Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Are we supposed to really take Dolby Vision and Atmos seriously on itoones

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-02-2018, 03:30 PM:

LOL! I can't help to keep from thinking they've gone the THX route and will soon be endorsing built in computer speakers for Atmos. And Dolby Vision on iToones? How's that laser illumination system function over iToones [Roll Eyes]

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1505495519
Full list: 4K HDR (Dolby Vision) & Dolby Atmos movies on iTunes
15 Sep 2017 | Rasmus Larsen | 331 Comments
We have ploughed through the iTunes movies catalog so you don't have to. Here's a list of all the 4K HDR (& Dolby Vision) and Dolby Atmos titles that we have found. You need the Apple TV 4K and of course a 4K HDR TV to enjoy all of this.

We'll keep the list updated. Are we missing some titles? Please share your findings in the comments section.

You can sort the list by pressing the headers or filter the list by typing text in the text fields.

(See the list in the above linky., The list is so long I'm not gonna waste server space on here!)

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-02-2018, 05:08 PM:

Tablets with Dolby Vision/ATMOS ...

https://www.dolby.com/us/en/categories/tablet.html

- Carsten

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-02-2018, 05:28 PM:

How soon before ATMOS is available for rolling boom boxes? They can know exactly where the bass line is coming from!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-02-2018, 08:42 PM:

I wish Dolby would focus more on getting commercial movie theaters equipped with Atmos (and do so with proper speaker/amp configurations). Not nearly enough theaters have good Atmos surround sound systems and not nearly enough movies use the Atmos process well. Without those basic things in place it seems like a waste of time to spam the Atmos brand all over the consumer space.

At first glance it does seem very ridiculous for phones, tablets and streaming services to support something like Atmos. OTOH, residential Internet speeds in many urban and suburban areas have reached bandwidth levels able to support 4K streaming and lossless or next-gen surround sound. The latest advances in 4G and emerging 5G technology will allow data rates fast enough to do the same thing.

It is possible to connect something like an iPad to a home theater system. I have a dongle for my iPad Pro that has a HDMI output and AC power connector (so the battery doesn't run down while playing video). There's various methods to wirelessly beam audio-video content to TV sets and home theater systems wirelessly. In the end those mobile devices and computing devices can connect to a home theater system the same way as a UHD Blu-ray player. Those devices only need to be able to pass the Atmos bit stream to a receiver that can process it.

Maybe the biggest problem facing Atmos in the home is the current general attitude from consumers regarding surround sound. And that attitude isn't good. Surround sound receivers and speaker systems aren't selling nearly as well as they did during the boom times of DVD. The systems are expensive. Installation is a pain in the ass to most consumers; this is why those silly sound bars are a popular alternative. Atmos doesn't just require a real home theater speaker system, it requires something much more elaborate. Two or more sub-bass enclosures and at least two or more speakers installed in the ceiling. So many consumers aren't even bothering watching their shows in the living room on a traditional TV set. They're watching movies and TV shows in bits and pieces on different devices. The home theater experience doesn't fit in well with that.

I think it might take some serious break-throughs in display technology for TV sets (and large computer monitors) to renew enthusiasm for "home theater." OLED display prices have come down quite a bit. Maybe they'll be able to improve the technology to bring down prices more and scale displays even larger. Augmented reality has a good amount of hype surrounding it, even though I think the scene is pretty murky right now. That might be an outlet for surround sound technology like Atmos.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 11-04-2018, 09:48 AM:

quote:
And Dolby Vision on iToones? How's that laser illumination system function over iToones [Roll Eyes]

First off, you’re comparing Dolby Vision, a home-spec video standard, to Dolby Cinema. Two completely different things.

Second, this is in reference specifically to Apple’s high-end streaming box and its ability to deliver these technologies to high-end home entertainment systems. Your mocking has nothing to do with capability and everything to do with your well documented hatred for Apple.

Third, you moved to Tennessee, so you’re never going to see a movie in a quality cinema again anyway.

As for the debate on Dolby Atmos, here’s a link explaining the various options for home deployment. I personally don’t see the point, but I’m not that sold on cinema Atmos either.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-04-2018, 11:32 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Not nearly enough theaters have good Atmos surround sound systems and not nearly enough movies use the Atmos process well.

Exactly Bobby! I've gone to about a dozen Atmos cinema sites and have left disappointed and felt somewhat ripped off upon leaving. I finally stopped going to them hoping there was a good one out there some place. To me it's nothing but a marketing gimmick for both Dolby and the Exhibitor to be able to charge premium prices. A good 7.1 system is still the icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned. Am not going to any more Atmos sites!

quote: Sam Graham
your mocking has nothing to do with capability and everything to do with your well documented hatred for Apple.

