as graphics output for menus, buttons, and navigation, which provides more time for implementing advanced-interactivity components in BD-Java. Sonic’s CineVision AVC encoding system has built a reputation for cinematic image quality and reliability. With detailed encoding parameters controllable on a segment level, CineVision produces a precise, high-quality AVC stream that will satisfy even the most discriminating encoding professionals in Hollywood.

“We are delighted that another world-class authoring facility has selected Scenarist and CineVision to increase its BD title output capabilities,” said Rolf Hartley, senior vice president and general manager of Sonic’s professional products group. “Many more movies will be released on Blu-ray Disc over the coming year and, as we have been through previous packaged media adoption cycles, Sonic will be at the forefront delivering the most advanced authoring and encoding technology available.”

[SquidPuppet]

Hopefully we will see improvements in Warner BDs.....yeah I know I am

[Bobby Henderson]

Does this news actually mean Warner Bros. will stop encoding its movies in lower bit rate Microsoft VC-1 encodings and do high bitrate MPEG-4 AVC instead?

I'm a little confused by this since this authoring facility probably has numerous clients for BD authoring projects.

[Sonny]

I'm screwed too, whats the deal...AVC is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 'perrrrdy' . God I hope the have woken up

[Blu Titan]

Like most of the forum members, I want high bitrate encodes for my BD's!

[Grubert]

Warner abandoning VC-1?

After the break: hell freezes over.

[jkwest]

Originally Posted by BlueNeon

Like most of the forum members, I want high bitrate encodes for my BD's!

Like "all" I think you meant to say...

[Jack Torrance]

And the industry again shuns M$ (though they have a finger or two in AVC)... not that that's a bad thing

[owa]

Wow! Didn't expect that.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Jack Torrance

And the industry again shuns M$ (though they have a finger or two in AVC)... not that that's a bad thing

Actually Microsoft could have less of a share in VC-1 than we all thought. This April 2007 article states that MS got 'mugged' over the patent terms - most of the companies with IP in the codec would end up getting more money from VC-1 than Microsoft (including Panasonic, Toshiba and -yes- Sony).

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by Jack Torrance

And the industry again shuns M$ (though they have a finger or two in AVC)... not that that's a bad thing

More like a toe, one of the smaller ones at that...

MS have a tiny stake in VC-1, if you want specifics send me a PM and I'll explain the situation in more detail.

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by Grubert

Actually Microsoft could have less of a share in VC-1 than we all thought. This April 2007 article states that MS got 'mugged' over the patent terms - most of the companies with IP in the codec would end up getting more money from VC-1 than Microsoft (including Panasonic, Toshiba and -yes- Sony).

Mugged is a strong term, MS asked for patents that didn't belong to them, and surprise surprise, they weren't granted. Sure MS may have implemented some things nicely in VC-1, no denying it, but the tech didn't belong to them to implement. Anyway, the VC-1 patent pool isn't finalised MS will gain a bigger stake, but not by very much if the earlier rulings were anything to go by.

Look, VC-1 as an underlying technology is incredibly similar to AVC, there is no point in questioning the fact (as some would do), the worst part is that VC-1 was actually designed for HD content ground up, while AVC wasn't. High Profile 4.1 was a relatively late addition to the AVC spec to gain acceptance for HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Strangely enough, the arithmetic entropy encoding tools that AVC (CABAC) adopted to get bitrates down low enough for use in streaming (YouTube, etc...) are actually what is going to drive AVC forwards ahead of what VC-1 will be able to do. Sure is it more computationally expensive to encode, but the gain is worth it. VC-1 didn't bother with entropy encoding as MS wanted it to be easy to encode/decode for a PC architecture (obviously) and CABAC is anything but easy.

[Maximus]

For a nice summary of audio and video compression see this:

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/Multimedia/node200.html

[Papi4baby]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

Mugged is a strong term, MS asked for patents that didn't belong to them, and surprise surprise, they weren't granted. Sure MS may have implemented some things nicely in VC-1, no denying it, but the tech didn't belong to them to implement. Anyway, the VC-1 patent pool isn't finalised MS will gain a bigger stake, but not by very much if the earlier rulings were anything to go by.

Look, VC-1 as an underlying technology is incredibly similar to AVC, there is no point in questioning the fact (as some would do), the worst part is that VC-1 was actually designed for HD content ground up, while AVC wasn't. High Profile 4.1 was a relatively late addition to the AVC spec to gain acceptance for HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Strangely enough, the arithmetic entropy encoding tools that AVC (CABAC) adopted to get bitrates down low enough for use in streaming (YouTube, etc...) are actually what is going to drive AVC forwards ahead of what VC-1 will be able to do. Sure is it more computationally expensive to encode, but the gain is worth it. VC-1 didn't bother with entropy encoding as MS wanted it to be easy to encode/decode for a PC architecture (obviously) and CABAC is anything but easy.

Thank you for a very informative post, i read most of this i think in one your post at AVS about a month or two ago it was about encodes. between the A-guy and one of the BD insiders i think maybe it was you.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Papi4baby

Thank you for a very informative post

Ditto.

All of that has definitely something to do with MS's "moving away from the codec". If suddenly their slice of the pie gets smaller, no need to make pies anymore.

i read most of this i think in one your post at AVS about a month or two ago it was about encodes. between the A-guy and one of the BD insiders i think maybe it was you.

Probably this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=996498

[Papi4baby]

Originally Posted by Grubert

Ditto.

All of that has definitely something to do with MS's "moving away from the codec". If suddenly their slice of the pie gets smaller, no need to make pies anymore.



Probably this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=996498

Yup that's the one, thanks.