Screen size, frame rate, color depth, encoding format, etc.

[WarpZone]

Okay, so I dabble in Flash cartoons. And maybe someday, I just might make one good enough to sell on DVD or be shown on TV. (Well, hey, I can dream, right?)

Except that DVD is dying, and Blu-ray just won the format wars, which means all the FAQs and Flash books are gonna suddenly be out of date. And soon we'll apparently have HD TV, and I have no idea what the format specifications on that are gonna be.

But for the moment, it seems to make the most sense for me to develop for the web right now, but keeping blu-ray in mind when I'm first setting up my stage size in Flash CS3 and choosing the colors for my characters.

So I guess what I'm saying is, please help me figure out what resolutions I should make my Flash movies at if the eventual goal is Blu Ray disc. Based on a few google searches, here are my best guesses, but any confirmations or corrections would be greatly appreciated:

Screen Size: 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. (Confirmed by numerous sources. Thanks, internet. )

Frame Rate: 24 frames per second (This is a guess? I saw some stats quoted from an official blu-ray gobbledygook report, but I have no idea what the 24 actually meant. I just assumed it was frame rate because 24 is the FPS for film.)

Color Depth: No idea. Please Help. Do I just use regular 32-bit computer graphics colors because it's digital video? Or do I need to stick to NTSC standards (RGB values clamped between 16 and 234 instead of the full 0-255) because everyone's TV uses NTSC colors? Please help!

Encoding: Apparently either MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC or SMPTE VC-1, it doesn't matter. (However, if you can recommend one format over the others for the purposes of rasterising a Flash animation, please let me know. (For example, if one format in particular is more likely to show nasty jagged compression artifacts when processing toon input, or, conversely, if one format compresses solid blocks of color particularly well for a smaller file size given the same running time, let me know about it.) Also, what menacing liscencing issues come with the use of each video format? Detailed instructions on how to sign my soul over to the particular devil who owns each format so that I can actually use any of this glorious new technology would be much appreciated.)

Pixel Shape: Unknown. Please Help. Are Blu-Ray pixels square like on a computer monitor? Or will I need to distort my movie in some way before I export it? NTSC uses rectangular pixels, which is weird and annoying.

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies. Sorry for being a noob and not reading all the old posts in the entire forum before asking this question. I seriously haven't been able to find all of this information together in one place online anywhere, at least not in language that I could understand.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by WarpZone

Screen Size: 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. (Confirmed by numerous sources. Thanks, internet. )

Correct. Though if you dream of your stuff to be made for Imax, go higher.

Frame Rate: 24 frames per second (This is a guess? I saw some stats quoted from an official blu-ray gobbledygook report, but I have no idea what the 24 actually meant. I just assumed it was frame rate because 24 is the FPS for film.)

Correct. 24 fps is what you need to animate for if you intend to transfer to film. Some European animation production go with 25fps because the production would only go into broadcast. Either way, 1080p24 is supported by BD players of all region.

Color Depth: No idea. Please Help.

Maximum is 4:4:4. BD uses 4:2:2 which is 8-bit color. You max out on space but at least if you intend to release it on BD, the downconversion is from the master files.

Encoding: Apparently either MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC or SMPTE VC-1, it doesn't matter.

If you can, don't compress. Save the animation files so that they can be re-rendered if and when you need to make a BD, which means that the encoding engineer would need an uncompressed HD master tape. Then you re-render for the tape to be compressed down the line.

Pixel Shape: Unknown. Please Help. Are Blu-Ray pixels square like on a computer monitor?

Square. ATSC standards use square pixels.


fuad

[WarpZone]

Thanks, WriteSimply! I just need a little clarification on some things...

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

Maximum is 4:4:4. BD uses 4:2:2 which is 8-bit color. You max out on space but at least if you intend to release it on BD, the downconversion is from the master files.

I'm afraid I don't know what your answer means. I'm not a TV guy. I'm a computer guy. Could you express your answer in terms of RGB values?

That's Red, Green, Blue values, like in Photoshop or when you go to change the colors in your desktop. These values combine additively the way light mixes, and usually 0 is the lowest possible value and 255 is the highest possible value.

