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

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » Are we supposed to really take Dolby Vision and Atmos seriously on itoones (Page 2)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2

Author Topic: Are we supposed to really take Dolby Vision and Atmos seriously on itoones Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 11-06-2018 09:24 AM                     As the story goes... With 5.1, it isn't as room/seating dependent to create essentially the same surround effect regardless of where one sits. Sure, as you get to the extremes it won't be as good but neither will the picture. With 7.1, the theatre/seating plays a large role in the surround perspective. Where you sit relative to the rear/side surround speakers will change your perspective of the audio relative to how the mixer on the dub-stage heard it. With Atmos, you once again, move back to where one's seating position is less critical since object is scaled to the actual theatre (with respect to location) so where you sit versus the audio you hear should be accurate...if you place a sound effect at a certain spot in the room...everyone should look at the same spot (give or take). Of course, in my opinion, that is the problem, unless the audio object isn't backed up with the visual on screen, the suspension of reality is lost. Which is why I think the emphasis on all mixes should be on the screen channels (preferably 5 in all cinemas) and then branch out to the "wide" speakers for off-screen calls...then move into the surrounds. I still maintain that ceiling surrounds are the biggest waste of time and money. As Bobby has also articulated, you seated position relative to the speakers is going to affect your perception. How you sit (does your head lean to one side) will affect how you hear it. Just what "valuable" information can come from the ceiling? If you are trying to create, say desert winds for effect, how many ceiling speakers help out the rest of the surround array to create that effect (as Marcel has essentially brought up). If you are trying to create a discrete sound up there...WHY? If people look at the thing making that sound, all they are going to see is either a speaker or a blackened ceiling or an air register...anything BUT the thing that is supposed to make the sound. The amount of times I can think where having discrete surrounds to covey audio movement versus what one gets in 7.1 audio is very, very few. It is like 3D. Sure, there are movies that 3D can augment just like there are soundtracks were sound movement in the theatre space can augment ("Gravity" is a good example of each) but those are so few and far between. Conversely, I think EVERY movie can be augmented by an excellent sound system with will balanced level/timbre and multiple screen channels to reinforce what is being seen. I've always hated hard-center dialog. It always appears fake (the bigger the screen the more disconcerting it is) and the same goes for music and effects. 3-screen channels was never enough for a cinema (even small screens). Most of the action is between LC and RC yet there are big voids there). With Atmos and object oriented sound, there is no reason to lock into the traditional mixing methods. Let the sound reinforce the picture.  |  IP: Logged Ken Lackner Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1907 From: Atlanta, GA, USA Registered: Sep 2001 posted 11-06-2018 10:31 AM                     quote: Are we supposed to really take Dolby Vision and Atmos seriously on itoones I don't know, but have you tried iTunes?  |  IP: Logged Terry Monohan Master Film Handler Posts: 379 From: San Francisco CA USA Registered: May 2014 posted 11-07-2018 09:20 PM                     Have any of you guys been to Disney's El Capitain Theatre in Hollywood CA programmed by Pacific Theatres? A few years ago they put in the Dolby Atmos® system and ruined the ceiling by installing overhead metal railings like in a stage light show. The ceiling speakers just hang way hi up and no way can you hear them from the downstairs or even the balcony most of the time. Did anyone at Dolby® think about the distance in this hi roof theatre and turn up the volume amp for the top sound effect. I'd would hate to be under this metal speaker railing when the big quake hits some day in Southern California. The low volume won't shake them loose but a quake will. Maybe the Dolby Atmos® ceiling speaker system may sound better in the home cinema as the placement is way closer to the audience for the overhead effect when they do come on.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 11-14-2018 04:21 AM                     I think many of you underestimate the amount of power you can squeeze out of those rather small looking speakers. The thing is, you hear them more often than you think, but unless you really tilt your head at the speakers, you're simply not able to locate the sounds coming from up there, it could as well come from the horizontal surrounds... Steve already explained most of it, but there is really just limited use for overhead speakers. A plane or spacecraft flying overhead, maybe thunder, but even then, the amount of strictly directional sound in those effects is also very limited. Even rain is a bad example. You hear rain when it hits a surface, so unless you're, for example, in a hut with a thin roof, you hear the rain hitting around you and not above you.  |  IP: Logged Daniel Schulz Master Film Handler Posts: 387 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Registered: Sep 2003 posted 11-15-2018 12:23 PM                        quote: Steve Guttag Which is why I think the emphasis on all mixes should be on the screen channels (preferably 5 in all cinemas) and then branch out to the "wide" speakers for off-screen calls...then move into the surrounds. I've often thought there was a missed opportunity to promote 5 screen channels with the advent of digital cinema. DCI should have specified 9.1 channels (5 screen channels + 4 surrounds), with a downmixer included in the server. This would have enabled a single mix and single DCP for distribution, but theaters equipped for only 5.1 or 7.1 would still have played back that file appropriately.