In terms of transparency, I believe that severely low bitrate was a problem for Lady in the Water. Amir has said he'd give it a look, and I'd like to request that the other insiders to take a look as well -- time permitting.
Again, don't trust the bitrate meters. As you know, I can't share the particular bitrates being used on that title, of course. Based on the published specs, I don't see anything to indicate it uses an unusually low bitrate.

In the following thread, I have specific timecodes displaying digital noise (not just film grain). Hopefully Amir can look at these times when he gets a chance.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9820656&&#post9820656

As I've said, I am fearful that overcompression was problematic on this particular release, and I'd hate to see this issue continue. As "codec guys" I'm hoping that if you do see problems with this disk, you are in a position to help studios correct them in the future.
[/QUOTE]
Generally speaking, we're not aware of titles going out with bad artifacts, and we're available to the studios to help them correct any issues they might turn up in their initial encodes. We talk to them very frequently.

Can you elaborate on this ?

--Patrice

Patrice,

The short story is that the lossless codecs were never planned to be supported in HDMI version 1.0 or 1.1 and although there was a proposal to support them in a sub version of 1.2, it did not happen. Naturally this would not be a matter of bandwidth, but a question of defining and supporting the protocols. This is also a key reason that advanced codecs are not supported fully in current BD or HD-DVD devices. The disc formats were ahead of the interface and lossless codec specifications.

paidgeek,

Can you tell us if the version of "Casino Royale" that will be given away to the first 500,000 PS3 owners in Europe who register will be a BD25 or a BD50?

Thanks,
Darin

It will be the normal street version of the disc which is a BD50.

Patrice,

The short story is that the lossless codecs were never planned to be supported in HDMI version 1.0 or 1.1 and although there was a proposal to support them in a sub version of 1.2, it did not happen. Naturally this would not be a matter of bandwidth, but a question of defining and supporting the protocols. This is also a key reason that advanced codecs are not supported fully in current BD or HD-DVD devices. The disc formats were ahead of the interface and lossless codec specifications.
Many thanks for the answer...
In fact I had in mind the lossless (DTS-MA and Dolby True HD) being uncompressed by player and send as PCM over HDMI... Not bitstream transport (who cares really as there is no receiver that can deal with it yet, nor in the forseable futur)

That allready works fine (at least for DDTHD), with any HDMI version ;)

Do you think the main reason is HDMI (< 1.3) not supporting them (as bitstream) or the horse power require to decompress them in PCM ?

--Patrice

Again, don't trust the bitrate meters. As you know, I can't share the particular bitrates being used on that title, of course. Based on the published specs, I don't see anything to indicate it uses an unusually low bitrate.

Generally speaking, we're not aware of titles going out with bad artifacts, and we're available to the studios to help them correct any issues they might turn up in their initial encodes. We talk to them very frequently.

That might well be the case, but considering EatingPie has been kind enough to provide TCs, scene and artifact descriptions, could you just play the HD DVD and/or BD discs of Lady in the Water and check those scenes for artifacts?

Note: I don't care for that title in particular, but I'm looking forward to Warner's The Fountain and would hate to see the amazing cinematography of that title damaged by artifacts.

I'm curious, is there a DTS insider than can give any insight into when DTS-HD:MA will become available on current players over both hi-def formats?

I have already seen it once, and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary (mind you, I thought the movie was awful so I think I lost my way a couple of times), but I will look again (saw it on my old A1/umr cal'd Ruby.)

BTW... .I mixed Nacho Libre :)

Hello FilmMixer

Since you mixed Nacho, did you have any say in its soundtrack on HD DVD or Blu-ray? Paramount did a 1.5Mbps DD+ track for the HD DVD and a 640kbps for the BD. Do you know what resolution they used? Did you have any say at all in the choices made? How accurate would you say the presentation is in regards to transparency to the original mix? Did you think either did a better job of representing the master?

Amir,

I have a technical question on VC-1. Correct me if I am wrong, but VC-1 is essentially a low-bitrate codec (or at least derived from a low-bitrate codec). On HD-DVD and BluRay the bitrate can be quite high due to the high capacity of those media. What is the average percentage of quantisation data in VC-1 when used on such high bitrates? Thanks in advance for any insight on this matter!

Hello FilmMixer

Since you mixed Nacho, did you have any say in its soundtrack on HD DVD or Blu-ray? Paramount did a 1.5Mbps DD+ track for the HD DVD and a 640kbps for the BD. Do you know what resolution they used? Did you have any say at all in the choices made? How accurate would you say the presentation is in regards to transparency to the original mix? Did you think either did a better job of representing the master?

Kris... I have no say whatsover. The home video departments take our masters and have at them... On the rare occasion, I will do a remaster for the home video version (for Sony or Lionsgate for example,) but even after that, I am not involved except for QC.

That being said, I have found the HD DVD of Nacho is pretty close to the master.. mind you, this is not a title I have done a direct comaprison with, but I was really happy with the HD DVD... the Beck song leading into the battle jam and the finale with the orchestral overlay are difficult to encode because of all of harmonics (in the accoustic guitar) and the ammount of material in all channels with crowds and orchestra... Both sections sound great on the DD+ tracks.

I didn't bother to get the BR disc because of the lower bit rate track... I'll see if I can get a copy and check it out.

That might well be the case, but considering EatingPie has been kind enough to provide TCs, scene and artifact descriptions, could you just play the HD DVD and/or BD discs of Lady in the Water and check those scenes for artifacts?
We're looking into it. And yes, kudos to EatingPie for providing such a complete description.

Note that it's quite likely that any issue could be a source issue, not an encoding issue. In the QA process for initial VC-1 encodes, the majority of issues flagged by the viewers turn out to be in the master.

Note: I don't care for that title in particular, but I'm looking forward to Warner's The Fountain and would hate to see the amazing cinematography of that title damaged by artifacts.
Our goal as well, absolutely. I hope we don't have to re-prove the obsessive passion we have for making incredible looking movies with VC-1.

I have a technical question on VC-1. Correct me if I am wrong, but VC-1 is essentially a low-bitrate codec (or at least derived from a low-bitrate codec). On HD-DVD and BluRay the bitrate can be quite high due to the high capacity of those media. What is the average percentage of quantisation data in VC-1 when used on such high bitrates? Thanks in advance for any insight on this matter!
VC-1 isn't a low-bitrate codec (certainly less so than H.264). It does well at low bitrates certainly, but it has different techniques it uses in high-bitrate environments to take advantage of available bits.

As far as "percentage of quantization data" - I'm not sure what your question is. Average QP?

Again, don't trust the bitrate meters. As you know, I can't share the particular bitrates being used on that title, of course. Based on the published specs, I don't see anything to indicate it uses an unusually low bitrate.


I can understand the reason for you folks not sharing bit rate information . .
if the studio doesn't share it first. That's being polite and professional.

What I can't understand is how closely the studios hold this info . . . . it sometimes
feels like they're holding back something bad.

Any thoughts on this?

It would seem that "transparency" with information would also be a good thing.

So, when we say that we can now do in 10 Mbps what took us 12 Mbps before, that's what we're talking about - an improvement in the quality of the codec implementation. It has nothing to do with trying to starve the bit of discs, or because we want rates that low. It does mean content creators have more flexibility in how they want to use the bits, which is the whole point.

Think of it like improving the gas mileage of a car, if you want. It's an unadultrated good thing for all concerned. And remember, the tech that makes a Prius get 40+ mpg can also get a sports car to do 25+ mpg with no loss in performance...

To waggishly continue the car mileage metaphor;

Some manufacturers would lead you to believe that an SUV is more
efficient than a Prius because it has a bigger gas tank. :D


-30-

Kris... I have no say whatsover. The home video departments take our masters and have at them... On the rare occasion, I will do a remaster for the home video version (for Sony or Lionsgate for example,) but even after that, I am not involved except for QC.

That being said, I have found the HD DVD of Nacho is pretty close to the master.. mind you, this is not a title I have done a direct comaprison with, but I was really happy with the HD DVD... the Beck song leading into the battle jam and the finale with the orchestral overlay are difficult to encode because of all of harmonics (in the accoustic guitar) and the ammount of material in all channels with crowds and orchestra... Both sections sound great on the DD+ tracks.

I didn't bother to get the BR disc because of the lower bit rate track... I'll see if I can get a copy and check it out.

Thanks for the info! I've heard from a couple of industry types that DD+ at 1.5 is just about transparent so it would be interesting to hear your opinion since you actually do this stuff.

Are you at liberty to say what soundtracks you've re-done for home video release? I know that New Line had that done a lot where they would do the EQ'ing a lot different. Do most studios want the mix changed a lot for a near field enviroment or for more dynamics?

Thanks for the info! I've heard from a couple of industry types that DD+ at 1.5 is just about transparent so it would be interesting to hear your opinion since you actually do this stuff.

Are you at liberty to say what soundtracks you've re-done for home video release? I know that New Line had that done a lot where they would do the EQ'ing a lot different. Do most studios want the mix changed a lot for a near field enviroment or for more dynamics?


FM, I know that you did We Were Soldiers but I don't recall if you did it for the home video release (HD DVD) or only for the theatrical??

FM, I know that you did We Were Soldiers but I don't recall if you did it for the home video release (HD DVD) or only for the theatrical??

Ben.. Paramount is really good about using the theatrical printmasters for HV, so in this case they are one and the same.

Thanks for the info! I've heard from a couple of industry types that DD+ at 1.5 is just about transparent so it would be interesting to hear your opinion since you actually do this stuff.

Are you at liberty to say what soundtracks you've re-done for home video release? I know that New Line had that done a lot where they would do the EQ'ing a lot different. Do most studios want the mix changed a lot for a near field enviroment or for more dynamics?

Most people that I talk to think that anything abouve 1.2mbps is transparent for all practical purposes... I would tend to agree, and I took a lot of flack some months ago saying I would rather have a high rate lossy codec at 24bit than a downconverted 16 bit PCM/Lossless.

I've mixed and supervised a lot of films that have been remastered for home, and it's no secret what they are, but perhaps I can shed some light on what each of the differnt studios does.

Sony is by far the most thorough as far as home video goes. They actually remaster (as much as they can) for home on the mixing stage where the theatrical was done, and almost always with the original mixers. We set up so that we can A/B the original mix through the main monitors, the original mix through the near fields, the home mix on the nears (with or without bass redirection)... etc. It's the right way to do it.

Disney has a department that does a lot of remastering, and a lot of great work on their older catalog titles..

Lionsgate and New Lime use outside companies to do the remastering on most of their A-tier titles. Lionsgate will usually use the theatrical printmaster for their non-A titles.

Universal and WB have inhouse remastering, but it is much more of a mastering job than doing a lot of fidling with the original stems.

Paramount, for the most part, uses the original theatrical printmasters.


For the most part, when a remaster is done for HV, the only things changes are the dynamics of the mix (i.e. making sure that the dialog doesn't fall off too much or low level backgrounds) or they will create a discrete surround for ES/EX tracks.. sometimes they get a little creative and change some things in the actual tracks, but we won't talk about that here. :cool:

Amir,

I know this is a longshot, but should the swirling rumors of an upgraded 360 for enthusiasts be true, is there any possibility MS could incorporate an upgrade program for existing 360 owners who would be willing to upgrade at a discounted rate, say $79 (or however much more the upgraded version costs compared to the premium version) plus shipping??

Amir,

Regarding the "fix" for the audio issues for the HD-DVD add-on to the 360.
Will this be part of a system updates, ie., spring/fall system updates?
Or will the update fix be available separately only for users who have the add-on connected?

Thank you.

-Brian

(Just picked up my HD-DVD drive today and I can't wait to try it out tonight)

Amir,

Have Disney dropped VC-1 or are they just playing around with AVC?

BTW... .I mixed Nacho Libre :)

Wow, awesome!

The sound was actually very crucial to the humor of the film. Like the crunching toast, the crazy old lady, the various screams and other subtle (or not so subtle!) touches. Great job! :)

One theater I saw it in actually didn't reproduce these subtle sounds, and it put a huge dent in the movie. I was very happy that they were again prominant in the Blu-Ray (and presumably HD-DVD) mix.

Nacho was far and away my favorite movie of the year!

-Pie

Amir,

Have Disney dropped VC-1 or are they just playing around with AVC?

Along similar lines...

Does any insider know what codec they're using for Pirates? And what the heck, Cars too?

TIA.

-Pie

amirm

I'm quite impressed with King Kong and MIS3. They look how new HDs should look.
From other hand these titles have one of the best PQ.

What have made them so good- perfect master?

thx

I can understand the reason for you folks not sharing bit rate information . .
if the studio doesn't share it first. That's being polite and professional.

What I can't understand is how closely the studios hold this info . . . . it sometimes feels like they're holding back something bad.

Any thoughts on this?
Perhaps they want to avoid people debating them endlessly on AVS Forum :)?

Really, bitrate isn't that good an indicator of what a disc is going to look like. It's probably better that reviews have to look at the actual content instead of going off a simple metric.

To waggishly continue the car mileage metaphor;

Some manufacturers would lead you to believe that an SUV is more
efficient than a Prius because it has a bigger gas tank.
Indeed...

I'm quite impressed with King Kong and MIS3. They look how new HDs should look.
From other hand these titles have one of the best PQ.

What have made them so good- perfect master?

A high-quality master is the critical factor to getting a great HD experience. All compression can aspire to is transparency to the master.

Also, a good master is also relatively easy (although certainly not trivial) to encode - noise and grain use more bits than anything else.

Just curious. What happened to Amir? Is he still at MSFT?

Just curious. What happened to Amir? Is he still at MSFT?

Have you read the first post on this page? The attention span of people on this site is amazingly small. And if that is a jab at his speed in answering questions I believe an apology is in order.

This is a 2 party question:

1. Ben/Amir - Any insight on why the DVD/HD-DVD release for Nails 'BYIT' offer drasticly different audio codecs for DVD and HD-DVD? I am a little dissapointed I will have to purchase the HD-DVD version for the PQ, and DVD version for DTS 1.5. Was it a disk size constraint? Another reason"

2. Also I was rather dissapointed with the outcome of Fear and Loathing. While it was nice, it wasnt leaps and bounds over the previous DVD releases previosly. What codec was used. In regards to PQ, i didnt find as drastic differnece in between the 2 versions. Was it a poor master? Was it VC, MPEG,

And one final note, why we still using DD640 when DTS is fat superior.

From all the revies I have read for the Nails release, it has been norhing short of spectacular. I can wait to get hands on it next week.

For the Microsoft guys..

Assuming the same source, what similarities/differences would you expect with a VC-1 / DD+ HD DVD and a WMVHD DVD?

I noticed a number of Imax releases are available on WMVHD DVD. Any particular reason they favor that format?

This is a 2 party question:

1. Ben/Amir - Any insight on why the DVD/HD-DVD release for Nails 'BYIT' offer drasticly different audio codecs for DVD and HD-DVD? I am a little dissapointed I will have to purchase the HD-DVD version for the PQ, and DVD version for DTS 1.5. Was it a disk size constraint? Another reason"
.


Why would you have purchase the DVD for DTS 5.1? The HD-DVD has Dolby TrueHD, which is losslessly compressed audio (48/24 PCM).

For the Microsoft guys..

Assuming the same source, what similarities/differences would you expect with a VC-1 / DD+ HD DVD and a WMVHD DVD?
Huge.

the WMVHD discs were:

anamorphic 1440x1080, not full 1920x1080
Encoded at Main Profile, not Advanced Profile
Constant Bit Rate encoded, not Variably Bit Rate Encoded
Averaged around 10 Mbps, not the higher rates of typical HD DVD
Had peaks of only about 10 Mbps (since CBR), not the much higher rates available to HD DVD
Used a much older version of our encoder that was much less refined, lacking a huge number of features and tweaks we added for enhanced HD encoding.

That the WMVHD discs were as good as they were was remarkable, but VC-1 HD DVD is a whole generation past that.

I noticed a number of Imax releases are available on WMVHD DVD. Any particular reason they favor that format?[/QUOTE]
Note that most of them are several years old, predating HD DVD.

We're emphasizing HD DVD as the format we support for HD on discs, WMVHD was a great learning experience, but better for us to back an industry standard than to try and make our own from scratch.

Just curious. What happened to Amir? Is he still at MSFT? He has been ill and just out of the hospital.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9801334&&#post9801334

I am sorry for the late reply. Have been in and out of the hospital/doctor's offices for the last week or so.... I think he has been sleeping during the normal time he usually posts. :)


post #2173

He has been ill and just out of the hospital.

I hope he has a speedy recovery.

VC-1 isn't a low-bitrate codec (certainly less so than H.264). It does well at low bitrates certainly, but it has different techniques it uses in high-bitrate environments to take advantage of available bits.

As far as "percentage of quantization data" - I'm not sure what your question is. Average QP?

I do not know what QP means, but I mean the data from the cosine transform. In more simple terms: the 'jpeg' data of the stream.

Amir,
Hope you feel 100% again soon, I am sure you are missed at work and home.

What is the status of the HD DVD "traveling show?" I know there was a lot of interest in an Atlanta stop (closest to me).

I do not know what QP means, but I mean the data from the cosine transform. In more simple terms: the 'jpeg' data of the stream.
QP=Quantization Paramater. It's a measure of how quantized the video is - the "JPEG data" of the stream.

I still don't quite understand your question. Can you give me an example of the kind of answer you're looking for, e.g. from a JPEG file?

OK, at long last :), here is the official word from the Xbox team on the software update for HD DVD player on Xbox 360:

"We plan on shipping an update to the Xbox 360 HD DVD player in early to mid spring. In this update we will be adding DTS output, improved Audio, and improved title compatibility."

The variability there is that this is a software project and we are fixing/enhancing a lot of things and we want to make sure we get them right. So it is difficult to give an exact day for the update. First day of spring is March 20th I believe so that should give you some prespective on the approximate release date.

Let me again apologize for how hard it has been to get you some information on this update.

Thanks Amir for the update. I am sure it will make a lot of 360 owners very happy. Could you make it before my birthday on March 24th? :-) Just kidding.