For example, 0,0,0 is pitch black and 255,255,255 is pure white, 128,128,128 is a medium grey, and 0,0,255 would be the highest-possible-contrast blue. But when preparing this computer-generated movie clip for NTSC, you can Never use The Same Colors ( ) as you would on a computer screen.

The minimum RGB value NTSC sets can display is a 16,16,16 dark grey and the brightest possible white is a 234,234,234 light grey instead of white. I don't know what would happen if you were to try to write a 0,0,0 pixel to a TV screen, but presumably it would look really bad, because there's all these programs and filters and special tools geared towards making images and video NTSC-compliant by clamping the min and max values to 16,16,16 or 234,234,234 before the final export or in post.

(I'm not sure, but I think this convention has something to do with allowing the TV set to adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness values after the analog signal has been interpreted...)

Anyway, is it okay for me to make my black outlines black as a computer would understand black, or do I need to do it as a 16,16,16 washed out NTSC black instead? Or if the Blu-Ray convention is different from both computer graphics and NTSC standards, please explain the whole 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 things in terms of 0-255, and either RGB or HSB. Cuz those are the only terms I know how to work with on the production end.

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

If you can, don't compress. Save the animation files so that they can be re-rendered if and when you need to make a BD, which means that the encoding engineer would need an uncompressed HD master tape. Then you re-render for the tape to be compressed down the line.

Well, I mean, I only have so many gigs of space on this... workstation would be too generous... let's call it a laptop. I was kinda hoping I could export the movie as an AVI, convert to MPEG, burn it to Blu-Ray and I'm done. It sounds scary when you toss around terms like "encoding engineer." You mean I'd need to hire a whole extra person just to burn it?

I intend to keep the FLAs and SWFs around, of course, so I can export the original vector linework into any format needed. (And any resolution, for that matter, as long as it's at a 16:9 ratio with square pixels.) I don't know what a master tape is. Do you literally mean a tape? I don't even know what the word tape would mean in a modern context... I didn't think anyone was still using 'em.

How many gigs of storage are we talking about on these "uncompressed HD master tapes?" How expensive is the gear to produce them? And what video codeq should I use for uncompressed video? Do I really need one in advance, or could I just export one on demand from the original FLA?

I guess at this point, maybe you'd better just link me to the Disillusionment Thread. You know, the one that tells bright-eyed enthusiasts all about the dark seedy underbelly of the industry and how many kidneys I'd need to sell in order to actually produce a disc. Apparently it's not as simple as I thought it was. (I.E. Buy a burner and some writable media, burn the disks, mail the disks.)

Thanks for the precious knowlege. More please...

[kx11]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

Maximum is 4:4:4. BD uses 4:2:2 which is 8-bit color . You max out on space but at least if you intend to release it on BD, the downconversion is from the master files.

so there's no point in getting 10-bit color video lcd??

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by kx11

so there's no point in getting 10-bit color video lcd??

Different usage and terms.

I would like to explain but I got no time at the moment. Look here for an explanation on dithering.

Originally Posted by WarpZone

I'm afraid I don't know what your answer means. I'm not a TV guy. I'm a computer guy. Could you express your answer in terms of RGB values?

RGB values are from 0-255. 16 however is the black level for NTSC. Anything than that is "below black." 234 is white for NTSC and anything above is "whiter than white". Both terms are great when you talk computers but doesn't quite apply over NTSC/ATSC. It's really very silly. If it's below black, how can you see it? And how could you see anything whiter than white? That's why what works on computer screens needs filtering when translated to video. In short NTSC standard is fine.

4:2:2 is an example of a chroma subsampling term. 4 is Luma or brightness. Both 2s are the red chroma and blue chroma components. 4+2+2= 8-bits. 2^8 is 256 which is enough for RGB which has values from 0 to 255. Since BD uses 4:2:2 color space. DVD uses 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, which also explains why colors POP on BD as compared to DVD.

So while HD uses the full RGB gamut of 0-255, BD cuts off this gamut at 16, since that is black, so that more bits are saved. I believe it cuts off anything beyond 234 too. So while 16 looks grey and 234 off-white, with NTSC color its perfect.

