Site created 12/15/97.		page created: 4/28/98 An Afternoon at the Diskworks: Behind-the-scenes at Image Entertainment In a nondescript warehouse, on the far western end of the sprawling San Fernando Valley, lies the offices and production facilities of Image Entertainment. It's taken about an hour and a half to get here, from my home in Orange County, south of L.A.. As I pull off the 118 Freeway and drive into the heart of Chatsworth, it strikes me just how close Image is, or was, to ground zero. Northridge, the epicenter of the now infamous earthquake of the same name, lies just a few miles away. It's rather appropriate actually, that such thoughts should enter my mind now. For Image, which survived the earthquake in large part due to the determination of its employees, is in the middle of a different kind of upheaval now: the transformation of home entertainment happening as a result of DVD. As many of you know, Image has been arguably the largest distributor of laserdisc product in the industry. Virtually every major Hollywood studio has licensed titles to Image for laserdisc distribution; a business which in 1994 amounted to $340 million in sales. But the last couple of years has seen a dramatic decline in laserdisc profits, and the culprit is clear. DVD (aka Digital Video Disc, or Versatile Disc as some say) has arrived on the scene, and is making a splash. As of April '98, the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association estimates that some 470,000 DVD players have been sold to dealers since the format's introduction, just over a year ago. That's a rather dramatic debut, when you consider that only 35,000 CD players were sold in their first year, and VCRs took two years to sell 100,000 units. Unfortunately, the success of DVD, has meant hard times for the laserdisc business. According to the numbers, sales of movies on laserdisc have dropped by 40% since DVD's introduction. Worse yet, laserdisc player sales have dropped by 65%. When you consider that, until a couple of years ago, Image earned 100% of its revenue from laserdisc, this could have spelled disaster. But Image has now embraced the DVD format, having signed distribution deals with Universal, Playboy, DTS and others. It's also diversified its product lines, which now include DTS-encoded music CDs, to help shore up its position in a changing marketplace. You may be surprised to know, that after Warner Bros. (which has released some 170 titles to DVD), Image is in a tight race for second place in the DVD market. They've licensed some 122 titles for the format - an impressive number for one year. Which is not to say that things have gone completely smoothly for Image. They're walking a difficult line right now. Some laserphiles are afraid that Image is going to abandon their beloved format for DVD. Fans of DVD, on the other hand, complain loudly that Image's DVD releases are among the most expensive, yet have the fewest features. And there's always a thread or two on the newsgroups, in which someone complains of poor picture and sound quality on an Image DVD. I'll admit, I too have been critical. After picking up Image's Double Indemnity, a title licensed from Universal for DVD, I was more than a bit disappointed, and I was vocal about it in the pages of The Digital Bits. I was surprised therefore, to receive an e-mail from Garrett Lee, Image's Director of Marketing (you probably know him best from his monthly column in Image's Preview magazine). Garrett had read my comments on the Bits, and had been impressed with my article on the Divx player (which I later learned, had been read by many on the Image staff). He suggested that I might like to visit Image, and tour their facility, to get a better understanding of the work they do there. Having worked in video for a number of years, and thus having a solid understanding of video technology, I was eager to taken him up on the offer. Based on the tremendous range of quality I had seen in early DVD titles, I had begun to suspect that DVD was a tricky format to work with. A look behind the scenes at Image would certainly help to improve my understanding of DVD in general. And with any luck, I could convey some of that new understanding to my readers. So it was, that on a sunny Thursday afternoon in early April, I found myself pulling into the Image parking lot. Image Entertainment's Chatsworth facility To call their facility low-key is an understatement. Having worked on or visited a number of Hollywood studio lots and production offices, I would never have recognized Image's facility, if not for Garrett's directions. Situated in the middle of a business and industrial park, not unlike countless others, nothing about the building's exterior betrays the work that goes on within. In fact, I drove right by it once, before spotting the small Image logo on the front door. Garrett met me in the lobby, and led me to his office in the center of the building. The halls were decorated with a host of movie posters, and laserdisc cover artwork. There was even a letter from Oliver Stone framed in the lobby, thanking someone at Image for an interview that had been conducted for some magazine or other. "Probably the best interview I've had done," the director wrote. I found Garrett himself to be quite pleasant. Certainly not DVD's 'Public Enemy Number One', as some on the Internet have made him out to be. Garrett assured me that he tries not to take it personally. What does drive the folks at Image crazy however, is the amount of criticism they've taken over the quality of their DVD work. "Nothing is more important to us than quality," he emphasized. More on that later. Garrett and I chatted generally for a few minutes, just getting to know each other a bit. Then, camera and notepad in hand, Garrett began showing me around their facility. He lead me through Image's sales offices, and their art department, where graphic artists were busy preparing the layout for the next issue of Preview. Their computer equipment was impressive - some very expensive work stations were in evidence, along with a state of the art scanner system, necessary for importing artwork for product packaging and advertising. "Image does everything but print the jacket and press the discs here in Chatsworth," Garrett explained. As we entered the production department, Garrett introduced me to Image's Director of Production, Frank Hall, who was eager to illustrate Image's commitment to quality. As Frank