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The Official LOTR: FOTR - Extended DVD Specs (1 Viewer)

Simon Young

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I think that anyone worried about the picture quality of the 4-disc release should take a close look at New Line's Platinum Series release of Se7en: it had a Dolby Digital track, a DTS track, a stereo track, three commentaries and a 5.1 isolated score. At 127 minutes long, the movie still managed to look stunning. Now, if you imagine that it had a fourth commentary instead of a stereo track, and one additional 5.1 track, it would have a specification all but identical to the upcoming release of Fellowship. Then remember that each disc of Fellowship will contain an average of 104 minutes of video, rather than 127 minutes.

As long as the size of that extra 5.1 track is equal to or less than 23 minutes of decent video, we should have a release that looks as good as Se7en did.

If I've got it all wrong, please go ahead and correct me. I don't really understand all the talk of peak bitrates and average bitrates, but on a simple scale of comparison, I don't think Fellowship should look at all bad.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Normally, Simon, I'd bitch at you about two different movies having different lighting and action, requiring different compression demands, but considering the dark lighting of Se7en, if anything that should have been HARDER to encode. Well, we'll see in November won't we?
 

BrettisMckinney

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Im a bit worried now, i thought that since it would be on 2 discs the bitrate would be huge! Now seriously, how many times can someone watch it with isolated effects and music? If pq suffers from these then boo i say.
 

Simon Young

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Well, I'd hope no-one would "bitch" at me simply for suggesting a point-of-view. However, I'll assume you were joking.
And yes, I did think about the different compression issues...however, it's really hard to say which would be the more difficult. Fellowship has a lot of movement and some dark sections, whereas Se7en has a lot of dark sections and some movement.
As for the isolated score, I'd listen to it far more often than one of the commentaries. Nobody's suggesting that they go, are they? It's like having an extended version of the soundtrack, in Dolby Digital! Plus you can burn it to CD if you want, and make your own soundtrack. As for the isolated effects, it worked really well on Toy Story so I'd be really into it if it works well here. It's almost overwhelming to hear just how much of the soundtrack is created by a couple of guys in a room with some broken glass and a coconut shell. :) Plus, like I said, it's useful for editors like myself to mess around with. But I'd say it should be the first thing to go if picture quality suffers.
However, I seriously doubt that, with New Line's reputation, and the amount they've put into the rest of the set, and with P.J.'s dedication to making this as great a DVD as possible, and with the people involved who've given us some great DVDs - such as Blade 2 - I don't really think we need to worry. I'm sure someone, somewhere, who knows a whole lot more about compression, bitrates and DVD than most of us, has done the math and paved the way for a truly superb set. I seriously doubt they'll drop the ball on picture quality.
 

Jim_C

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>>So the movie is going to have an additional 30 minutes added. Is all of that 30 minutes going to be extended scenes, or is that time being taken up by the extra extended credits (the ones that list the fan club charter members names)?
 

Michael St. Clair

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Splitting the movie across six discs wouldn't increase the peak video bitrate by 1 byte.
Average bitrate available to video, and peak bitrate available to video are both important but for different things.
'Fellowship' will likely have around 448k more of the peak bitrate used by sound than 'Seven'. 448k/sec is not an insubstantial amount of data when encoding dark scenes, highly detailed scenes, scenes with lots of action, smoke/fog, or water. 448k can make a substantial difference with certain material.
I'm not saying the new version will look bad. I'm certainly buying it!
It is highly likely that certain scenes will look at least a teeny bit worse (softer or with more artifacts) than on the first version. However, there's a decent chance that it won't be noticable on a 'typical' display, or that a 'typical' viewer won't notice it on any display. The difference might well be extremely subtle.
Hopefully somebody like Bjoern will do a good analysis of the final result. But if you care about the movie, you likely won't wait for that!
 

Nathan V

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Before I actually go through and read all this thread, let me just say, in regards to the extras:

Effing crap.

I think we can all forget about Pearl Harbor: VS being "the most extensive exploration into making a film."

Looks like this'll be the new benchmark.
Do we know if New Line will send out preview copies before the release date?

Nathan

[edited to remove gleeful profanity]
 

John CW

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(So long Nathan(?))