4:4:4 is full RGB. According to research, very few people can spot the difference between this and 4:2:2. 4:2:2 uses HALF the bandwidth of 4:4:4 video, which is probably the reason why HD in BD uses it.

Well, I mean, I only have so many gigs of space on this... workstation would be too generous... let's call it a laptop. I was kinda hoping I could export the movie as an AVI, convert to MPEG, burn it to Blu-Ray and I'm done. It sounds scary when you toss around terms like "encoding engineer." You mean I'd need to hire a whole extra person just to burn it?

Only if you want to make it mass market product. Encoding engineer, the guy who makes sure that the video is top notch, is the guy that does the compression job for audio and video.

Yes, you can do that. If your projects are short, MPEG-2 is fine. But if it has a lot of detail or fast movement, you might want to look at H.264 codec to encode the video.

I don't know what a master tape is. Do you literally mean a tape? I don't even know what the word tape would mean in a modern context... I didn't think anyone was still using 'em.

Yes, TV and film production still uses tapes and they're still good. We're not talking VHS here. You "master" a tape from the telecine process or laserscan OR a direct-from-digital-files dump. Then the encoding engineer use the tape to encode.

How many gigs of storage are we talking about on these "uncompressed HD master tapes?" How expensive is the gear to produce them?

Quite expensive. But since you just clarified that you're the home brew type, you probably don't need it. But keep the original files! Back it up using your BD burner.

And what video codeq should I use for uncompressed video? Do I really need one in advance, or could I just export one on demand from the original FLA?

A video that is uncompressed doesn't need a video codec to render since it's uncompressed. Often a video codec refers to how things get lossily compressed. A lossless uncompressed video creates a lot more work when you want to lossy-compress them; lossless uncompressed->uncompressed->lossy compress.

I think I have reached my depth here but ask away. I'm sure other REAL experts will chime in.


fuad

[WarpZone]

Interesting! Thanks!

So I definitely want NTSC color on my disk, because I can fit more content on a disk that way? Makes sense! But I also want the web version to look as nice as possible, since the web version is basically the advertisement for the disk version.

Do I need to manually recolor the characters in my Flash file to make them NTSC-compatible? Or is it safe to just develop once for web, then run the video through an NTSC conversion tool? I've heard that the automatic NTSC tools don't always provide great results, but I can't immagine why this would be the case. I mean, it's a straightforward ratio conversion. 0:255 to 16:234. You'd think an automated tool could do this flawlessly, no sweat.

I don't exactly have a burner yet, so I can't just directly test these conversion tools myself. Has anyone used an NTSC conversion tool before? Can you recommend a good one? I'll probably just end up going with whichever one's freeware/open-source/very cheap shareware. Cuz, you know, homebrew. But it would be helpful to hear what the caveats are with using such a tool.

When I asked what codeq to use for an uncompressed master tape, what I really meant was "what video file format do I use?" I guess I was using the term "codeq" liberally to mean "video-playing software of any sort," not strictly "the portion of the software that is responsible for compression/decompression." Sorry for the confusion. I should have said "What type of file do I write to the Master Tape?"

I'll look into the H.264 codec. In general, I'd like to have as few intermediate steps as possible between Flash and the Blu-ray disk. Flash AS3 itself can only export directly to AVI or MOV, but as I understand it, there are third-party softwares that can convert a Flash SWF file into several types of movies not directly supported by the authoring tool. (Sometimes these tools even address issues with the original export process, like correctly displaying each frame of a motion-tweened looping animation as it moves across the stage, or showing particles or other content dynamically generated at run-time using ActionScript code.)

I doubt any were specifically designed with blu-ray in mind, though. There's a pretty severe cultural and economic disconnect between the communities of Flash artists and the cutting-edge videophiles.

I'd immagine at the very least I'll need a 3-step pipeline. Flash > AVI > Blu-Ray , where the second > symbol represents Some Tool. If anyone knows what Some Tool is, please let me know.

And if I do use a third-party converter to export my Flash file, I'll probably have a bigger choice of formats. Should I gravitate towards AVI as an uncompressed, lowest-common-denominator video format? Or is there a better format to use as a master video file?

Thanks again and again, WriteSimply. You are teaching me in a few sentances what would take me days to hunt for online, or months of trial-and-error to discover on my own.