Industry Insiders Q&A MASTER THREAD [separate thread for Xbox/Add On & PS3]

[Schlotkins]

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

[TomsHT]

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

[AnthonyP]

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
?

[amirm]

Originally Posted by AnthonyP

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...

[amirm]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

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?

[amirm]

Originally Posted by TomsHT

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….

[RobertR1]

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?

[evdberg]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

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 !

[TheLion]

Originally Posted by amirm

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?

[HighDeff]

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.??

[batmanbegan]

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

cheers

[dobyblue]

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.

[heresy]

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.

[HorrorScope]

Originally Posted by Sean_O

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.

[joshd2012]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Who does BVHE use to get their AVC encodes done?

Panasonic

[Supermans]

Originally Posted by amirm

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..

[LarryChanin]

Originally Posted by HorrorScope

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 (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"

Larry

[Schlotkins]

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

[xpouyat]

Originally Posted by Schlotkins

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.

[markrubin]

mod

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

Thanks

[laric]

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...

[Phloyd]

Originally Posted by amirm

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.

[thrustbucket]

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.

[chefboy1]

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?

[amirm]

Originally Posted by Supermans

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 )

[swanlee]

"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!!

[Bizill]

Originally Posted by swanlee

"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.

[TrevorS]

Originally Posted by Supermans

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!

[Schlotkins]

Originally Posted by xpouyat

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

[JBlacklow]

Originally Posted by amirm

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?