I hope you feeling better. I know I have missed reading your very infomative posts.

Teddy

Thanks for the info Amir but more importantly, heal up proper!

OK, at long last :), here is the official word from the Xbox team on the software update for HD DVD player on Xbox 360:

"We plan on shipping an update to the Xbox 360 HD DVD player in early to mid spring. In this update we will be adding DTS output, improved Audio, and improved title compatibility."

The variability there is that this is a software project and we are fixing/enhancing a lot of things and we want to make sure we get them right. So it is difficult to give an exact day for the update. First day of spring is March 20th I believe so that should give you some prespective on the approximate release date.

Let me again apologize for how hard it has been to get you some information on this update.

well, it's closer to a definate. now amir, may i ask you if you know anything that will be done to correct lip sync problems? thank you.

First Tom (Broadcom) took ill, now amir...is there something hazardous to our health about this HD "stuff" ? :)

Get well soon, both of you!

QP=Quantization Paramater. It's a measure of how quantized the video is - the "JPEG data" of the stream.

I still don't quite understand your question. Can you give me an example of the kind of answer you're looking for, e.g. from a JPEG file?

The VC-1 stream contains besides the quantization data all sorts of other data, like headers, parameters, motion vectors, etc. I like to know what the percentage of quantization data is in the high-bitrate VC-1 stream, so <amount of qd> / <total stream size>. My guess is that the % is higher in a high-bitrate stream than in a low-bitrate stream. If I understand correctly I am looking for the inverse QP: the more data is used for the cosine transform, the higher the percentage is and the lower the QP is?

Example: in a normal movie on DVD, the quantization data is typical 85% of the total m2v stream data.

Amir,
Hope you feel 100% again soon, I am sure you are missed at work and home.

What is the status of the HD DVD "traveling show?" I know there was a lot of interest in an Atlanta stop (closest to me).
Thanks for your interest :). We are getting started on them again. First one will be in Vancouver (Canada). Then we are coming to your home town, Atlanta, and then up to Boston. Someone should probably create a new poll on which cities we should hit in addition to these as the old one is out of date given our previous visits.

Thanks for all the “get well” wishes. And no, it has nothing to do with HD :). Unfortunately, it is one of those cases where they don't have an accurate diagnosis. But I am well enough to get around and hopefully good enough to make the trip to Japan next week (for the 10th anniversary of DVD Forum!).

I have a question for Paidgeek, are you able to tell us the region encoding of the release of Big Fish that is coming out in the states? the pre-release back fo the case up at DVD Empire has region A, but surely the theatrical run for this film has finished and it has already been released on DVD almost everywhere.

OK, at long last :), here is the official word from the Xbox team on the software update for HD DVD player on Xbox 360:

"We plan on shipping an update to the Xbox 360 HD DVD player in early to mid spring. In this update we will be adding DTS output, improved Audio, and improved title compatibility."

The variability there is that this is a software project and we are fixing/enhancing a lot of things and we want to make sure we get them right. So it is difficult to give an exact day for the update. First day of spring is March 20th I believe so that should give you some prespective on the approximate release date.

Let me again apologize for how hard it has been to get you some information on this update.

Amir, excellent news - is it coincidental that it is around the date of the PS3 launch here in Europe :p Seriously, there's been a rumour flying around the internet regarding the update decreasing the fan noise of the 360, can you comment on this? It is a big issue (my brother, not an AV nut like me, commented on how loud it was, so much so it was distracting) This would help enormously vs. the PS3!

Then we are coming to your home town, Atlanta, and then up to Boston.

Has the Boston leg been finalized? I posted in that thread but never heard back about a date and location.

Amirm, glad to hear your feeling better man.


I have one question that puzzling me. Some movies look fantastic on my 51" Hitachi HDTV and others appear to look darker. I can't put my finger on the issue. I tested my settings with AVIA & Digital Video Essentials (DVDs) so, it's set to the best possible settings for my HDTV. My settings are perfect for my Xbox 360, DVD playback/360 game play but; I've noticed on the HD-DVD drive, that Fast and the Furious: Tokoyo Drift and Superman Returns appear darker both are the Combo format type? Could this be because of the Combo format or is it just darker pictures? I don't remember King Kong T3, Apollo 13 or Batman Begins being this dark.

To increase picture performace I think HD-DVD should trade mark a TV setup type program included on the HD-DVD that would be a cool feature to add to HD-DVD kind of like the setup bars some DVD's have This would give them another cool feature. Picture quality is becoming such a issue on these formats why not do that so your HDTV is constantly setup proper? My 2 cents worth hope that helps...

To increase picture performace I think HD-DVD should trade mark a TV setup type program included on the HD-DVD that would be a cool feature to add to HD-DVD kind of like the setup bars some DVD's have This would give them another cool feature. Picture quality is becoming such a issue on these formats why not do that so your HDTV is constantly setup proper? My 2 cents worth hope that helps...

I imported a disk from canal + and it had set up bars for brightness and contrast calibration. I don't know if that is standard on all releases in Europe but (Total Recall from Canal +) had it. :)

All Studio Canal Title have is (so far)...

--Patrice

Has the Boston leg been finalized? I posted in that thread but never heard back about a date and location.
Not yet but we are looking at some time in April.

Not yet but we are looking at some time in April.

The 16th is my birthday, if that has any bearing on your decision. :D

Thanks for your interest :). We are getting started on them again. First one will be in Vancouver (Canada). Then we are coming to your home town, Atlanta, and then up to Boston. Someone should probably create a new poll on which cities we should hit in addition to these as the old one is out of date given our previous visits.

Amir,
Where can I find a list of dates and locations for the road shows?
-t

Amir,
Where can I find a list of dates and locations for the road shows?
-t
We finalize them one at a time and post them to the threads that get created in the HD DVD section for that location.

In general, these are not road shows. As my schedule allows, I make a trip to meet with some of you who can come to the meeting. So there is no regular schedule for them as such.

The VC-1 stream contains besides the quantization data all sorts of other data, like headers, parameters, motion vectors, etc. I like to know what the percentage of quantization data is in the high-bitrate VC-1 stream, so <amount of qd> / <total stream size>. My guess is that the % is higher in a high-bitrate stream than in a low-bitrate stream. If I understand correctly I am looking for the inverse QP: the more data is used for the cosine transform, the higher the percentage is and the lower the QP is?

Example: in a normal movie on DVD, the quantization data is typical 85% of the total m2v stream data.
Ah, gotcha.

I haven't seen numbers on this before, but I'll see if someone has run those numbers. Overall, I'd expect we'd be in the same ballpark. We have efficiency improvents for both spatial encoding and motion vectors, so I doubt the ratio woudl be that different.

It'll also depend quite a bit on the content, of course.

Posts not conforming to the guidelines of this thread have been removed.

Posts not conforming to the guidelines of this thread have been removed.

Don, can you explain please? There seems to be many here waiting for an answer about this I dont quit see how it does not fit the guidlines. If you can explain then maybe we can reword it differently

Ok, lets re-word it...

Can any insider told us if studios releases delays are related to some changes required by recent AACS exploits ?

--Patrice

Amir,
Why has there been a slowdown in Q1 releases for HD DVD? Is it a security issue? Is it something else? If so, will they ramp up in May? Is Universal still planning on releasing 100 titles this year? Can you tell us what is going on?
Mods: If this does not meet the guidelines, please PM me and explain why.
J

Yes, here are the guidelines posted:
"Industry Insiders only may answer questions or make comments: this is the thread for chat between Insiders as well

any AVS member can post questions [only questions please] for Insiders- but we will not tolerate any bashing

AVS recognizes the special nature of Industry Insiders and values their participation: we ask all AVS members to treat them with respect "

The question that got deleted was whether any HD-DVD insider could say whether the 300 target for releases and 100 from Universal was still being promised? How this could be considered "bashing" or disrespectful is unclear to me. This comes from someone who *hopes* that the 300 target is still on, but want some input from insiders

Universal Releases for 2007

Jan - 4
Feb - 1
Mar - 2
Apr - 4
May - 2

Amir or anyone else who can answer, I would like to know why Universal is outputting so few movies per month when previously they were releasing 9 to 11 movies per month last year?

Amir,

this afternoon about ten posts asking about the lack of 2007 HD DVD releases were removed from the Insider Q & A thread. This is obviously a relevant and important concern for many HD DVD owners. Also, I am not sure that the studios or insiders even seem to be aware of the early adopters' concerns.

Some of the questions that were removed from the thread dealt with:
- Does HD DVD still plan to honor their promise of 300 titles this year (100 from Universal)?
- How many of the 300 titles will be imports?
- Why are there so few HD DVD title announcements so far in 2007?
- Why are no insiders or studios making official statements regarding the lack of titles?
- Is HD DVD doing anything in regards to Disney, Fox, and Lions Gate?

The general consensus of most HD DVD owners is that HD DVD is not releasing or announcing nearly enough titles. People want to know why there is a delay and when the titles will be released. Many HD DVD owners are purchasing PS3s and Blu-ray discs with the money they would have been using on new HD DVDs.

I encourage you or the studios who support HD DVD to release some sort of official statement reassuring early adopters and let us know when the quality titles will be released this year.

thank you

Amir,

this afternoon about ten posts asking about the lack of 2007 HD DVD releases were removed from the Insider Q & A thread. This is obviously a relevant and important concern for many HD DVD owners. Also, I am not sure that the studios or insiders even seem to be aware of the early adopters' concerns.

Some of the questions that were removed from the thread dealt with:
- Does HD DVD still plan to honor their promise of 300 titles this year (100 from Universal)?
- How many of the 300 titles will be imports?
- Why are there so few HD DVD title announcements so far in 2007?
- Why are no insiders or studios making official statements regarding the lack of titles?
- Is HD DVD doing anything in regards to Disney, Fox, and Lions Gate?

The general consensus of most HD DVD owners is that HD DVD is not releasing or announcing nearly enough titles. People want to know why there is a delay and when the titles will be released. Many HD DVD owners are purchasing PS3s and Blu-ray discs with the money they would have been using on new HD DVDs.

I encourage you or the studios who support HD DVD to release some sort of official statement reassuring early adopters and let us know when the quality titles will be released this year.

thank you


OK

The question has been asked enough: now please wait for a response from an Insider

Please don't repeat the question again

I have a question for Paidgeek, are you able to tell us the region encoding of the release of Big Fish that is coming out in the states? the pre-release back fo the case up at DVD Empire has region A, but surely the theatrical run for this film has finished and it has already been released on DVD almost everywhere.

Per company policy, I am sure this will be coded for all regions.

Bump:

Blu-ray insiders or anyone that knows:

How much persistent storage is mandated for profile 1.0 players?

Alternatively, does anyone know how much persistent storage has been included in any current players?

I have some questions concerning Warner's policy:

The Prestige will be released in Europe by Warner on both formats. What codec will be used for the european Blu-ray -- AVC (like the Buena Vista US release) or VC-1?

The subtext question I really want to ask is the following: does Warner have a contractual obligation to use VC-1 for its HD discs, or can the studio use whatever codec it wishes?

Considering the fact that the region A BD of The Prestige has won a lot of praise for its quality, is Warner allowed for instance to make a deal with Buena Vista to use its encode since it's already there, if they wanted to?

And if Warner has to use VC-1 for The Prestige, since BD and HD-DVD share the same video encode, isn't there the risk that the European BD might be a step down compared to the Buena Vista disc, due to its HD DVD legacy?

In short, when issues like this one arise, wouldn't it be common sense that studios and publishers just "share" the video encodes throughout the world?

Amir,
this afternoon about ten posts asking about the lack of 2007 HD DVD releases were removed from the Insider Q & A thread.
No worries. I saw them all before running to work this morning but no time to :). But appreciate the mods trying to focus us on specific Q/A, rather than areas that require discussion. Your questions are more specific than those so I think it fits the format better :).

This is obviously a relevant and important concern for many HD DVD owners. Also, I am not sure that the studios or insiders even seem to be aware of the early adopters' concerns.
You can bet that anything that I see of significance here gets communicated to our partners, whether we are talking about hardware, software or something in the middle. I can't always provide the answers I get back, but your voices are most definitely heard, and in many cases, acted upon. Having said this, please note that our competitors watch this space very carefully though so when people ask forward looking questions, I cannot provide specifics that would put us at a competitive disadvantage.

Some of the questions that were removed from the thread dealt with:
- Does HD DVD still plan to honor their promise of 300 titles this year (100 from Universal)?
Very much so.
- How many of the 300 titles will be imports?
We have not broken this out I don’t think so I won’t go there. But you already know that a 100 is from Uni. So significant number will be from major studios in US as soon as you add in Warner/Paramount. Also keep in mind that we did not include titles from distributors which we do not have a relationship with and alternative/adult content. So the sum total should be higher than 300.
- Why are there so few HD DVD title announcements so far in 2007?
I will just repeat the answers I have given before :):

1. This is usually a slow time of the year for electronics business. There is a big push before end of the year, then a breather, getting ready for spring.

2. We tend to not be as big on announcements before the fact.

On #2, I know people want us to “fight fire with fire” and that point is not lost on us.
- Why are no insiders or studios making official statements regarding the lack of titles?
On the insider front, we booted off the only studio insider that we had here representing studios publishing HD DVD. And I am sure there are not more people standing in line to be subjected to the same fate. I will try to compensate some for this by posting what I can but not everyone is comfortable with me representing them officially here.

Key thing is that lack of representation and news should not be construed as lack of action. There is a lot going on that we will be able to share them with you as time goes.
- Is HD DVD doing anything in regards to Disney, Fox, and Lions Gate?
Yes. The number one thing we are doing is getting the cost of the players down, so that there is a mass market there for their content. As has been noted before, the total sales of BD+HD DVD is not even 1% of DVD. We are putting a lot of engineering behind getting other companies to roll out cost effective HD DVD players. And for those interested, we are also hard at work enabling combo players to be built. All of this will help to develop a robust market for HD optical.

Ultimately, our approach here is to execute well to create a thriving marketplace around a format which provides great audio/video/interactivity and ready manufacturing. This will provide the best enticement for studios to support it. Artificial inducements only go so far.

The general consensus of most HD DVD owners is that HD DVD is not releasing or announcing nearly enough titles. People want to know why there is a delay and when the titles will be released. Many HD DVD owners are purchasing PS3s and Blu-ray discs with the money they would have been using on new HD DVDs.
I see and hear this. Believe me, the point is not lost on us. But this is not a one or two month venture for us. When I joined Microsoft, the favorite line everyone would use on me was, “it is a marathon, not a sprint.” You have to “integrate things over time” and not just focus on instantaneous results. These things take time and people need to have longer perspective than a couple of months. Also, we work very differently than the BD group and are bound to have strong cycles that they won’t have.

I know the outlook on the front lines may be different. But you would not believe the pipeline of projects in play that we see. We are talking about movies that you buy a player just to watch them! The best is yet to come as they say.

Let me finish by saying that I really appreciate the strong support for HD DVD out there. You have my personal assurance that you would be very pleased with what we are going to deliver. I certainly would not hang around here, if I did not think we were going to have a great year ahead of us. :)

I encourage you or the studios who support HD DVD to release some sort of official statement reassuring early adopters and let us know when the quality titles will be released this year.

thank you
Will do :).

Assume that I have plasma screen with HDMI 1.3 (1080p supported).

Will HD EX1 or XA2 send proper (24p without repeated frames) signal to my plasma?

thx

That was pretty much the same answer you gave me a while back. :(
J

I have some questions concerning Warner's policy:

The Prestige will be released in Europe by Warner on both formats. What codec will be used for the european Blu-ray -- AVC (like the Buena Vista US release) or VC-1?
I don't think anyone can disclose that until the title comes out.

The subtext question I really want to ask is the following: does Warner have a contractual obligation to use VC-1 for its HD discs, or can the studio use whatever codec it wishes?
They can use whatever codec they like. As you may recall, some of their early BD discs used MPEG-2. And that Warner was keen on getting off that, and back to VC-1.

Considering the fact that the region A BD of The Prestige has won a lot of praise for its quality, is Warner allowed for instance to make a deal with Buena Vista to use its encode since it's already there, if they wanted to?
In general, studios do not share their encodes with their distributors. The distributors get the rights to distribute a movie and usually buy the telecine masters. I know that is how Studio Canal works for example, wrt to the US titles they have rights to.

And if Warner has to use VC-1 for The Prestige, since BD and HD-DVD share the same video encode, isn't there the risk that the European BD might be a step down compared to the Buena Vista disc, due to its HD DVD legacy?

In short, when issues like this one arise, wouldn't it be common sense that studios and publishers just "share" the video encodes throughout the world?
Per above, they usually do not get encoded content, but the original master. They can of course, go and negotiate for to buy the encode. But I suspect they can get it done to their spec in the local area for similar cost. At least this is my understanding of it.

As to the risk, I suspect it holds both ways. If with smaller disc and lower bit rate we match the same quality (or heaven forbid, beat them), then there will be questions the other way too :p. Frankly, I think that title would look very good in VC-1 and any quality differences will make for nice arguments here, but in reality, will be of little consequence (assuming of course that it does come out in VC-1). Of course, if we look better, you can ignore what I just said. :D

Amir,

It looks like there is an assumption by some that even if HD DVD adds region encoding it won't have any affect on current players. Is the XBOX360 add-on guaranteed to stay region free for HD DVDs even if the format adds region encoding capability for the studios?

Thanks,
Darin

Amir, thanks for your answer.

I don't think anyone can disclose that until the title comes out.


Why?

Disclosing what codec is being used doesn't sound any different than saying that title A has a Dolby Digital track and title B has an audio commentary. It's not a critical information that can make or break sales. Can you elaborate why a studio would keep a codec under wraps until the last minute?


As to the risk, I suspect it holds both ways. If with smaller disc and lower bit rate we match the same quality (or heaven forbid, beat them), then there will be questions the other way too :p. Frankly, I think that title would look very good in VC-1 and any quality differences will make for nice arguments here, but in reality, will be of little consequence (assuming of course that it does come out in VC-1). Of course, if we look better, you can ignore what I just said. :D

Of course. But my question was in the broad sense: why fix something if it isn't broken?

