Could this be it? Folded Space Enhanced Resolution - Page 2

The most satisfying "aspect" of my Home Theater is that the movies are displayed in their original AR, just as in a premium public theater.

Assuming this development gets us still closer to the best home presentation vs. the original film elements, I am all for it! I'll be happy to upgrade both projector and player (and re-buy all my 'scope favorites) to take advantage of this new technology.

I wish Folded Space the best of luck in convincing studios and mfrs to adopt their new encoding technology. Not an easy task I'll bet!

Can't have it both ways. If 1920x1080 is anamorphic, then that 1920x1080 is vertically stretched, out of proportion so the lens puts it back right at 2.37. It's going to have to be scaled to add black bars. So either that's another copy of the video that is not stretched and includes encoded bars, or something has to scale.

Are you saying we could have true 4k content on a blu-ray, or just that it is compatible by interpolating/upscaling a 2K image? Would blu ray even be able to hold a full movie at 4k resolution, which would be 4x as many pixels per frame as 2K?

He's just saying that MFE would work with 4K, he's not speaking to BD's ability to hold a 4K movie. But with the new generation of upcoming codecs and a bump in capacity, it's possible that BD could hold 4K. Of course the spec would have to be amended, and you may or may not have to buy a new player.

[*]2560 x 1080 (beyond HDTV specs and no use unless we go 21:9).

Maybe of value with a 4K projector

After reading further, it seems that the letterboxed version of the movie (the same version that is currently stored on BD) would have to be the "base" version that can simply be passed from the player after decoding, since this is backwards compatible with current BD players.

To me it seems that the other three versions - the P&S, the anamorphic, and the wide versions would all have to be processed from the letterbox version. I'm guessing that the extra data in the black bars is used to enhance or "bolster" the anamorphic version that results from vertically scaling the original letterbox version. Perhaps there's other data that's used to further enhance the interpolated image when scaling to 2560x1080.

Of course, maybe they're cleverly able to store more than one "per-pixel" version of the film (i.e., letterbox and anamorphic) that requires no extra processing to produce. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

You're thinking of this too linearly. Right now, if you want to expand a 1920x810 image to anamorphic 1920x1080, you have to scale and interpolate the extra 1920x270 pixels. But what if the pixels that contain true picture detail for the middle of the movie image could be stored and hidden out of sequence behind the letterbox bars? The Folded Space decoder would both unhide the pixels and correctly map them to their proper positions in the middle of the picture. The pixels are just data, after all. They don't have to be stored in sequential order. It should be fairly trivial for a decoder to rearrange them into a predetermined order.

The "hiding" process could be as simple as blanking out the pixels when not in use.

Essentially correct. The vertical contains "real" resolution in that it is derived from the actual picture detail contained in the master. The horizontal is accomplished by an extremely accurate predictive algorithm developed by Folded Space. I just want to be clear that this is a new process, not simply "scaling," and it works very very well. I can't say much more at this point.

Mark, once again you are exactly correct There is no "scaling" involved, it's simply a matter or removing or re-integrating information.

They key to getting a true high rez anamorphic image is to ensure we have a master that has the additional vertical resolution available. This means we have to have either a 4K source or a 2K anamorphic source. If a film is shot anamorphically, it is scanned in anamorphically as well. This means we can get additional vertical resolution from existing 2K masters of anamorphically shot films. Make sense? Getting additional resolution from 4K sources is a no brainer

As I mentioned above, there is no scaling done. As long as we have access to a master that has the additional vertical resolution, THAT becomes our master. Our master source is already anamorphically stretched using real resolution in the vertical. The letterbox version is created by simply removing information from that source.

I am just saying our process is totally compatible with 4K resolutions. Whether or not we ever see anything like that is up to the Blu-ray manufacturers and studios, etc.

I guess the best way to look at this is that the 2560 x 1080 version is the "base" version, with the extra info stored behind the black bars. All other versions are extracted from this. Another way would be to say that the "anamorphic" 1920 x 1080 is the base version, since that is what precisely fits within the 16:9 container - and what would qualify as "pixel for pixel."

I can't really get into much more detail without revealing that which I cannot

We think actually that the process would boost sales of anamorphic lens systems and 21:9 displays, as with those technologies you get it ALL - full resolution, an immersive, true widescreen display, and no black bars. The people who hate black bars and watch films on 16:9 displays can get rid of them right now just by pushing the "full" or "zoom" modes on their aspect ratio controls. All we are doing is offering those folks a higher resolution version of what they are already doing. And it would help Blu-ray sales because there are certainly those consumers who don't like films on Blu or DVD because they can't stand the letterbox bars. Knowing that a full screen option exists for them if they choose it should help bolster sales.

Here is how we think about it - four versions on one disc that hits all demographics. We think it's a win-win, and will certainly help raise awareness for 21:9 / anamorphic in the process. It will now be extremely evident that those who choose the full screen version are missing out on what anamorphic and 21:9 can deliver, since these "ultimate" formats will be illustrated when describing the process

Sounds good, but consumer education will be a buger. You guys know as well as I do how surprisingly difficult it can be to train even some dealers on anamorphic. But if it can be dummied down so the consumer can pick the right thing and understand the differences, might sell to them, too.

best case scenario - when does this become available?

