New Ken Kutaragi interview (1) @ PC Watch

[SPM]

http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/news/n_AVC.shtml

As for the differences between the two codecs, Goldman said, "from a high-level point of view, they have much in common in regard to coding efficiency The differences are deep down in the coding level, either with how or where a coding tool is applied in the processing chain, or in a few cases, with the choice of a different tool to perform a particular function. Both are excellent and they far exceed the capability of MPEG-2 in bit-rate reduction.

"AVC is more complex and may ultimately offer the potential for higher quality and more efficient coding. VC-1 is less complex and therefore, presumably easier to implement efficiently," Goldman said.

Examples of specific differences between AVC and VC-1 include AVC's use of six-tap filters versus VC-1's use of four-tap filters. AVC uses an entropy scheme known as CABAC (context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding) that is computationally intensive and therefore expensive to implement. VC-1, by contrast, uses high-order entropy coding that is less complex and less expensive to implement.

"We chose smarter algorithms that are less complex," Ribas said. "It is a significant advantage to be less complex. Rather than the kitchen sink approach, we were very careful in our design choices."

Modulus' Robinett, however, believes that CABAC is one of the elements of AVC that will provide video quality superior to VC-1.

It is standardization that drives acceptance of these new codec technologies. AVC has, in fact, been an international standard for about one year now. A Joint Video Team (JVT) composed of coding experts representing the ISO/IEC and the ITU-T organizations (from the moving picture experts group [MPEG] and the video encoding experts group, respectively), created this advanced coding standard.

These organizations are now poised to ratify extensions to the AVC standard that would result in four new profiles including High Profile directed at broadcast television applications, as distinct from the currently ratified Main Profile. The AVC High Profile is a superset of the Main Profile and adds a few new tools, including the adaptive use of an 8x8 block transform and quantization scaling matrices. The technical work is complete and as of this writing is awaiting formal ratification.

VC-1 is well into its standards process under the auspices of SMPTE. Based on the Windows Media 9 Advanced Profile, which is roughly equivalent to the AVC Main Profile, VC-1 includes tools such as the 8x8 block transform that appear only in the new extensions to AVC.

The technical literature seems to all agree on one thing - H.264 AVC will be superior in quality but VC-1 will require less processing overhead.

Other things the article mentions are AVC is more advanced in the standards process, and VC-1 components are built into Windows media. (hence Microsoft's purpose for proposing VC-1 rather than AVC (of which they are a member) as a standard seems to be to promote Windows media over competitors).

 

[scooby_dooby]

Give it a rest man, your anti-MS crusade is getting very old. One argument doesn't work, quick drop it and find another!! They're codec's, who really cares?

Since AVC is not 'ready', the BDA should've had all the DVD's mastered using VC1 so they didn't screw over all the people who are buying these crap 25gb mpg2 discs, it's as simple as that IMO, no lame excuses please.

 

[TheChefO]

Give it a rest man, your anti-MS crusade is getting very old. One argument doesn't work, quick drop it and find another!! They're codec's, who really cares?

Since AVC is not 'ready', the BDA should've had all the DVD's mastered using VC1 so they didn't screw over all the people who are buying these crap 25gb mpg2 discs, it's as simple as that IMO, no lame excuses please.

Agreed - regardless of what the specific reasoning, it all boils down to trying to sell these (expensive) movie players (and movies) to consumers. If there are other competitors in the same market, it would behoove the more expensive competitor to prove their superiority in any way possible. Right now they are not only twice the cost but underperforming as well. Whatever the reasoning is not important. If the media or encoders were not ready then the platform should have been delayed.

But by all accounts this delay was not necessary as a reasonable codec was/is available that while not proving superiourity over it's competitor, at least puts it on close to equal footing (quality wise). The only clear reasoning for not choosing it is greed (and stupidity )

 

[one]

Anyway, it should be noted that those first 25GB MPEG-2 Blu-ray titles will never be released on HD DVD no matter how much you cried. It means you should compare the quality of those BD titles with their DVD versions, not with unrelated HD DVD titles. It works like an exclusive game.

 

[TheChefO]

Anyway, it should be noted that those first 25GB MPEG-2 Blu-ray titles will never be released on HD DVD no matter how much you cried. It means you should compare the quality of those BD titles with their DVD versions, not with unrelated HD DVD titles. It works like an exclusive game.

Agreed - good luck to them convincing consumers to gamble a grand on a BR player and movies of questionable video quality advantage over their established Dvd's. :smile:

 

[rabidrabbit]

I would be more worried about the amount of good movies that are launching with BD and HD-DVD, than some relatively minor differences in the video quality
...but maybe the real launches of these formats are still ahead.