Amir,

It looks like there is an assumption by some that even if HD DVD adds region encoding it won't have any affect on current players. Is the XBOX360 add-on guaranteed to stay region free for HD DVDs even if the format adds region encoding capability for the studios?

Thanks,
Darin
It is understood that if region coding is added to HD DVD spec, it will have a grace period for implementation and existing devices will be exempt from having to retroactively support it. This is because it is unreasonable to have expected companies to design in such features, when they did not know about it during the development of the product.

So the assumption is correct based on everything I know about the process.

Supposedly the current compromised software player(s) expire and have to be renewed after some period of time and it seems possible some studios may hold off some new releases pending confirmation things will be more secure. Can any insider confirm or correct this? Or provide a date?

- Tom

Amir:

Thank you for taking the time to reply but I would like to follow up on this until we get some further clarification of what is to be expected as far as movie content over the next several months.

A total of 13 titles announced for almost a half a year by HD DVD’s only major exclusive studio is way more then a bit of a slow down especially since Universal was releasing almost that amount of titles per month previously.

Universal releasing only one title for February is very disappointing to those of us who support HD and look forward each month to there release’s. And I think most of us would like to be able to purchase and watch more then 1-2 movies exclusive HD DVD’s per month.

Can you give any more detail to the cause of such a drastic slow down for a half of a year?

Can you please tell us if we can expect any drastic increase in exclusive HD content in the next 3-4 months or do we all just have to look forward to the second half of the year?

Are there any HD DVD's with interactive internet content coming up or has they already been released? It's hard to keep up :)

Why would you have purchase the DVD for DTS 5.1? The HD-DVD has Dolby TrueHD, which is losslessly compressed audio (48/24 PCM).

i Dont have a receiver that can decode TrueHD

i Dont have a receiver that can decode TrueHD
No one does. That's why the player decodes it for you, and sends the bits out over one of PCM over HDMI, analog multichannel, or recompression to a TOSLink compatible codec.

In the modern era, audio decoding has no more business being in a reciever than video decoding does. There's a reason why we aren't using ATSC compatible streams on a disc that are decoded in your TV :).

hi amir, I am curious. Does MS have IP in AVC? (Fwih, they do, but then one hears so much which turns out to be incorrect).

Yep. We're on the list:

http://www.mpegla.com/avc/

A total of 13 titles announced for almost a half a year by HD DVD’s only major exclusive studio is way more then a bit of a slow down especially since Universal was releasing almost that amount of titles per month previously.
What is announced so far and the reality will be different.

Universal releasing only one title for February is very disappointing to those of us who support HD and look forward each month to there release’s. And I think most of us would like to be able to purchase and watch more then 1-2 movies exclusive HD DVD’s per month.
I agree more movies would be better. But again, as for anyone selling things at retail, studios consider these months "dead" so very little promotion, and production goes into doing a lot now. All retail oriented activity surrounds key periods where there is a lot of consumer demand. And with that, one can justify promotion of content, etc. Yes, I appreciate BD group putting out titles now but compare the record for Disney, Fox, etc. with Universal last year and you see that they had a ton of catching up to do.

Can you give any more detail to the cause of such a drastic slow down for a half of a year?
I have given one of the key reasons above.

Can you please tell us if we can expect any drastic increase in exclusive HD content in the next 3-4 months or do we all just have to look forward to the second half of the year?
You can expect great products in this half and the second half. Per my note, spring is an important period so you can expect to see solid slate of titles for that.

Amir,
Whatever happened to the BCI titles?

Per my note, spring is an important period so you can expect to see solid slate of titles for that.
Isn't April considered part of spring?
J

In general, studios do not share their encodes with their distributors. The distributors get the rights to distribute a movie and usually buy the telecine masters. I know that is how Studio Canal works for example, wrt to the US titles they have rights to.

I wonder then where SC got their telecine master of TOTAL RECALL as it's clearly better than the one LG used for the BD.

Amirm, I solved the brightness issue, I had to raise brightness from 51% to 55%-56% this was strange because AVIA & Digital E.. said my best levels were at 51%. Well nice to know a adjustment was all that was needed.

But again, as for anyone selling things at retail, studios consider these months "dead" so very little promotion, and production goes into doing a lot now. All retail oriented activity surrounds key periods where there is a lot of consumer demand. And with that, one can justify promotion of content, etc.
If all studios consider the first quarter as a "dead zone" and BD has only released 15-20 titles a month right now, can we expect the same studios to pump out 80-100 titles a month later on the year too?

As a comparison, do you know how many regular DVDs are released monthly?

Finally, are the production time the same between SD and HD (from start of a project to distribution to retail)?

**

I have a question that isn't related to future titles! There have been many complaints Warner titles are "soft." For instance, see Batman Begins and The Departed. Obviously, we know it isn't VC-1 (see King Kong, Seabiscuit, etc). Has any insider viewed the master of these films and compared it to the encode?

I don't personally suspect there is a problem. However, people are comparing the sharpness of The Prestige and Batman Begins (being a lot of the same crew) and saying this is evidence of a problem with Warner.

Thanks,
Chris

If all studios consider the first quarter as a "dead zone" and BD has only released 15-20 titles a month right now, can we expect the same studios to pump out 80-100 titles a month later on the year too?
I think you are extrapolating something from my answer which I did not say :). I said that as a rule, the retail business is slow this time of year so HD DVD studios are matching their cycles to that. Clearly, BD studios are not if they are keeping the same run rate as the hot Christmas season or in case of Fox/Disney, doing even more than they did then. As such, I am not sure you can expect them to quadruple their run rate (putting aside whether that is possible from production/mastering point of view). Can they and will they do more titles then? I think it is reasonable to say yes. But saying they will go crazy relative to now, would be much harder to claim.

As a comparison, do you know how many regular DVDs are released monthly?
Not off hand. But the dynamics are not even remotely the same. There is a good market for DVD titles even in slow times given its much larger market (100X of BD/HD DVD). Not so with these formats.

Finally, are the production time the same between SD and HD (from start of a project to distribution to retail)?
I know a lot more about HD production than SD. But from anecdotal data I hear, they are similar (but the costs are not, certainly in the case of BD).

I wonder then where SC got their telecine master of TOTAL RECALL as it's clearly better than the one LG used for the BD.
Studio Canal takes special pride in restoring/re-mastering titles to much higher standards. I know, because they made a special point of explaining this to me the first time I met with their executives :). They say they spend considerably more money than others in similar situation.

Are there any HD DVD's with interactive internet content coming up or has they already been released? It's hard to keep up :)
Nothing released yet. But we showed prototypes at CES.

Reminder
Please follow the thread rules

This thread is for questions only to insiders,

Amir:

First, I wish you a full and speedy recovery.

I don't know if you have any information or can share anything in this forum, but I thought I'd take a shot:
is there any truth to the speculation in this forum on certain HD DVD's being released in the near future, specifically one or more Matrix movies (rumored for 4/10) and/or Jaws/ET etc.?
I think many would appreciate any information on these, even if it's only in the form of some hints as opposed to concrete confirmation.

In any case, thank you very much for your continuing contributions to the forum.

amirm, appreciate the detailed answer you gave earlier. A few questions: first however can you comment on this statement:

we are also hard at work enabling combo players to be built.

I find this a surprising statement from someone behind HD DVD. How do combo players benefit the HD DVD format? Isn't the goal for HD DVD to be the only HD optical format? How do combo players accomplish this? Is the HD DVD camp going to settle for coexistence with BR?

2 questions regarding the Xbox HD DVD player - the background image when a movie is stopped is not very attractive. Any chance that can be changed or allow users to choose their own background?

Will the eject button on the remote that comes with the addon be able to control the HD DVD tray?

Thanks again for your time.

I know a lot more about HD production than SD. But from anecdotal data I hear, they are similar (but the costs are not, certainly in the case of BD).


Can you explain with rounding of-course how much more expensive is it for Blu-Ray production vs HD-DVD? An average perhaps would also be interesting to know. Also, how did you get the information of production costs for BD if you work for Microsoft? Is it private info? (I just read in your sig that you do work with Blu-Ray discs when VC-1 is placed on them.. which makes sense..however how much more would be interesting to know.)

As you admit Blu-Ray has pumped up their releases and have pulled ahead of HD-DVD in sales during this period where sales are slow. Is it not smart of Sony/Disney to be doing this at this time since we are at a stage where early adopters are craving for more titles and support for either system is fickle and easily changeable since so few titles relatively have been purchased by all of us? We are seeing many threads of people selling all their HD-DVD collection and player because of lack of faith.

Even though the market represents 1% of the total disc sales, you especially should be interested in that 1% and seeing them remain loyal. I know the actions of the company you work for are the result of many thinkers and marketing people and perhaps you don't have much say in their doings other than trying to explain their actions on this forum. Since it would seem your mentioning to your marketing team how the majority of early adopters feel and there response has been to stay silent and do nothing seems to make me and others think they don't have the will to win.. Or at least as much as Sony has... Amir, I have great respect for you and although I have been critical of your posts in the past, I just want you to know I appreciate you coming on here and giving all of us the time of day. I do want your company to pull things together because the competition has brought out the best of both companies and does make you work harder at improving things quicker. It is my opinion that BD50 would not have been put into production had it not been for HD-DVD30 and VC-1 being so effective. And now when the table has turned, you guys have started to come up with HD-DVD51 to combat that. So I wish you and your team Godspeed, and keep on improving that codec of yours ;)

Amir

With DVDs, and say Xbox and PS2 games too, you knew that the content was always going to be on the physical disc which was reassuring. Now with HD DVD and Xbox 360 games for instance, you have the possibility for DLC as well.

I wonder how is the consumer going to keep tabs on the DLC for HD DVDs? For the Xbox 360 you simply go online with your Xbox 360 to check the available content for every game without having to pop in any games into the DVD drive, which is great. Is it going to be just as easy for HD DVDs or is this information going to be scattered about the different studios making it more difficult to fathom? I mean, will this information be gathered on one single website or will it be scattered about every studio website?

Thanks

I find this a surprising statement from someone behind HD DVD. How do combo players benefit the HD DVD format? Isn't the goal for HD DVD to be the only HD optical format? How do combo players accomplish this? Is the HD DVD camp going to settle for coexistence with BR?
Good question :). The interest we see currently is from BD companies wanting to add HD DVD capability to their products. As such, we see nothing but goodness from this. But even if others want to build them, that is also fine by us. We have no exclusivity requirement for people to work with us. If they need our help to build HD DVD playback into any system, we are here to help them.

You have to remember that our goal before taking sides in this equation, was to see if both formats could have equal features so that a single player could handle both. This is why we pushed so hard for BD format to adopt the same three codecs as HD DVD had, and use AACS instead of their proprietary copy protection that was in BD V1.0 recorders. Ditto for moving them from a Sony file system to UDF used in both formats now. We failed ultimately in getting unification on the interactivity but the win on the video side was still very significant in making it possible to build dual format players (no way to add HD decode in software).

On co-existence, that is where we are, and headed in the future. We have a strong commitment to the HD DVD format as does Toshiba. Together, we will ship a lot of HD DVD players. I assume Sony is not packing its bags with PS3 so that will be there too. We will have hundreds of titles this year. They will have hundreds of titles. Both of us are handicapped for now by the consumer being happy with DVD and its low cost hardware and large installed base. So we are pretty fairly situated compared to each other in grand scheme of things. Longer term, other factors may weigh in differently but there is nothing going on right now to predict a different future.

2 questions regarding the Xbox HD DVD player - the background image when a movie is stopped is not very attractive. Any chance that can be changed or allow users to choose their own background?

Will the eject button on the remote that comes with the addon be able to control the HD DVD tray?
I don’t know either answer but will try to find out.

Hi Amir,

Glad to hear the 360 Dashboard update is on track. Excellent news.

Quoting the Xbox team:

"In this update we will be adding DTS output, improved Audio, and improved title compatibility."

These improvements sound great, but another big question on a lot of peoples minds...what is the status of the audio-sync/lip-sync problem? Will this be addressed by this update?

Thanks in advance,
Stuart

Amir,

I wanted to bring something up about the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360.

I just purchased one this week, along with a handful of HD-DVDs. I use VGA out to my Samsung DLP at 720p, calibrated by me. I hooked up the player, used the Avia disc to make sure my levels were correct (had to turn Brightness/black level up about 5~6 notches), and was checking out some DVDs.

I was able to verify this by loading Call of Duty 3, which saves my screen/gamma settings in the options. A brightness setting of 51 is what it originally was, and previously I had used Avia to get that setting (before getting the HD-DVD add-on) and had tweaked CoD3's gamma setting to give the correct black level.


And I confirmed that this holds true when putting Avia in either the HD-DVD drive or main system drive. The Brightness black level has to be turned up 5~6 notches for SD DVD. Using the King Kong HD-DVD and SD DVD, to get the black bars at the top and bottom to be black, it required the same settings - 51 for HD-DVD and 56~57 for SD DVD.


I also experimented with the component cable connection, as my TV will take 1080i (not possible over VGA) but not 1080p. I tried component cables in both 720p and 1080i and found the following results.

For my component connection, HD-DVD requires the same Brightness black level setting I had used previously before switching to VGA cables - 59. However checking Avia and King Kong SD in either drive, in either resolution, I had to turn the Brightness black level setting down from 59 all the way to 35!


I confirmed all of this multiple, multiple times.

Unless this is just a fluke on my system only, it looks like the software update for the HD-DVD player altered the SD DVD decoding portion of the software, greatly throwing off at least the black level threshold. Perhaps it accidentally changed the IRE, although I don't know why it would be 5~6 notches off over VGA and 24 notches off for Component, and in the opposite direction.

Amir, have you ever seen or heard anything like or about this?
Thanks.

Regards,

Brian

Studio Canal takes special pride in restoring/re-mastering titles to much higher standards. I know, because they made a special point of explaining this to me the first time I met with their executives :). They say they spend considerably more money than others in similar situation.

OK, but you said the overseas studios usually buy the telecine masters and do their own authoring and compression. So in the case of TOTAL RECALL, did SC have their own telecine done or did they get the master from LG? I had heard that LG had used the wrong (older) telecine on their BD.

OK, but you said the overseas studios usually buy the telecine masters and do their own authoring and compression. So in the case of TOTAL RECALL, did SC have their own telecine done or did they get the master from LG? I had heard that LG had used the wrong (older) telecine on their BD.
I don't really know. That level of detail is not something we worry about :). But note that some of the improvements has come from use of VC-1 and better encoding, not just a better master.

I don't really know. That level of detail is not something we worry about :). But note that some of the improvements has come from use of VC-1 and better encoding, not just a better master.

Actually, after doing some research I just found out that the Carolco library is owned by Studio Canal whereas LG is just the U.S. rights holder. I would assume from this that SC had access to better elements in addition to the better encoding.

I have another question, if you are allowed to answer.

You have mentioned a tool that Warner uses for their VC-1 masters that make them usable on BD. Is this something developed exclusively for Warner or is it available to other studios as well? I ask this in reference to Paramount using MPEG2 on some BDs that have VC-1 on HD-DVD.

You have mentioned a tool that Warner uses for their VC-1 masters that make them usable on BD. Is this something developed exclusively for Warner or is it available to other studios as well? I ask this in reference to Paramount using MPEG2 on some BDs that have VC-1 on HD-DVD.
Not Amir, but I can answer that one. It's available to anyone who has the encoder. And it's a very usual tool that saves a ton of time.

Hi Amir, about a year ago you had stated (http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2006/03/19/86944.aspx) that, “Microsoft is hard at work in developing native HD DVD playback in Windows Vista. We have a large, dedicated team working with our hardware partners, optimizing our software infrastructure, and ensuring compliance with copy protection measures so we can stay on target for providing HD-DVD playback on Windows Vista this year. Finally, as we have mentioned time and time again, Microsoft has no plans to provide native Blu-ray playback functionality in Windows Vista. Such functionality will be provided by third parties, similar to the way DVD playback is offered today.”

I've purchased Microsoft Vista Home Premium x64 since it included Media Center (fantastic product by the way) and understand that ATI will be releasing drivers in March to support HD DVD under Vista x64. Judging from your statement does this mean that a free update for Vista is coming that will enable HD DVD playback in Media Center? I have the XBox 360 HD DVD add-on and would love to get it working in MC for Vista x64.

I've purchased Microsoft Vista Home Premium x64 since it included Media Center (fantastic product by the way) and understand that ATI will be releasing drivers in March to support HD DVD under Vista x64. Judging from your statement does this mean that a free update for Vista is coming that will enable HD DVD playback in Media Center? I have the XBox 360 HD DVD add-on and would love to get it working in MC for Vista x64.
Not anymore. We changed our plans about a year ago, when we realized that there were a number of companies building HD DVD playback for PCs (and did so for XP, where we had no plans). So we decided to help them with compatibility suites and other assistance, as opposed to building our own player. The team did go on to build the Xbox 360 player however.

As to using the 360 drive, that is certainly possible now. The drive is WHQL certified and should work well with third-party players.

Not anymore. We changed our plans about a year ago, when we realized that there were a number of companies building HD DVD playback for PCs (and did so for XP, where we had no plans). So we decided to help them with compatibility suites and other assistance, as opposed to building our own player. The team did go on to build the Xbox 360 player however.

As to using the 360 drive, that is certainly possible now. The drive is WHQL certified and should work well with third-party players.
That is a shame. It looks like Vista Media Center will only allow low resolution DVD format natively. Unless I am reading this incorrectly, so I'll ask the question more directly.

Will Vista Media Center ever be able to play HD DVD natively, within the Media Center interface?

Michael

Not anymore. We changed our plans about a year ago, when we realized that there were a number of companies building HD DVD playback for PCs (and did so for XP, where we had no plans). So we decided to help them with compatibility suites and other assistance, as opposed to building our own player. The team did go on to build the Xbox 360 player however.

