Industry Insiders Master Q&A thread IV: ONLY Questions to Insiders - Page 146  

What service are you talking about?

Thanks for the reply.

Sounds good. So what's the potential there? Given hd dvd format's impending loss of content is there enough activity to give hd dvd owners something worth looking into here or not?

Does hd dvd format hold some advantages for prospective Indie content providers?


I can certainly understand that a direct burn to HD disk from an XBLM encode wouldn't work but couldn't you automate a re-encode before the burn? Especially since absolute quality wouldn't be as critical as absolute convenience in this scenario.
When you say "Download-and-burn HD DVD is an interesting market" do you mean let the user download and burn it themselves? Wouldn't that be less secure than encode/burn hd dvd/mail hd dvd ?

In fact would most fit on standard dvd disks/HD DVD9?


Nice tech info but how about some action clips like the wmvhd demo clips or did I just not look enough?

On a similar train of thought, where is the device AACS encryption key stored in standalones? Is it stored in the firmware or is it burned into a separate ROM chip. How does the AACS revocation work? Thanks.

Maxpower, was the vision of replacing the full DVD player installed base calculated as a benefit of the BD approach in your analysis?

benwaggoner, can you comment on Dave's mention that GDMX believes having higher bitrate/bandwidth will decrease VC-1 encoding costs on titles, due to speed and ease? Is there really a significant cost difference? (Warner gets a lower bill?) Is 'hand tweaking' still a considerable effort on most titles, even with the latest tools available?

@Any insiders (this question relates to both formats)

No doubt higher peak bitrate is a tangible of blu-ray and something that should not only help a studio for fast encoding but also please videophiles/audiophiles about blu-ray going forward.

At the same time in the aftermath of the Warner decision what is the possibility that some movies will end up published on BD25 rather than on HD DVD 30? What are the implications of the loss of that 5Gigs of capacity for those movies?

I suspect they'll get more benefit from not having to worry about PIP .

The newest version of PEP dramtically reduced the amount of reencoding required, so I don't know if it'll make all that much of a difference today. I'll ask around and see if I can get any hands-on info. I'd say the average title has probably 10% the hand-tweaking as was required a couple of years ago.

Blu-ray has the capacity for Combo/Twin formats? I thought that this was attempted twice and both attempts failed. Is there new information here?

Thanks. As they say, "old habbits die hard."


Yes, our VC-1 encoder lets you do side-by-side comparisons this way. It can also overlay compression parameters so that for example, you can quickly see which blocks are compressed more than others.


If DNR is used, it is done prior to any compression.

Yeah, it'll be a wide variety of content. With players at $149, you don't need too many discs you can't get otherwise to jump in.


Not requiring AACS for replicated media is huge for indie content providers. An extra $2.50/disc for a run of a 1000 is a killer. Robust support for HD content on DVD-9 media is also welcome.


Well, if we wanted to provide content that could be burned to disc, we'd probably be better offf just packaging it as a HD DVD compliant disc image, and then enabling that to play off drive, network store, or burn to disc.


There would presumably be some kind of managed bunring software to handle AACS and such, like download-and-burn DVD.


Certainly any TV episode. We could fit a full-length movie at XBLM data rates on a DVD-9 as well.


Sorry, it's what I had handy . I'm trying to find some and content to do some more interesting clips here. I've got a clip I've been making that's maybe 50% of the way I'm hoping to find some good workstation time to finsih.

Ben I am confused by what you wrote, didn't warner just announce they are going to start releasing profile 1.1 discs with pip on bd? Also how has Warner's announcement affected the hd dvd division at Microsoft? IS the team a little down now, or are they as committed as ever to save hd dvd?

Here and here are some links to their presence at CES, it seemed to impress a lot of people from what I hear.

Ben:

Any updates you could share regarding HD DVD support in DVD authoring packages, specifically using VC1 or AVC compression rather than MPEG2? And is anyone from Toshiba or Microsoft actively engaging Adobe to get HD DVD integrated into Encore? Any chance Microsoft might release a basic HD DVD burning utility (something akin to MovieMaker - simple but usable)?

Thanks!

This point, and some of the other reasons that Warner has used for their choice, has always been a little confusing for me, and I'm hoping that you can shed some light on it so that I can understand a different perspective better.

From your statement above, it sounds as though the primary obstacle that HD media has right now is customer confusion between the two HD formats, is that correct?

Is it possible that there is also confusion about the actual difference between HDM and upconverted SD DVD's?

I base this question on the surveys that were done last year about people thinking they were watching movies on HD, but the movies they listed weren't available on either HD DVD or Blu-ray at the time.

One of Warner's stated reasons for their change was uncertainty about the economy, using gas prices as a catalyst for concern about spending on luxury items.

Being on the financial side of examining the issues, I'm curious to understand how switching to producing discs exclusively for one format serves that concern?

I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, but Blu-ray players are hundreds of dollars more expensive than HD DVD players, which reduces the amount of money people with limited budgets would have to buy movies. By alienating HD DVD customers, they are now removing almost a million households from the pool of potential customers for their movies.

I'm willing to believe that the gas prices comment was a convenient reason or it was taken out of context or something, but if price sensitivity is really a factor, how does such a decision work in that scenario?

Would you be able to share with us some examination of the obstacles faced by HD media to become successful? I'd be interested in the big issues as seen by the studios and manufacturers.

