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1080p HD Demo Disc – Design and Build - Page 3

post #61 of 1069
8/13/09 at 12:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ebirbal View Post

Maybe something from "Planet Earth" ?

Which Disc, clip?
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post #62 of 1069
8/14/09 at 12:08am
This should give more ideas
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=755493
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post #63 of 1069
8/15/09 at 4:30pm
Thanks!
Thank you to everyone who has been contributing their thoughts to this project. In the end, the best result will only come with your own input and perspectives.

The original demos were great
I appreciate and use the demos from the original HT Demo Tree. As some have indicated, the menu interface in those discs could be improved. Essentially the feedback regarding those discs boils down to:
(1) menus should get out of the way, and
(2) they should look professional and "resemble" the amount of time, effort, and cost we put into our HT spaces.

What do YOU want to see?
So, I'd like to ask a few menu related questions of the fine AVS users who LURK beneath the surface (you know who you are).

(Uno) Based on what I've seen/heard, the default menu option that is selected once you arrive at the menu should be "Play All". Yes? No?

(Dos) If you weren't going to hit the "Play All" button/option, would you want to see some sort of category menu? Like LFE, Action, Animation/Kids, etc...

(Tres) From a layout/design perspective, what would YOU want to see?

A direct, thumbnail based option similar to these...




Or a categorical/icon approach, similar to this....


Or a more thematic approach like this....


This is your chance to be heard!
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post #64 of 1069
8/15/09 at 7:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Audixium View Post

Thanks!
Thank you to everyone who has been contributing their thoughts to this project. In the end, the best result will only come with your own input and perspectives.

The original demos were great
I appreciate and use the demos from the original HT Demo Tree. As some have indicated, the menu interface in those discs could be improved. Essentially the feedback regarding those discs boils down to:
(1) menus should get out of the way, and
(2) they should look professional and "resemble" the amount of time, effort, and cost we put into our HT spaces.

What do YOU want to see?
So, I'd like to ask a few menu related questions of the fine AVS users who LURK beneath the surface (you know who you are).

(Uno) Based on what I've seen/heard, the default menu option that is selected once you arrive at the menu should be "Play All". Yes? No?

(Dos) If you weren't going to hit the "Play All" button/option, would you want to see some sort of category menu? Like LFE, Action, Animation/Kids, etc...

(Tres) From a layout/design perspective, what would YOU want to see?

A direct, thumbnail based option similar to these...
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...-DVDA-LOB0.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...D_Menu_1a1.jpg

Or a categorical/icon approach, similar to this....
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...th-youtube.jpg

Or a more thematic approach like this....
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...llenangels.png

This is your chance to be heard!

I'm not a fan on the thematic version and not quite sure about the categorical look but it could work the best depending on how you set it up. Care to make a mock-up?



As for good clips, the car chase scene in Quantum of Solace is great. It looks good about the sound is amazing. I'm thinking about 0:00:35 to 00:01:37.
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post #65 of 1069
8/16/09 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by gthrift View Post

I'm not a fan on the thematic version and not quite sure about the categorical look but it could work the best depending on how you set it up. Care to make a mock-up?

Ok, so a vote against the Thematic version, and hesitation regarding the categorical look. Does that mean you prefer the initial, direct approach?

Mock ups will come once the community starts to show a preference for a common direction.


Quote:
Originally Posted by gthrift View Post

As for good clips, the car chase scene in Quantum of Solace is great. It looks good about the sound is amazing. I'm thinking about 0:00:35 to 00:01:37.

Thanks!!! I agree that is a great scene. It made my dog pee...
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post #66 of 1069
8/17/09 at 4:02am
I kind of like the 'HeadSpin' look. Also, everyone seems to be concentrating on big crash bang boom. I would like to see a nice quiet scene. You know, maybe some good music or ambiance. A dark cave to show off your blacks, a mountain to show off you whites or canyon with surround echo or spin around . Something like that. Every move has a quiet scene, yes?
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post #67 of 1069
8/17/09 at 6:19am
I like both the Direct and Thematic with Thematic having the edge because you can get to a direct look by going to scene selection.
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post #68 of 1069
8/17/09 at 6:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by oman321 View Post

I like both the Direct and Thematic with Thematic having the edge because you can get to a direct look by going to scene selection.