As to using the 360 drive, that is certainly possible now. The drive is WHQL certified and should work well with third-party players.
Thank you for the quick reply. It is unfortunate that HD DVD playback will not be coming from Microsoft for Vista as was intially planned. With respect to third party software, I do not expect there to be any 64-bit solution any time soon, especially one that will allow native HD DVD playback within Media Center itself since it is a 64-bit program and will require 64-bit decoders. In that light, would it be possible for Microsoft to release an update or add-on for 64-bit versions of Vista for HD DVD playback within Media Center? I for one -- and I am sure many others in my situation -- would be willing to pay a reasonable fee that would allow full HD DVD playback within Media Center itself. After having a taste of what it is capable of I now want to use it for everything. :)

Amir,

The Xbox 360 allows me to display 16:9 content over VGA at my plasma's native 1024x768 resolution.

Windows Media Player also allows me to compensate for my plasma's rectangular pixels to produce a similar result.

In both situations it means I can run with 1:1 pixel mapping for optimum results with both HD and non-HD content.

Windows XP Media Centre Edition on the other hand steadfastly refuses to compensate for rectangular pixels even though there are thousands upon thousands of plasmas out there with this set-up, and more being produced all the time. Part of the advantages in going for an HTPC is 1:1 pixel mapping, but it's just not possible with MCE and a great many plasma displays.

I have to run at 1280x720, losing 48 lines of resolution plus introducing ugly scaling artefacts.

Does MCE in Vista support rectangular pixels? Will there ever be proper support for 16:9 1024x768 within Windows XP Media Centre Edition? It's not as if it would be difficult to provide support for.

Will Vista Media Center ever be able to play HD DVD natively, within the Media Center interface?

Michael
Actually, your question is not very precise :). In Vista, we have the ability for third-parties to plug into the event that gets created when someone inserts an HD DVD (or BD) disc. That means third-party players can seamlessly integrate their players into Media Center.

But I suspect you are asking if there is Microsoft code to play HD DVD and for that, the answer is no. In the future of course, we might add this functionality as we did with DVD playback. But for now, you have to rely on third-party solutions.

Amir,

The Xbox 360 allows me to display 16:9 content over VGA at my plasma's native 1024x768 resolution.

Windows Media Player also allows me to compensate for my plasma's rectangular pixels to produce a similar result.

In both situations it means I can run with 1:1 pixel mapping for optimum results with both HD and non-HD content.

Windows XP Media Centre Edition on the other hand steadfastly refuses to compensate for rectangular pixels even though there are thousands upon thousands of plasmas out there with this set-up, and more being produced all the time. Part of the advantages in going for an HTPC is 1:1 pixel mapping, but it's just not possible with MCE and a great many plasma displays.

I have to run at 1280x720, losing 48 lines of resolution plus introducing ugly scaling artefacts.

Does MCE in Vista support rectangular pixels? Will there ever be proper support for 16:9 1024x768 within Windows XP Media Centre Edition? It's not as if it would be difficult to provide support for.
I don't know the answer to this. I just put in the question to the team. Will report back what I heard.

BTW, the feature in Media Player came from AVS Forum people asking for it :).

Hi Amir,

You seem to have missed my question (hopefully by accident, and you're not deliberately avoiding it :)

Can you please let us know if the spring dashboard update will do anything about the 360 HD-DVD lip-sync problems?

Thanks,
Stuart

Hi Amir,

You seem to have missed my question (hopefully by accident, and you're not deliberately avoiding it :)

Can you please let us know if the spring dashboard update will do anything about the 360 HD-DVD lip-sync problems?

Thanks,
Stuart
The update has many bug fixes. My memory is a bit hazy on this but I am fairly certain we have made fixes in this area. But please keep in mind that there are many, many causes for lip sync from authoring to the display/processor. So I don't want to say any and all sync issues are resolved as I see sync problems with stand-alone BD/HD DVD players, HD cable, my Sony TV, etc. I will be here to pester the team, should there be bugs that are in our player in this regard post update :).

Hi Amir,

Thanks for the quick response. I totally understand that sync issues can be introduced at many points in a home theater system (I've read of people encountering sync problems due to their tv's doing upconverting without them realizing it).

That being said, a lot of people have complained of "common" lip-sync issues (for example, many people have noted specific spots in Batman Begins which exhibit problems). That leads me to think that particular lip-sync issue is being introduced by the HD-DVD add-on, so I was wondering if anything has been done to rectify anything the add-on has been causing.

Thanks,
Stuart

Windows XP Media Centre Edition on the other hand steadfastly refuses to compensate for rectangular pixels even though there are thousands upon thousands of plasmas out there with this set-up, and more being produced all the time. Part of the advantages in going for an HTPC is 1:1 pixel mapping, but it's just not possible with MCE and a great many plasma displays.

I have to run at 1280x720, losing 48 lines of resolution plus introducing ugly scaling artefacts.

Does MCE in Vista support rectangular pixels? Will there ever be proper support for 16:9 1024x768 within Windows XP Media Centre Edition? It's not as if it would be difficult to provide support for.
OK, I got the answer. It seems that this is an implicit option, rather than explicit. But it is there.

During first-run setup (or later under settings) on Vista, if you set the resolution to 4:3 (or similar non-16:9 resolution) but that you indicate you have a widescreen display, MCE will assume non-square pixel and set the display mode accordingly.

Question to the MS guys:

You know, many of us HTPC'lers like players like Media Player Classic or ZoomPlayer, because they're very flexible (you can choose which DirectShow filters to use etc). Now there are nice MPEG2 DirectShow decoders available and also nice H.264 decoders. But there's not a single VC-1 decoder available that works fluidly with MPC on my quite well equipped PC. Since VC-1 seems to be a really good codec, I think this is a bad situation.

So would MS consider offering a speedy DirectShow VC-1 decoder? Either for free or for a small price? That would be great! And IMHO it would help VC-1 to get more fans...

Amir,

I was in Ultimate Electronics in Mesa Arizona and they have a big professional display for HD and Bluray. One side sporting each.

The problem is, the big marketing board describing HD DVD says that it "Supports 720p resolution". On the other side, where Bluray is described, it says "Supports full 1080p for maximum HD resolution".

This display is very large.

If I'm in the shoes of anyone in the HD DVD camp this sort of thing would make me livid.

My question is:
Are the proper people aware of this and stuff like this? Is anything being done about it?

The problem is, the big marketing board describing HD DVD says that it "Supports 720p resolution". On the other side, where Bluray is described, it says "Supports full 1080p for maximum HD resolution".

This display is very large.

If I'm in the shoes of anyone in the HD DVD camp this sort of thing would make me livid.

Just to add to this ... today's BestBuy two page ad about BD/HD does the same.

Amir,

I was in Ultimate Electronics in Mesa Arizona and they have a big professional display for HD and Bluray. One side sporting each.

The problem is, the big marketing board describing HD DVD says that it "Supports 720p resolution". On the other side, where Bluray is described, it says "Supports full 1080p for maximum HD resolution".

This display is very large.

If I'm in the shoes of anyone in the HD DVD camp this sort of thing would make me livid.

My question is:
Are the proper people aware of this and stuff like this? Is anything being done about it?

Hi Amir,

As a follow-up to thrustbucket's question, do you have an email address where you would like us to forward other examples of retailers spreading incorrect or misleading information?

For example, in today's Sunday print advertisement, Best Buy stated the following regarding the Toshiba HD-A2:

"Enjoy the jaw-dropping color and clarity of 720p HD and watch all your standard DVDs in near-HD quality."

This misleading information is also part of their on-line purchasing information.

Thanks.

Larry

Why is it that every single Best Buy promotion needs to have a Blu Ray slant?

I guess this question would go to the Blu Ray insiders. What sort of deals or incentives does the BDA have with Best Buy that would seemingly be responsible for these persistent errors and omissions in favor of Blu Ray?

I have a hard time believing that these are honest mistakes as they happen frequently, and never are they anything but to the detriment of HD DVD.

Amir,

I wanted to bring something up about the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360.

I just purchased one this week, along with a handful of HD-DVDs. I use VGA out to my Samsung DLP at 720p, calibrated by me. I hooked up the player, used the Avia disc to make sure my levels were correct (had to turn Brightness/black level up about 5~6 notches), and was checking out some DVDs.

I was able to verify this by loading Call of Duty 3, which saves my screen/gamma settings in the options. A brightness setting of 51 is what it originally was, and previously I had used Avia to get that setting (before getting the HD-DVD add-on) and had tweaked CoD3's gamma setting to give the correct black level.


And I confirmed that this holds true when putting Avia in either the HD-DVD drive or main system drive. The Brightness black level has to be turned up 5~6 notches for SD DVD. Using the King Kong HD-DVD and SD DVD, to get the black bars at the top and bottom to be black, it required the same settings - 51 for HD-DVD and 56~57 for SD DVD.


I also experimented with the component cable connection, as my TV will take 1080i (not possible over VGA) but not 1080p. I tried component cables in both 720p and 1080i and found the following results.

For my component connection, HD-DVD requires the same Brightness black level setting I had used previously before switching to VGA cables - 59. However checking Avia and King Kong SD in either drive, in either resolution, I had to turn the Brightness black level setting down from 59 all the way to 35!


I confirmed all of this multiple, multiple times.

Unless this is just a fluke on my system only, it looks like the software update for the HD-DVD player altered the SD DVD decoding portion of the software, greatly throwing off at least the black level threshold. Perhaps it accidentally changed the IRE, although I don't know why it would be 5~6 notches off over VGA and 24 notches off for Component, and in the opposite direction.

Amir, have you ever seen or heard anything like or about this?
Thanks.

Regards,

Brian


To everyone:
I followed up with Amir via PM about this. I had forgotten that the 360 doesn't upconvert over component, so for that test and the large difference in black level setting, it was most likely just the different service menu settings for 480p versus 720p on my TV. Still not sure why, but the black level does change 5~6 notches (on my TV) when playing SD DVDs versus HD-DVDs using VGA at 720p for both.

Actually, your question is not very precise :). In Vista, we have the ability for third-parties to plug into the event that gets created when someone inserts an HD DVD (or BD) disc. That means third-party players can seamlessly integrate their players into Media Center.

But I suspect you are asking if there is Microsoft code to play HD DVD and for that, the answer is no. In the future of course, we might add this functionality as we did with DVD playback. But for now, you have to rely on third-party solutions.
The only trouble with this approach is that third-party players try to distinguish themselves by having different user interfaces and features and do not integrate well into the Media Center interface. This limits Media Center's ability to actually perform and be a Media Center.

Why? Users do not want to learn several different ways of performing a given task. They like a simple unified approach and one that Media Center until now has provided and where it has excelled. Relying on third-party vendors for HD DVD capability will ensure that Media Center will never be for the masses. The multiple user interfaces required will be too cumbersome for most families to operate.

Michael

Amir can you go into more detail on which AVC encodes you feel someone might argue are "broken" as I've seen nothing but terrific results.

The only trouble with this approach is that third-party players try to distinguish themselves by having different user interfaces and features and do not integrate well into the Media Center interface. This limits Media Center's ability to actually perform and be a Media Center.

Why? Users do not want to learn several different ways of performing a given task. They like a simple unified approach and one that Media Center until now has provided and where it has excelled. Relying on third-party vendors for HD DVD capability will ensure that Media Center will never be for the masses. The multiple user interfaces required will be too cumbersome for most families to operate.

Michael
I agree. Now that Media Center is standard in Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista it should be touted for not only standard definition DVD playback, but HD DVD as well. I now have a MC remote and HD DVD drive, and I think that Microsoft should at the very least offer a solution for integrated HD DVD playback by offering decoders for x86 and x64 systems for the buying public. I would be willing to pay for this instead of a third party alternative that relies on a separate interface other than Media Center. This would further encourage the adoption of HD DVD for those who are still sitting on the high-def fence.

Amir-

I know you mentioned before that the audio for Studio Canal discs would most likely be OK in the future. Is there anyway you can confirm the T2 and Graduate discs are OK?

Thank you in advance,
Chris

Hi Amir:

I just wanted to say thanks for answering my questions/posts. I also wanted to say I hope all is well as far as your health.

I am distraught about the lack of support being shown from Universal currently and think releases like this month with only one movie is more then a slow down, its more like a slow death. But I do hope and look forward to more being released soon as you suggest.

Thanks again

It is understood that if region coding is added to HD DVD spec, it will have a grace period for implementation and existing devices will be exempt from having to retroactively support it. This is because it is unreasonable to have expected companies to design in such features, when they did not know about it during the development of the product.

So the assumption is correct based on everything I know about the process.

Amir, not exactly sure what you mean by grace period.

do you mean that X months before new devices need to have RC? X months before existing devices need to have RC?

also if for some reason a new FW or renewal happens, will that mean that RC will most likely also be applied
?

Amir, not exactly sure what you mean by grace period.

do you mean that X months before new devices need to have RC? X months before existing devices need to have RC?
X months after the specifications are approved by DVD Forum (typically 18 months). So if the spec is approved December 2007, no one is obligated to support it until say, May of 2009.

also if for some reason a new FW or renewal happens, will that mean that RC will most likely also be applied
?
It would only mean that, if the provider of such software/firmware, would want to add the feature, even though not obligated by DVD Forum. Given the desirability of region free products from consumer point of view, it would be hard to imagine a company volunteering to do this on their own.

I can tell you that we would have no motivation to add region coding to Xbox 360 HD DVD player before we are obligated to do so.

Finally, keep in mind that there is not a whole lot of momentum behind region coding in DVD Forum for HD DVD. A number of major companies are against it, including some studios. So I give it very low odds in getting approved and would not be surprised if it goes away sometime this year...

Amir can you go into more detail on which AVC encodes you feel someone might argue are "broken" as I've seen nothing but terrific results.
We have yet to see one that does as well as our VC-1 encoder. But you want to see broken AVC titles, take a look at HD DVDs that have come out of Japan. Those are done by the Toshiba encoder which from what we hear from the post houses, is one of the best, if not the best now.

You have to remember that we have the luxury of seeing both the master, and the AVC encode when we go against it. You all are stuck with a single encode with no other reference to compare it to. When we do the comparison, we always see less detail in the AVC encode.

And to be fair, BD's higher rate does erase some of the sins of AVC. But not all....

Before I get a ton of arguments on this :), please remember that the studios who use VC-1 today, can choose to use any codec they want. And AVC companies are constantly pushing them to use their encoder. There is a reason they continue to use VC-1.

Now does this mean the AVC encodes look awful? Of course not. Give it good sources and encode it well, and it can impress. But for those of us in the know, there is always something left behind and we ask, why do that when VC-1 doesn't suffer the same?

Hi Amir:

I just wanted to say thanks for answering my questions/posts. I also wanted to say I hope all is well as far as your health.
Thanks.

I am distraught about the lack of support being shown from Universal currently and think releases like this month with only one movie is more then a slow down, its more like a slow death. But I do hope and look forward to more being released soon as you suggest.

Thanks again
I think everyone has the right to be distraught by lack of news releases from Universal. But no one should be distraught by what they are actually doing for HD DVD. Their resolve could not be stronger than it is today and you will see that in their actions in the future. BTW, the same holds true of other HD DVD studios. All of them are just as serious if not more about HD DVD, than they have always been. So really, the only malaise is in the eyes of AVS forum members. Outside here, everyone sees much stronger activity around HD DVD than we have ever had. We are certainly as busy as you can imagine with it all….

Amir or Ben,

Going back to the encoding time for a min:
Let's say that Batman Begins on HD DVD took 2 weeks to encode using VC-1. That was some time ago. Present day, how long would it take to encode due to the improvements with the lastest and greatest VC-1 toolset and encoder?

Ah, gotcha.

I haven't seen numbers on this before, but I'll see if someone has run those numbers. Overall, I'd expect we'd be in the same ballpark. We have efficiency improvents for both spatial encoding and motion vectors, so I doubt the ratio woudl be that different.

It'll also depend quite a bit on the content, of course.

I am sorry if I seem a bit impatient, but do you have already some info? There is so much going on in this thread that this item sinks away amongst the other questions. Otherwise please send a PM if you know something more, I might miss it if you post it here. Thanks !

We have yet to see one that does as well as our VC-1 encoder. But you want to see broken AVC titles, take a look at HD DVDs that have come out of Japan. Those are done by the Toshiba encoder which from what we hear from the post houses, is one of the best, if not the best now.

You have to remember that we have the luxury of seeing both the master, and the AVC encode when we go against it. You all are stuck with a single encode with no other reference to compare it to. When we do the comparison, we always see less detail in the AVC encode.

And to be fair, BD's higher rate does erase some of the sins of AVC. But not all....

Before I get a ton of arguments on this :), please remember that the studios who use VC-1 today, can choose to use any codec they want. And AVC companies are constantly pushing them to use their encoder. There is a reason they continue to use VC-1.

Now does this mean the AVC encodes look awful? Of course not. Give it good sources and encode it well, and it can impress. But for those of us in the know, there is always something left behind and we ask, why do that when VC-1 doesn't suffer the same?

...

I would also like to ask, as a real world benchmark ;) , if there is any insider who can/is allowed to hint the codec choice for Buena Vista's upcoming "crown jewel" Pirates of the Caribbean I+II releases?

Amir

Do you have any idea, when we´ll see the first wave of Broadcom based HD DVD players from the Chinese companies, announced at the CES2007.

Q2, Q3 or later.???

And which street prices should we expect.??

:rolleyes:

what are the other alleged "sins" of AVC, as you put it, besides higher bitrate requirements? thanks

cheers :)

Have there been tests done with Toshiba's AVC encoder vs. Sony's AVC encoder. Who does BVHE use to get their AVC encodes done?

Thanks.

you want to see broken AVC titles, take a look at HD DVDs that have come out of Japan. Those are done by the Toshiba encoder which from what we hear from the post houses, is one of the best, if not the best now.

So is it Toshiba ineptness that is causing the problems? It seems that other companies producing AVC titles are doing exceptional jobs and they don't even have the "best" encoders.

