Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Sound Sample Rates

my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Operations » Digital Cinema Forum » Sound Sample Rates (Page 4)

This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Author

Topic: Sound Sample Rates

Daniel Schulz
Master Film Handler

Posts: 387
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2003

posted 03-20-2013 01:43 PM

Chiming in to answer Mitchell's question: for the theatrical release, the same mix is used for SRD, Datasat (formerly DTS), SDDS and the Digital Cinema, with a few exceptions. For example, there was a brief window when some films did both 8 channel and 5.1 channel mixes, since SDDS supported 8 channels. Nowadays there are often both 5.1 and 7.1 mixes for D-Cinema (not to mention Dolby Atmos mixes or Auro 11.1 mixes)- in that case, the 5.1 mix for D-Cinema is also used for the 35mm SRD/Datasat/SDDS tracks.

| IP: Logged

Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 03-20-2013 01:46 PM

Assuming discs don't have enough space for the theatrical mix (which as has been pointed out, isn't the case for the vast majority of them), why can't they create a special-order disc that has the theatrical mix for people who have properly set up rooms?

| IP: Logged

Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-20-2013 01:56 PM

Realistically, how much longer are disks of any kind going to be manufactured? Why would the suit types put anymore money into improving the format if, as expected, downloading will wipe them out?

And while we're at it, is the download mix the same as the disk?

This all from someone who has never bought a TV and the one he owns just lost one of the Red.

| IP: Logged

Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-20-2013 02:16 PM

I think disks will be made for quite a while. I don't know about DVD/Blu-Ray, but in the music industry, where the media would have you believe the CD is "dead," the industry is on track to sell over 100 million of them this year. There is still a large market for "physical ownership."

| IP: Logged

F. Hudson Miller
Film Handler

Posts: 48
From: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Registered: Jun 2009

posted 03-20-2013 02:35 PM

There is not a big enough market for special order disks.

The download version gets the near field. The theatrical is used no place except cinema theaters.

Mr. Schulz is correct. There are all kinds of of other exceptions. There are or course upto 32 language versions that at derived for the M&E. There are International English versions for when the picture is different internationally than domestically. Also different countries have certain censorship issues that result in a mix that the sound is adjusted to make it less aurally violent.

In the end it is a crazy complicated sound order.

| IP: Logged

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-20-2013 03:11 PM

I can kind of understand the interests of making separate mixes for home theater/near field and commercial theater far field environments. However, modern EQ technology should be able to allow one definitive mix to work in either environment (wasn't this the original motivation behind "Home THX?"). The situation with IMAX and its very odd surround speaker placements are another issue.

This still doesn't get to the core of the problem with some of these movies on Blu-ray: technicians are coming in long after the movie played in theaters and conducting radical revisionism on the original mix.

The Lion King had a pretty awesome sounding theatrical mix, and it was just lossy 320kbs Dolby Digital 5.1. It didn't sound quite so powerful on DVD and many have complained the lossless surround mix on Blu-ray is pretty wimpy. I don't think the near field vs. far field X-curves have anything to do with that. Somebody simply chose to pull down the faders on those master stems.

The same things goes for Jurassic Park. The idea the Blu-ray track got wimped out seems like déjà vu all over again. We went through this crap over a decade ago when Jurassic Park arrived on DVD. The original DD 5.1 and separate DTS 5.1 DVDs had wimpy audio compared to the original theatrical mix and what was encoded on the DTS Laserdisc. Universal Home Video heard the very loud complaints and issued a "fixed" DTS DVD with audio that more closely resembled that of the DTS Laserdisc. Is Universal Home Video going to bother with a fixed JP Blu-ray?

Why anyone at Universal is tinkering with the original Jurassic Park mix is beyond me. They're going in and farting with Gary Rydstrom's Academy Award winning work. That's not much different from someone taking their oil painting kit into an art museum and "fixing" various paintings made by other artists. But I suppose if the art museum is paying the mystery painter to come in and alter the work that makes it OK.
[Roll Eyes]

quote: Chris Slycord
Assuming discs don't have enough space for the theatrical mix (which as has been pointed out, isn't the case for the vast majority of them), why can't they create a special-order disc that has the theatrical mix for people who have properly set up rooms?

