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Author
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Topic: Dolby's new sound system
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-20-2014 02:43 PM
The devil is in the details when it comes to good showmanship in a commercial movie theater. It takes good employees to care enough about details. With the way big theater chains are being operated too many of the jobs in the theaters have turned to shit. Why would an employee or manager care about details if they're really tweaking their resumes and keeping an eye out for a better job elsewhere?
This is essentially why some movie theaters equipped with Dolby Atmos aren't getting it right when it comes to advertising the process. I know for certain if Mike went to the effort & expense of putting Atmos in his Roxy Theatre he would be selling the hell of it whenever he got a DCP with an Atmos track. But Mike is vested in his theater. It's more than just a job to him.
The wannabe IMAX branding strategy is also to blame. Just take all the specific ingredients about the movie presentation, projection and sound format in particular, and hide that behind some acronym that doesn't mean anything.
quote: Martin Brooks
Dolby should do some kind of co-op program where if they're dealing with the studio/distributor (since most movie display advertising is placed by the distributor, not the theater), the studio gets a break on licensing fees if they include Atmos designations for individual theaters. If they're dealing with the theatre, the theatre gets some kind of credits (or cash) that would be good for service or equipment or promo material or something.
I don't know what Dolby charges in terms of licensing fees for a movie production to use Atmos. They may not charge anything at all. I don't think they were charging studios to encode audio in Dolby Digital. Dolby is mainly in the business of selling hardware and software. They do make a good amount of money licensing various Dolby technologies to consumer electronics companies.
I think Dolby would get Atmos into a lot more theaters if they could license it out in the same manner as RealD. That would spread out the high expense of installing a properly configured Atmos sound system to a far more manageable level rather than having to pay the entire cost at once up front. However, would such an approach be practical? A Dolby Atmos sound system is a far more complicated thing to install and maintain than a RealD processor and Z-screen.
If the licensing situation was work-able Dolby would get a larger, more steady stream of income flowing in from Atmos-equipped theaters -maybe even enough income to bribe movie studios into giving Dolby Atmos a larger listing on movie posters than the microscopic treatment the brand is currently receiving.
quote: Carsten Kurz
And I think it's the same at Dolby with ATMOS marketing. Talented engineers. But the former coke selling new exec thinks Dolby Vision is the next big thing, because cinema is SOOO old style and this new pinky flashy 80inch flat screen SOOO cool.
Dolby's marketing efforts in the past 20 years have been hit and miss. I'm not exactly sure what they're trying to accomplish currently, but consistency in branding doesn't seem like a high priority. Lately they've been mixing different type families into some of their stuff, such as this Dolby Vision thing and even some material for Dolby Atmos. Normally they use Morgan Sans, but now the Gustan type family is getting used as well. Gustan looks like a mash-up between Verdana and Frutiger with hints of Serpetine. Gustan has a lot more "weights" from light to extra bold than Morgan Sans. Unlike Morgan Sans, Gustan can be legally used as a web font. However, Gustan just isn't a typeface that makes me think of technology. It looks more like something good for an auto parts store. And it doesn't mesh particularly well with the Dolby lettering or Eurostile type that still appears in some places. If I was in charge of Dolby's branding look I could have made some better typographical choices.
Regarding Dolby Vision, I don't see the point for it now and maybe not even in the long term either.
All TV sets currently in use and for sale do no better than the REC 709 color space standard. Blu-ray discs are typically encoded with video using 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. How is Dolby Vision supposed to fit into that? HDMI 2.0 is touting a number of big improvements, with "x.v.Color" and REC 2020 color space being supported. This would allow better support of 4:4:4 "deep color" video. We could still be years away from seeing such TV sets.
Dolby Vision is being hyped from the point of view that modern video cameras have all sorts of dynamic range in their raw footage that's going unseen. Here's a big part of the problem: the need of mimicking the film look. All of the video processing, compositing work and color grading/finishing work deliberately mutes away a lot of that color. Some movies look like they were shot through a bag filled with urine. If viewers would be happy with an electronic, live video look to things then wider color dynamic range could come along for the ride.
Some of these people talk about HDR imagery. I, for one, am not such a big fan of it. The tone mapping sucks much of the time. The surreal looking results make me think the photo was taken from the point of view of a drug user whose brain cells were put into overdrive by some type of narcotic or hallucinogen. HDR just looks unnatural. And that's contrary to its intended goal: capturing imagery with the same wide dynamic range as human vision. Our eyes trounce cameras in several ways, with dynamic range being a very big one.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-20-2014 05:29 PM
quote: Martin Brooks
What's the point of having a great sound system if no one knows it's there?
Dolby will send some marketing material for movies that are mixed with Atmos, I have seen t-shirt giveaways for Wolverine, Hobbit 2 and there are some posters as well. I have also seen an orange Dolby Atmos sign that leaves me shaking my head. Most of the promotion are ok at best, nothing great tho.
quote: Martin Brooks
This was a big problem for THX in those days as well. The few NYC theaters that were THX equipped never advertised the fact in movie ads. However, when I used to visit Los Angeles, they all did.