Why is it that every single Best Buy promotion needs to have a Blu Ray slant?

I guess this question would go to the Blu Ray insiders. What sort of deals or incentives does the BDA have with Best Buy that would seemingly be responsible for these persistent errors and omissions in favor of Blu Ray?

I have a hard time believing that these are honest mistakes as they happen frequently, and never are they anything but to the detriment of HD DVD.

Larry imo mis-quoted, I just copied/pasted:

"Enjoy the jaw-dropping clarity of vivid high-definition with this HD DVD player that can also upconvert your standard DVD library to 720p or 1080i resolution."

Larry seemed to make some changes which changed the message details. OR BB quickly fixed their errors and updated it with this.

Who does BVHE use to get their AVC encodes done?

Panasonic

Thanks.


I think everyone has the right to be distraught by lack of news releases from Universal. But no one should be distraught by what they are actually doing for HD DVD. Their resolve could not be stronger than it is today and you will see that in their actions in the future. BTW, the same holds true of other HD DVD studios. All of them are just as serious if not more about HD DVD, than they have always been. So really, the only malaise is in the eyes of AVS forum members. Outside here, everyone sees much stronger activity around HD DVD than we have ever had. We are certainly as busy as you can imagine with it all….

Amir,

I have a question I will ask you but first you should now this. I have quite a few friends who own HD-DVD players and movies who do not frequent the AVS forum who feel very strongly that this "malaise" is very real and lasting for too long. I did not need to inform them of it when they can see it for themselves. If your team and those around you have as strong a resolve as you say they do, actions speak louder than words. A few of those friends are almost at the giving up stage and I don't blame them.

Although I'd still like my original question in post 2345 to be answered. My new question is about VC-1 in general. Batman Begins for example was an early VC-1 encode made to fit onto a 30GB disc. That encode was very good however it wasn't enough to be considered a tier 0 title. If you were able to do the encoding for that movie over again to be placed on an HD-DVD51 for some special edition. Would the movie be able to achieve tier 0 quality using VC-1 because of a higher bitrate and newer methods or encoder versions? I know there are many factors involved with quality but I am looking for any type of answer you can give. I believe you have seen the Batman Begins master and compared it to the VC-1 encode back when it was being worked on. Would a higher bitrate have helped the title back then or simply better tweaking? I know you guys have gone thru enhancements as you have mentioned and have improved upon the VC-1 codec since then. My other question would be if you had to do another re-encode of Batman Begins for a 30GB HD-DVD today. Would current technology be good enough using today’s VC-1 encoder to make the film look better and be closer to tier 0 than it was? I know it is a lot to ask and is a very theoretical question however you don't have to answer with Batman Begins as the movie but any generic title that would fall under the same pattern would do.

You may be thinking "Where am I going with this?" or "Why do I want to know this information?" It is simply because I still trust in you and believe when you say VC-1 is hands down better than all the rest you have seen when compared to other codecs when being compared to the original masters. Since I do believe you, I want to know how much better is Vc-1 on 50 or 51 GB's going to look in the future when compared to the same films done to fit on 30GB discs. It is almost a 40% increase in space available so the quality has a huge amount of room to get that much better since it doesn't have to compress as much. If the quality increase is going to be as much as I imagine it to be, then we all here on AVS forum have a lot to look foreword to in the future when VC-1 gets chosen by the studios more and more and 50-51GB discs get used regularly. Regardless of who wins the format war, your division will be working with VC-1 and 50-51GB's of space sooner rather than later so your input on this could bring some excitement back into the crowd.. And it really doesn't matter if we are on Blu-Ray's or HD-DVD side since whomever wins the format war will still benefit from VC-1 when it is used in the future by the victorious format..

Larry imo mis-quoted, I just copied/pasted:

"Enjoy the jaw-dropping clarity of vivid high-definition with this HD DVD player that can also upconvert your standard DVD library to 720p or 1080i resolution."

Larry seemed to make some changes which changed the message details. OR BB quickly fixed their errors and updated it with this.

Hi,

If you are referring to me, I have the print advertisement in my hand and it is as I posted it. Furthermore, as I write this, Best Buy's on-line circular (http://bestbuy.shoplocal.com/bestbuy/default.aspx?action=detail&flashbrowse=y&storeid=2413252&rapid=371523&pagenumber=19&listingid=-2093729633&ref=%2fbestbuy%2fdefault.aspx%3faction%3dbrowsepageflash%26s toreid%3d2413252%26pagenumber%3d19%26rapid%3d371523%26prvid% 3d022507ba) (which also permits on-line purchasing) continues to state "Enjoy the jaw-dropping color and clarity of 720p HD and watch all your standard DVDs in near-HD quality. (HD-A2)"

Here's an other posting on the subject:

Best Buy Ad says HD-DVD "720p" (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=810943)

Larry

Another Studio Canal question: For movies who's native language is in English (ie. T2, Graduate, etc), will one be able to watch the movie in English with NO subtitles? Are they still playing on having the language selection menu at the beginning so it's a seamless English experience for US viewers?

Thanks again,
Chris

Another Studio Canal question: For movies who's native language is in English (ie. T2, Graduate, etc), will one be able to watch the movie in English with NO subtitles? Are they still playing on having the language selection menu at the beginning so it's a seamless English experience for US viewers?

Thanks again,
Chris

English audio tracks without subtitling will be possible for StudioCanal HD DVD titles which are also released in UK: Leaving Las Vegas, Terminator 2, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Arizona Dream, Deer Hunter, The Graduate and Mulholland Drive.

Titles with english audio and forced subtitles: Serpico, Million Dollar Baby, We were soldiers, Traffic and Three days of the Condor.

mod

a friendly reminder: this thread is for Questions to Insiders only: and only Insiders can answer them

Thanks ;)

Thanks Xavier,

Did you have any insider info as to why Studio Canal postponed (again) on more month their releases ?

--Patrice

Mod : Afaik, Xavier is a Microsoft France insider quite involved on Studio Canal encoding support...

But you want to see broken AVC titles, take a look at HD DVDs that have come out of Japan.

I find it unusual that you make one example that almost nobody in the USA has access to.

Perhaps you can point out a bad USA release to support your claims?

I am very interested in what support you have for your idea that VC-1 is superior to AVC when we have seen Open Season and The Prestige offer excellent image quality using the AVC codec.

We also see Paramount using AVC on HD DVD with Babel - is that release broken? I have not seen it so I would be interested in your view of this title.

I am also interested in your opinion of Flightplan - which to me didn't look very good despite being high bitrate VC-1.

Please help us to understand the superiority of VC-1 - so far I don't see it myself.

How can one tell which codec a film is using? I have looked on the back of all my hd dvd's and they don't seem to say.

A general question to insiders:

What formal and informal lines of communications are there between BD & Universal Studios and HD DVD & Fox/Disney/Sony? Do the sides meet up regularly (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, etc.) to discussion the state of affairs and to check up on progress?

If there are discussions, how far up the command structure does it go?

Although I'd still like my original question in post 2345 to be answered. My new question is about VC-1 in general. Batman Begins for example was an early VC-1 encode made to fit onto a 30GB disc. If you were able to do the encoding for that movie over again to be placed on an HD-DVD51 for some special edition. Would the movie be able to achieve tier 0 quality using VC-1 because of a higher bitrate and newer methods or encoder versions? I know you guys have gone thru enhancements as you have mentioned and have improved upon the VC-1 codec since then. My other question would be if you had to do another re-encode of Batman Begins for a 30GB HD-DVD today. Would current technology be good enough using today’s VC-1 encoder to make the film look better and be closer to tier 0 than it was? You may be thinking "Where am I going with this?" or "Why do I want to know this information?" It is simply because I still trust in you and believe when you say VC-1 is hands down better than all the rest you have seen when compared to other codecs when being compared to the original masters. Since I do believe you, I want to know how much better is Vc-1 on 50 or 51 GB's going to look in the future when compared to the same films done to fit on 30GB discs.

First thanks for the trust in our abilities wrt to VC-1 and kind hearted post :). Was nice to see in the sea of push backs otherwise. Second, I am glad you asked me about this movie because I know it well. I had watched it in the theater, and for once, I was most impressed with a sequel to a comic book -- unexpected story line, and great production overall. I had really enjoyed watching it on the big screen. Needless to say, when I heard it was coming to HD DVD, I was quite anxious to make sure it looked really good. I knew this would be a landmark title and we had to get it right, even beyond my own desires.

So I went to the guy who runs the codec team for me and put him on notice that this movie better look good and we should pull out all stops to achieve the absolute best quality possible even if it meant hand encoding every frame manually. To my surprise, he said the movie was already encoded and that the data rate was only 10 mbit/sec! I thought I heard him wrong. So I asked again and he repeated once more that it was just 10 mbit/sec. With a bit of trepidation, I asked how well it looked. He again surprised me by saying it looked great and that was the view of the compressionist who had encoded it also. OK, so I knew our codec had great performance but it was still hard to believe that we would be happy with the quality at that rate.

So I asked to see the “check disc” (preliminary production discs). The first scene I was looking for was the glacier pan. Not that it was hard to compress, as the pan is slow and VC-1 has no trouble tracking such large motion with very high efficiency (we have quarter pixel motion estimation which gives us much better ability to do this than the half pixel system used in MPEG-2). I wanted to see it because it was a grand scene in the theater and I was most impressed when that bright scene came up with all of its grandeur.

My suspicious were confirmed and the scene had no compression artifacts but look somewhat soft – no doubt that is what keeps it from “tier 0” in people’s books. While I was a bit disappointed in that, I could tell the softness was from the master as per my previous statement, it was not a hard scene to encode. So I had the team probe the post house and they confirmed that scene was just as soft in the original.

So I continued to watch the movie and I become progressively more impressed. My jaw dropped during some of the scenes where you could see detail that simply was not visible in SD, such as the dirt on the little soldier in the girl’s hand. But the best was yet to to come. I am talking about the scene where the camera pulls away from the train and you see the cityscape. Man, that was so sharp I thought I would cut my hand if I touched the screen :).

I was really worried about the above segment and expecting to see artifacts. Reasons were many but most had to do with the fact that it was computer generated with no regards for who Nyquist was :). What I mean is that when you shoot a natural scene, the capturing equipment always rolls off the frequency response. This means that no edge is ever 100% sharp. In contrast, in digital domain, one can have a black pixel next to a white pixel which represents infinite frequency response (i.e. breaks the Nyquist theory of filtering things beyond the limits of the system).

You see the same impossibility on your computer screen all the time where a black pixel can be next to a white pixel and is represented perfectly on a digital display such as an LCD (the same on a CRT monitor would have less clarity, with the white a bit less white, and the black a little less black and possibly “ringing” from the video circuits being upset with an above spec signal bandwidth). Such was also the case with the city scene, with so many lines on the buildings, sharply defined, and moving in different directions. Yet the codec preserved that detail without seemingly even trying. It was job well done and no better proof of how well an advanced codec can deal with such a movie, yet hit a data rate that is the maximum of red laser DVD!

The final encode wound up being 12 mbit/sec btw as reported by cjplay here about a year ago (hence the reason I took liberty of mentioning the data rate here against our typical policy). They probably tuned it a bit more or simply bumped it up for good measure. But I didn’t complain about that. After all, even at 12 mbit/sec, we are talking about the video only using 12 gigabytes of space! Put another way, you could put the movie and a lossy+TrueHD track and it would still fit on HD DVD-15!

So do I think we were space constrained in this movie? Not at all. HD DVD-30 was plenty to hold all the extras, PiP, etc. Where we data rate constrained? No. Other titles had come out with higher data rates still. There simply was no need to use higher rate for this title with VC-1.

What can we do today with the latest tools? For one, we could hit the same quality with much less work. Second, we could probably improve the “micro-quality” some. This is a term I just made up (:)), to indicate the quality of individual frames improving even if a human can not perceive an improvement. Although you could argue that those of us who live and breath with this stuff, could see some marginal improvement, I doubt that even the best videophiles would be able to see any improvements. As such, I don’t think there is any merit in re-encoding the movie. Rather, I like to see them re-shoot/re-master the glacier scene. That would make a much bigger difference than any re-encode.


Regardless of who wins the format war, your division will be working with VC-1 and 50-51GB's of space sooner rather than later so your input on this could bring some excitement back into the crowd.. And it really doesn't matter if we are on Blu-Ray's or HD-DVD side since whomever wins the format war will still benefit from VC-1 when it is used in the future by the victorious format..
The usage for TL-51 is really for people who think it is best to load up one disc, as opposed to use two, even if the latter is cheaper to make or has more consumer value (and I am talking about both formats here). And it is probably a bigger marketing tool than technical. This is why you don’t see me talking about it all, unless asked. Current HD DVD is a well designed system. Its capacity is well matched with the advanced codecs being used on it. So we don’t see much real need for extra capacity although we appreciate Toshiba, Memory-Tec, etc. continuing the pace of innovations.

On VC-1 being used equally in both formats, I am afraid that is not an outcome that I see, given where I sit. Most of the reasons are simple. The studios on HD DVD side have no technology arm which make encoders so they are much less biased by NIH (not invented here) syndrome. And of course, they are not annoyed at all that we choose to support HD DVD :), or hold a larger IP position in another codec. You see that the reality bears this out given the huge volume of VC-1 titles going through studios who publish in HD DVD, as opposed to other studios. BD companies are giving us another excellent reason to stay firmly with HD DVD on this front in their avoidance of VC-1 (not that more was needed, but here we are anyway).

I am waiting to catch my flight to Tokyo soon. Time permitting, I will expand more on this topic and history of VC-1/AVC and questions raised on my post last night.

“Ja!” (see you later in Japanese :))

"But no one should be distraught by what they are actually doing for HD DVD."

I'm honestly getting tired of the same lines over and over again, can you please relay to the studios we are tired of talking and want some action NOW!!!. The lack of releases is REAL just look at the calendar we are approaching March, the holidays are long since over and we still have only seen a small trickle of HD-DVD releases.

LESS TALK, MORE MOVIES!!!

If the studios think they are doing us a favor by being so secretive on their plans and keeping us in the dark While dozens of BLU-RAY movies are getting released every month non stop, the studio's are sadly mistaken.

The holidays are over we are quickly approaching Spring the releases need to ramp up ASAP!!

"But no one should be distraught by what they are actually doing for HD DVD."

I'm honestly getting tired of the same lines over and over again, can you please relay to the studios we are tired of talking and want some action NOW!!!. The lack of releases is REAL just look at the calendar we are approaching March, the holidays are long since over and we still have only seen a small trickle of HD-DVD releases.

LESS TALK, MORE MOVIES!!!

If the studios think they are doing us a favor by being so secretive on their plans and keeping us in the dark While dozens of BLU-RAY movies are getting released every month non stop, the studio's are sadly mistaken.

The holidays are over we are quickly approaching Spring the releases need to ramp up ASAP!!
SERIOUSLY AGREED! I believe this speaks clearly for everyone. Only some are brave enough to speak it, but still do so with the utmost of respect for you insiders.

Batman Begins for example was an early VC-1 encode made to fit onto a 30GB disc. That encode was very good however it wasn't enough to be considered a tier 0 title. If you were able to do the encoding for that movie over again to be placed on an HD-DVD51 for some special edition. Would the movie be able to achieve tier 0 quality using VC-1 because of a higher bitrate and newer methods or encoder versions?

Have you read the text in the first post of Fettastic's Tier thread? If you had, you would know that that thread generally has very little to do with transfer quality, and everything to do with pretty pictures.

The thread shouldn't even be called PQ -- it's a misnomer, since the only context within which PQ makes sense is that of a specific film. An HD title can look exactly as the original director intended and still rate at the bottom of the Tier ranking. Yet, how the final transfer compares to the original film is the only meaningful measure of PQ.

Go back and actually read the text in the first post, not just the title list. The Tier list is intended to rank the HD show-off capability of the titles, NOT the accuracy with which they present the original film!

English audio tracks without subtitling will be possible for StudioCanal HD DVD titles which are also released in UK: Leaving Las Vegas, Terminator 2, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Arizona Dream, Deer Hunter, The Graduate and Mulholland Drive.

Titles with english audio and forced subtitles: Serpico, Million Dollar Baby, We were soldiers, Traffic and Three days of the Condor.

Thank you so much for your response - I appreciate it. Can you comment on whether or not the audio is the correct pitch on these new titles?

Cheers,
Chris

And to be fair, BD's higher rate does erase some of the sins of AVC. But not all....Now does this mean the AVC encodes look awful? Of course not. Give it good sources and encode it well, and it can impress. But for those of us in the know, there is always something left behind and we ask, why do that when VC-1 doesn't suffer the same?Seeing as how there are independent video experts who frequent this forum and this thread, could you please state what specifically are the "sins" and "something left behind" in AVC?

I think everyone has the right to be distraught by lack of news releases from Universal. But no one should be distraught by what they are actually doing for HD DVD.

What ARE they doing, though?

Has there been a delay in producing some titles that might otherwise have come out in these lean months ? Are they taking a break or ramping up for the increased interactivity or some new feature, perhaps? Or are their internal reorganization issues at the parent company(ies) having an effect?

Amir,

I have a question about the Xbox 360 and Dashboard updates.
Recently the Dashboard was updated to allow 1080p output over VGA, where before only 1080i was available. However now there is only 1080p available, with no option for 1080i. Many people with earlier HDTVs can do 720p and 1080i over VGA, but not 1080p. I don't mind 720p and it looks great, but it would be very nice if a 1080i output option was returned to the settings when using VGA.

Do you know if this is coming in the upcoming update?

Thank you.

-Brian

After all, even at 12 mbit/sec, we are talking about the video only using 12 gigabytes of space! Put another way, you could put the movie and a lossy+TrueHD track and it would still fit on HD DVD-15!Then can you give some insight into why we had to settle for 16/48 TrueHD instead of 20/48 or 24/48?

Now that "Babel" is out on HD DVD with AVC, can you give some specific things from that movie for people to look at to backup claims you guys have made about issues with AVC?