Considering what all can be done with BD-Live it would seem possible, at least in theory, for an end user to download an alternative sound mix and run that with the movie. The downloaded data could be stored on a flash memory card connected to the Blu-ray player (or on the hard disc in the case of the Playstation 3). Unfortunately this kind of function would probably have to be already authored into the disc (various links, scripting, etc. in BD Java to allow the alternative mix download from a menu). In the case of The Lion King or Jurassic Park, the studios would have to author another disc with a fixed audio track.

quote: Mike Blakesley
I think disks will be made for quite a while. I don't know about DVD/Blu-Ray, but in the music industry, where the media would have you believe the CD is "dead," the industry is on track to sell over 100 million of them this year. There is still a large market for "physical ownership."

I think it's interesting how vinyl LPs are kind of making a comeback. The 30th anniversary picture disc of Screaming for Vengeance by Judas Priest caught my eye in our local Hastings store this weekend. I might have bought one if I had a turntable.

Movies in physical retail packaging will be around for a long time for various reasons. If consumers are going merely download all the movies they buy they'll need a stack of external hard discs to store all the data (and continually move the data to newer hard discs to keep from losing it as the discs degrade over time). The Internet, for most people, is too damned slow. Big telcos are putting more of their money into mobile phone infrastructure rather than doing anything to improve residential-based Internet connection speeds. It's going to be a long time before Americans see Internet download speeds fast enough to stream Blu-ray equivalent HD quality video in real time on any widespread basis. Sadly, too many of us are so engrossed with our tiny smart phones and tablets to give a damn. ISP's will milk customers for everything they can get with each incremental upgrade. Internet speeds in America are not going to leap forward in any big way until our bandwidth bottlenecks turn into a serious competitive disadvantage for international business. Until then progress will continue to be deliberately very sloooowwwwwww.

| IP: Logged

Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003

posted 03-20-2013 03:41 PM

A group of some of my friends are getting very much into digital downloads of films, and seemingly quite keen on it. In fact, they see me as a bit antiquated that I still by films on disc. They say that they cannot see a difference between Blu-ray and their digital download on their setup, which I guess is fair but for many of us, especially with front projection systems, Blu-ray is almost required.

In regards to Jurassic Park: at the time of the initial Blu-ray release, I asked someone at Universal why the original theatrical 5.1 mix was not included, and all they said was that the 5.1 mix was on the DVD release. Obviously the folks at Universal have no clue. This whole situation has me skeptical of the 3D re-release: will the theatrical track be re-mixed or 1993 original?

AJG

| IP: Logged

Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-20-2013 03:52 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
If consumers are going merely download all the movies they buy they'll need a stack of external hard discs to store all the data (and continually move the data to newer hard discs to keep from losing it as the discs degrade over time).

You don't need a hard disk for mass storage if you don't want one. If you "buy" your downloads from Amazon, you can either watch them streaming, or if your connection is too slow for that, you can download them to your DVR and then delete when you are done. If you want to download again in the future, you still can. I think this will probably be the future of movie "ownership," although it still doesn't give you as much as the package does, especially in terms of extras and portability. I can see ways around those issues though.

Back to the other topic, already in progress.

| IP: Logged

Daniel Schulz
Master Film Handler

Posts: 387
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2003

posted 03-20-2013 04:13 PM

Speaking just for myself, I think the workflow described by Mr. Miller is the ideal one - the original mixing crew, after finishing the theatrical printmaster and the M&Es, do a home video remix with near-field monitors. I definitely agree with the consensus that long-after-the-fact remixes leave a lot to be desired - you have a different mixing team, who are creating a new mix to their own liking, without regarding to the original creative choices made in the mix. But, given that there are dramatic differences between 99% of home theaters and commercial cinemas, a home video remix for the Blu Ray supervised by the original mix team, while the project is still fresh in their minds & ears, and taking into account the sonic differences between a theater-sized room with theater-sized speakers and a living room with a typical 5.1/7.1 setup seems pretty ideal to me.

While there are no home theater standards per se, the mixing guidelines that I've seen for home video are pretty reasonable approximations for what most home theaters look like, in terms of speaker layout and distance from the viewing position.

| IP: Logged

Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003

posted 03-20-2013 04:28 PM

There are some cases where an original was involved. Ben Burtt I believe helped re-mix the Indy trilogy for Blu-ray. I never heard the original 6 track mixes, but the ones that are there seem period accurate and amazing.

I also read that the sound mix on Tron Legacy was never really complete for theatrical release, and was thus refined for the home release. After seeing it a few times theatrically, including IMAX, I will say that I enjoyed the sound much more at home. I've also heard that Blu-ray mix in a cinema once as a demo, and it sure sounded amazing in there too.