Sam, LOL! I happen to own an eye pad that is on AT&T which I mainly use for remoting in to theaters if I am on the road... or sitting in dialysis. Also, note that I am posting this comment from my eye mac desktop... My Apple hatred is about the eye phone of which I went through almost a dozen in just four years, all broken screens or failed port connectors. Then I switched to Samsung Note 2 and only needed a phone every three years or so. The abuse that Note 2 took during digital conversions is legendary. I still have it and it still works! My next phone was a Note 4 which did crap out on me, but it happened a month before the contract was up and they gave me a Note 5 to finish out my contract. After that I switched to a Windoez Phone out of curiosity. That was over two years ago. Now I have a Nokia 1520 which is the second best god dam cell phone ever made far as I am concerned. The only better cell phone you can get is the HP Elite X-3, but the camera in the X-3 is only 15 megapixel with an unknown make lens, and the 1520 has a 20 megapixel camera and Zeiss lens. I have had the 1520 battery last as long as 29 hours before recharge under almost continous NET use!! I also have a Nokia 1020 and the accessory camera grip to put it in just to use the 41 megapixel camera it has...

P.S., We have a brand new AMC a mile away... it actually has DLP and half way decent sound. I have not been let down by the new AMC because I never go to any AMC expecting very much. It was clean with decent picture and sound. However, I mainly go to see stuff at the Belcourt Theater.

Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 11-04-2018, 11:13 PM:

We just have three Dolby Atmos® Theatres in San Francisco CA.

Why Is It the 12 times I have seen a movie at a cinema showing a movie in this system I have only heard the ceiling speakers on just once, and very low volume. .

Plenty of split and far back corner surrounds on plus deep base but the Dolby Atmos® mix or amps from over my head seems to be lacking.

I think in some of these cinemas there is so much sound coming from the stage speakers the level of the ceiling speaker rows is drowned out, or the volume setting is set to low.

Many of these theatres have a very high ceiling and maybe the roof sound takes longer to hit my ears.

Many of my stereo/hi fi freaks also say they never hear any sound coming from the Dolby Atmos® set up on the ceiling array of speakers.

I am sure they do a Dolby® alignment from time to time but maybe some films need more volume from above put into the mix for that special time overhead sound is called for or needed.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-04-2018, 11:26 PM:

quote:
I've gone to about a dozen Atmos cinema sites and have left disappointed and felt somewhat ripped off upon leaving. I finally stopped going to them hoping there was a good one out there some place. To me it's nothing but a marketing gimmick for both Dolby and the Exhibitor to be able to charge premium prices. A good 7.1 system is still the icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned. Am not going to any more Atmos sites!

I'm still holding out some hope for the format. I guess that comes from experiencing the somewhat rare combination of a movie with a great Atmos mix played in a theater with a properly functional Atmos-equipped surround sound system. Movies with mixes like the one in Gravity are a treat if the theater's surround sound system is equipped to deliver the goods.

I'm sure there's better theaters out there, but of the limited number of Atmos-equipped theaters I've visited I've been most impressed by the surround in Harkins' Atmos-equipped Cine Capri theaters. On top of that they charge only a $1 premium above standard ticket price, and the big screen has curtains and masking! I've been to a few "Dolby Cinema@AMC" theaters. I haven't heard Atmos work as well on those screens. But that could be a fault of the movie mix. Plenty of Atmos-mixed movies sound hardly any different at all than a standard 7.1 mix.

Commercial theaters can be all over the place with how they can configure an Atmos-capable surround sound system, from an effectively minimal 9.1 setup to something far more maxed out. It all depends on how much the theater chain wants to spend on the installation. Judging by the very slow growth pace of Atmos installations it doesn't look like theater chains want to spend more than the minimum to get that Atmos brand on the marquee -which makes the whole effort a waste of money. Why do they bother at all if they can't get it done right? By the way the rival DTS-X format seems to be in even worse shape. I can't even find a credible list anywhere of theaters equipped to play that format and the choices of how theaters can configure a sound system to play it is even more varied and murky. That's all very bad news for movie-going customers. Great way to get ripped off.

With the way movie productions approach sound editing and mixing (with much of it being done at the very last minute) it doesn't provide much growth potential for formats like Atmos.

Maybe the gaming industry could do something productive with Atmos, via augmented reality, gaming headsets and other types of gear. Computer games have already been delivering real time multi-channel surround sound. I'm sure the latest gaming systems have more than enough processing horsepower to render a real time Atmos audio stream.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-05-2018, 07:34 AM:

I've said it before and I'll say it again...ceiling speakers are the fools gold of cinema sound.