--Darin

paidgeek,

I know there was a quote about the BDP-S300 having the same capabilities as the BDP-S1, but can you tell us if it will have any extras (like TrueHD decoding)? Also, can you confirm 1080p24 output support with the BDP-S300?

Thanks,
Darin

Also, is there an answer on the issues with Hulk Vision / U-Control from the 360 add on for error C667000B

I also asked this in posts 9807300 & post 9542830 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9542830&highlight=C667000B#post9542830)

I was in Ultimate Electronics in Mesa Arizona and they have a big professional display for HD and Bluray. One side sporting each.

The problem is, the big marketing board describing HD DVD says that it "Supports 720p resolution". On the other side, where Bluray is described, it says "Supports full 1080p for maximum HD resolution".

This display is very large.

If I'm in the shoes of anyone in the HD DVD camp this sort of thing would make me livid.

My question is:
Are the proper people aware of this and stuff like this? Is anything being done about it?
From a content provider (major studio) prospective ?
(Since nobody has answered your question)

Different folks from different studios have different outlooks on the importance of what you describe.

I shall quote Jerry Pierce (Senior Vice President of Technology, Universal Pictures) from about 3 weeks ago, speaking to a group of industry insiders......
"The average Joe is going to buy the sexiest TV he can afford - all it needs is an “HD” sticker."

Then jokingly of course, he added…………."I strongly believe that Harley Davidson needs to sell TVs, so they can put a “HD” sticker on them.

Then seriously, he continued...............
"Consumers just want a 16 x 9 TV.
1080p?, 720p?
They don’t care what all that means as long as it says, “HD.” "

Or to phrase it in a question form, does anyone deny Jerry saying this ?
Or perhaps the above comments are only applicable to TV’s and not high-def players ?

I really truly like Jerry, he wakes me up and makes me laugh :D before the first cup of java kicks in……… and he certainly is pragmatic.

So, to answer your question, somebody with shoes (untied) in the HD DVD camp doesn’t think it’s a big-ee.

So, I say, just let it go.

P.S.
Mark, I don’t want you to get bored at your beach house in Avalon, or wherever. :)

We have yet to see one that does as well as our VC-1 encoder. But you want to see broken AVC titles, take a look at HD DVDs that have come out of Japan.Would you mind listing some of the recent HD DVD titles released using the Toshiba MPEG-4 AVC encoder and telling us how they are broken?


Those are done by the Toshiba encoder which from what we hear from the post houses, is one of the best, if not the best now.Are you claiming that the Toshiba MPEG-4 AVC encoder is the best available or did you mean to say that it is the best available for HD DVD?


You have to remember that we have the luxury of seeing both the master, and the AVC encode when we go against it.Would you mind listing some of the recently encoded movies you have compared in this way?


You have to remember that we have the luxury of seeing both the master, and the AVC encode when we go against it. You all are stuck with a single encode with no other reference to compare it to. When we do the comparison, we always see less detail in the AVC encode.Have you ever done this with recent MPEG-4 AVC encodes such as Open Season, Reign of Fire, or The Prestige? If not than how can you possibly claim that all AVC encoders are incapable of encoding fine detail? Also how many Blu-ray exlusive MPEG-4 AVC encodings have you ever compared with the actual master? Would you mind listing all of them?


Before I get a ton of arguments on this :), please remember that the studios who use VC-1 today, can choose to use any codec they want.Wouldn't that explain why Paramount has been testing MPEG-4 AVC with some of their recent HD DVD movies such as Babel?


But for those of us in the know, there is always something left behind and we ask, why do that when VC-1 doesn't suffer the same?Unless you can actually prove that all MPEG-4 AVC encoders are incapable of encoding fine detail isn't this just a personal opinion?

We have yet to see one that does as well as our VC-1 encoder. But you want to see broken AVC titles, take a look at HD DVDs that have come out of Japan. Those are done by the Toshiba encoder which from what we hear from the post houses, is one of the best, if not the best now.

Your comment on quality raises the question for me once again...

Have you, or others at Microsoft, had a chance to re-examine Lady in the Water yet?

Benwagonner stated "it's being looked at" and I would like to know if you guys have checked it, and if you've found the same agregious artifacts as myself (and other posters who verified my findings).

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=808075

I have also read similar complaints about The Departed, though I myself have not seen it and cannot comment. I mention it because of the following in a recent post:


Yet the codec preserved that detail without seemingly even trying. It was job well done and no better proof of how well an advanced codec can deal with such a movie, yet hit a data rate that is the maximum of red laser DVD!

I'm getting a sort of "magic bullet" impression from these statements (in the context of your whole post), and in the context of Lady in the Water, and complaints about The Departed, this re-kindles my previously-stated concerns.

After all, Batman looking good at a low bitrate doesn't mean every movie is going to as well. But if you give studios that impression, they might plan their disks accordingly (ie less space needed for the movie, more special features, and less expense by using only one disk for everything). But, ultimately, this scenario is a recipe for loss of picture quality, and that's something none of us end-users want to see.

-Pie

Have you read the text in the first post of Fettastic's Tier thread? If you had, you would know that that thread generally has very little to do with transfer quality, and everything to do with pretty pictures.

The thread shouldn't even be called PQ -- it's a misnomer, since the only context within which PQ makes sense is that of a specific film. An HD title can look exactly as the original director intended and still rate at the bottom of the Tier ranking. Yet how the final transfer compares to the original film is the only measure that is meaningful regarding PQ.

Go back and actually read the text in the first post, not just the title list. The Tier list is intended to rank the HD show-off capability of the titles, NOT the accuracy with which they present the original film!

Amen!

Amir, are you aware of the Babel subtitle issues? Any fix coming?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=809426

Your comment on quality raises the question for me once again...

Have you, or others at Microsoft, had a chance to re-examine Lady in the Water yet?
My copy was SD so no, I have not looked at it. But the team did. And then followed up with the post house. They cringed when we asked their opinion of the source :). Unfortunately, they no longer had the source handy (it is expensive to keep the sources around so when the project is done, they are retired). They did say they would investigate a bit more. If they get back to me, I will relay what they say.

For now, we do have the data rate using our analysis tool and it is "unremarkable" in that its average is pretty decent and its peak quite healthy. While we agree there are quality issues in some of the scenes you mentioned, they do not appear to be codec related, given the information we have. Nor did the post house skimp on data rate to get there as you originally feared. The situation seems to be a case of a source that was intentionally made the way it was, with some possible flaws in the original transfer in some scenes.

(on the train to Tokyo...)

As a follow up to questions a few days ago about how we do on concert videos, looks like Peter's review on NIN is out and he gives it a perfect, 5/5 score! http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/nineinchnailslivebesideyouintime.html

"Both of the next-gen releases receive identical 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p/VC-1-encoded transfers. The result on this HD DVD edition is fantastic...But 'Beside You in Time' is the perfect example of the superiority of pre-recorded formats like HD DVD -- the image is incredibly detailed, life-like, three-dimensional and free from obnoxious macroblocking...

This is also such a strong HD DVD release that it is worth checking out even if you don't like Reznor's music. It is a terrific demo disc, with first-rate picture and sound, and a nice assortment of bonus features. Without a doubt, this is the best music performance yet released on HD DVD. "

Looks like our optimizations for such content have paid off.

Amir, are you aware of the Babel subtitle issues? Any fix coming?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=809426
Not personally. But I put the question to the team. Will report back if I hear anything.

Amir, in light of your extensive comments on Batman Begins and on VC-1 as compared to AVC, I wonder if you have seen the BD of The Prestige? If so, do you think that the differences that appear to exist in the PQ are attributable to differences in the masters? Since the director and the DP are the same on both, and since both have similar colorations, one would have expected both to look very similar. Thanks

English audio tracks without subtitling will be possible for StudioCanal HD DVD titles which are also released in UK: Leaving Las Vegas, Terminator 2, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Arizona Dream, Deer Hunter, The Graduate and Mulholland Drive.

Titles with english audio and forced subtitles: Serpico, Million Dollar Baby, We were soldiers, Traffic and Three days of the Condor.

Welcome Xavier [ member name xpouyat] as our newest Insider

He works in the HD DVD division at Microsoft, in charge of technical deployment of HD DVD technologies in Europe: based in Paris.

They cringed when we asked their opinion of the source .

Are you suggesting that poor source can cause artifacting? The complaints about LitW are specifically due to artifacting not any other transfer/source issues.

Are you suggesting that poor source can cause artifacting?
Based on what I know so far, yes.

The complaints about LitW are specifically due to artifacting not any other transfer/source issues.
Some things that people consider compression artifacts, can and do also occur frequently due to other reasons. For example, banding or as we call it, "quantization noise," can occur both when a source is reduced in resolution/color space improperly (e.g. from 10-bit to 8-bit or from RGB to YUV), or from overcompression (too much quantization) during encoding. In both cases, you are reducing signal resolution causing steppiness rather than a smooth graduation, albeit, for entirely different reasons. You want proof? Set your PC desktop to 256 colors and then look at a picture with graduated tones. You see banding all over the place.

Given the above, you will have no way of knowing just looking at the final results where it was caused. This is why we consult the people who had the source to find the cause. And when they say something is in the source, then we know not to chase the wrong thing. As an aside, the logo from one of the studios has banding in it which bugs me to no end at the start of every movie from them. But when I chased that one down long time ago, they said it was in the original, and due to improper conversion of that (computer generated) segment. As you can imagine, it is easy to encode such short segments so we have another proof of encoding not being at fault here.

The latest issue of WSR gives this title a 3.5 for picture quality, complaining about “colors being understaturated, with the all the colors looking somewhat drab and uninteresting. Details are not as well resolved as the best high-definition releases, and black levels are not as deep as they could be.” All of these things are hallmark of the style used to produce this movie. The review has no complaints about compression artifacts bolstering the data I have provided that folks may be finding faults with the movie style and its source, than anything else.

Now, if you are telling me that without seeing the original, someone has determined beyond the shadow of doubt, and above the word of the people who encoded the content, that they are seeing compression artifacts, then I would be happy to hear their scientific reasoning.

Finally, as a kind note, it takes considerable amount of work to go and chase such answers for you all. I am bothering people who are busy encoding movies and are only researching the answers out of the goodness of their heart to satisfy you all with your curiosity. I am also using up personal favors when those people don’t work for Microsoft. If the reaction at the end is like this, claiming the answer is wrong with no specificity or data of your own, I won’t bother to do this anymore when asked by all posters. It is not fair to the people doing this work to waste their time this way. They don’t need to be told “they are ugly too :).”

Quick question regarding the 360 HD DVD addon. How will it handle 7.1 sound? rumour says that LOTR HD DVD will have TrueHD 7.1 and I'm interested to know if the 360 can play that back? I mean is it possible via the S/PDIF interface?

Now, if you are telling me that without seeing the original, someone has determined beyond the shadow of doubt, and above the word of the people who encoded the content, that they are seeing compression artifacts, then I would be happy to hear their scientific reasoning.

Amir, if source is so vital to picture quality, and without seeing the source for a given film, how can you ever conclude that VC-1 produces a better image than AVC or MPEG2 for that matter? If the people doing the encoding feel that a given codec produces an image most transparent to the master, why argue otherwise?

After all, Batman looking good at a low bitrate doesn't mean every movie is going to as well. But if you give studios that impression, they might plan their disks accordingly (ie less space needed for the movie, more special features, and less expense by using only one disk for everything). But, ultimately, this scenario is a recipe for loss of picture quality, and that's something none of us end-users want to see.

(broke my arm couple of days ago, so short answers until I get speech recognition set up).

We work with studios directly of figuring out bitrates for complex projects, and they're more than familiar enough with what PEP can do to plan out more typical projects rest assured, they get more detailed advice than llistening to Amir and I on AVS :).

Major VC-1 titles are simply not going out bitstarved. And we at Microsoft would make a big fuss with the studios if we thought some bad looking VC-1 was going to be released. We certainly wouldn't put up with anything like the poor BD MPEG-2 titles.

Amir, if source is so vital to picture quality, and without seeing the source for a given film, how can you ever conclude that VC-1 produces a better image than AVC or MPEG2 for that matter?
In HD DVD, we usually see both the source, and the AVC encode together because those post houses are much more open with us on their selection of codecs. So we are able to make clear comparisons against the source, AVC results and sample VC-1 encode. We have also been through plenty of shoot outs against AVC by both industry consortiums and studios to say nothing of the fact that the science backs what we observe in practice (more on this in later posts). Our opinion as such, is formed over a number of years and extensive hands on experience. The signature of AVC is quite clear and the same theme we see in encode after encode. So we don’t need to see every movie to believe what we believe in. And our opinion is shared by studios such as Warner and Universal which have fully standardized on VC-1.

To use an audio analogy, if I you knew that a speaker was "bright" (i.e. had exaggerated highs), would you need proof on every song that it sounds bright? Surely you form your opinion appropriately after listening to your favorite tracks on it, and observing the same results over and over again. Such is the case with AVC and softening grain and detail as compared to VC-1.

Now it is true that if you fed VC-1 bad content, it would reproduce it just as bad. Indeed, I have said one of the reasons AVC gets used in HD DVD is because we do precisely that: preserve excessive noise as opposed to filtering in AVC. But I assume your interest and that of others is how we perform with great looking sources. On those, we are not source limited and here, VC-1 advantages shines in preserving more of what goes in it.

So you know, I have challenged studio executives who think AVC is better to pick their favorite clip, encode it with AVC, and then give us a shot to do better in VC-1. I made such an offer about 4 weeks ago to one studio executive. The person agreed with the challenge. But you know what? We never heard back from them! I mean what could be more fair than this test? They got to pick the clip, spend all the time optimizing the AVC encode, etc. They are still welcome to follow up after reading this post. Not saying we will win 100% as their opinion may not match ours. But I would not make the offer if I did not think we had an advantage on our side with VC-1 algorithm.

If the people doing the encoding feel that a given codec produces an image most transparent to the master, why argue otherwise?
Because we don't believe that their motives are pure in that respect. We have a long history of working with the same companies and know their views regarding our company and their business preference which overrides the quest for transparency. And of course, it is not typical human emotion to go and borrow food from the opposing army, even if she offers it to you :). You have to swallow a lot of pride in doing that (something that we have done in offering them VC-1 support to the same level as top HD DVD studios).

Again, I will post more on this later but you have to remember that there was a time when BDA thought the only perfect codec for that format was MPEG-2 and they fought tooth and nail to keep other codecs out. If you at all believe in AVC being good, then you also have to believe that the history is not on the side of people who say they pick the best codec for the job. Is it a magical coincident that we start to see AVC encodes from Sony when they have their own AVC encoder and not a moment sooner? Was the Panasonic encoder which was used in titles from other studios, produced worse quality than MPEG-2 before that? If not, and their quest was for the best picture quality, why not use the Panasonic encoder then for all of last year? You see it doesn’t add up, does it? In HD DVD land our post houses have access to all three encoders and none of this kind of politics gets in the way. And you see VC-1 as the predominant choice still.

But in a way, we are tired of convincing people what is good for their format. It is not like we get a medal if we make BD look better with VC-1. I have communicated this to said executive above that if they do not seriously consider using VC-1 in their titles, then we will not treat them much longer as a tier 1 studio with our (free) support and frequent software updates. We have plenty of willing customers so why waste time as you say, banging our head against the wall. And I don’t recall them offering us free AVC encoders must less support from the people who invented the codec. :)

Last but not least, let me say I am puzzled to see such strong support of BD studios avoiding VC-1. I mean, how is it good for you all? Even if you just believe 10% of what I said on this topic, don’t you want VC-1 to be there for those percentage of movies? If so, where are the 10% of movies from Sony that could have benefited from VC-1? I know why they would want to avoid VC-1 per above, but can’t why the fans post 10 part challenges to me, wanting to justify AVC being be all and end all choice for them in advanced codecs for BD format. You are paying for VC-1 in every player you buy. Why not have it be a valid option for you on the content side? That would only come if you put the heat on BD studios to prove to you all, why there is so little usage of VC-1. Have them explain the science. Have them tell you how many movies they have tried to do with VC-1. Have them tell you how much they engage our help in getting good quality out of VC-1. Above all, have them prove to you, not just claim, that what you say is true: that their quest is for transparency. As long as you make them comfortable putting out MPEG-2 and AVC-only content, that is what you are going to get in the future regardless of whether VC-1 could do better. And that, puts HD DVD in a strong position with its choice of three codecs, not two...

Major VC-1 titles are simply not going out bitstarved. And we at Microsoft would make a big fuss with the studios if we thought some bad looking VC-1 was going to be released.
Truly, please elaborate how so ?

(broke my arm couple of days ago, so short answers until I get speech recognition set up).

We certainly wouldn't put up with anything like the poor BD MPEG-2 titles.
Ben, that’s a pretty bold statement (discounting the slight you’ve just made against BD MPEG-2 titles), so what EXACTLY would be your recourse ?

Isn’t this something like a tenant telling the homeowner what to do--- despite what is written in the Rental Agreement ?

Granted, I would suppose that Sony(paidgeek) can not say one thing about Microsoft’s VC-1 encoder (at least detrimental) due to signed papers.

But exactly what leverage does Microsoft have if a particular compressionist say at GDMX does not do a job that Microsoft feels meets its VC-1 standards, if the time element involved is completely discounted ?

P.S.
Sorry to hear about your fractured humerus.
People’s health issues always put into prospective the most important things in life........... quickly.

To the MS guys..

Any word on an official release of Windows Media Encoder (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx) for Vista? The last update was January 8th (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929182). I'm trying to keep my new Vista box fresh and clean, and "hotfixes" scare me. :rolleyes:

Also, Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition beta is no longer available. Does that mean we are close to seeing a new product? Or was the beta a complete failure? :p

And that, puts HD DVD in a strong position with its choice of three codecs, not two...Are you saying that HD DVD is using three codecs and Blu-ray is only using two?

The signature of AVC is quite clear and the same theme we see in encode after encode.

