Anamorphic encoded Blu-Rays on the Horizon ! - Page 2

Are they (RED) actually doing a optical disc format? Why are they when hard drives seem to be better? If they are, then yes this needs to be a part from the get go.

I'd like to Phillips and Oppo on the list with many others to follow.

It is not a optical format. The details are scarce yet, but I believe it has SSD inside for storage and that the player downloades material from the content provider RED has partnered with.

You can of course connect any optical drive or PC to the player too.

http://www.red.com/products/red-ray

Not currently, since right now we are working with the studios primarily to get them on board with content. It's a chicken and egg thing - without MFE content, and MFD player doesn't do anyone any good. The BDA is listening, so once we get a studio or two to sign on we should see MFD get into players pretty quickly

Right now, there would be no benefit to MFE on RED footage since filmmakers using RED do not shoot with anamorphic lenses. They certainly could, but I don't know of any filmmaker who has. When a filmmaker wants to shoot a film in the 2.40:1 format with the RED camera, he / she simply only uses a 2.40:1 section of the RED image sensor (typically 4096 x 1728). Since the RedRay player simply passes on the original resolution of the "filmed" material, it would pass on the 4096 x 1728 (or 3840 x 1620) native resolution of the footage to the display. In this case, there is no additional vertical resolution to be had, and therefore no real benefit for MFE in this scenario. If filmmakers started using anamorphic lenses to take advantage of greater vertical resolution for widescreen footage, then yes - MFE would absolutely be of benefit.

All of this said, MFE makes great sense for films shot with RED cameras that end up on Blu-ray, as we can extract the extra vertical resolution we need. In fact, the screenshots I posted the other day are from a feature shot with a RED camera.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

I see that I have to be a little more persuasive and add some more info.

There are more movies shot on Red cameras and Anamorphics than one might think, even though that has nothing to do with the RedRay format as it is not Red Camera spesific.

The importance is to get MFE into the RedRay format from the start, to make content creators familiar with the feature, which often takes time.
It also needs to be added to the RedRay Format Creator software and added to the Anamorphic feature in Red Cine X RAW converter and Editor software.

In general very few 2:35:1 movies are shot with anamorphics, even movies originating on film, today. Even The Lord of the Rings was not shot with Anamorphic, but was printed Anamorphic.

As for Red Camera productions, quite a number of shorts and music videoes, (and even documentaries) are shot with RED and Anamorphics. Total Recall (2012) and Fire with Fire are the only known features I can list at the moment that where shot with Epic an Ananmorphics.

A lot of people are in fact asking RED to release a 4:3 camera sensor so they more easily can use the 2x Anamorphic lenses.
Pages of Anamorphic Lenses discussions for Red cameras here; http://www.reduser.net/forum/search.php?searchid=6480376
Example of music video shot on Epic with Anamorphics; Rihanna - Where Have You Been

Angenieux, Cooke and Zeiss are said to be building new Anamorphic sets for digital cameras. So Anamorphic shot movies are not disappearing.

Now to the real point; The RedRay player & distribution format is not exclusively for Red Camera films, but is a distribution and playback format for all 4K movie content.

Red is in partnership with a Content Distribution Company which will take care of the actual content distribution of the RedRay format.
That means there could be a lot of Anamorphic shot movies on the RedRay format in the future, also movies shot on film(most of them, as very many movies are still shot on film).

One of the added positives of implementing MFE for 4K formats at this early stage is that it might avoid 4K format creators to think that "4K is such a high resolution that we can just crop it to 2:40:1" and thereby starting to "dilute" the resolution.

Also when Production and Post Houses know about the advantage of MFE they will have the choice of using it, not only for Anamorphic shot movies, but for 2.40:1 movies that where shot spherical and cropped. They could add the vertical stretch conversion in the Post House in similar ways that Spherical shot "Scope" movies always where printed Anamorphic.

If MFE could benefit 4K formats by increasing resolution for us with Anamorphic lenses, I think it would be worth having a talk with Red and at least give them the opportunity to consider including it in the RedRay Playback Codec format.

PS; RedRay can also downconvert 4K to 2K "on the fly", so for many it will not be different than BD, just better 1080p imagery.
Edited by coolscan - 11/25/12 at 11:13am

Interesting! This goes against what I was told by someone who is supposedly very much "in the know" when it comes to RED and digital cinema formats. We did discuss the possibility of RED releasing a 4:3 image sensor to ensure compatibility with existing camera anamorphic lenses, but it was my understanding that there was no real interest there. In fairness, this conversation was about a year ago, so obviously things have changed.

Thanks for passing along all of this info. One of the invaluable things about this Forum is that you never know who might be reading and where that may lead. I will definitely contact RED this week.

