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This topic comprises 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Topic: ATMOS comes home...
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 03-12-2015 02:54 PM
The release of titles in Atmos for the home has been slow, to say the least.
Unbroken is a good sign, as it is Universal's first Atmos title.
Lionsgate has been Atmos' best friend, with more titles than any other studio. They've even produced Atmos releases on Blu-ray that weren't released in Atmos theatrically (Step Up All In, John Wick).
Warner's release of Gravity at the end of this month looked like a test back when it was announced, and the fact that WB has not announced any other titles (including the most obvious, being the last Hobbit movie) reinforces my feeling that the Gravity release was a way for them to dip their toes in by devoting very limited resources to a catalog release.
Paramount has had just two releases (Transformers 4, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and one announced, but then failed to produce, release (Hercules).
Fox has not gotten on board, and neither has Disney (Guardians of the Galaxy and Big Hero 6 would have been huge titles for Dolby to hang their hat on).
When content is king, Atmos for the home is still the prince who is too young to take the throne.
My theory is that now, the studios are waiting for DTS to release more details about DTS:X, its Atmos competitor. DTS is the 300-pound gorilla in Blu-ray sound, and their approach sounds like it's going to take the object-oriented approach of Atmos and mix in some other cool features, and probably throw in some intelligent speaker placement processing as well. It's anticipated that the mainstream AV receiver manufacturers will be on board (DTS pre-announced that in January), so we should see DTS:X join Atmos on receivers released later this year.
The full DTS announcement was supposed to be in March, but rumors are that it may be delayed until the beginning of April.
I would imagine all of this has the studios in a holding pattern.
Dolby had its chance at first-mover advantage, but they launched without full support from the studios. Instead of having over a dozen major releases on Blu-ray in Atmos, we have less than half that (domestically).
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 03-13-2015 09:22 AM
quote: Scott Jentsch
My theory is that now, the studios are waiting for DTS to release more details about DTS:X, its Atmos competitor. DTS is the 300-pound gorilla in Blu-ray sound, and their approach sounds like it's going to take the object-oriented approach of Atmos and mix in some other cool features, and probably throw in some intelligent speaker placement processing as well.
I think DTS has better brand recognition for the home, I can see studios waiting for DTS to roll out. I also understand that DTS-X is going work for a lot of broadcasts so the view will be able to do a lot of modification to the sound before or while they are watching.
Here is some info on Dolby Atmos mobile.
“Mobile audio has to improve”. That’s the message Dolby’s chief marketing officer Bob Borchers stressed in a recent blog post. “It’s no good having a razor-sharp image of Godzilla if his roar sounds like a mouse with a sore throat.”
He certainly has a point. With more people than ever consuming cinema blockbusters on tablets and phones, money has been piled into improving screen technology without giving the same level of consideration for audio.
In fact, Borchers quoted figures that suggest displays drive 45 per cent of the cost of a phone, with just 4 per cent awarded to the audio side of things – something Dolby is unsurprisingly keen to change.
It used MWC 2015 to show its commitment to bringing the Atmos experience to mobile devices. Read on for all you need to know.
What is it?
Dolby Atmos started in 2012 as a multi-directional sonic experience that was only available with up to 64 specially calibrated speakers placed in the walls and ceiling of a cinema environment. More recently we’ve seen it filtering down to a home cinema setup with the right kit, but just as Dolby’s 5.1 surround sound processing made its way to portable devices and headphones, so Atmos is making the same move.
How does it work?
Atmos on mobile devices works through a rather clever combination of binaural headphone rendering and object-based audio.
The former creates surround sound through headphones using something called head-related transfer functions, or HRTFs.
HRTFs have been around since surround sound processing first arrived in headphones, the basic idea behind them being that when you hear a sound, your head gets in the way of the soundwaves and changes them.
Your brain picks up on these changes, as well as the time difference between when a sound reaches one ear and the next, using all this information to determine where the sound is coming from.
By reverse engineering this process, sound experts have been able to develop virtual surround sound that can produce, from the single speakers on either side of your headphones, sound that seems to come from all around you.
To take this a step further and create a Dolby Atmos experience on the go, technicians combine this knowledge of HRTFs with object-based audio, the foundation of Atmos, to create a more all-encompassing sound.
This means that every object in the scene is packed with data that explains exactly where its sound should originate and where it should move to in a scene, placing it there with greater precision – even overhead.
Read more at http://www.whathifi.com/news/dolby-atmos-mobile-everything-you-need-to-know#H4hrhrYdXr7vbLkz.99
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-16-2015 10:43 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
But do you really think the non-availability of proper encoding software on anything other than the Mac will seriously impact the decisions taken on a multi-multi-million dollar big time Hollywood release?
Price and convenience both make a big difference in a multi-media production environment.
If you're creating professional level, mass produced Blu-ray discs you're already stuck on the Windows platform for doing that work since the software doesn't run on OSX. Part of the disc authoring workflow involves encoding lossless & lossy compressed audio tracks for all the different features on the disc, including the audio re-encode needed for the main feature.
If you're going to use DTS' Master Audio Suite you can keep all the Blu-ray audio & video encoding work on the same computing platform and maybe even the same computer. If you want to use Dolby TrueHD you'll need a separate Mac-based computer just to do that audio encoding work. You're going to be hopping files back and forth between Mac and PC platforms.
Price has been an issue in the past. Dolby's TrueHD encoding software used to cost around $4000. Now you can buy the Dolby Media Producer Suite for $1300, but it's still Mac only. DTS Master Audio suite costs $1495 and runs on both Windows and Mac.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Personally, for a home theater I just couldn't care less if something is encoded in Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio. Both are supported by any self-respecting AVR and both mixes will be virtually indistinguishable.
And that makes it all the more easy for a Blu-ray authoring team to stick with DTS-HD Master Audio and not bother with Dolby TrueHD. They can get all their disc authoring work done in a Windows-only environment.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
It's like choosing between TIFF or PNG as uncompressed pixel format. Both formats have their advantages, but when looking at them on the same monitor, the result is the same.
You can open, edit and save TIFF or PNG images using the same image editing application, be it Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc. You can't do that with the Dolby & DTS audio formats.
You have to use specific applications from Dolby and DTS to encode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats. As far as I know there is no "built-in" encode capability for either Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD in any sound editing application like ProTools. There doesn't appear to be any other 3rd party plug-ins from companies like Minnetonka Audio.
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