So are you saying that you disagree with Peter Bracke when he says:


'Babel' never looks "digital," instead more resembling a well-worn film.

For such a busy film, I was also impressed by the lack of any compression artifacts -- neither blockiness nor video noise are ever a problem.

I only ask because you seem to like to quote Peter such as in your comments about Nine Inch Nails a few posts back, so I assume you consider him a credible reviewer of image quality?

He seems to cover all the bases. AVC has done a good job on a noisy/grainy film and does not look digital and does not artifact.

Can you describe the AVC signature so that we can all look for it?

Any word on an official release of Windows Media Encoder (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx) for Vista? The last update was January 8th (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929182). I'm trying to keep my new Vista box fresh and clean, and "hotfixes" scare me. :rolleyes:
I'm not aware of any plans beyond the Hotfix. WME works just fine in Vista with it (or without in 99.x% of the time). Use it with confidence :).

Also, Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition beta is no longer available. Does that mean we are close to seeing a new product? Or was the beta a complete failure? :p
We decided not to commercialize the technology in Studio Edition ourselves - Microsoft isn't a big publisher of professional video tools. Instead we're working with the industry to help them incorporate core technology along those lines in a wide variety of other products.

I'll share more info about this when the products in question have been launched (and tool vendors interested can PM me).

Ben, that’s a pretty bold statement (discounting the slight you’ve just made against BD MPEG-2 titles), so what EXACTLY would be your recourse ?
Get Amir to call them and tell them not to :)? It's a theoretical case - the studios we're working with have been gratifyingly concerned with high quality. But if a disc looked likely to be released that would reflect poorly on VC-1, we'd do whatever we could to rectify the issue before it shipped.

I don't know why you'd want to discount my slight against BD MPEG-2 titles - there are plenty I wouldn't want to put my name to.

But exactly what leverage does Microsoft have if a particular compressionist say at GDMX does not do a job that Microsoft feels meets its VC-1 standards, if the time element involved is completely discounted ?
There's a lot of QA steps before a disc ships - it's not a compressionist's call for when it's "good enough."

And we regularly review studio content thata's in production to suggest quality improvements.

P.S.
Sorry to hear about your fractured humerus.
People’s health issues always put into prospective the most important things in life........... quickly.
Just my Ulna, and not all the way through, thank goodness. But between that and my shoulder troble, I think I've had two fully functional arms for all of three weeks in the last year...

So are you saying that you disagree with Peter Bracke when he says:


I only ask because you seem to like to quote Peter such as in your comments about Nine Inch Nails a few posts back, so I assume you consider him a credible reviewer of image quality?

He seems to cover all the bases. AVC has done a good job on a noisy/grainy film and does not look digital and does not artifact.

Can you describe the AVC signature so that we can all look for it?
Lack of detail is the typical signatures - you wouldn't expect blocks or other digitaleffects. More like everything was run through DVNR, even if it didn't need to be.

Get Amir to call them and tell them not to :)?
Fair enough,
I like your sense of humor. :D

For any future :eek: shoulder problems, should they arise, try ............
Stephen Snyder, M.D. in Van Nuys at www.scoi.com - one of the best in the country, errrr world for that matter.

As long as you make them comfortable putting out MPEG-2 and AVC-only content, that is what you are going to get in the future regardless of whether VC-1 could do better. And that, puts HD DVD in a strong position with its choice of three codecs, not two...

Amirm, since you're so passionate about VC-1, could you please start with Warner and ask them to *finally* exploit the full real estate of BD? They should create two separate encodes - one for BD and the other for HD DVD. Have them show us that a VC-1 bitrate in the 30s can truly achieve fantastic results.

This isn't a follow-up comment, it's *truly* a question. And it's not a question of technology -- it's a matter of politics. The perception that prevails is that Warner treats BD users as second-rate citizens, because we're fed with the leftovers of HD DVD.

Since Warner won't answer these kind of questions in their (rare) public chats, could you ask them if they would be willing to optimize their encodes to the fullest capacity BD can offer, at least for their big profile releases?

Addenda: could you please also ask Warner if they plan to provide BD with the best lossless audio sources in the future? Warner have downgraded audio from 24/48 to 16/48 on some occasions, which was a letdown.

Amirm, since you're so passionate about VC-1, could you please start with Warner and ask them to *finally* exploit the full real estate of BD? They should create two separate encodes - one for BD and the other for HD DVD. Have them show us that a VC-1 bitrate in the 30s can truly achieve fantastic results.
But they wouldn't look any better. Once you've got an optimal HD-DVD VC-1 encode, infinite bits isn't going to gain much of anything with real-world content.

This isn't a follow-up comment, it's *truly* a question. And it's not a question of technology -- it's a matter of politics. The perception that prevails is that Warner treats BD users as second-rate citizens, because we're fed with the leftovers of HD DVD.

Since Warner won't answer these kind of questions in their (rare) public chats, could you ask them if they would be willing to optimize their encodes to the fullest capacity BD can offer, at least for their big profile releases?
I can't speak for any particular studio, of course, but many studios have wondered about this, and experimented with it. And we see studios deciding to just use the HD DVD encode, bucause doin a second would be extra work with no improvement in quality.

If the BD-only studios were consistantly producing better looking discs, I could understand the request, but this manifestly isn't the case.

HD DVD is very well designed to give a great movie experience with advanced codecs. Bear in mind the BD data rate was designed assuming MPEG-2...

I can't speak for any particular studio, of course, but many studios have wondered about this, and experimented with it. And we see studios deciding to just use the HD DVD encode, bucause doin a second would be extra work with no improvement in quality.


But no consumer will ever know for sure because they don't hang out in authoring labs. Ben, this is not about empirical tests in labs. It is a selling point. How can the studios expect to entice consumers when they're basically telling half of them that they'll have a reduced HD experience?

There's a question I added later in my post regarding the use of 16/48 audio. If 24/48 doesn't provide any improvement, why aren't HD DVDs in 16/48 as well?

But they wouldn't look any better. Once you've got an optimal HD-DVD VC-1 encode, infinite bits isn't going to gain much of anything with real-world content.Doesn't higher bitrate help to suppress block noises - such as the beginning shot of Batman Begins where many bats are flying in the sky, or obvious and annoying pulsing issue at night scenes with heavy noises on Miami Vice?

If it really wouldn't look any better, said codec seems having issue.

But they wouldn't look any better. Once you've got an optimal HD-DVD VC-1 encode, infinite bits isn't going to gain much of anything with real-world content.
...

So VC-1 is in effect lossless?

But no consumer will ever know for sure because they don't hang out in authoring labs. Ben, this is not about empirical tests in labs. It is a selling point. How can the studios expect to entice consumers when they're basically telling half of them that they'll have a reduced HD experience?
Same way you know if your DVD or BD's are well done :).

Do you want to shop by bit rate or by a good image? A bad master won't look good at 40 Mbps...

There's a question I added later in my post regarding the use of 16/48 audio. If 24/48 doesn't provide any improvement, why aren't HD DVDs in 16/48 as well?
Most HD DVD discs are 16/48.

Doesn't higher bitrate help to suppress block noises - such as the beginning shot of Batman Begins where many bats are flying in the sky, or obvious and annoying pulsing issue at night scenes with heavy noises on Miami Vice?

If it really wouldn't look any better, said codec seems having issue.
Miami Vice looks like Miami Vice - it's a very stylized film, including some unusual digital effects.

I'm not familiar with any issues with Batman Begins, honestly. That title was completed before I was on the team.

Most HD DVD discs are 16/48.Are there any that are better than that? Say at least 20bit/48kHz, please! This is from a wanna-be audiophile. If not possible it seems to build a case for the need for TL51/1.5x doesn't it? And then there is LOTR with 7.1 audio (hopefully lossless) looming ahead.

So VC-1 is in effect lossless?
Yes, a good VC-1 encode should be provide visually transparent compression.

Most HD DVD discs are 16/48.Why? And if it is because of a limitation of the design or specs for HD DVD, then should the audio for the Blu-ray version be held back because of that, in your opinion? In other words, should the Blu-ray version be limited to 16/48 because 24/48 wouldn't work well on an HD DVD release of the same movie?

--Darin

Ben, amirm

Have you done any encodes with 59.94i sources?
Are there any differences how PEP handles interlaced source in comparison to film?

Do you know any studio which uses 10Gbit network with PEP? Does it speed up encoding (with 10 PCs 1Gbit network seams to be bottleneck)?

Does PEP divide source into exactly the same parts (each PC has the same amount video to encode)?

thx

Miami Vice looks like Miami Vice - it's a very stylized film, including some unusual digital effects.

I'm not familiar with any issues with Batman Begins, honestly. That title was completed before I was on the team.Pulsing is one of the famous compression artifacts. I pretty much doubt that pulsing was there on its master, unless "the master" was already encoded by some sort of inter-frame compression method which was causing pulsing issue (neither D5 nor HDCAM causes this as you know). As to Batman Begins, please see the opening scene where thousands of bats are flying. A lot of block noises are there at that scene.

Yes, a good VC-1 encode should be provide visually transparent compression.

The poster asked if VC-1 was lossless, as in can it do 4:2:0 without throwing any data away. Visually transparent and lossless are two very different things, so which is it?

Have you done any encodes with 59.94i sources?
Yes.
Are there any differences how PEP handles interlaced source in comparison to film?
Same workflow. You'd need more bits of course.

Do you know any studio which uses 10Gbit network with PEP? Does it speed up encoding (with 10 PCs 1Gbit network seams to be bottleneck)?
Some are using FibreChannel, and some dual-gigabit. It's just software, so 10G certainly would work.

Does PEP divide source into exactly the same parts (each PC has the same amount video to encode)?
No, we do it at chapter boundaries.

Amirm, since you're so passionate about VC-1, could you please start with Warner and ask them to *finally* exploit the full real estate of BD? They should create two separate encodes - one for BD and the other for HD DVD. Have them show us that a VC-1 bitrate in the 30s can truly achieve fantastic results.

This isn't a follow-up comment, it's *truly* a question. And it's not a question of technology -- it's a matter of politics. The perception that prevails is that Warner treats BD users as second-rate citizens, because we're fed with the leftovers of HD DVD.

Since Warner won't answer these kind of questions in their (rare) public chats, could you ask them if they would be willing to optimize their encodes to the fullest capacity BD can offer, at least for their big profile releases?

Addenda: could you please also ask Warner if they plan to provide BD with the best lossless audio sources in the future? Warner have downgraded audio from 24/48 to 16/48 on some occasions, which was a letdown.
Your wish will soon come true, somewhat. Look for a demo disc that will have Warner clips specifically encoded for BD and taking advantage of the higher bitrate. And you'll enjoy the 24/48 PCM to match :D.

Have you done any encodes with 59.94i sources?
Are there any differences how PEP handles interlaced source in comparison to film?

The preprocessing is the same workflow with just a change in options. Encoding wise, it takes a little longer because of the extra fps and will eat a few more Mbps because of that.

Do you know any studio which uses 10Gbit network with PEP? Does it speed up encoding (with 10 PCs 1Gbit network seams to be bottleneck)?

We use it on a 4Gbit fibre channel SAN where I am. I'd say the bottleneck is more in the SAN, not the connection. If you had 10 PCs reading from one file, you get into issues with file access over bandwidth to each machine.

Does PEP divide source into exactly the same parts (each PC has the same amount video to encode)?
It's all up to the compressionist. Normally, you would choose segments by chapter, which more than likely won't be equal pieces.

So, since MS wouldn't allow a VC-1 encode that didn't pass their muster and since a good VC-1 encode is "visually transparent", every flaw on any VC-1 disc is obviously from the master (which, of course, can only be verified by those doing the encoding since they've seen the master.)

Congratulations, you've written yourself the perfect circular logic. It would be funny if you weren't supposed to be an Insider providing valid information; instead it is just sad.
Just as circular as yours :).

What sort of info would you find useful here? I can't exactly post the uncompressed master of a studio film for you to make a comparison...

The poster asked if VC-1 was lossless, as in can it do 4:2:0 without throwing any data away. Visually transparent and lossless are two very different things, so which is it?
Mathematically lossless would give you peaks up around 800 Mbps. Not going to happen!

Mathematically lossless would give you peaks up around 800 Mbps. Not going to happen!

No worries...you did answer the question I was intending to ask...As a follow up, is VC-1 the only of the 3 codecs to be transparent within the bandwidth restraints of BD?

Most HD DVD discs are 16/48.

Ben.. don't you mean the True HD tracks are at 16/48? I believe all of the lossy codecs decode to 24/48.

Can any of you insiders put up a pre-encode master frame (4kx2K will work even better) from a currently released Blu-ray/HD DVD, so that we can all examine it in detail?

Thanks Ben, Jeff.

We want to setup file server with 20 SATA disks and Infiniband 10Gbit network. It is quite new ( renewed) technology and apparently works really good.

This what you described means that PEP will be bottleneck in our system:)

If I've set up encoding over many PCs and all of them finished encoding, but one (eg. slow machine) is still doing it, can I do something with that?

thx

Your wish will soon come true, somewhat. Look for a demo disc that will have Warner clips specifically encoded for BD and taking advantage of the higher bitrate. And you'll enjoy the 24/48 PCM to match :D.


If some good soul wants to send me a copy, I'm not complaining :D

Your answer is right on target. I think Warner should be optimizing their BD to the fullest extent of their specs and storage capacity. It's terribly unfair for BD users, even more since Blu-ray is leading sales right now.

So my question is the following: what would it take (in terms of time and money) to produce a medium-high bitrate encode, optimize it for BD, and then go back and lower the bitrate and optimize the result for HD DVD? And the same goes for 24/48 to compensate for the lack of 5.1 DD+.

This isn't an indie, it's Warner we're talking about. They have huge resources, a great catalog and they've always been on the bleeding edge of technology.

Ben.. don't you mean the True HD tracks are at 16/48? I believe all of the lossy codecs decode to 24/48.
That'd be up to the DSP in the particular player - the spec doesn't mandate this IIRC.

Can any of you insiders put up a pre-encode master frame (4kx2K will work even better) from a currently released Blu-ray/HD DVD, so that we can all examine it in detail?
That'd take a studio insider - we couldn't.

What sort of info would you find useful here? I can't exactly post the uncompressed master of a studio film for you to make a comparison...

Some short clip from a master should be possible to get permission to release. And then have Microsoft (VC-1), Panasonic (AVC) and Sony (MPEG-2) do their best on the clip and release the results.

A gentlemen's agreement would suffice that encoding would be done with the current encoding tools and in a timeframe reflecting a real world scenario.

Then, everyone can pour over the results and come to conclusions for themselves.

Gary

If a certain studio wants their titles encoded AVC instead of VC-1, are they aware that AVC lacks the detail of VC-1? Surely if you guys can spot the differences, they can see it also, no?

I don't claim to know a lot about codecs, but I can't imagine why a studio would do such a thing unless other factors involved such as cost or politics.

Some short clip from a master should be possible to get permission to release. And then have Microsoft (VC-1), Panasonic (AVC) and Sony (MPEG-2) do their best on the clip and release the results.

A gentlemen's agreement would suffice that encoding would be done with the current encoding tools and in a timeframe reflecting a real world scenario.

Then, everyone can pour over the results and come to conclusions for themselves.

I'd certainly be happy to participate in such a shootout.

And the studios have done this for thier own use a number of times, for forum tests amd such. Getting them to release source for this to the public would be welcome, but certainly a challenge.

If a certain studio wants their titles encoded AVC instead of VC-1, are they aware that AVC lacks the detail of VC-1? Surely if you guys can spot the differences, they can see it also, no?
Sure, which is why see more and more VC-1 being used by quality-concious studios.

Of course, there certainly are masters where less detail is more...

I don't claim to know a lot about codecs, but I can't imagine why a studio would do such a thing unless other factors involved such as cost or politics.
We're still in the early days of course, so there is still experementation with different codecs and tools. I expect that our market share will continue to go up.

I'm not sure why's you'd rule out politics as a factor, though...

Sure, which is why see more and more VC-1 being used by quality-concious studios.

Of course, there certainly are masters where less detail is more...


We're still in the early days of course, so there is still experementation with different codecs and tools. I expect that our market share will continue to go up.

I'm not sure why's you'd rule out politics as a factor, though...

I was simply referring to earlier in this thread where Amir was talking about challenging a certain studio rep who though AVC was better. Then I read comments about how you guys see the same signature time and time again on AVC...lack of detail. It just doesn't make sense to me that they'd wouldn't use VC-1 if it's obvious that VC-1 has more detail....unless they purposely wanted less detail.

No, I wouldn't rule out politics. I'm sure that's a part of it, but I didn't know if that was the reason with the said studio.

That'd be up to the DSP in the particular player - the spec doesn't mandate this IIRC.A player firmware (SHARC DSP firmware in the Toshiba players) limitation? Not a storage/bitrate bandwidth budget title authoring decision?

Granted this is not required by the HD DVD spec -- just two channels of TrueHD are.

That'd be up to the DSP in the particular player - the spec doesn't mandate this IIRC.

I was talking about the encodes, not what the players may or may not be capable of.

Wow! The first time I have read this. A player firmware (SHARC DSP firmware in the Toshiba players) limitation? Not a storage/bitrate bandwidth budget title authoring decision? Are the SHARCs in the Tosh max'd out and not able to handle 20 bits for TrueHD. Similar problem for 7.1 TrueHD decode even though HDMI 1.1 could transport the linear PCM?

Or does the Toshiba audio DSP firmware just need some more work/optimization and the internal hardware resources (memory/thruput) are OK? I guess I don't really expect Microsoft to answer these questions. Sorry Ben for getting all excited. :o

Would Analog Devices and Dolby Labs have some more low level code implementation work to do in conjunction with Toshiba to get 20 bits and 7.1 channels? Granted this is not required by the HD DVD spec -- just two channels of TrueHD are.
Eh? I'm not saying any particulr limitaion n any particular player - just that there's no particular requirment for internal depth. Players could just as easily do 24-bt.

