DTS 96/24 Titles? (1 Viewer)

[Eric F]

Are there any movies planned for release in this format? Other than the French Tomb Raider release they've all been music video/DVD-A related.

This would be an ideal addition to the Superbit DVDs. I realize that it would eat into the video track, but now that they're doing 2-disc Superbit titles it makes sense.

I'm thinking about this now because there are some new 192/24bit soundcards under $200, the software support is bound to follow...

 

[Damin J Toell]

This would be an ideal addition to the Superbit DVDs. I realize that it would eat into the video track, but now that they're doing 2-disc Superbit titles it makes sense.

Why? Single-disc Superbit titles didn't have any extras, anyway, so having the second disc doesn't result in any extra space.

DJ

 

[Eric F]

Think about what you just said.

 

[Adam Barratt]

Columbia TriStar haven't shown any interest in using 1509kbps DTS, so I don't imagine they would be overly enthusiastic about adding an additional 512kbps on top of this. This would double the real estate occupied by audio on these discs, with little actual gain for listeners.

Doing so would also reduce possible peak video bit-rates for SuperBit titles to well below those possible for their non-SuperBit equivalents, which doesn't seem sensible.

Given the total lack of actual 24-bit 96kHz theatrical soundtracks, it would seem to be a fairly redundant exercise.

Adam

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Adam,

You don't know if there would be "little gain" with a DTS 24/96 track. This is newer technology and sports a higher sampling rate than even Dolby Digital.

JVC may include DTS 24/96 to their D-Theater HD movies in the near future.

Dan

 

[Adam Barratt]

Dan, unless all theatrical soundtracks have recently started including content above 24kHz, what significant gain could there possibly be?

DTS 96/24 may have a higher sampling rate and be 'newer technology', but if there's nothing there to take advantage of it, what's the point? It's just wasted data.

Adam

 

[Ed St. Clair]

When addressing resolution, I prefer the term 'misused' over "wasted".
Every little bit [pun] helps. See Widescreen Reviews audio review of D-VHS T2.
DTS needs to address this by releasing a title in this format.
Maybe, Babe or Fear & Loathing in LV, with anamorphic widescreen, duh!

 

[Christian Dolan]

AFAIK, most, is not all, digital tracks used in film post (i.e. Pro Tools sessions et al) are 48k/24bit. While greater bit depth would be interesting, I don’t know what benefit 96k would bring to existing soundtracks.
-Christian

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Until recently Pro Tools didn't support I/O above 48k/24bit. Only with the recent debut of ProTools HD will there even be tracks available which could benefit from this muscled up DTS format (unless they came from analog mags from 20 year old films).




You say this as if Dolby Digital's sampling rate is something special to be trumped. Even higher than Dolby Digital? This is not necessarily anything to use as your high water mark.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Think about what you just said.

I did when I said it. You said that it now makes sense with the advent of 2-disc Superbit titles, but those titles offer no extra space on the movie disc than their one-disc counterparts. So why do 2-disc Superbit titles change the situation at all?

DJ

 

[Eric F]

I did when I said it. You said that it now makes sense with the advent of 2-disc Superbit titles, but those titles offer no extra space on the movie disc than their one-disc counterparts. So why do 2-disc Superbit titles change the situation at all?

Why? Because there is more space. There is no hard-fast rule stating a movie has to be on one disc. In fact, many of us would sacrifice getting up our couches and changing a disc for higher audio quality or more of a movie (ie:LotR director's cut).

With the second disc there would probably be enough room for the higher quality of video Superbit titles offer, DTS 96/24 and extras. The only thing that might be sacrificed is the full AC3 5.1 track (2.0 instead?), which I doubt many folks going for the Superbit titles would miss much.

That said, I already have one of the first DVD-A titles produced by DTS with a 96/24 track. I'm dying to hear it. I might even be tempted to purchase the French Tomb Raider release if WinDVD or PowerDVD ever support the format (which they will, with DVD-A support as well). By then I'm hoping there will be some R1 theatrical releases with the format.

So, can we speculate at what bitrate the sound was sampled at for Attack of the Clones? It must be pretty high, 24bit at least. I'm sure many other films will follow that trend. If Tomb Raider can have a 24bit audio track there must be others.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Why? Because there is more space. There is no hard-fast rule stating a movie has to be on one disc.