Edit: How much did Sony have control over the launch of first Blu-ray player and software?
I do agree that BR launch should have been delayed until either or both the dual layer and mpeg4 authoring were ready (or VC-1, was it politically possible. The politics should not be forgotten, they're just as valid reason for not implementing something as technical reasons).

 

[London Geezer]

I would be more worried about the amount of good movies that are launching with BD and HD-DVD, than some relatively minor differences in the video quality
...but maybe the real launches of these formats are still ahead.

Edit: How much did Sony have control over the launch of first Blu-ray player and software?
I do agree that BR launch should have been delayed until either or both the dual layer and mpeg4 authoring were ready (or VC-1, was it politically possible. The politics should not be forgotten, they're just as valid reason for not implementing something as technical reasons).

Sony had all to do with the Blu-Ray movies released so far, and Samsung is responsible for the Blu-Ray player they launched.
Sony will be responsible for the players they will release and the movies they will release.
Everyone else (Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer etc) will be responsible for their own players.
I think it's all down to Sony now, they need to make sure that the movie they release (cause initially, the vast majority of movies will be Sony's) are up for the challenge. So far they haven't done too well, but it's so early i don't think we should worry too much.

 

[mckmas8808]

Give it a rest man, your anti-MS crusade is getting very old. One argument doesn't work, quick drop it and find another!! They're codec's, who really cares?

Since AVC is not 'ready', the BDA should've had all the DVD's mastered using VC1 so they didn't screw over all the people who are buying these crap 25gb mpg2 discs, it's as simple as that IMO, no lame excuses please.

It is only the beginning. It's not the end of the road. Both CD and DVD had rough starts. If I was Sony and anybody else on the BDA I wouldn't have gone with VC-1 either. I would want to produce my disc on MPEG-4 and just make more money in the beginning using MPEG-2 from early adopters.

I just hope Blu-ray disc are using MPEG-4 in October/November timeframe.

 

[patsu]

Since AVC is not 'ready', the BDA should've had all the DVD's mastered using VC1 so they didn't screw over all the people who are buying these crap 25gb mpg2 discs, it's as simple as that IMO, no lame excuses please.

Agreed - regardless of what the specific reasoning, it all boils down to trying to sell these (expensive) movie players (and movies) to consumers. If there are other competitors in the same market, it would behoove the more expensive competitor to prove their superiority in any way possible. Right now they are not only twice the cost but underperforming as well. Whatever the reasoning is not important. If the media or encoders were not ready then the platform should have been delayed.

But by all accounts this delay was not necessary as a reasonable codec was/is available that while not proving superiourity over it's competitor, at least puts it on close to equal footing (quality wise). The only clear reasoning for not choosing it is greed (and stupidity )

I agree that BDA should have delayed their initial BR launch until end of the year to save money and avoid confusion like this. I also agree with the "no excuse" flame. I am not sure about the alleged cost structure though.

As for mastering using VC-1, the studios should be able to proceed independently without Sony's help (RobertR1 mentioned that some Japanese studios have decided to use VC-1 recently) ? Was VC-1 authoring tools/services for Blu-ray ready in time for first wave Blu-ray titles in the first place ?

As far as Sony is concerned, they will have their own agenda to push and their project to run. I hope for dual layer BD-ROM soon.

The technical literature seems to all agree on one thing - H.264 AVC will be superior in quality but VC-1 will require less processing overhead.

Without objective tests, I'd just say VC-1 and AVC are comparable. It's not exactly clear that simpler processing means inferior results where compression is concerned. Remember the MPEG 2 proponents' principle: "Lesser compression at high enough bitrate produces result closer to the original (in general)". Again I'm no AV expert.

Incidentally, we have this from yesterday:
http://news.com.com/Toshiba+wants+unified+DVD+format/2100-1041_3-6088269.html?tag=nefd.top

 

[Titanio]

I thought this report might be relevant to the discussion, particularly that relating to codecs etc. Hope it's not old (!)

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

Basically, the site's editor wanted to update on BD and Samsung's player after visiting Pioneer's offices. He basically got to bring down the Samsung player and compare with Pioneer's upcoming player, using their own 1080p displays etc. and also talk with some of the Pioneer big-wigs about the various issues he had encountered.