Hope you succeed with RED.
What I am most afraid of is that they are not aware of the amount of interest and users of Anamorphic lenses by the consumer HT owners and possibly dismiss MFE on those grounds.
I often see a lack of knowledge by the content creators of what is "high on the agenda", what is regarded as quality, and what "moves" the enthusiast consumers, like people here on AVS.
Hope you are a good salesman.

Exactly. Just look at how Cameron took his 3D TITANIC right back to 16:9. Why? Because the majority of TVs are 16:9 and maxing the image height for the most people means filling a 16:9 screen. FS and MFE could be used to provide both markets with a full height image, yet the film gets its AR cropped because of the limits of the current BD specs. I only hope that because it was shot on Super 35, he has been able to open the masks for most of it. The CG stuff? Doubt it is anything other than a centre crop there.

Hi there, I'm about to receive my first Anamorphic-compatible projector, a relatively inexpensive Benq w1070, I'm considering purchasing an A-lens because I want to do a lot of PC gaming and watch CinemaScope movies on my custom DYI screen. What I was wondering is, with a Bluray that is eventually encoded with this new technique, at 2560x1080 res, can I send that as a shrunk 1080p 16:9 image, only to have it re-expanded to fit my entire screen via the A-lens? I.e., so that I don't lose going from 1920x1080 -> 1920x810 as we currently do, instead go from 2560x1080 to 1920x1080 "squeezed" then optically unsqueezed, so it uses the native projector resolution, but loses a bit of the horizontal.

Should I assume that all Blurays encoded with this technique will be treated as essentially 1080p 16:9 bitrate, even if their native aspect ratio is something different than 16:9? What I'm getting at is...looking to the future, if I can pick up a c-stock A-lens for my 1080p projector, with one of these Blurays, can I take advantage of all the native pixels of the projector without loss of actual vertical resolution. (since the squeezing + unsqueezing vertically is no longer done by the projector, i.e. the hdmi signal shows a full 16:9 frame at full res, no black bars). I don't think my projector will support 2560x1080 natively, so it'll have to be squeezed down to 1920 horizontally. what I'd like to know is, other than via my PC, can I do this type of vertical-only squeezing so there is no subsequent loss of horizontal resolution.

Your understanding is pretty much spot on, although what you would feed your projector would simply be the true vertically stretched anamorphic version rather than the 2560 x 1080 version. MFE allows for the user to choose any one of four formats:

Standard:16:9 letterbox (at 1920 x 810)
16:9 Full: cropped 16:9 full screen (at 1920 x 1080)
FullHD Wide: anamorphic widescreen (at 1920 x 1080)
SuperHD Wide: 2.35:1 widescreen (at 2560 x 1080)

Any MFE / MFD compatible Blu-ray player would be able to decode any of the above formats. Anamorphic lens users would simply need to choose FullHD Wide (no computer needed).

Of course, all of this depends upon industry adoption of our process, which we are working on

Best of luck to you, John! A huge CIH fan here.

... and cool to see you're in Colorado Springs as well. I'd love to hook up some time and get a demo.

In case anyone wants to know what native anamorphic motion video might actually look like, I found a YouTube video of the ending of G I JANE which appears to be 720P true anamorphic. All the other clips from the film were either letter boxed for centre cropped. This would be even better at 1080P, so if you use an A-Lens, you can project this using your real or 16:9 mode instead of letterbox.



G I JANE 720P True Anamorphic

Lets hope the studios support this with Folded Space for 1080P on BD.

John what about subtitles? I'd like to think that any title transferred using this technology will simply have the STs in the picture where they belong.

Why did the studios want them to take it out? Doesn't make sense.

Floyd

That may be possible. PM me if you like.

Thanks Scott

That issue has already been brought up by a couple of the studios, and they realize that the will need to re-position the subtitles into the picture area. In fact, one of the projector manufacturers that promotes the zoom feature heavily has asked for our help with this too.

Good to know The one good thing about the STAR WARS BD set is that they have placed the STs where they were seen in the cinema. With HD, I see (yes pun intended) no need to have STs in the black bars as they are perfectly legible over the image.

The argument for STs in the balck bars always seems to come down to something about them being easier to read and to that I have to ask what about for 1.85:1 films when there is no other place to put them?

My argument against subtitles in the letterbox bar is that they draw the viewers' eyes away from the movie, and draw attention to the empty real estate on the screen. This destroys the illusion of watching the movie in a cinema, and reminds viewers that they're just watching a TV.

