Blu-ray at contests/festivals

[ned c]

There is another discussion on this subject but centered on the NvS competition. Obviously I am far away from this so have statred a more general thread on this important subject.

Many movie makers are now working in HD and want their productions seen to best advantage but there are some snags. For international Festivals will the local Blu-Ray players play 1080 60i and 1080 50i plus 1080 24p and 720 24p? I wish to know the answer to this and would welcome samples from Europe to test here and I am happy to send N American versions to evaluate there. (go off line to my e-mail address for info).

We have also seen that HD downrezed to SD DVDs played on a line doubling player deliver excellent results. At AMPS we will stay with SD for a while until we have resolved the player issues. We do view the entries on a line doubler so be assured your movies are well presented.

Thanks

ned c

[Michael Slowe]

Ned, we are all wondering how best to show our HD productions but it seems that BD is not really taking off commercially so one asks will that format be with us for very long? I have seen my stuff both in SD and BD and to be honest there was not a huge difference. The same HD film, one on BD, the other downscaled in BitVice and the DVD then shown on an upscaling BD player, looked pretty similar. Both were better than the old days of DV and really good enough for any purpose, including a full size cinema where I had one showing. If a festival can use an upscaling BD player then SD DVD's would be perfectly satisfactory and even the fussiest HD entrant would approve I'm sure.

That's my experience anyway, let's see what others may say.

[tom hardwick]

Ah, but the Blu-rays at BIAFF were slicing our corneas they were so sharp. The SD stuff was very good, but there's a noticeable step up to excellence.

[Michael Slowe]

Ah but Tom, you and I differed in our opinions on that! You even thought my BD showing was really sharp, I thought it no better than the SD DVD's that I was used to seeing the film on. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder we hear, sharpness, definition, call it what you will, is often the subject of great debate. My point was, and you will agree I know, the upscaling BD players present a picture off SD DVD's which is a step forward and very acceptable indeed for large screen presentations. That is assuming the original footage was originated in HD, that does make a considerable difference, even if there is at some point in the post production process a downscaling.

[col lamb]

I use solid state.

Take a look at the Western Digital WD TV unit, it plugs in via HDMI and has a USB2 socket (Network socket on some models as well).

Into the USB I can put a memory stick, a card reader or a portable hard drive.

My movies are in HD format h264 and it plays them great, I also encode the movies into SD MPEG2 for DVD use if needed.

For competitions get the entrants to send in their encoded HD movies on a data DVD (cheaper than solid state) and copy the movie onto your source drive that is going to plug into the WD TV unit, simples.

You can also easily set up a Playlist on the WD TV unit so you can play one movie after the other with whatever you want in between them, no changing disks. So easy for the projectionist.

No messing around with shiny disks and players that can take an age before they display the menu system of a disk.

[Dave Watterson]

Great tip! Amazon uk is selling these around £70 - add a few quid for the HDMI cable. IF your projector or tv can accept HDMI this sounds like a very promising and relatively cheap way to manage festival presentations.

-Dave

[Michael Slowe]

That's pretty well what the cinemas do with their 'digital' programmes. A full length feature film arrives on a small drive, size around 150 Gb's, the cinema decodes it with information supplied by the distributor and away they go. Mind you the projectors cost around £60,000!