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Topic: Dolby's new sound system
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 06-18-2013 11:06 AM
quote: Mike Blakesley
No. Not unless all the Dolby guys at the convention were saying it wrong.
Maybe they exceeded their legal daily "dose" of Kool-Aid? ![[Smile]](smile.gif) For "normal" people it seems quite obvious that Atmos is a reference to Atmosphere. Which at least would make a lot of sense in all kinds of ways..?
quote: Bobby Henderson
There has been little if any advertising effort made to support uncompressed 5.1 channel Linear PCM audio in d-cinema shows. I never saw any movie poster or end credits list mention anything about LPCM audio EVER. Never mind the fact it is a serious upgrade above the data lossy compressed sound formats on 35mm film.
Although it was a pretty great leap forward in regards of quality, most people didn't really notice the difference. But many people didn't even notice the switch from 35mm to digital. Sometimes I actually suspect that many people only notice "3D" because they need glasses to look at the otherwise fuzzy image...
The "Uncompressed LPCM" is probably hard to market. Dolby also had a hard time with it. They just slapped the "Dolby Surround" label on it, although it is obviously no real format and just an indication the theater is (probably) using a Dolby decoder in their A chain.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Even with film rapidly disappearing from commercial movie theaters the old film-based digital sound formats are still getting their logos used on most movie posters and virtually every end credits list.
Movies are actually still being released with DTS/Datasat and SDDS soundtracks (although 8-channel SDDS seems to have finally died in 2007). The inclusion of those logos is, for the time being still valid. LPCM just doesn't have a nice logo, nobody took care about putting a nice logo on it, nobody made a nice trailer for it...
But I agree, it is kind of stupid that Dolby Atmos is at least missing from some of those credits and even most movie posters. Yet, 3D and IMAX (3D) are all over them.
quote: Bobby Henderson
And now we have the situation with Atmos. This sound format breaks all kinds of unprecedented ground. As much of a leap forward as this is I'm flat out exasperated over how poorly Atmos is being advertised.
Movie studios probably aren't keen in marketing a system that hasn't yet seen a widespread adoption. They probably also don't
want to give Dolby free advertising as they most likely think that putting that in there doesn't sell any extra tickets, like ("fake") IMAX seems to do. But don't you think this will improve once the number of Atmos installs reaches a certain critical mass and a bit more main-stream exposure?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-18-2013 02:55 PM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Movie studios probably aren't keen in marketing a system that hasn't yet seen a widespread adoption.
70mm was never adopted in a widespread manner. Yet it commanded great prominence in many newspaper ads.
IMAX on film or digital isn't widespread either. I don't know just how many IMAX digital theater screens are operating now, but I'm willing to bet it's a lower number than the number of 70mm equipped screens that were in operation at the end of the 1980's.
I, too, suspect the movie studios are getting money from IMAX and Real-D for their brand placements in all forms of movie marketing. I never see Dolby 3D mentioned in any of those ads, much less other competing 3D formats like XpanD 3D. A few movie trailers and TV commercials show logos for other big screen brands from theater chains (RPX, XD, ETX, etc.).
Still, if the studios can't include Dolby Atmos in the advertising why do they even bother with the dying digital sound formats for 35mm film? It still doesn't make any sense.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Although it was a pretty great leap forward in regards of quality, most people didn't really notice the difference. But many people didn't even notice the switch from 35mm to digital. Sometimes I actually suspect that many people only notice "3D" because they need glasses to look at the otherwise fuzzy image...
The switch from optical analog sound to digital is very noticeable. The only way I can see the switch not being noticeable is if the theater had its sound system goofed up. Unfortunately there's no shortage of 5.1/7.1 wired movie theaters with crappy sound.
IMHO, the switch from film projection to video projection is a little less noticeable. The digital image is more steady, but it's not really any better than a film-based image. In some regards it's worse in areas like overall contrast and black levels (not to mention resolution capability over 2K projection). Some of those issues are made moot by digital intermediate use in post production. The finished movie product as a digital file disables any advantages film projection has over video.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
The "Uncompressed LPCM" is probably hard to market. Dolby also had a hard time with it. They just slapped the "Dolby Surround" label on it, although it is obviously no real format and just an indication the theater is (probably) using a Dolby decoder in their A chain.
The movie studios and movie theater chains never made any effort to sell the public on LPCM 5.1/7.1 audio. They couldn't tell me "it's hard to market." They never tried in the first place.
The home video distribution departments of movie studios didn't have any problem marketing new sound formats on Blu-ray. Lots of Blu-ray discs have LPCM 5.1 and LPCM 7.1 audio. The vast majority these days use DTS-HD Master Audio (lossless compressed) and in some cases Dolby True HD (lossless as well).
I didn't like Dolby trying to re-label LPCM 7.1 as "Dolby Surround 7.1". There was no Dolby encoding/compression process involved. I suppose their effort was better than nothing, which is exactly the kind of marketing effort LPCM was getting.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 06-19-2013 03:27 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson
The switch from optical analog sound to digital is very noticeable. The only way I can see the switch not being noticeable is if the theater had its sound system goofed up. Unfortunately there's no shortage of 5.1/7.1 wired movie theaters with crappy sound.
The switch between optical analog sound (even Dolby SR) and digital formats like SRD and DTS was a huge leap forward in my opinion. But I pointed at the switch between the lossy compressed SRD/DTS/SDDS formats and 5.1/7.1 LPCM. Although that also was a great leap forward, most people didn't notice it. I guess it will even be hard to notice most professionals in a blind hearing test in a random, decently equipped theater.
quote: Bobby Henderson
IMHO, the switch from film projection to video projection is a little less noticeable. The digital image is more steady, but it's not really any better than a film-based image. In some regards it's worse in areas like overall contrast and black levels (not to mention resolution capability over 2K projection). Some of those issues are made moot by digital intermediate use in post production. The finished movie product as a digital file disables any advantages film projection has over video.
Although that discussion would be better suited in another thread and has probably been done over again and again: Digital as in Video presentation has given birth to a whole subset of new SNAFUs like:
- Low resolution, like you already mentioned. Especially noticeable during credits, subtitles or in animation pictures. A 35mm projection seems to be capable of hiding those artifacts much better, even if it is pulled from the same digital 2K intermediate.
- Bad color convergence
- Scaling issues, resulting in all kinds of nasty artifacts on-screen. In my opinion, 2K leaves almost no room for scaling, keystone adjustments or other digital manipulations, without hurting the image quality. Some theaters don't zoom their picture in place, they stretch it in place, probably to avoid zooming during the show.
- More aspect ratio screw-ups, like failure to zoom the picture during scope presentations.
- Defunct screen masking (because the theater seemingly doesn't care anymore)
- Silver screens, because of Digital 3D
quote: Brad Miller
But Mike how can that be??? The movie studios pay lots of money for "near field" (aka: "shitted up") remixes because they know the home viewers are incredibly nitpicky about the sound from their home-theater-in-a-box setups.
I guess this is primarily the studios getting screwed here, because I've yet to encounter a Blu-Ray or DVD that markets its remastered near-field mix. Sure, there are re-releases that market the totally digitally remastered THX and whatnot approved and sealed soundtrack, but not specifically "optimized for your home-theater-in-a-box".
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