Video Essentials UPDATE
e-town.com
Update: Sunday, 6 July 1997
"It's done when the toothpick comes out clean, not before!". The DVD of Video Essentials isn't out of the oven yet, but it looks reasonably good for that happening by the end of July.
It's been a while since our last update. There have been so many turns in direction that updates prior to this would have been out of date by the time we got them posted. We've known for a month now that getting Video Essentials out on DVD, in a condition where it will be reasonably functional on the majority of players, will require both a number of compromises in interactivity on our part and some further compromises in function of a number of players. We've even had to re-edit sections of the program to make it better conform to the reality of first generation players. At one point we were considering not bringing it out for another six months, waiting for players to catch up to the DVD system specification for interactivity capability. We've compromised at a program level that will clearly demonstrate the differences among the first generation players. You'll have reasonable navigation capability on some machines and poor capability on others.
What compromises do we expect you to see? We suspect, as an example, that some machines won't skip backwards to prior sections. You'll have to go into the Title or Menu to select the section you want repeated. We expect trouble with the A-B repeat capability of some machines. Again, you'll have to re-select the sections you want to play again from the Title or Menu functions. There will probably be others, including the possibility that the display on one brand of player will not tell you where you are in the program.
What compromises did we make in the interactive instruction set? You may know that menu navigation on the DVD is accomplished using the arrow pod. Program navigation is normally accomplished using the Skip Forward and Skip Reverse buttons. We wanted to add the arrow pods as a program navigation tool in an effort to make functionality consistent between the two types of operations. In doing that we lost A-B repeat capability, seamless play within any Title, and the ability to display where we are in the program.
There are other compromises, one of which has caused us to seriously question issuing Video Essentials now, before the second generation of players is on the market. Only one brand of player of all of the first generation product we've tested will pass the below black portion of PLUGE. That means that the majority of you will not see the below black strip in that pattern. You'll still be able to set black level correctly, but not by using the method described in the program. Making that change in the program would be part of delaying it six months, at which time we probably wouldn't have to make the change.
Delay time in start-up of the audio, after the program has come out of one of many stop points in the program, is another major problem. In editing the program for laserdisc and DVD we allowed a one-half second delay in the audio starting after each stop point. We've found that many Dolby Digital decoders don't un-mute for three to four seconds after the program starts, clipping parts of the audio in the process. Fixing that problem would have required a complete re-edit of the DVD program. Another six months of delay. We could have solved this with the PCM track, but the MPEG encoder we are using couldn't take the more than 1.5 Mega-bit per second hit in video quality. Taking PCM audio out, even though the program says it's there, is yet another compromise we've had to make in the interest in getting the program out now. There are probably other MPEG systems that could properly encode the video with PCM audio present, but another delay would be encountered if we moved the project to another facility. In talking to those other facilities, the issue of re-editing the program certainly came up.
We've decided that the program will come out of the oven sooner rather than later. It will be done, but in a manner that doesn't cover up existing problems in the system. We hope that you'll accept these compromises, knowing that you need Video Essentials now to set up your systems properly, and that most of the problems will be solved in future generations of players. The current program will work properly on newer machines about the same time we could have put out another version that would have gotten around the present problems. That delayed program probably would have been less functional.
At one point we even considered a limited release of the current version of the program for player manufacturers and home theatre installers. Having that widely available and not available to consumers in general has its own set of problems. Most important, we don't want to delay possible improvements in DVD by keeping one of the tools needed for those improvements off the market. That idea of a limited release of the current version was dropped in favor of our going back to an authoring that more closely matched system specifications. It would become the limited release. It's the one that allowed arrow pod navigation, but compromised a great deal of player functionality in the process. It will probably be made available to manufacturers as a test case for the next generation of players. If we do that, PCM audio will be added back in, plus DTS, if they are ready on time. We'll find someone who can handle the MPEG encoding, while retaining the video quality expected of Video Essentials. |