Interesting, for thematic I was thinking something along the lines of theater based. Perhaps some folks around here wouldn't mind sharing some high quality pics of their setups.

Here is an XBMC shot - the menu is clearly in the way, but I think you can get a sense for the theme:


Or would you rather have a movie based theme with a background image that rotated/changed occasionally?
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post #69 of 1069
8/17/09 at 7:18am
I like that HT idea. Maybe add a couple of them so they could rotate as you suggest with the movie theme. You can perhaps combine them also showing the HT's screen with a screen pic on it.
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post #70 of 1069
8/17/09 at 12:26pm
Thread Starter 
Audixium – thanks for getting the design discussion going. I like the idea of a main title page with all the categories and sub pages under with specific clips for that category.

Here is my stab at the front page design. Basic but gets the point across. I don’t think either of these is “the one” but I’m hoping it will spur on some more thought.

Title Page Idea #1
Each icon depicts the category to be viewed. Once selected, another page would be displayed where the viewer could choose an individual clip (with thumbnails) and/or have the ability to play all clips at once.

NOTE: I also added a “Play All” option to play all clips from all categories






Title Page Idea #2
This one is similar to the XBMC clip above (but not nearly as elegant, sorry). As a category is selected, the category icon would get larger and the others would get smaller and gray out. I see it operating like XBMC or Windows Media Center where the focus stays in the center and the icons move up and down. This would allow for more categories and not be limited to screen size.


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post #71 of 1069
8/17/09 at 12:34pm
You know it is going to be a great disc when there is a category labeled "explosions."
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post #72 of 1069
8/18/09 at 5:55am
What an awesome thread! I like title page #1. Appreciate your efforts swithey.
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post #73 of 1069
8/18/09 at 7:54am
I really like the title #1 look. And I say it is a great idea to break clips down into categories.

I watched a couple of movies this past weekend. Twister and Transformers. Both have excellent audio, and several good scenes for a clip disk.

But in Transformers, most would say that the Ironhide flip scene is a good one. Whereas I think the Scorponok in the desert scene is better to demo. That one has exellent picture quality, surround, and lfe.

I agree with the other poster that would request some quiet beautiful scenes too. I have a blu titled Alaska, and it is gorgeous.

Sorry I did not get any time stamps yet. But the kids and wife do not like me pausing during the action!

This weekend I will get a couple scenes from Twister, Transformers, and Wanted. 3:10 to Yuma too..
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post #74 of 1069
8/18/09 at 10:13am
I too like the category title too. make it easier to organize. however, do keep it mind that if we are really gonna use DVD-5/DVD-9 disc, that would mean we can only put a limited amount of clips in each disc. may be like 8-12 clips at best?? if so, than it would make not much sense to just put 1-3 clips in each own category and make it harder to browse/found.

just a simple thumb nail of each clip like Audixium's direct thumb nail template which could hold ALL of the clips that we could fit into a DVD might be a better choice for easy navigation imho.

and I do like the theme-base template too! but might it for just a specialized disc like LEF specialied disc? e.g. original HT Demo disc's Disc 5 & 21?

oh, here's the theater background image that you might be able to use.

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post #75 of 1069
8/18/09 at 11:12am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by landshark1 View Post

I too like the category title too. make it easier to organize. however, do keep it mind that if we are really gonna use DVD-5/DVD-9 disc, that would mean we can only put a limited amount of clips in each disc. may be like 8-12 clips at best?? if so, than it would make not much sense to just put 1-3 clips in each own category and make it harder to browse/found.

just a simple thumb nail of each clip like Audixium's direct thumb nail template which could hold ALL of the clips that we could fit into a DVD might be a better choice for easy navigation imho.

and I do like the theme-base template too! but might it for just a specialized disc like LFE specialized disc? e.g. original HT Demo disc's Disc 5 & 21?

You might be onto something. If we do use a DVD5/9 medium, maybe we could make a specific disc for each category. This would net us more clips per disc.

But, if we use the "download" model, then we could make the disc as large as we want. What you lose there is portability -- i.e. for demos on a friends system, testing out TV/Proj/Speakers at a Home Theater Store, etc.