One of the big revelations with regard to the Samsung, specifically, was that its HDMI output looks to be the cause of some problems - it seems to do some funny processing of the signal before outputting it. They compared to the Pioneer and the difference was clear. Using the Samsung's component output with 1080i, and the colour problems etc. disappeared.

Second, and probably more relevant with regard to the discussion here is the commentary on the codecs, with a couple of interesting impressions (particularly regarding a MPEG2 clip):

While we were conducting our tests, Pioneer's Senior Vice President Andy Parsons joined us for while. We continued sampling various Blu-ray Disc titles from Sony and Lionsgate, along with some other film demo material, including one clip that was encoded in VC1 format. Those of you who are interested in how Blu-ray displays VC1 material will be pleased to know that it looks absolutely spectacular. Unfortunately, I can't talk about the specific clips we saw, but it wouldn't be fair to compare Blu-ray's VC1 quality to that of HD-DVD at this point anyway, especially not from a single short clip. I will tell you, however, that one specific piece of test footage we looked at (in MPEG-2) was hands-down the single most stunning high-def video I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of HD video in my day, but NOTHING this good in terms of detail, color, contrast and lack of compression artifacting. I have no doubt that both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc are capable of delivering video quality of this level eventually, but I'm betting full-length movie discs this good won't start hitting store shelves until mid-to-late next year... when the authoring and compression folks have had enough time to really hone their wizardry with these formats. The same was also true in the early days of DVD, of course, and compression quality has only gotten better since 1997. I suspect the same will be true with HD.

Of course, we don't know what kind of bitrate that clip was using, if it could be sustained over an entire movie (well, I guess that begs the question - how much footage could be stored on a 50GB disc at a constant 54Mbps?).

Also, another possible reason beyond beyond patent royalties etc. for Sony's use of MPEG2 in their movies:

For the record, and for those who may be interested, I've been told that one of the chief advantages of using MPEG-2 over VC1, at least in the near term, is that it's easier to encode quickly in high quality. A good MPEG-2 encoding can be done in, say, two passes, whereas VC1 right now can take as many as five or six passes to achieve high quality. Still, that will certainly change over time as the VC1 compression software gets better.

 

[TheChefO]

It is only the beginning. It's not the end of the road. Both CD and DVD had rough starts. If I was Sony and anybody else on the BDA I wouldn't have gone with VC-1 either. I would want to produce my disc on MPEG-4 and just make more money in the beginning using MPEG-2 from early adopters.

I just hope Blu-ray disc are using MPEG-4 in October/November timeframe.

That's a fine theory but the problem as has been brought up before is; what do they do with these titles which were already released on mpeg2? Do they re-release them a year from now on vc-1 saying "oh these are Superbit!"? Really this situation is rediculous. Not only do consumers have to contend with multiple hi-def movie disc standards, but now they also have to contend with codecs used as well.

This format war is a joke up to now and while I agree, initially it is expected they would have some bumps in the road but there should be absolutely no confusing a bleeding edge $1000 movie player with a cheap dvd player from walmart with a built-in up-scaler.

 

[Sis]

It is only the beginning. It's not the end of the road. Both CD and DVD had rough starts. If I was Sony and anybody else on the BDA I wouldn't have gone with VC-1 either. I would want to produce my disc on MPEG-4 and just make more money in the beginning using MPEG-2 from early adopters.

I just hope Blu-ray disc are using MPEG-4 in October/November timeframe.

I don't get this argument, though I've heard it before. HD DVD opted for VC-1 for most (all?) of their releases. This was the right decision. Blu-ray opted for mpeg2. This was the wrong decision.

In terms of storage size and available codecs, Blu-ray and HD DVD are roughly equals at launch. The picture quality of their launch titles are different solely due to a poor decision to support mpeg2 and not adopt a better codec.

In other words, Blu-ray made a mistake. It's certainly not the end, but to rationalize it by saying CD and DVD had rough starts is not accurate, given HD DVDs "good" start, with regards to picture quality. So we know this rough start was unnecessary.

 

[patsu]

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

I wish he had noted the bitrate for the MPEG 2 test footage. That would at least be a reference to guide our expectation.

EDIT: This is the effect Blu-ray should generate regardless of what codec to use: " I've seen a lot of HD video in my day, but NOTHING this good in terms of detail, color, contrast and lack of compression artifacting". Then it would be held in high regard.

 

[Sis]

Of course, we don't know what kind of bitrate that clip was using, if it could be sustained over an entire movie (well, I guess that begs the question - how much footage could be stored on a 50GB disc at a constant 54Mbps?).