Eh? I'm not saying any particulr limitaion n any particular player - just that there's no particular requirment for internal depth. Players could just as easily do 24-bt.OK. Sorry, I misunderstood. I edited my earlier post to remove the jump to conclusion stuff. :o

A question to Amir/Ben: Would you consider releasing your new Xbox real time DTS encoder as a DirectShow filter for us HTPC guys? That would be most awesome.

Your wish will soon come true, somewhat. Look for a demo disc that will have Warner clips specifically encoded for BD and taking advantage of the higher bitrate. And you'll enjoy the 24/48 PCM to match :D.


I can't wait! Do you have any details on this like titles, maybe? Will it possibly be available for consumer purchase/download/acquisition?

I'm thinking at the very least we'll include the early HDDVD only titles (Batman Begins, V for Vendetta, etc). I always had the sneaking suspicion I'd regret getting the Batman Begins HDDVD (I held off the longest, though I did enjoy the movie greatly at the theater!) Look like I might have my first BD/HDDVD double dip if that's the case!

I drool to think I could get a PCM track out of it (I know my HDDVD has TrueHD 5.1 but I have no way to get it out of my 360 add-on)....

amir/ben:

I see that the DVD Forum Steering Committee has approved "Version-up Information for DVD Specifications for High Definition Video (HD DVD-Video), Version 1.0 to 1.1"

http://www.dvdforum.org/37scmtg-resolution.htm

What are the major changes in 1.1 vs 1.0?

http://www.dvdforum.org/37scmtg-resolution.htm

Having just looked at the link Grubert gave to the recently approved stuffs.. I saw something odd I was wondering about.

For anyone in the know: What is the meaning of "Time Limited DVD Logo" (link from quoted url (http://www.dvdforum.org/images/Time_Limited_DVD_Logo.pdf))? Is this the second coming of DIVX?

Amir, in light of your extensive comments on Batman Begins and on VC-1 as compared to AVC, I wonder if you have seen the BD of The Prestige? If so, do you think that the differences that appear to exist in the PQ are attributable to differences in the masters? Since the director and the DP are the same on both, and since both have similar colorations, one would have expected both to look very similar. Thanks

My question above seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

To come at this from a slightly different perspective, for Amir or any other Microsoft insider, any thoughts on why it is that Universal seems to generally get so much better results from VC-1 than Warner does?

Your wish will soon come true, somewhat. Look for a demo disc that will have Warner clips specifically encoded for BD and taking advantage of the higher bitrate. And you'll enjoy the 24/48 PCM to match .

I think Warner should be optimizing their BD to the fullest extent of their specs and storage capacity. It's terribly unfair for BD users, even more since Blu-ray is leading sales right now.

Jeff, I wont ask any specifics about this title but if I may ask, have you noticed any major differences using a different codec and/or optimizing this to BR specs compared to the equivelant title for HD?

Paramount encodes there titles seperatly for each of the formats but I dont think any reviewer has pointed out any differences at all so far between them.

For any insider willing to talk about it ...

I don't think there has been any official news on the AACS front for quite a long time. Are any studios getting cold feet and reconsidering putting their most prime material out there on hidef disc because of the untimely discovery of the security vulnerabilites?

- Tom

So you know, I have challenged studio executives who think AVC is better to pick their favorite clip, encode it with AVC, and then give us a shot to do better in VC-1. I made such an offer about 4 weeks ago to one studio executive. The person agreed with the challenge. But you know what? We never heard back from them!
Whoa, I missed this posting.

Are you referring to a Sony executive ?

Because if so, I don’t think you’re being accurate or fair with your account.

Instead of talking about codecs, the Blu-crew is pumping out good-looking titles :D in two different codecs, as per their choosing but, I’ll give paidgeek a jingle so that he can speak with his colleague and respond to your posting, if the answer to the above question is “yes.”

Getting back to actually asking questions..............

Paidgeek,

Assuming the BDP-S300 is one of the two Sapphire models announced at CES, when can we expect an announcement regarding the second player?

Thanks!

It was asked earlier but I don't think it's been answered. Can we expect the French HD DVD releases (specifically "The Graduate") to exhibit any audio anomalies. I'm not exactly sure what's been said in other threads ... but I've heard grumblings from users who claim the tracks are of a higher pitch.

Not being an expert, I can't imagine why this would be the case if the encode is the same as it would be here in the U.S. (by that I mean it's on the disk as 1080p/24).

But before I splurge on about $35 worth of HD DVD, can some expert let me know what to expect. Will the track of the French release of "The Graduate" sound as it is supposed to when played here in the U.S. on an HD-A1?

For any insider willing to talk about it ...

I don't think there has been any official news on the AACS front for quite a long time. Are any studios getting cold feet and reconsidering putting their most prime material out there on hidef disc because of the untimely discovery of the security vulnerabilites?

- Tom
Take this for what it is worth but I have not heard of any HD DVD studio changing their plans because of this.

Sure, which is why see more and more VC-1 being used by quality-concious studios.
Are you saying that if a studio is not using VC-1, they are not quality concious?

To come at this from a slightly different perspective, for Amir or any other Microsoft insider, any thoughts on why it is that Universal seems to generally get so much better results from VC-1 than Warner does?
Unfortunately, there is no way to make such generalizations. Every movie will be subjected to so many production steps and mastering that it is hard to know what shape they wind up in by the time the land in a VC-1 encode pipeline. GDMX (Warner's post house) has stellar expertise in VC-1 encoding, going back two years and with wide open support channel to us. So little fault can be put in that part of the process as opposed to what Uni uses.

A question to Amir/Ben: Would you consider releasing your new Xbox real time DTS encoder as a DirectShow filter for us HTPC guys? That would be most awesome.
That's a good request :). Unfortunatley, the answer is no. Our license is limited to Xbox use. We have to pay out royalties for it and shipping it as an open Dshow filter would mean paying for a few hundred million copies. For that much money, we could put down a healthy down payment to buy some of the BD studios :D. Encoding technology can be quite expensive...

That's a good request :). Unfortunatley, the answer is no. Our license is limited to Xbox use. We have to pay out royalties for it and shipping it as an open Dshow filter would mean paying for a few hundred million copies. For that much money, we could put down a healthy down payment to buy some of the BD studios :D. Encoding technology can be quite expensive...
I understand. Would selling such a Dshow filter for a few dollars work for you? I guess the potential market for such a filter would be too small to make sense? How about bundling it with Vista Ultimate? :)

Unfortunately, there is no way to make such generalizations. Every movie will be subjected to so many production steps and mastering that it is hard to know what shape they wind up in by the time the land in a VC-1 encode pipeline.
So given your above statement, wouldn't it be reasonable to say the same thing about the VC-1 vs. AVC vs. MPEG2 arguments?

Indeed, i think this is the point some other people have been asking about as well. I like the idea of the public codec shootout!!

To all insiders...let's get the shootout done so we can put all of the codec talk and questions to rest once and for all!!!

Nils, do you want to pick one or two questions to ask and then I can address? This is not a thread for 10-part arguments/rants about issues :). I have good answers to everything you asked btw :). Moving your question to the other threads won't do any good as I don't participate in any other thread than this one on HD optical topic.

Alternatively, you could wait until I have time to write up to a question asked a while ago, which is what science in AVC would make it have softer video than VC-1 (this is the signature btw. I have said it a dozen times as has Ben so I don't know why you still ask what the signature is).

I have good answers to everything you asked btw :).Then can you tell us why movies on HD DVD in the US (like the "Batman Begins" you were talking about earlier) have been limited to 16/48 for the TrueHD? You've told us in the past what a proponent of lossless audio you were.
Alternatively, you could wait until I have time to write up to a question asked a while ago, which is what science in AVC would make it have softer video than VC-1 (this is the signature btw. I have said it a dozen times as has Ben so I don't know why you still ask what the signature is).Babel is out on HD DVD now and Paramount and their post house chose AVC/MPEG-4 over VC-1. Can you point out some specific spots in it that you claim were wrong because of that choice? Ben has also claimed that AVC/MPEG-4 can't do film grain. Is your position that the film grain in that release of "Babel" is wrong? If so, it would be nice if you would back it up with timestamps.

If you are going to go into the loop filter again, are you only going to do it under the extra protection of this insider's thread, or are you willing to discuss it in an open thread at this point?

--Darin

Nilsp, do you work for Sony?

I am surprised more people have not been mentioning the NIN release.

I picked it up in both DVD and HD-DVD formats and both are some of the best I have seen in their respective formats.

My question is I have an older Sony STR-K9900P receiver that my 360 HD-DVD add on is hooked up to optically. My understanding was that you need HDMI to take advantage of TrueHD. If you didnt have it then, it reverts to an analog stream. I was expecting it to at least be as good as the DTS version, which I thought it was, BUT, I get strange clipping. If I switch to the reg Dolby track it goes away. The DVD with DTS sounds fine in my standalone, in the xbox dvd drive and the add-on.

Any insight?

From News:


Not sure if it is reported before or not or Toshiba just started selling their HD DVD-R equipped notebook in Japan.


What happened to HD DVD-RW?

Gary

I'm sure this has been asked, but I'll ask anyways.

I suppose this is for Amir.

Have studios that currently support HD-DVD, considered going with straight HD-DVD/DVD combos discs instead of producing combos and a standard DVD version?

Couldn't this make adoption of new HD-DVD technology more viable as people would already own the software?

So my question is the following: what would it take (in terms of time and money) to produce a medium-high bitrate encode, optimize it for BD, and then go back and lower the bitrate and optimize the result for HD DVD? And the same goes for 24/48 to compensate for the lack of 5.1 DD+.
Well, the easy answer is double. If it is optimized for BD, it won't work on HD. You'll run into conflicts with bitrate, buffer size, and inverse telecine. Plus, the encode will take longer on the HD side since it would more than likely be a lower bitrate and that would lead to more 3rd pass work. Of course, the source would play a large part in that, so it's only an assumption.
I can't wait! Do you have any details on this like titles, maybe? Will it possibly be available for consumer purchase/download/acquisition?
I don't want to reveal that just yet. It was created as a retailer demo, so getting one would be a hassle. And I doubt most of them will set it up right to take advantage of the PCM tracks, but they're there.
Jeff, I wont ask any specifics about this title but if I may ask, have you noticed any major differences using a different codec and/or optimizing this to BR specs compared to the equivelant title for HD?
To be honest, it's a classic case of diminishing returns. I never thought any of their HD counterparts were starved for more bits. I'd say that the higher peak rate helped to make the encodes easier, but not night-and-day better. While the BD encodes do have a slight gain in quality, it's to be expected when the average bitrate is about double that of the HD encodes.

Insiders,

Don't you guys have a private forum where you can aggressive;y question each other's statements about conversations with studios?

As an enthusiast, I know that all sides "spin" their messages. I still enjoy this thread as it has a lot of great information, despite the spins.

What I would ask all of you is - would you please not cause the cjplay incident to happen again? We want all of you to contribute to our knowledge.

amir/ben:

I see that the DVD Forum Steering Committee has approved "Version-up Information for DVD Specifications for High Definition Video (HD DVD-Video), Version 1.0 to 1.1"

http://www.dvdforum.org/37scmtg-resolution.htm

What are the major changes in 1.1 vs 1.0?
This is second hand info from my team as I no longer attend any meetings (other than the giving a keynote this afternoon for the 10th anniversary). With that out of the way, I know about two areas:

1. Application authentication. As you know, HD DVD players mandate internet connectivity. To assure that rogue programs can not run in the players, each application must be signed/authenticated. Today, the only way to do this is to use AACS protection to cryptographically authenticate the application. While this works fine for movie content, for smaller productions in other domains such as training, etc. where AACS is not needed, it is not a very convenient solution. So version 1.1 creates a new mechanism to have applications be signed by third-party certificate authorities (i.e. how today’s applications are signed on PCs).

2. Support for 44.1Khz (and multiples) for audio HD DVD discs to support cases where the production is done natively in that sampling rate. The request had come from the music industry to use HD DVD as a high-quality music delivery system.

Equipment makers/application vendors have 18 months to provide this functionality. Until then, it is up to companies to volunteer to implement the same sooner.

Amir, would you mind answering the detailed questions (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9886433&&#post9886433) I posted earlier in this thread?

Amir/Ben/MS generally,

AntShaw in #2486 asks about audio problems with the new NIN disc. Also, thread here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=812834 - briefly, there are THD and other audio problems with the add-on and this disc. Can anyone at MS confirm this and/or comment?

Also, do many people at MS 'eat their own dogfood' by using the add-on as a primary HD DVD player? I think it works quite well overall, but there are random glitches that I hope MS people notice and are able to escalate.

Amir/Ben/MS generally,

AntShaw in #2486 asks about audio problems with the new NIN disc. Also, thread here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=812834 - briefly, there are THD and other audio problems with the add-on and this disc. Can anyone at MS confirm this and/or comment?
Thanks for the pointer. I am asking the team about it.

Also, do many people at MS 'eat their own dogfood' by using the add-on as a primary HD DVD player? I think it works quite well overall, but there are random glitches that I hope MS people notice and are able to escalate.
Yes, we have a ton of people who eat this dogfood (myself included). But most are now testing the new software update so they may not be seeing this kind of problem.

Nilsp, do you work for Sony?
I don't think he does. Based on his location, I suspect he works for Telenor. Folks here probably don't know much about this company but Telenor has been quite active in development of MPEG-4 AVC. For example, their encoder/decoder for AVC won over the Nokia implementation and became the basis for the reference implementation (we did the same for MPEG-4 part 2). I am sure the industry is very appreciative of the role they have played in this regard.

Amir, would you mind answering the detailed questions (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9886433&&#post9886433) I posted earlier in this thread?
I am sorry but I really can't. The entire reason this thread was created is because people got frustrated with our exchanges in the format thread, having a single goal of who can wrestle the other to the ground, as opposed to unearthing information in clear concise way that people can read and learn about. Your multipart post, with many quotes of my previous answers, looks very much like those argumentative posts of the past so I choose to not answer it.

You are of course welcome to assume I don't know how to answer the questions and assume you are right. My feelings would not be hurt one bit :).

BTW, I do the same with some of the other questions asked here so don’t feel like I have singled you out (see my response to Nils and lack of response to some other queries).

Note to mods: happy to have this post deleted if you see fit. {Nope. Helps to explain to others that this is supposed to be a question and answer thread, not a court of law. -Doc }

So you know, I have challenged studio executives who think AVC is better to pick their favorite clip, encode it with AVC, and then give us a shot to do better in VC-1. I made such an offer about 4 weeks ago to one studio executive. The person agreed with the challenge. But you know what? We never heard back from them! I mean what could be more fair than this test? They got to pick the clip, spend all the time optimizing the AVC encode, etc. They are still welcome to follow up after reading this post. Not saying we will win 100% as their opinion may not match ours. But I would not make the offer if I did not think we had an advantage on our side with VC-1 algorithm.

Amir,

I presume you are not referring to Sony Pictures right? Naturally you would know that we have sent samples to Dan and are having a dialog with him on the results.

Your post indicates again that Sony Pictures must have dark or political motives for using something other than VC1 for our titles, we don't.... As I have mentioned before, we author and compress for a number of studios, if they want their titles prepared with VC1, we are happy to oblige.

You are getting further and further out on a limb about the ability of AVC to reproduce the master, grain and all. To date we have done many side by side tests internally and with those who actually make the films. It is safe to say they know what their titles are supposed to look like and their opinion runs counter to yours. Look for confirmation in the next few weeks...

Getting back to actually asking questions..............

Paidgeek,

Assuming the BDP-S300 is one of the two Sapphire models announced at CES, when can we expect an announcement regarding the second player?

Thanks!

Sorry, but I can't give any specifics on the player release dates. Sony Electronics will want the honor of announcing their product plans..

paidgeek,

I know there was a quote about the BDP-S300 having the same capabilities as the BDP-S1, but can you tell us if it will have any extras (like TrueHD decoding)? Also, can you confirm 1080p24 output support with the BDP-S300?

Thanks,
Darin

Sorry for the late response...

I don't have all the specifics on this player. I know it will output 24p, but I don't have confirmation about the audio decoding specs yet...

Paid, since your back could you answer the following:

How much persistent storage is mandated for profile 1.0 BD players?

Paid, since your back could you answer the following:

How much persistent storage is mandated for profile 1.0 BD players?

No persistent storage is required for these players.

This is second hand info from my team as I no longer attend any meetings (other than the giving a keynote this afternoon for the 10th anniversary). With that out of the way, I know about two areas:

1. Application authentication. As you know, HD DVD players mandate internet connectivity. To assure that rogue programs can not run in the players, each application must be signed/authenticated. Today, the only way to do this is to use AACS protection to cryptographically authenticate the application. While this works fine for movie content, for smaller productions in other domains such as training, etc. where AACS is not needed, it is not a very convenient solution. So version 1.1 creates a new mechanism to have applications be signed by third-party certificate authorities (i.e. how today’s applications are signed on PCs).

2. Support for 44.1Khz (and multiples) for audio HD DVD discs to support cases where the production is done natively in that sampling rate. The request had come from the music industry to use HD DVD as a high-quality music delivery system.

Equipment makers/application vendors have 18 months to provide this functionality. Until then, it is up to companies to volunteer to implement the same sooner.

Thanks amir.

I don't think he does. Based on his location, I suspect he works for Telenor. Folks here probably don't know much about this company but Telenor has been quite active in development of MPEG-4 AVC. For example, their encoder/decoder for AVC won over the Nokia implementation and became the basis for the reference implementation (we did the same for MPEG-4 part 2). I am sure the industry is very appreciative of the role they have played in this regard.
You are correct. I work for Telenor, although not specifically with encoder/decoder development. I'm in the Broadcast divison (DTH/Cable/IPTV/DTT), but my HD interest is more of a personal quest for the best possible PQ/AQ in my Home Theatre.

Just as a side note, to prove I'm not on a anti-Microsoft campaign, we're upgrading our SMS system and part of that process is switching to BizTalk, .NET Framework 3.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 plus Atlas. I'm very happy with the results so far! :)