THX was always advertised in newspaper ads and at the theatre in my area. I have never seen Atmos advertised in the newspapers or any other website in my area aside from the Cineplex website.
quote: Martin Brooks
The manager said, "oh, it's not playing in Atmos." I said, "the film is in Atmos and that's an Atmos screen.
LOL, well at least it is not like my area where everything is in Atmos when it is played in the Atmos theatre, so far they have showed Jack Ryan, Lego Movie, Lone Survivor, and most recently RoboCop all in Atmos.
quote: Martin Brooks
I bought a ticket for that screen anyway. It was in Atmos and they played the Atmos snipe. So even the theaters don't know what they're doing.
Atmos is a single inventory, so if the movie was released in Atmos, you do not have to worry about the particular location getting an Atmos DCP. There is no worry about keys.
quote: Martin Brooks
So with that exception, the theaters don't really have an incentive to push special sound formats if they don't think it drives revenue.
They do have the incentive if the film makers and studios push a particular movie, more than ever directors and producers have the chance to reach out and push a particular format. When the director of Gravity says that people should see Gravity in Atmos, then there will be a faithful base of patrons that will want to see it in the format. Not everyone but some.
quote: Martin Brooks
Of course, then you can ask why they bothered to install it in the first place.
Cineplex has no competition in my area, they own practically everything, they have installed Atmos in all of their new AVX auditoriums. They do charge a premium for it.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 02-20-2014 10:15 PM
quote: Martin Brooks
What's the point of having a great sound system if no one knows it's there?
I think it's that society is already saturated with whiz-bang technology.
Personally, I don't think the average patron cares about a specific element of the experience. It's all in how everything comes together.
People knew when they saw a CinemaScope movie. They knew when they heard magnetic sound. The curved screen was impressive. All that was when they were driving Packards and waiting for their neighbors to get off the phone line. It takes a lot more to impress people today, so maybe its enough not to do such a crappy job that they go home, thinking their TV set would give them a better show.
If I go to a movie, the picture is sharp and properly presented, the sound is at least equal to the best I've heard to-date, and the auditorium is adequately appointed... as I've experienced them, then I go home happy. Whether I've experienced someone's brand-name gimmickry doesn't matter to me at all.
I understand that some here will seek out the newest technology. It's appropriate and expected from this group. I just don't think the masses are that much into the finer details, nor do they really need to be.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-22-2014 02:49 PM
quote: Jack Ondracek
Personally, I don't think the average patron cares about a specific element of the experience. It's all in how everything comes together.
I think you are correct on that, the average person will care more in how it all comes together, terms such as "immersive, experience, etc" are what the younger generation expect today. These people who will pay $20 to see a movie in IMAX are usually the same group that never knew what it was like to pay a lot less for a movie. I remember 70mm having a price premium in the 70s in my area, but since those price premiums, I don't remember price premiums since.
As for Dolby Atmos, I think Dolby made the right decision with the name, Atmos is short for Atmosphere and it was a very good idea to move away from XX.1 or anything like that. Long-term, I doubt Atmos will be all that successful.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-22-2014 07:41 PM
Dolby updated their Atmos movies page in the last few days.
There's lots of Atmos mixed movies in international markets, but in the North American market that most of us care about the following movies have been made official:
300: Rise of an Empire, Warner Bros, 3/7
Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Dreamworks, 3/7
Noah, Paramount, 3/28
Rio 2, Fox, 4/11
The Amazing Spiderman 2, Sony, 5/2
Godzilla, Warner Bros., 5/16
X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fox, 5/23
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Fox, 6/11
I still think quite a few other Summer movies are going to be added to that Atmos list, quite a few more than Auro 11.1.
I would be surprised if movies like Malificent, Edge of Tomorrow, the latest Transformers sequel and Guardians of the Galaxy don't end up being added to the Atmos list.
quote: Jack Ondracek
Personally, I don't think the average patron cares about a specific element of the experience. It's all in how everything comes together.
Perhaps.
I believe lots of movie theater customers are both technically savvy but jaded. They might only care about how everything comes together, but very high ticket prices are eventually going to give them incentive to look further into what's what.
This is essentially why I believe IMAX has built their current digital house as a house of cards. Dual projector 3D is the only specific selling point they have. Anything else can be had in a standard priced, 2K resolution theater. 5.1 sound? Hardly anything special about that. 2K resolution video? That can be had on an ordinary HDTV set. Need to see 2K big? Just sit in the first few rows of a standard priced theater. It accomplishes the same damned thing as IMAX, but without the $3 to $6 surcharge. You might even get masking, curtains and a better sound system to boot.
It's only a matter of time before backlash starts to set into the situation. It's going to take more than a damned meaningless acronym to justify a very high surcharge. If I'm going to pay $3 to $6 above standard price I expect something extra.