Also, another possible reason beyond beyond patent royalties etc. for Sony's use of MPEG2 in their movies:

I think everyone agrees that given enough bits, mpeg2 would be fine (though I thought max video on Blu-ray was 40Mbps). The question is twofold:

1) How can you get that quality using mpeg2 on a 25gig disc?
2) If you do use a 50 gig disc, doesn't that burn most of the disc space on the movie, negating the benefit of the bigger disc?

I think Sony was caught in a tight position, of hoping DL Blu-ray discs would be available at launch, allowing them to ride mpeg2 until the AVC toolsets were mature enough. I believe they probably actively avoided VC-1, possibly to the detriment of their launch, primarily for competition reasons.

EDIT: Indeed, 40Mbps according to Blu-ray FAQ: http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_vs_hddvd_comparison

 

[Titanio]

If ultimately, with experience and refinement of their process, they can fit a MPEG2 encoded movie on the disc that gives an exceptional, maybe the best picture (as described by that author), then don't be surprised if Sony sticks with it and doesn't hop to AVC at the first opportunity (or, at least, permanently).

It sure would have been good to know what kind of bitrate that clip was using.

In the meantime, though, AVC for all intents and purposes is available now, and what other studios do is their own business. The choice of MPEG2 for the initial Sony titles should not be generalised to a choice made by or for 'Blu-ray'. Other studios can do what they want, tools-allowing.

 

[patsu]

2) If you do use a 50 gig disc, doesn't that burn most of the disc space on the movie, negating the benefit of the bigger disc?

If the result is that appealing, I wouldn't mind having the extras in lower bitrate.

 

[rabidrabbit]

That's a fine theory but the problem as has been brought up before is; what do they do with these titles which were already released on mpeg2? Do they re-release them a year from now on vc-1 saying "oh these are Superbit!"? Really this situation is rediculous. Not only do consumers have to contend with multiple hi-def movie disc standards, but now they also have to contend with codecs used as well.

This format war is a joke up to now and while I agree, initially it is expected they would have some bumps in the road but there should be absolutely no confusing a bleeding edge $1000 movie player with a cheap dvd player from walmart with a built-in up-scaler.

Yes, they'll probably release some Ultimate Edition versions of them later, that's nothing new with DVD, I've lost the count of how many different relesases there are for T2 for example.
I wouldn't be surprised there wouldn't be some new editions of the HD-DVD movies released now at some later day, with bells and whistles interactive menus, downloadable extras, better sound and better iq.
That's nothing new, and not something we already haven't experienced with DVD, and not just "Superbit" releases.

The films released are all already on DVD, and really not something people are going out to rush and buy a HD-DVD or Blu-ray for. I would expect more once the newer or more high profile films are being released on HD-DVD and BD.

I think everyone agrees that given enough bits, mpeg2 would be fine (though I thought max video on Blu-ray was 40Mbps). The question is twofold:
1) How can you get that quality using mpeg2 on a 25gig disc?
2) If you do use a 50 gig disc, doesn't that burn most of the disc space on the movie, negating the benefit of the bigger disc?

1) I don't think you can.
2) 2 disc "Special Editions" are the norm with DVD's. The single disc editions have usually very little extra content. There's no reason for HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs not to go the same path. In addition, there's the possibility of getting the extra (streaming?) content from the internet connection that's buit in.

 

[TheChefO]

Yes, they'll probably release some Ultimate Edition versions of them later, that's nothing new with DVD, I've lost the count of how many different relesases there are for T2 for example.
I wouldn't be surprised there wouldn't be some new editions of the HD-DVD movies released now at some later day, with bells and whistles interactive menus, downloadable extras, better sound and better iq.
That's nothing new, and not something we already haven't experienced with DVD, and not just "Superbit" releases.

The films released are all already on DVD, and really not something people are going out to rush and buy a HD-DVD or Blu-ray for. I would expect more once the newer or more high profile films are being released on HD-DVD and BD

Agreed but the big selling point right now for these (very expensive) players is vastly improved image quality. If it does not clearly seperate itself from an upscaled dvd, then what's the point? Especially now at the introduction of the format with very high prices. Sure they can improve later, but they're trying to sell based on a feature that is non existant (in some titles).

 

[rabidrabbit]

A much bigger selling point would be a greater variety of players to choose from, and a better selection of movies.
As it is, neither of these players really sell to the masses.
Isn't it funny.

 

[one]

If it does not clearly seperate itself from an upscaled dvd, then what's the point?

If one can't separate it from an upscaled DVD, he/she should quit reviewing HD contents IMO.