Picture quality should come before the sound effects track!! Interesting as it may be, if I have to get up and switch discs halfway through the movie I'd like REFERENCE quality please! I could even let DTS go to get a reference quality disc -- I know there are a lot of DTS fans out there, but wasn't the DD track good enough?

Hmmm: Also, Which New Line disc was it that really dropped the ball PQ-wise? Rush Hour 2 wasn't it? Just because it's New Line doesn't mean they'll definitely get it right (although I admit things DO look incredible from the specs!!)

Here's counting the days til 11/12!!

~ John
 

DonRoeber

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I'm pretty sure that New Line knows that if they screw this up that there will be rioting in the streets and heads will roll. I've no worries that this DVD is going to be perfect in every way.
Sean,
I'm getting the LOTR set and a 5 disc progressive changer for Christmas. I figure that's awfully close :)
 

DaViD Boulet

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Normally, Simon, I'd bitch at you about two different movies having different lighting and action, requiring different compression demands, but considering the dark lighting of Se7en, if anything that should have been HARDER to encode. Well, we'll see in November won't we?
Yes, but we don't have an "unfiltered" SB version of Seven to see how much entropy/detail they filtered to ease compression demands.
On a large-screen projection system this last level of detail makes a HUGE difference. Some transfers (Toy Story 1 and 2, Fifth Element) that have virtually no excess filtering look almost hi-def. It's incredible. Then you get another transfer that has filtered all the fine detail to aid compression. Ugh...suddenly it looks like blown-up VHS on a 100" screen.
The scary thing is that both transfers might look pretty much the same on a 27" set...and so the studios don't think twice about filtering fine detail.
LOTR needs all the detail it can get. I really, REALLY hope they manage to pull this off without sacrificing the image one bit. The existing DVD is excellent, but STILL could use a tad more detail. If we loose any resolution for this extended version it will be really, really a shame.
There certainly *are* a few audio extras I'd be willing to scrap if that were the case. But the 6.1 DTS isn't one of them :)
We can only wait and see...
-dave
 

Craig W

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Does anyone know if the commentaries are encoded as two channel 192kbps or can we hope that possibly they were encoded as a single channel at 96kbps.

I mean really do they need to use that much space for commentaries that few will listen to more than once. Here's a request to the studios please encode commentaries as 1.0 Dolby Digital. It would be taking less from the video bitrate and/or it could fit more commentaries in same space.

I agree that some title appear to be very soft in detail. At first I thought it was my Sony DVD player's downconversion for 4:3, but after replacing that I still see some softness on certain titles.
 

Dan Brecher

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Isolated 5.1 Music Track
If anyone heard a big girly shriek, don't worry. That was just me responding to the additon of the isolated score. :)
Only things to fear now:
Compression overload (I'd hope the commentaries are VERY low bitrate, less than 192) and a questionable disc swap transition in the form of a quick and easy "turn tape over" style Pearl Harbour esque transition. Give me a full on intermission sequence. :D
Dan
 

Nick Sievers

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I am really interested in the PJ, Fran Walsh and Phillpa commentary.

Also, I asked this in the other thread a while ago but got no response. Is New Line sending out review copies of this release or are they treating it like the 2disc set and keeping it as under wraps as possible?
 

Ray H

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I can't say I have an answer to that. But I would assume they would. I believe they held on to the copies of the first release to prevent the TTT preview from getting online.
 

Brian W.

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All new scenes. The 19 minutes for the Charter Members scroll is above and beyond the additional 30 minutes.
So if the widely quoted 3:28 running time is sans credits (which is exactly 30 min. longer than the 2:58 theatrical WITH credits), does that mean there's actually an additional 37 minutes of extra footage??? Because I did hear 40 minutes mentioned somewhere recently, from someone connected to the film. I thought it was strange, since 30 minutes had always been quoted before.
 

Ray H

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My guess is it's 208 minutes with the 7 or 8 minutes of original credits. The charter scroll may just be an additional feature.
 

Nick Sievers

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40 minutes mentioned somewhere recently, from someone connected to the film
Ian McKellen stated it, he was reporting on a private screening he had recently attended at WETA. I think it could well be close to 40min worth of extra footage by looking at your logic Brian.
 

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