I like your background. Here is Idea #1 with your background.
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post #76 of 1069
8/18/09 at 12:15pm
Go ahead Steve, you can use your HT as the background
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post #77 of 1069
8/18/09 at 12:31pm
Too much good stuff...besides what has been mentioned

Live Free Die Hard - apartment scene and car coming at them in the tunnel
Smokin Aces - 50 cal
Serenity - griever chase
Underworld
Shoot Em Up
Hitman
Constantine
Push

Look good and sound good
I Robot
Speed Racer
Coraline
Chris Botti

All have some really great scenes
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post #78 of 1069
8/18/09 at 1:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by swithey View Post

You might be onto something. If we do use a DVD5/9 medium, maybe we could make a specific disc for each category. This would net us more clips per disc.

But, if we use the "download" model, then we could make the disc as large as we want. What you lose there is portability -- i.e. for demos on a friends system, testing out TV/Proj/Speakers at a Home Theater Store, etc.

Is the potential loss of portability a big deal? Seems like it would be, for the reasons you cite. Plus, the convience of popping in a disc vs downloading (if I understand this correctly). I don't understand the technology/hardware implications as the technical discussion is beyond me.

But, from a convience perspective, I imagine a room of guests anticipating the demo while waiting/hoping for a successful 'download' to complete or just hitting the play button on the BD player.

By the way, this really is a great project.
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post #79 of 1069
8/18/09 at 2:30pm
I'd suggest the Title Page 1 of Swithey or the Headspin of Audixium. Simple and right to the point. A title page with categories, thumbnails, and a Play All. More than that and we start using disc space for the menu and menu animations...

Re: the download versus DVD, I vote for DVD. You have the portable issue, as discussed, but the size limit will also help to force the end result to be more effective. Doing multiple discs then becomes the logical solution, but of course now the project is expanding.
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post #80 of 1069
8/18/09 at 2:33pm
FWIW:
I vote for a single DVD with the simple straightforward title page, as shown above
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post #81 of 1069
8/18/09 at 2:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by kjlewie View Post

Is the potential loss of portability a big deal? Seems like it would be, for the reasons you cite. Plus, the convience of popping in a disc vs downloading (if I understand this correctly). I don't understand the technology/hardware implications as the technical discussion is beyond me.

But, from a convience perspective, I imagine a room of guests anticipating the demo while waiting/hoping for a successful 'download' to complete or just hitting the play button on the BD player..

I was implying that people would download the entire demo disc to their hard drive (ahead of time) and play it with a Home Theater PC (HTPC) or something similar to the Popcorn Hour (PCH). However, downloading 24-50gb might take a while anyway

We'll play it by ear and see how things turn out.
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post #82 of 1069
8/18/09 at 3:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by swithey View Post

Here is my stab at the front page design. Basic but gets the point across. I don't think either of these is the one but I'm hoping it will spur on some more thought.

Title Page Idea #1



Each icon depicts the category to be viewed. Once selected, another page would be displayed where the viewer could choose an individual clip (with thumbnails) and/or have the ability to play all clips at once.

I like this category based menu and simple menuing. If this is a blu-ray disc, I will be converting into .mkv files to run on the PCH and it will be fairly easy to convert a simple menu like this into a YAMJ menu for demos.

Thanks for your work!
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post #83 of 1069
8/18/09 at 3:31pm
oh, sorry, I was under the impression that it will be DVD-size base for people to burn onto a DVD disc.... and that's why I think we'll be limited by how many clips that we could squeeze in. and why I vote for a simple thumbnail/play all menu.

I wouldn't mind for a download PC playable version tho as I have HTPC for each TV in the house. and it will most likely be the method that I'm gonna play it back anyway regardless which way we go.

but I think we do need to think 'bout the end product's file size tho. first, even someone is kind enough to host it on their FTP server, it will eat up lots of bandwidth for his hosting. and if we go for the torrent way, even with lots of people seeding it, it will take days/weeks to download 20+GB of file. versus if we need it w/in a DVD size, and just make more different discs, people don't have to wait that long to download them.
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post #84 of 1069
8/18/09 at 4:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by landshark1 View Post

oh, sorry, I was under the impression that it will be DVD-size base for people to burn onto a DVD disc.... and that's why I think we'll be limited by how many clips that we could squeeze in. and why I vote for a simple thumbnail/play all menu.