Here's my list:

1. Penetration of at least one HD display device in households
2. HDM superiority over DVD (picture quality, sound quality, features)
3. Hardware prices
4. Hardware featuresets
5. Unanimous studio support
6. Availability of movie titles (A-list titles, day-and-date releases, etc.)
7. Penetration of more than one HD display device in households (secondary use of SD DVDs in other rooms, vehicles, laptops and other portable devices)
8. Software prices
9. Studio concern over availability of movies by rental (Netflix, Blockbuster) reducing the market for movie purchases
10. Confusion between HD DVD and Blu-ray (competing formats)

You will note that I put HD DVD / Blu-ray confusion way down at the bottom. In my mind, if both formats are supported equally by the studios, that element is just a marketing challenge. The red and blue boxes have differentiated the two formats very clearly, and I think people are smart enough to figure out that they need to buy the blue box or the red box. I can see a small contingent of people just not getting it, but those same people aren't going to be able to figure out the difference between SD DVD and a single HD format either.

If one assumes that HD DVD will go away (for the sake of discussion), how does that help any of the above concerns, except for that last one?

If the Warner decision really does push Universal, Paramount, and Dreamworks to produce Blu-ray discs, does that mean that more software will become available?

Unless they make some announcements between now and June, Warner's decision actually decreases their total library of HD titles by 21 discs (because of titles like Casablanca, Batman Begins, etc. not being available on Blu-ray)

With the fact that many households, especially families, use their DVDs in multiple devices, how does that factor into the situation? HD DVD/DVD combos had some issues, but the jury is still out as to whether the issues were really widespread or amplified on forums by unhappy customers.

Assuming that such issues were insignificant in the macro view, I see the value in having both formats available to consumers with one purchase. I know that there are concerns about putting a Blu-ray disc and a SD DVD in the same box and the DVD landing on eBay, but when some recent movies being sold at the big box retailers for well under $10, I would think that bundling them would allay the objection of the dual use and the higher cost (since the Blu-ray now comes with a free DVD) on the part of the consumer.

At least two of the recent CES announcements (the Panasonic DMP-BD30, informal assurance of BD-Live on the PS3) will take care of the hardware featuresets objection (which admittedly, most consumers aren't aware of, which is going to create an issue come October), so then the main issue becomes price. If some of those players can cross the $300 street price mark, that's a step in the right direction.

Do any of these concerns match up with what the manufacturers and studios see as obstacles to adoption of even one HD media format?

Benwaggoner,

First of all, thank you for all of your informative posts. Recently you had said that the 1000 Indies Project was almost ready but had been finishing up with some technical hurdles. Were any of those hurdles related to Toshiba's recent updates to add HD DVD-R playback to some models?

http://hddvdformat.blogspot.com/2008...ble-on-hd.html

I have to say that I am still very excited about this program, and I hope to see it up and running soon!

Thanks David, it's good that you can get fresh inside info such as this. Is your source(s) able to identify which BDs in the pipeline will be the first ones hitting the street with the higher bit rates? I'm pretty excited about this development.

I'd let one of the people from the HD DVD team speak about their morale . I'm on the codec team.

No, it had to do with all the little fiddly bits in getting a high volume authoring/muxing system to work. There wasn't any one thing, but lots of little things that needed to be nailed down. Making a disc via a database is rather different than building a studio title.

One of the main goals of the just-released VC-1 Encoder SDK is to enable HD DVD compliant VC-1 eleentary stream support in a wide variety of products. So expect to see a lot more support for .vc1.

(for those who didn't see it)
http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/20613/Default.aspx

When Warner starts releasing exclusively on Blu-ray is there any chance that they might start using 20/24-bit lossless audio tracks instead of 16-bit lossless audio tracks?

Ben,

If you were given an average movie to fit on DVD9, and you can use any file system, any video encoder, and any audio encoder you wanted, what would you use and what would be the specs (resolution, color depth, audio, etc.)?

I do a lot of family home videos in 1080i, and burn them to DVD-R in the HD DVD format. Any idea how much VC-1 encoded video (when that option is available) I might be able to fit on a 4.7 GB DVD-R?

I don't need to much, people get grumpy when you make them watch long family home videos,

According to the actual encoder who worked on this one, he said a lot of this was in the master.

Merrick,

The plan right now is to port any releases that aren't available on BD but were released on HD DVD. There isn't enough profit to be earned by doing a new encode. The good news is that most of the "exclusive" HD DVD titles look pretty good so we shouldn't be harmed by this.

To add to what Amir has said, New Line has used different post houses compared to Warner, so lumping the two together isn't fair.

When you see exclusive BD titles, they will have the upped bitrate. I can't speak of any specific titles at this point...sorry.

Dave Vaughn, based on whippersnapper's "excitement" about higher bitrates from Warner... which I doubt is because they will be saving money on the authoring job... Do your GDMX contacts have an opinion on if the additional BD bandwidth available for video will add noticeable quality to their compression work using current revision tools, or merely make it easier for them?

Ben, I guess I can ask you the same.

As I said its not just New Line. You can pick pretty much any Warner release at random and it will have DNR. I just didn't have any obvious screenshots handy at the moment to show it. But they look basically the same as Pans.

It will make things easier for them. Whether most viewers will be able to see the difference, we will see. GDMX is very proud of a lot of their encodes that they have done.

For the record, they don't do EVERY Warner encode, but one of their managers/leads that I speak with is very much against DNR. I feel that a lot of what we think is DNR is inherent in the masters and there is nothing that can be done about it.

BTW, this particular contact was not happy about Pans Labrynth either...so that says something.

Can you give an example movie? And where would it be playing back? Assuming you mean PC playback...

In general, I'd make a WMV file using the VC-1 Encoder SDK and WMA Professional. All 2-pass VBR. For 2 hours on DVD-9, I can do 8 Mbps video and 448 Kbps audio, which can look plenty darn good.

Of course, I'd encode at native resolution (so, 1920x800 for 2.39:1 content), use longer GOPs than for optical discs, use VBR audio. With today's tools, we can do a darn good looking movie on DVD-9 - far better than what was being done on WMVHD a few years ago (which were CBR and Main Profile instead of advanced)