Totally understand that you can't reveal any proprietary, unique processes here for obvious reasons.

That being said, if this is backwards compatible with current BD players, then my understanding is that the 1920x817 version (with black bars on top and bottom) - which is what we currently get with 'scope films on disc - is what's stored in its entirety, no? Any other version - the "anamorphic" version, the "wide screen" (2560x1080) version, and the P&S version - would all be derived by adding the "extra" info stored behind the black bars and interpolating the desired image using your proprietary algorithm?

I'm definitely a fan of multiple AR's being stored on a single disc - I like the flexibility and added choice that it gives to the end user - but I'm just trying to wrap my head around what's the "original" and what's derived using on-board processing.

John:

I'd be interested in being a alpha tester. Happy to partner, and sign NDA's etc. Contact me at scott a*t techht d*t com. What's good for you is good for me

Thanks,
Scott

Theoretically yes, I'm sure a BD could store 2560x1080 in terms of space available. The problem is that 1) the BD spec does not include that resolution, and 2) existing players would have no way of processing such a resolution without a firmware upgrade at a minimum - and that's assuming the on-board hardware would support such a resolution. In order to be backward compatible with existing BD players, any 'scope film would HAVE to exist on the disc in its letterboxed form as it would on current discs.

Again, I'm sure this makes sense to a layperson, but the mechanisms at work here are not so simple. Anamorphic DVDs were actually encoded with rectangular pixels within the 720x480i box allowed by the spec, and the pixel aspect ratio was actually encoded on to the disc for use by the player. If you played such a disc on a 4:3 display natively (with zero processing), you'd get a horizontally compressed image 480 pixels high and 720 pixels wide. Anamorphic DVDs were included as part of the original DVD spec, so you could adjust a setting (usually called screen size, with choices of 4:3 and 16:9 or something similar) that told the player how to scale the image properly for viewing.

However the BD spec does not include any similar feature in terms of discerning between 2560x1080 content and 1920x1080 content, so no current BD player would know how to read anything but a 1920x1080 image. It certainly wouldn't know to "remove every 4th line" of the former resolution, and even if it did, the results would look awful - this is why we have scaling algorithms instead. Of course, no BD player currently is capable of scaling a 2560x1080 image to 1920x1080, and at best such an addition would have to come in the form of a firmware fix (at worst, the on-board VP chip wouldn't be firmware upgradable and such a capability couldn't be added). I guarantee you no BD player manufacturer is going to be willing to issue firmware upgrades for every single player it's made in order to allow the system you've described to work.

So we're back at square one - in order to be backwards compatible (and compliant with BD specs), any BD with a 'scope movie has to contain a 1920x1080 letterboxed version as the BASE version. What the guys at FS have done is use additional algorithms in concert with the "unused" space in the black bars to store additional information that can later be extracted to create one of three processed images - 1920x1080 P&S, 1920x1080 Anamorphic, and 2560x1080. The way I understand it, none of those three formats have purely "original" information in the extra space outside of the original letterboxed version; however some original information is used in concert with FS's proprietary predictive algorithms to create the versions above that are truer to the original (and contain more picture information) than one would achieve via pure scaling.

See my post above - although some real data from higher resolution masters is used and stored behind the black bars, the unaltered original that is stored on the disc - which requires no processing - is still the same as the 1920x1080 letterboxed versions that we own today.

As I said before, I'm all for the idea of having data stored on the disc - and processing available - that allows for variable ARs without having to interpolate all the extra picture area, and I hope that this gains traction with studios. However it also has to work with existing BD players, which has pretty clear implications as to what is and isn't being stored on the disc in terms of "all original" data.

Also interested in alpha testing - I barely got to use my scope setup before I left, and after being away for 4 moths I'll be ready to do some fun trials with RS55 and Isco3 should the opportunity present itself!

I think there's a bit of confusion going on, as there are two different perspectives being given here and in each "base" has a different meaning.

What John is saying when he say "base" is that their "source" is a true, 2560x1080 (or better) source, and that they then feed that "base" 2560x1080 video into their system. So as far as their system goes, they are starting with a real 2560x1080 picture.

The confusion is from our end we're trying to figure out what's the "base" source that the player starts with. In this case, I believe HogPilot is right, to retain backward compatibility, the base video on the disc has to be letterboxed 1920x1080 (1920x810 active area). They then "hide" essentially the difference between the 1920x810, letterboxed "base" version, and the "full" 2560x1080 version via some clever encoding in the letterbox bars. In fact this is exactly what John/Folded Space say

So my guess then is that what happens is there's the base 1920x810, backward compatible version, then in addition to that there's the "difference" information for the 2560x1080, and possibly some P&S mettadata stored in the black bars. So when you play an MFE disc on an MFE player, it decodes the base version, plus the difference information, to create a "real" 2560x1080 image, which is then either displayed as is, scaled to 1920x1080 anamorphic, or P&S'd, with the later two happening on the fly. It seems to me that it would be storage-prohibitive to try and store three different difference images in the black bars and would be much more efficient to just store the 2560x1080 difference in the bars and create the Anamorphic and P&S versions on the fly.