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-15-2018 01:51 PM                     Atmos can support 5 stage channels, even the DCI specs have room for LE and RE stage channels too, but they're just not standard. Then we have the situation with the theater screens. Most are taller, common-width screens. Not true 'scope aspect ratio screens. Combine that with modest sizes and it's hardly worth putting 2 extra stage channels behind it (especially when so many audience members tend to sit up high in the rear rows of the theater). I hope commercial movie theater designs can evolve and get back to making the 'scope aspect ratio the full screen aspect ratio rather than 1.85:1. But that means possibly building wider auditoriums with lower ceilings. IMHO the incline angle of stadium seating from one row to the next is too steep. By the way, I just saw something which might bring more light onto why there's a push for Atmos into iPads, iPhones, iTunes, etc.: Dolby Dimension headphones. I thought $300-$400 was a tad pricey for noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones. These babies run $600! But that high price should appeal to the iPhone crowd.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 11-15-2018 06:02 PM                     Fortunately, by far not all new developments are "flat-sized" rooms, at least not around here. Heck, recently I even saw masking reappear! I don't see stadium-seating disappear, it's the defacto standard for all new developments, but it's not all bad. If done right, it might even be better than a sloped floor design, all things considering. There is a decisive move to provide for more legroom. This has the added advantage that the slope in a stadium-seated auditorium doesn't need to be so steep anymore, which has a lot of advantages. Some of the more advanced new build-outs, like the original Dolby Cinema implementation, also uses a slightly sloped, faceted ceiling design. I think that even a large "flat" screen can benefit from two extra stage speakers. But sound mixers all over the world need to be convinced to start to put the voices where the mouth is... Name a few recent mixes where they actually took the efforts to mix the voices of the actors in any different way than just dumping them into the center channel...  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-15-2018 11:15 PM                     It sounds like this is assuming sound editors and sound mixers have ample time to make all sorts of creative choices in post production. Too much of this work is done at the last minute with stupidly short deadlines. I'm amazed they can develop any decent surround mixes at all with sound design treated as a freaking after thought by the rest of the movie production.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 11-16-2018 01:44 AM                     Well, during the last IBC (International Broadcasters Convention) at Amsterdam, "AI" was all the rage, whatever that entails to be. But a lot had to do with facial and gesture recognition. One example was, how you could animate a character using your own facial recognition and gestures, which saves tons of time, compared to the old way of creating key-frames. I've also seen a lot of "AI" stuff creeping into the latest idea of the "smart studio". Stuff where cameras would automatically track the presenter for example, using facial recognition. The guys at Blackmagic Design even did a workshop on how you could code something like that using their software API stack, which was pretty interesting to see, especially how easy it has become to do such stuff. Now, you could probably combine this with your audio mixing suite, where voice panning could be calculated based on facial recognition. It would certainly not be perfect and would most likely need some polishing, but it could probably save you 90~95% of the menial work.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 11-16-2018 08:12 AM                     DCI/SMPTE always provided for 5-screen channels. There were originally to be on channels 7/8 but got bumped to 9/10 due to the ADA channels and servers not ready to play channels 15/16 at the onset (where the ADA channels were to originally go). I'd say that putting a decoder in the server would be a non-starter. (SDDS did in their processor and most sound mixers HATED it) The mantra was to move away from that and more into, whatever is on the mix comes through unmolested. And 5.1 was considered to be the "floor" for sound formats to ensure that all could/should reasonably comply. I've never seen a screen (for projection) that was too small not to benefit from 5-screen channels. One's ears are VERY sensitive to directional cues in a lateral plane. Note, for my home theatre, I'm putting in 5-screen channels and for non-Atmos movies, I have developed a 3-5 decoder for QSYS to go in the opposite direction. I'm curious to hear how it works with actual movies. Thus far, I've determined that it does do the basics of decoding the channels, you can pan the sound and I can put five different tones out of the right speakers starting with just the three channels. So we'll see. I think a big missed opportunity in DCinema was to drop the silliness of setting the surround speakers to different levels than the stage channels. That was done to accommodate the legacy of mono-surrounds (all surrounds playing is 85dBc, Left or Right surrounds play at 82dBc so they acoustically sum to 85dBc). Since we defined DCinema with a 5.1 minimum audio format, we essentially ended the mono surround legacy for DCinema. At that time, a DCinema processor should set all channels the same (except subwoofer, which has 10dB of in-band gain). This would be more consistent with the mantra of play back what they put on the track. Those processors that handle fancier soundtracks, like 7.1 would be responsible for balancing out the channels for lesser (5.1) formats. But someone that is just buying or setting up a 5.1 system would have no overhead to contend with. The other miss was putting ADA channels on the full-range AES tracks. There should have been "Aux" channels like DTS did for them. They need telephone quality audio, not full-bandwidth PCM. We are just concerned about getting clear human voices on those channels. I would have allowed for more than just 2 aux channels. That could have satisfied the likes of Dbox or whatever else needed non-full range high-bit count PCM audio.  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

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.