Thanks JS. I got my new Benq w1070 and set my PC to output a custom res doe 2:35 : 1. It is awesome. Best part, is that for 16:9 content I can use the digital zoom on the projector. I lose some resolution that way, but the size is the same, and I don't have to switch between 1920x810 and 1920x1080 depending on the content I watch. I'm a PC gamer so I love me some ultrawide screen action. w00t.

I think your FullHD Wide is a really neat solution, but I'm wondering, how can you fit 2560x1080 in the same image data stream as FullHD Wide? Or is it all the same data. I think the BD "native" is 1080 high, and no projectors currently support 2560, but just in terms of bandwidth and encoding, I'm curious how you can encode a BD that plays the same on older Bluray players in letterbox 1920x810, and both 1920x1080 anamorphic and 2560x1080. I thought "hiding" the extra pixels behind the letterbox bars is a brilliant way to preserve backwards compatibility, but that data can't be just extra information vertically, can it, if you can also recreate 2560x1080 which has the same height. Or is the 2560 merely extrapolated from the 16:9 FullHD "Wide" and contains no extra actual raw video data over it. //scratches head

ps can anyone point me in the direction for some c-stock A-lens sources? like via PM maybe. thanks!

If you go back to post 13 in this thread, you will see that I posted the white paper on MFE for download. There is a pretty thorough discussion of the "four different formats on one disc" concept and how it works.

As far as getting to 2560 x 1080, here is a brief explanation. First, we start with a 2560 x 1080 master from the studio. Then we pass this master through the MFE encode, which results in a 1920 x 810 letterboxed version with extra vertical resolution hidden behind the black letterbox bars. This extra resolution can then be losslessly re-integrated with the letterbox image to get us a true anamorphic widescreen image at 1920 x 1080. This version has 33% true additional vertical resolution and picture detail (FullHD Wide).

To get to SuperHD Wide (2560x1080), MFD (the decode side of MFE) starts with this same anamorphic 1920 x 1080 version and uses its predictive algorithm to extrapolate the image out to full 2560 x 1080. The MFD process works better than any scaling algorithm because since we started with 2560 x 1080 master, MFE / MFD essentially "knows" what picture information was thrown out in order to create the letterboxed version of the movie. It then predictively reintegrates this lost information to create "SuperHD Wide." While this is not exactly the same as having a true 2560 x 1080 native video stream, our tests have shown that the result is hard to distinguish from the original 2560 x 1080 master, and that MFD creates a final widescreen image superior to what is achievable by scaling.

This sounds amazing!! Would LOVE to see this.

I have a JVC RS45... I wonder if JVC is the manufacturer you were referring to.

I can see that point of view.

However I can also agree with the point of view that subtitles in the black bar area finally stop the subtitles from obscuring and defacing the image. Subtitles are almost uniformly ugly looking and it can be like someone constantly putting graffiti over beautiful cinematography. I remember the first time I saw some foreign films, the cinematography unsullied by subtitles which were placed below the image, I thought "finally! What a great idea!"

That said, since I have a projection system and mask my images, subtitles on the image area are helpful and the lesser of two evils.

Of course you at Folded Space have thought of this, but since it's not said here earlier I'll write it out..

It's not just the studios and Blu Ray player manufacturers. It's also the video streaming services: Netflix, iTunes and the likes.
- Or are their formats in any case so flexible that MFE is not needed in the first place?
What kind of codecs are they using? - Are they just copying Blu Ray discs to their hard drives? Could MFE be of help here?
I bet if you could sell the idea to Apple, that would make it easier to sell the idea to Film Studios as well.

For video streaming services updating thousands of movies titles into the new encoding would be less of a job than printing all those millions of new blu ray discs...
(Yet I bet George Lucas surely likes MFE Blu Ray: Now all the Star Wars Collector's Boxes can be resold again, before the next 5 years when they will be yet resold with the 4K standard and the saga will continue...

Is there much extra processing power needed for the MFE? If not, then a Blu Ray player could _in_theory_ be updated by firmware update. (That is if the encoding algorithms are not put into ROM chips only.)

A few notions and questions here. I'm pretty new to the subject so please pardon me if I have mistaken something elementary.

1) 21:9 Ratio TV's are mostly out of Market today. Philips killed the production of 21:9 TV's this autumn. In USA Vizio is still selling. (?)
Meaning this device sold 2009-2012.
http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1232448072
The best benefit of MFE can be get with 21:9, 2560 x 1080 screens, but the markets are dead for them, at least for the time being.

2) In Philip's Cinemascope 21:9 TV's, the maximum input signal is 1920 x 1080. So, even if the Blu Ray player gives 2560 x 1080 signal, the TV set doesn't compute it. - Or at least not in the proper form.
Have I understood it right? - Have you tested at the Folded Space how the Philips Cinemascope reacts if you try to input 2560 * 1080 signal?