You don't have ears designed to pick those speakers up. The position of your head will dramatically affect how well you hear them. Now, side-to-side, that is something different. Our ears are very good at pick up those differences.

I've heard a fair number of Atmos systems now and the ceiling speakers are, by far, the least effective. Being able to locate sound more precisely behind the screen should be where they concentrate their efforts (but they don't for some reason...LC/RC are used much except for pass-through) and Left/Right Wide should be the next area of interest. Your eyes are on the screen, not the air register in the ceiling. The sound should augment what you are seeing.

As for tuning these rooms...they are more uniform than you are giving them credit for. They are done with 5-8 mics and each speaker is swept. At the end, pink noise is panned through all of the channels to show channel-to-channel consistency in their timbre. The tuning is done via the CP850 (or IMS3000). You can hand-tune one but that is a LOT of speaker to tune and how consistent are YOU versus the processor that can do any channel in seconds.

You also have a range of speaker systems in use. The quality of them varies all over the place, just like stage speakers. They may measure the same with pink noise but that only tells you one bit of the story.

And all of this still comes down to the mix. If Woody Allen were to do an Atmos release, you'd still not hear Left and Right any more than hearing any surround speakers since he puts everything in center. I've now heard some "fun" mixes where the speakers specific to Atmos were well used and would distinguish themselves from a 7.1 room. That said, about 90% of the Atmos mixes I've heard were no improvement over the 7.1 mix from my listening position.

I'm still putting Atmos into my home theatre...where the home mix will further muddy the waters.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-05-2018, 08:48 AM:

I've got an OLED TV in the living room that supports Dolby Vision and you can obviously see the difference between standard Rec.709 content. The difference between HDR10 and Dolby Vision is not easy to perceive, but Dolby Vision should support a higher "luminance per pixel" than HDR10. I don't think there is a single device or setup out right now that can do the maximum of 10k "nits" supported by the Dolby Vision specs...

Now, I suppose that any tablet and phone with a modern, high-contrast display can match the "luminance per pixel" of my OLED TV, so it's absolutely possible to get Dolby Vision support on your phone or tablet. Whether that's useful for generic consumption is something different.

As for Dolby Atmos... Even a boom box with 2 speakers could perfectly support "Dolby Atmos". Dolby Atmos currently doesn't really guarantee a minimum number of discrete output channels, so you could essentially create a single-speaker setup with it...

I agree on Steve with the Dolby Atmos Ceiling speakers, especially the number of them in your average Atmos room is just stupid crazy.

Yesterday I watched "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a newly fitted Atmos theater. There was just a single scene that came to mind, where the overhead speakers really added something to the overall experience and that was during a Second Unit scene where a 747 was approaching overhead and landing in front of you.

This effect, although somewhat impressive, could easily have been achieved with just 4 speakers instead of the 12 speakers that currently are being used in this same room. Overhead sounds are extremely hard to localize, so the only thing important is to be able to fill the room with them. In smaller rooms, a single speaker could even be sufficient.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-05-2018, 12:31 PM:

There is actually a minimum spec of 4 speakers on each side wall and 4 surrounds on the rear wall. The ceiling speakers would then be 8. However, it is possible to "cul" the ceiling speakers in any zone but you still aren't allowed to go below 8 ceiling speakers. So, for a commercial cinema, the minimum Dolby Atmos surround system will be 20 surrounds plus two Surround-LFE.

As the room gets larger one can then pair/cul to reduce the amplifier/speaker count.

The problem with getting too few ceiling speakers (culled too much) is that what remains has to play that much louder and then ruins any effect of placing an object where you want it to be...it will sound like it is coming from that blasting speaker.

Now, with DTS-X...it is the wild-west where anyone can do anything because nobody is watching. Furthermore, the 16-channel version is what is somewhat being pushed...distinguishing itself even less from a 7.1 system

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-05-2018, 02:22 PM:

I think you can easily fix the coverage problem by having all speakers put out the same discrete channel. I don't think there is really much value in much more than a single "voice of god"-kind of channel in most conventional room designs.

The Auro 13.1 system does something similar, although they create a pretty unnecessary "Height" layer, they have just a single "top" channel.

Dolby Atmos somewhat feels like a plot to buy into unnecessary output channels and speakers. I still don't understand why there is so much focus on the ceiling, while behind the screen, where accurate positioning of sound really matters, the minimum speakers remains at 3...

Some of you might remember the short-lived "imm sound", which developed their own object based sound format for cinema and which was bought by Dolby, shortly before the release of Atmos.

