Pushing the BD envelope

Format war resolved, ROLF HARTLEY, General Manager for Sonic’s Professional Products Group, takes a ‘where are we now’ look at the BD production landscape, how to push the advanced features envelope, and discusses what professional authoring facilities might expect to see next.

As consumers around the world are just starting to become acquainted with Blu-ray Disc, the new darling of the Hollywood packaged media industry, professional authoring service providers and post facilities everywhere are considering investing in a new infrastructure to provide their content publisher customers with high-end BD title production.

But firstly, special thanks to Toshiba for their bold decision in February 2008 to withdraw their HD DVD format. Format wars always cause irrational development actions by manufacturers and an equal measure of inaction by consumers; we’re all glad this particular conflict is over.

So, now everything is just great in the world of BD, right? Well…yes and…er, not yet. “Yes”, because facility owners can get involved with a single HD standard and “No” because there’s still a lot of work to do to ensure BD is successful at both professional and consumer levels. The ongoing settop player evolution means the authoring community is faced with the challenge of delivering titles that are altogether compelling, compatible and profitable to make. How do we do that?!

DELIVERING THE ADVANCED INTERACTIVITY GOODS

It’s typical at the start of any format launch to expect initial titles to have base functionality so more titles can be made quickly to fuel consumer awareness and demand. The same thing happened when DVD-Video was launched. Now, though, there’s a lot more interest from content holders for titles that exploit the advanced interactivity promised when BD was conceived.

A terrific example of exciting new BD interactivity is the Neil Young Archive Series which was demonstrated at Sun’s JavaOne conference held in May. Created by the highly regarded production team at MX Entertainment in San Francisco, California, the title is a truly dynamic multimedia experience which combines on-disc and on-line content via BD-Live to form a seamless entertainment experience for consumers.

Two of the exciting BD-J-enabled features in this title include the Neil Young career navigation timeline where the user clicks on the artist’s history to select audio, video, or images. It also features updatable audio, video, and image content via BD-Live where the player’s network connection allows updates to keep the title fresh and dynamic.

This title sounds great too considering its 192kHz, 24-bit audio resolution which is certain to please Neil Young enthusiasts and audiophiles everywhere.

If you think it is time to start making great BD titles too, here is a list of things you’ll need to get out on the cutting-edge of BD:
Personnel and experience. Obtaining and retaining the right team is probably the hardest and most expensive asset your facility will ever acquire (especially considering programming for BD-J). The good news is that trained HDMV authors are readily available. Also your authoring system provider should provide training. While it’s hard to find BD-J programmers, thanks to Sun and specialty conferences like Java-One, more Java experienced programmers are becoming available in short order.

HD-ready infrastructure. If you’re involved in HD work, you already know that you need lots of hard disc storage space and speedy access to it across a local or wide area network.

Cinema quality encoding system(s). A mastering-level encoding system, like Sonic’s CineVision, that provides deep image quality control and stream legalization in all of the BD supported video codecs.

Authoring system(s). Such as Sonic’s Scenarist BD, you will need advanced authoring capabilities to control navigation and programming functions at the spec level. A professional authoring system will ensure that the original source elements are BD legal streams and the output is compliant with the evolving set-top player industry. As well as assembling all the on-disc content, the authoring system should support BD-Live Virtual File System (VFS) creation required for seamlessly combining on-disc and on-line content. Don’t forget BD-J! Your authoring system should provide an integrated BD-J development capability such as Scenarist BD-J which features a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE along with extensive BD-J legalization and debugging.

BD-J security controls. You’ll need to manage the security certificates required for making BD-J titles. Your authoring system should include system utilities like Sonic’s Scenarist Safeguard, that are used to ensure that your BD-J content is secured correctly ready for successful playback. BD-J certificate management can be very confusing, even for seasoned BD authors, so you’ll definitely need to make sure your authoring system has convenient certificate controls.

Emulation and QC environment. Up to now quality checking and title testing meant acquiring of a rack of every kind of Blu-ray player, a BD burner and making an on-going investment in BD-R discs.
Now however, classic hardware emulators are starting to become available such as the Sonic/Sony BD Reference Emulator Suite available exclusively from Sonic. Classic emulator systems let you QC titles from a hard drive so you save time and expense burning to BD-R.

While this list, and by no means exhaustive, may seem a bit overwhelming, there are numerous benefits to getting involved in BD now. Here are two key reasons why getting started now makes sense.
Firstly, there is a major push by major motion picture studios to attract movie watchers to BD. That means that a lot of titles are being made right now; and authoring prices are high meaning that your ROI can be very good.

Secondly, the cost of getting involved is significantly lower today considering the amount of refined technology available from authoring technology providers.

BD-J PRODUCTION SERVICES

As consumer BD adoption is rapidly increasing, there is a commensurate emphasis on building more innovative titles. To take advantage of the creative power of BD, you’ll need to exploit at least some of the technical depth that BD-J offers.

This kind of programming deviates from what we would consider traditional authoring and can certainly be a daunting process, but just like all early development of new technologies, the systems and workflows get easier as the industry at large gains experience.
Right now, one of the key obstacles to innovating cool first-of-kind interactivity in BD-J is the current phase of set-top player evolution. The fully BD-J capable players that feature internet connectivity are still a few months away (bar the PlayStation 3 of course). Once they arrive they will be in short supply and we can probably expect a few more months of firmware updates to smooth out any technical glitches that may show up in the first players.

Still, the benefits of getting involved in BD in general now are strong, not the least of which is building the technical experience which enables a facility to differentiate itself from competition. There are many clear examples of how facilities that engage early in new technology emerge as leaders in the industry; MX Entertainment is one of them.

HIGH DEFINITION MOVIE MODE (HDMV)

Do you really need to be a Java programmer to get involved in BD today? No. Just look at the broad range of DVD-Video titles in the market today. On aggregate, the vast majority of titles published, not only by major motion picture companies but also independent and private content publishers, generally fall into a fairly standardized form.

It’s this same approach that we can expect in Blu-ray Disc; in that we can expect the titles that really ‘push the envelope’ in advanced interactivity to populate a smaller list than those that take advantage of BD’s HDMV (High Definition Movie Mode) and/or simplified BD-J titles that utilize BD-J for neat menus rather than full-on cutting-edge functionality.

First of all, don’t take what I’ve said above to mean that HDMV is simple to make and results in a simple, boring disc! In fact, the good news for authoring businesses looking to join the Blu-ray Disc party today is BD HDMV is not only packed with cool authoring capabilities, it offers the most compatible and refined portion of the BD spec for which to author. That means you’ll have far less to worry about as you initiate BD authoring services. Here’s some cool things that HDMV features:

Pop-up menus – with animated buttons and action sounds, these menus don’t interrupt video playback.
256 Color Graphics and Image Overlays – full 256-color graphics for subtitles provide more creative possibilities for features like trivia tracks and even pop-up video.
Picture-in-Picture – all new BD players support PiP.
These three features alone provide an interactive settop experience that DVD-Video cannot.

CRYSTAL BALL TIME

There is a bright future for professional facilities with the convergence of on-disc and on-line high definition content in a highly interactive and convenient packaged media format. BD represents an emerging standard that promises all that and more.

Over the next 24 months, our industry will rapidly expand in infrastructure to support BD demand, and facilities that embrace this evolution will secure their place as leaders in this market and be prepared for the next one when it arrives. The good news is that getting involved now is easy with a proven standard (HDMV) and title compression and authoring technology that works well.

For more information, visit www.sonic.com/go/papers....

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