3) Wouldn't it be best for the picture quality if the soon becoming 4K format adopted a native 21:9 ratio? (That would be 5120 x 2160.)
I understand that for the Folded Space this solution wouldn't be the best, since then the MFE wouldn't be needed for the 4K.

4) As I see it, MFE is very much welcomed, but doesn't yet solve the whole problem. To me it's a problematic that 21:9 aspect ratio sets that have 2560/1920 = 33% more pixels in their sets have to settle only for 810/1080 = 75% of pixels when comparing to 16:9 viewing standard Full-HD TV program.
If I have understood right, MFE does solve the problem for the missing 25% resolution for 21:9 format, which is more than fine and really an unecpected joy that the Blu Ray format could be thus upgraded so eloquently!
When it comes to 4K however, why not aim to actually give the 21:9 viewer more pixels than for the 16:9 viewer? For the point of view of a manufacturer (and especially their marketing!), this would make much more sense than just getting even with the standard 16:9 sets.
If all was lossless the current 21:9 TV could perform (2560 x 1080) / (1920 x 810) = 1.78 times more pixels in cinemascope movies than the current Full-HD with letterboxes. The same relation will happen with 4K. That is if Foldes Space tech isn't used.

5) Stupid question on MFE: Does it only enhance the vertical resolution, leaving the horizontal resolution intact? Or does it spread the exrta resolution evenly for horizontal and vertical resolution, since the data for MFE Blu Ray disc is extracted from a higher resolution master tape?
(If it's more data on 1080/810 = 1.3333, then both horizontal and vertical resolution could be enhanced by SQRT 1.3333 = 1.1547 that is by 15%.)

6) Is the bottom line of MFE that less upscaling is needed? (And that the upscaling can get more exact.) Since the MFE-coded data packet from blu ray disc can deliver the information equivalent of 1920 x 1080 (in 21:9 aspect ratio) there is less upscaling to be done than from the 1920 x 810 information packet. But since the MFE-coced packet only contains the information equivalent of 1920 x 1080 of data (in 21:9 aspect ratio) there's still upscaling needed to the all-full 2560 x 1080.
Did I get this right?

Yes, streaming can benefit from MFE in the same way as Blu-ray.

MFE does not require much additional processing. Some players could possibly be upgraded by firmware update, others not.

RE: streaming technologies / codecs, etc. You might check out these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP

So no, they do not just rip Blu-rays. The world of streaming is a fast changing one with lots of old and new masters out there (which is why sometimes you get a terrible old 4:3 pan and scan stream and other times you get great looking HD). As streaming becomes more and more the norm, much of this should get cleaned up. MFE can certainly benefit streaming as they will not have to have multiple versions of a movie for download - they can just have the MFE version and people can decode it however they wish.

1. Yes, it does seem that 21:9 TV is on life support at the current time.

2. We have not tested either the Philips or VIZIO sets with 2560 x 1080, but that's ok since we already know that they will not accept this resolution (discussions with the chip manufacturer). There is really no way to test this with Blu-ray anyway, since no Blu-ray player yet outputs that resolution (we would have had to output from PC).

3. Based upon our involvement with the CEA and discussions with CE manufacturers regarding 4K, it is extremely unlikely that 21:9 will be adopted as the 4K standard. Most content is now produced in 16:9 and it would not make much sense for the industry to throw a new aspect ratio at people along with a new resolution. Of course, the beauty of MFE is the ability for both formats to live in peace together on the same delivery medium

4. If you look at post 52 in this thread, I discuss how we get 2560 x 1080 resolution using MFE. We can easily adapt this process to 4K resolution (as you mention, 5120 x 2160).

5. The extra "real" resolution is in the vertical, with a 33% increase going from 810 to 1080. The horizontal increase is achieved predictively, as explained in post 52.

6. Yes, essentially, with additional explanation of how we can get to 2560 x 1080 with results superior to scaling in post 52. You can even inspect the screenshots I uploaded in post 24, which show clear benefits of MFE decoded 2560 x 1080 over 1920 x 810 upscaled to 2560 x 1080 (make sure you download the pics and compare them at full resolution).

Just a quick question. What is this 4K resolution about? I remember something about 4K resolution taking 2 or 3 BR discs and far into the future. Has that changed?

21:9 aspect ratio for displays might not be dead yet. LG, DELL and Phillips are just now launching 21:9 PC monitors.
The 21:9 TV from Phillips was quite popular in Europe, but the price was much too high. If they had lowered the price and/or made them larger they might have sold much more. Seems like Phillips more or less is leaving the TV business.