Their first roll-outs featured just a hand-full of ceiling speakers, although they were of an interesting design. I found a picture of one of those setups here.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-05-2018, 02:41 PM:

The biggest problem with ceiling mounted surround speakers: stadium seated auditoriums with high ceilings. In a standard slope house ceiling surrounds would work better since would be positioned much closer to the listener.

I visited the Broken Arrow Warren Theater to watch one of the recent Mission: Impossible movies there on one of their 2 "grand infinity" screens. I don't know what they're called now since Regal gobbled up the chain. I made the mistake of getting seats on the ground level rather than paying extra to sit up in the balcony. The room had a very high ceiling and very few ceiling mounted surround cabinets up there. Couldn't hear them at all, even during the Unfold Dolby Atmos trailer. On top of that the sound was turned way the hell down. So, out of the sound you could hear, none of it was very dynamic at all. I had similar low volume issues at my last couple visits to the Moore Warren Theater.

By contrast, the Harkins Theater I mentioned had 50 surround speaker cabinets visible, including two rows of 10 speakers up in the ceiling running from the back wall to the screen. They weren't the best quality speakers money could buy, but they could be heard if you didn't sit way down close to the screen. I watched American Sniper at that theater with a group of friends and we got stuck sitting down in the bottom rows close to the screen (all thanks to certain people in the group piddling the f*** around and making us late). In that seating position it was very difficult to hear any ceiling surround activity, much less any other activity in the surround field.

Ceiling surrounds or not, Atmos can be great for the side and back wall surrounds if the theater installs the extra amplifiers needed. Surround panning effects can work a hell of a lot better. 5.1 surround in a commercial theater is really pretty lousy unless you're sitting in one of few seats where the sound between the screen and surrounds are balanced. And that's harder to do in stadium seated theaters. 7.1 makes things a little better, but you have to sit closer to the back to hear the back wall at all.

Sub-bass is typically not impressive in stadium seated theaters. I've never heard a stadium seated theater come close to matching the sound quality I heard in great standard slope houses (such as the GCC Northpark #1 in Dallas).

quote: Marcel Birgelen
Overhead sounds are extremely hard to localize, so the only thing important is to be able to fill the room with them. In smaller rooms, a single speaker could even be sufficient.

I disagree. I heard surround panning effects in Gravity which had individual ceiling, side and back wall speakers working together to deliver a really precise motion track for the audio -something that's impossible to do with a conventional 5.1 or 7.1 system. Sub-bass audio is difficult to localize in terms of direction. That's not the case for the higher frequency bands.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-05-2018, 06:19 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
I'm still holding out some hope for the format.

I certainly was holding out! I usually give something three strikes and it's out. I have literally been to 12 different locations/films and I am done with holding out for better because it isn't going to happen...

Mark

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-06-2018, 01:17 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
I disagree. I heard surround panning effects in Gravity which had individual ceiling, side and back wall speakers working together to deliver a really precise motion track for the audio -something that's impossible to do with a conventional 5.1 or 7.1 system. Sub-bass audio is difficult to localize in terms of direction. That's not the case for the higher frequency bands.

Our screening room does have 4 ceiling speakers, which are all individually amplified. We've also got 4 individually amplified speakers on each side and in the back. They're all separate Atmos channels. For the size of the room, this is more than adequate.

The last year I've experimented quite a bit with the Dolby Atmos Production suite. I'm nowhere close to a professional mixer with that thing, but it's easy to test-case some scenarios if you've got a full Atmos installation at hand.

That's also how I finally got convinced that those overhead speakers aren't really adding all that much to the experience, at least not for the price you need to pay to put them in. Those speakers could be better used elsewhere, like I mentioned, behind the screen or to increase the horizontal resolution.

I'm 100% convinced that I could create an overhead panning sound illusion using just a single overhead speaker or single channel array and a high resolution, horizontal speaker array.

Although you can localize "height", the "resolution" in which you can is really pretty limited, much like sub-bass.

Your brain is also easy to fool. If you start a certain sound effect, for example sirens, at a high volume and this sound is located behind you, you will correctly locate it as being behind you. Now, if you slowly decrease the volume and then move it to the front of the room, many people will still identify it as coming from the back of the room.

One of the most impressive things I've heard in a while was IOSONO's Wave Field Synthesis. IOSONO has been gobbled up by BARCO and I haven't heard much about it since then. This needs an even denser surround array, but also in this setup, the focus is on the horizontal array.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 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.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 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?

Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 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.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 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.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 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.
[Eek!]

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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...

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 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.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 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.