Oh...so you would prefer that the movie be split up on 2 discs to accomodate the sound? You didn't say this before at all. Since current 2-disc Superbit titles don't do this, there was no way for me to know that that was what you were getting at.

DJ

 

[Nick_Scott]

Columbia TriStar haven't shown any interest in using 1509kbps DTS, so I don't imagine they would be overly enthusiastic about adding an additional 512kbps on top of this. This would double the real estate occupied by audio on these discs, with little actual gain for listeners.

Where did you read that?
I read that the 96/24 tracks on DVD-Video are still 1.5mpbs to comply with DVD-V specs. With ~1.0mbps being used for 48mhz, and a ~0.5 used for the 96mhz information.
However, a 4.5mbps 96/24 version was planned for DVD-A, but MLP was chosen instead.
Either way- Just waiting like everyone else. We'll probobly never see it. I have high-hopes for HD-DVD, but the current specs look like it won't have enough room with its MPEG-4 junk hogging up the space...
Actually, MLP looks like it would make a pretty good HD-DVD formay... if we could only make it fit...

 

[Eric F]

Damin, do I really need to spell everything out?
At any rate, isn't DTS 96/24 specifically targeted at feature films on DVD? Not DVHS or HD-DVD, or even DVD-A. If you have the equipment to play back a DVD-A why would you even need a DTS 96/24 track anyways? I assume they put it the DVD-A discs for folks without DVD-A support.
The main problem with the format is it just comes as another case of market confusion. Even I (who is relatively knowledgable about this stuff) after picking up the DVD-A disk thought the 96/24 track would play back on any DVD player like any other PCM 96/24 track. DTS sort of worded their press release like that. It took a bit of digging to find out you need a whole new decoder to support it.
The French Tomb Raider disc should be an interesting test run.

 

[Adam Barratt]

Nick, I just re-checked my original source and it is no longer online. From other online sources it seems DTS 96/24 does indeed occupy the same space as a conventional higher bit-rate DTS soundtrack (1509.75kbps). None of these are particularly reliable sources, so I've sent an email off to DTS to check/confirm that this is the case.
Thanks for the heads up.
Adam

 

[Damin J Toell]

Damin, do I really need to spell everything out?

Yup. It's certainly a better method of getting information across than telling me to "think about it," thereby making it take even longer for you to finally explain what you meant. All I did was ask you to clarify, but I guess if I don't understand things in the first place, I'm not worthy of posing a question.
At least I know now.
DJ

 

[Eric F]

Damin, we're getting a bit off topic now, but I did explain after you made it clear you misunderstood what I meant. I just thought it was a bit odd how I made the point that 2-discs meant more space and you said there wasn't any. I guess alot of people are locked into the idea of a movie having to be on a single disc. (ie: that other thread).

As far as the bitrate for DTS 96/24 goes, I was fairly certain that it ate into the video track, but there aren't two distinct audio tracks (one for 16bit and 24bit). Maybe not. At any rate I don't think the extra 500k is going to make a huge impact. 2-3 disc sets are being sold now as it is, and we all know what with Superbit's success that plenty of folks will pony up for the best quality possible. Personally I care nothing for the extras or commentary, partly why my attitude is starting to become more favorable to the D-Theater format.

There of course is plenty of space on on DVHS, and HD-DVD. Is there any chance of having DTS tracks on DVHS or have they ruled that out completely? You would think they would have gone for something like MLP tracks on the pre-recorded/copy protected format instead of AC3. Dolby must have a tidy deal with all these manufacturers.

 

[RobD]

D-VHS can support DTS on certain players (Recently manufactured JVC players support it). I really want to see a review of the kind of quality DTS 96/24 can provide. It probably has most relevance for Music Video and Superbit type release IMHO.

 

[DeanWalsh]

Eric, just for the record, it's the Italian release of Tomb Raider that has the DTS 96/24 track. This track is actually the Italian dub of the film. From what I've been told though, it sounds absolutely phenomenal.

 

[Aaron Cohen]

Das Boot Superbit I believe is two dual-layered discs with the movie spread across both of them.