Dolby Atmos at least qualifies as being something extra -some ingredient that actually might be worth a price premium.
In regards to movie screens which cost an extra $3, $6 or higher to enter, I have zero sympathy with what Dolby Atmos costs. They're raking in the dollars and can damned sure step it up a big notch to make the surcharge worth it. Paying $13 or $16 per ticket for plain 5.1 sound is idiotic.
I guess the main problem I see with Dolby Atmos right now is how movie productions are using it. It annoys me if I go to the trouble to see a movie presented in Dolby Atmos, but ends up sounding no different than a conventional 5.1 surround mix. It takes a considerable amount of extra effort above mixing a 5.1 or 7.1 audio track to do an Atmos mix right. If a movie production is going to fob off an Atmos track that is essentially no different than a 5.1 track they shouldn't bother in the first place.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-26-2014 12:16 PM
quote: Jarod Reddig
I think its the same old story of the only real thing that gets people into the cinemas are good movies.
I have said this on here a few times, the most important thing is is the movie. Usually, good movies bring in an audience.
quote: Jarod Reddig
Out of everyone I know that goes to the movies regularly none of them really care about great sound or perfect perjection. Its the movie that gets them to go to the theater and new tech just doesnt' interest the average person that much. As said all the whiz-bang tech these days just confuses the average person. Its only when something goes wrong do they ever even consider the quality of the presentation. Its sad really but I honestly think that for the majority of the public this is the norm.
You are right again, the average person just wants to watch the movie, they live close to a movie theatre, they go to see the movie and that's that. With digital presentation, a decent presentation is not hard to achieve.
I also don't believe the horseshit saying "they don't care because they don't know the difference", most average people are so busy with their lives that they don't have the time to worry about what type of projector or sound system is installed. They just want to watch the movie when they want to watch it.
quote: Jarod Reddig
I hope Dolby is succesfull with Atmos.
Just like 6-Track 70 in 70s, SR in the late 80s, Digital in 90s, then there was also EX, Atmos is just the modern version of a new Dolby format. It will play to the 5% of those who really think it makes a difference. Expect a new Dolby format down the road.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-26-2014 03:19 PM
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
I also don't believe the horseshit saying "they don't care because they don't know the difference", most average people are so busy with their lives that they don't have the time to worry about what type of projector or sound system is installed. They just want to watch the movie when they want to watch it.
It's got nothing to do with busy lives. It has everything to do with what people are interested in.
The majority of people, like you said, don't care about formats and such. They just want it to look and sound good. They don't care HOW it happens. It's kind of like a jet plane....I don't know exactly how they work nor do I care; I just want my flight to get there on time (and the guy in front of me not to recline his seat).
The whole point of advertising such things as Dolby, Atmos, Imax, or any of the "alphabet soup" that's proliferating lately, is to get the public to equate that brand with "good sound/good picture" without having to know how it's done.
Where things go wrong is when some crap cinemas have a "Super UX" (or whatever) auditorium that is really just a larger room with the same old stuff in it, that makes some people feel ripped off. Their conclusion is that the "premium" brand, whatever it is, just means a higher price for a bigger room with the same old stuff in it. This is why people are so upset with the recent Imax developments -- it's just a bigger room with the same old stuff and it's diluting that once-pristine brand name, but all the suits see is the increasing $ so it must be good! (Plus it's digital!)
But those suits missing the point that many movie fans are seeing that it's just a bigger room with the same stuff and many of them might decide not pay the premium the next time. They'll either seek out a cheaper theater or wait for the video. It's bad to advertise a "premium" and then not deliver one.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-27-2014 02:35 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
They'll either seek out a cheaper theater or wait for the video.
Or maybe just wait till the movie comes to you mobile.
Dolby to bring Atmos cinema sound to mobile
The audio company has special algorithms that deliver spatial sound similar to its Atmos technology to your basic headphones.
BARCELONA, Spain -- Want cinema-like audio when you play video games or watch a movie on your smartphone or tablet? You may be able to get it soon.
Here at Mobile World Congress, audio company Dolby gave me a demo of its Atmos technology running on a tablet. I listened to four different video clips via an ordinary passive headset (Sennheiser, if you must know), and came away impressed. I was particularly amazed at how audio came from below my chin and above my brow, enveloping me in a cocoon of sound
Atmos is basically a surround-sound system with the ability to support up to 128 audio tracks. It's capable of making rain sound like its falling from the ceiling.
Using algorithms running on either a dedicated audio processor chip or an ARM processor core, Dolby is able to simulate the same effect by tricking your brain into thinking the sound is 3D.
As exciting as this sounds, Dolby isn't releasing this just yet -- the company says it is up to its partners to implement the technology in their devices. Furthermore, Dolby hasn't even come up with a name for the technology yet, though I did suggest Atmos Mobile
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57619496-78/dolby-to-bring-atmos-cinema-sound-to-mobile/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
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