But then there is stuff like Jurassic Park and Ghostbusters that are just all sorts of wrong. Hell, the Dolby A track on Ghostbusters sounded much better than the Blu-ray. Hands down better.

AJG

| IP: Logged

F. Hudson Miller
Film Handler

Posts: 48
From: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Registered: Jun 2009

posted 03-20-2013 04:44 PM

I must say the coolest thing is that you guys love the tracks so much! I (on behalf of my fellow sound guys) take that as a big compliment. I also must apologize for the number of drivers I have helped blow out!

I think it all comes down to how much the studio values the property. Over the years I did a whole bunch of Jerry Bruckheimer movies. Whenever Disney wanted a new release master, Jerry always came back to us to do it. I can't count how many versions of "Con Air" I have done over the years!

| IP: Logged

Lincoln Spector
Film Handler

Posts: 46
From: Albany, CA, USA
Registered: Mar 2012

posted 03-20-2013 05:51 PM

"(You may argue that Blu-Rays have no place in cinema exhibition. I agree. But not everyone else does.)"

Scott: I'm one of those who doesn't agree. I've seen Blu-rays projected onto very large screens with DVI projectors. And I thought they looked acceptable. Not as good as DCP or a pristine 35mm print, but much better than many a 35 I've seen.

Lincoln

| IP: Logged

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 03-20-2013 06:38 PM

F has failed twice now to answer these simple questions.

quote:
#1 How many people do you feel bought that DVD or bluray because there was a near-field mix on the disc?

#2 How many of those people do you think bought the movie because for some weird reason they actually liked or wanted to sit through that movie?

#3 How many disc sales do you think would have been lost had the fine print on the box said "the original unaltered theatrical sound mix has been preserved here in DTS-MA"?

| IP: Logged

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-20-2013 06:54 PM

quote: Lincoln Spector
I'm one of those who doesn't agree. I've seen Blu-rays projected onto very large screens with DVI projectors. And I thought they looked acceptable. Not as good as DCP or a pristine 35mm print, but much better than many a 35 I've seen.

Um, that really depends on Blu-ray and DCP that are being compared (not to mention the 35mm print and its handling).

Judging by the file size of some DCPs it's clear quality standards have been relaxed to some degree to allow much smaller file sizes (probably to allow either faster downloads via satellite or faster ingesting into the server). I was used to seeing 2K DCPs tip the scales at 200GB-250GB. Now it's not unheard of to see a 2K DCP coming in at 1/4 of those file sizes.

Some DCPs are getting nearly small enough to fit on a 50GB dual layer Blu-ray disc. The movies are encoded in JPEG2000, which is really just a bunch of still images wrapped in a movie container. The MPEG-4 AVC and VC1 video formats used on Blu-ray can utilize inter-frame compression techniques, use more transform blocks and probably other compression tricks that can't be used or aren't allowed in a DCP.

In the end, a 1080p/24 movie encoded in AVC or VC1 on Blu-ray that uses most of the capacity on a dual layer BD50 disc could actually end up looking better than a 2K JPEG2000 DCP that has been squeezed down to a 60GB size. The AVC and VC1 formats are arguably more efficient at small file sizes.

Of course there's plenty of Blu-ray discs with feature file sizes crammed down to small levels despite the capacity of a BD50. I like to jump on Warner Bros. from time to time over the small DCPs it releases from time to time and the even smaller encodes found on their Blu-ray releases. Some of these movies would fit just fine on a single layer BD25 if not for the extras pushing it past that level. Maybe there's some guy at Warner Home Video who still thinks they're supporting HD-DVD.
[Razz]

| IP: Logged

F. Hudson Miller
Film Handler

Posts: 48
From: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Registered: Jun 2009

posted 03-20-2013 07:59 PM

F has failed twice now to answer these simple questions.

quote:
#1 How many people do you feel bought that DVD or bluray because there was a near-field mix on the disc?

#2 How many of those people do you think bought the movie because for some weird reason they actually liked or wanted to sit through that movie?

#3 How many disc sales do you think would have been lost had the fine print on the box said "the original unaltered theatrical sound mix has been preserved here in DTS-MA"?

1) NOT MANY

2) HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS

3) NOT MANY

I don't understand why you think the filmmakers should not get the track they want for the home video release. The Sound Designer and the Re-Recording mixers, with the director create the soundtrack. Why shouldn't we be allowed to release the version we wish to?

| IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Printer-friendly view of this topic

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.