I wouldn't mind for a download PC playable version tho as I have HTPC for each TV in the house. and it will most likely be the method that I'm gonna play it back anyway regardless which way we go.

but I think we do need to think 'bout the end product's file size tho. first, even someone is kind enough to host it on their FTP server, it will eat up lots of bandwidth for his hosting. and if we go for the torrent way, even with lots of people seeding it, it will take days/weeks to download 20+GB of file. versus if we need it w/in a DVD size, and just make more different discs, people don't have to wait that long to download them.


I pretty much agree on all of that.

A DVD5 format is really a must as far as I can see, as it means you can take it along to anyone's place and demo it there, just the same way we have the original dvd demo disks.

Sizing them to fit a DVD5 also allows the option of usb sticks to move stuff around for demo purposes.


At the same time we have a lot of people with HTPC's, which would in effect remove the size 'restrictions' away from a DVD5.

As far as hosting it somewhere, I have no problems with continuing on from the DVD demo disks, however the server that I have it on is now around 1000km away from here, so to upgrade to a bigger HD to allow for multiple HD demos is going to be quite costly, as I'll have to pay someone to go in to put new hard disk in, then copy the data across.


So really a DVD5 sized HD demo disk/s is possibly the way to go.

Also as has been mentioned, 25Gb is a huge amount of data to ftp or torrent around the place in one hit, whereas 5 x DVD5's is going to be a whole lot more convenient if you ask me.
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post #85 of 1069
8/18/09 at 4:47pm
what you on about down loaded 120gb in a week for the dvd demo discs 1-27 on the torrent and ftp site.

25gb-50gb is nothing really. you should be able to choose if you want it on dvd or blu-ray or pc file a vote me thinks?
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post #86 of 1069
8/18/09 at 6:09pm
Good discussion here...logistically I see the value of starting with a single DVD5 or DVD9 AVCHD disc. In utopia it would be a multi-disc Blu-ray series, but reality keeps tapping on our shoulders .
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post #87 of 1069
8/18/09 at 6:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by homethx View Post

what you on about down loaded 120gb in a week for the dvd demo discs 1-27 on the torrent and ftp site.

25gb-50gb is nothing really. you should be able to choose if you want it on dvd or blu-ray or pc file a vote me thinks?

Dunno what sort of bandwidth you guys outside of Australia have, but we're pretty much the internet backwater over here. We have download limits on broadband of as little as 10Gb per month, and many of 20 - 25Gb per month.

All that said, I still think we need to start small, i.e. a DVD5 for distribution purposes.

Down the track we can get more elaborate, with BD size disks.

I personally think most of us that are looking at this sort of stuff, have HTPC's where they'll download and keep the demos for direct access, rather than messing around with disks, be they DVD or BD !
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post #88 of 1069
8/18/09 at 9:33pm
Why not use rapidshare/megaupload for distribution?

I vote for a DVD9 at the minimum.
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post #89 of 1069
8/18/09 at 9:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ebirbal View Post

Why not use rapidshare/megaupload for distribution?

Depends upon how much the group of us here want to push our luck against the movie corporations I guess.

I know the dvd ht demos were supposed to be via a fairly private distribution system, i.e. PM for ftp logins, etc., so as to avoid waving flags in the face of the movie corporations, and telling them 'up yours', or 'come and get us' by having download locations searchable via google and the like.
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post #90 of 1069
8/18/09 at 11:27pm
Quote:


Depends upon how much the group of us here want to push our luck against the movie corporations I guess.

I understand the quasi legal nature on the endeavour, but we dont necessarily need to publish the rapidshare/megaupload links. They can very well be exchanged via PM/email just like its currently being done for FTP for the demo DVD's.

The advantage with rapid/mega is that one poor guy/ftp server wouldnt have to bear the brunt of all the download requests that are going to pour in, plus its atleast a little bit more "safer" than putting it on anyone's private FTP server.

For best results, the DVD should be split up in multiple parts and uploaded to multiple file sharing sites, where each part on each site is identical and the links can be exchanged. That way, free users can simulate multiple downloads by simultaneously downloading say part1.rar from site A, part2.rar from site B, part3.rar from Site C, etc.
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