explained, their DVD work began with two titles - Robocop and Silence of the Lambs. "DVD is much different than laser in terms of mastering and production demands," Frank explained. "It's trickier." At the heart of the difference, is the compression. Often times, a film or video element that would look terrific on laser, cannot always be easily compressed for DVD. Each candidate element must be examined very closely for potential problems. Precisely because of the cleaner, more detailed image provided by the format, subtle picture flaws in a master tape tend to call more attention to themselves on DVD. Frank led me into a small video bay, where Image's DVD Production Coordinator, Craig Flanagan, was examining a piece of video for potential DVD use. As the tape played (shot-on-video footage of a tropical beach), Frank and Craig pointed out flaws that would cause trouble for DVD's MPEG-2 compression. The culprit here was digital video noise reduction. Often times, an editor will use digital noise reduction to clean up footage in post-production. This can help to keep edges sharp in brighter areas of the picture. But MPEG-2 will hang up on this, and actually add noise to the image. The effect is similar to watching a DVD on your TV at home, with the sharpness control set too high. Perhaps the biggest problem when mastering a DVD, is finding original elements good enough to be used for the format. "DVD loves fully digital elements, clean of noise, grain and soft images," Frank tells me. In fact, the best DVDs are produced by using a Digital Betacam or D1 master tape obtained from a new High Definition film transfer. Unfortunately, most older films and catalog titles aren't available from the studios at this level of quality. Film transfers older than about 8 years just aren't up to snuff. Very few, if any, are anamorphic. And the master tapes available tend to be older recordings, on partially or completely analog formats. If the title is big enough, and is sure to sell many thousands of copies on DVD, the studio might be willing to spend the money needed to produce a new anamorphic transfer (anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000 per title). But for many smaller titles, this just isn't an economically feasible option. There are a number of common steps Image goes through when producing a DVD. The first is to obtain the license to distribute a particular title on DVD. The terms of this deal will have a tremendous effect on the final content of the disc. And an important thing to note here, is that the studios and content producers, in large part, dictate these terms to Image. The idea, for example, that Image could have prevented the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition from appearing on DVD to ensure sales of their laserdisc version is, as Garrett says, "ridiculous." "We just don't have that kind of power with the studios." Sometimes, Image is given very strict instructions not to include anything extra on the DVD, that isn't already on the laserdisc version. Other times, the deal specifies a limited period of time in which Image can distribute the title, which in turn, limits the amount of money Image can spend to produce it. Once the deal is in place, Image then obtains all of the production 'assets' from the studio. This varies from title to title, but usually includes the video and audio elements, and the artwork. The top priority is always to get the best quality master available (hopefully, a digital transfer, preferably in 16x9 format). If the title was ever released with 6 channel sound, those elements (also called 'stems') are needed as well. Other common elements might include Closed Captioning files, and foreign language tracks. And if the terms of the license allow for extra elements to be added, those are collected as well. While touring the production department, I was introduced to an in-house producer named Greg Carson. It's Greg's job to collect all of the special edition materials, such as production artwork, commentary tracks, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and trailers. While most of his efforts thus far have been geared towards laserdisc, Image is planning to do more of this on DVD as well. Depending on the title, Greg may simply assemble existing materials. Or in some cases, he may actually contact a film's director, for example, to arrange a visit in which to record a brand new commentary track (as is the case with director Ron Shelton for the upcoming Bull Durham DVD). Again, it all depends on what the deal allows. And no matter what is collected, every element must be approved by the studios, making this a very time consuming process. Image's tape room, equipped with D1 and Digital Betacam decks Once all the necessary elements have been obtained, they are edited to a Digital Betacam master. It is at this stage, that research can be done to ensure that the best available elements are being used. For example, it might be noticed that a title has a particularly bad video transfer, or that the film elements used were of poor quality. A decision must then be made. Can a better master be found? Does the deal allow for a new, custom transfer to be done? Or is it necessary to cancel the title all together? This last option was the result in at least one recent case. I can't tell you what the title was, but suffice it to say that it would have been a terrific seller on DVD. Unfortunately, the best master tape available was terrible. Image could certainly have gone ahead and released the film to DVD, and probably have made a great deal of money in the process. Instead, as Garrett explained, Image insisted in making quality as important as profit. In another case, with a title that Image eventually did release (The Andromeda Strain), Image was able to actually improve slightly upon the quality of the master. Andromeda Strain has been criticized by some on the Internet for its video quality, which is admittedly not terrific. But again, Image worked to obtain the best available master tape. And I can tell you, having seen Frank Hall's direct A/B comparison of the master, with a copy of the final DVD produced from it, that the DVD actually looks slightly better than the original. The MPEG-2 compression appears to have reduced some of the inherent picture noise. Don't ask me how, but it's true. I saw it with my own eyes. Occasionally, the expected popularity of a title, and the level of cooperation from the studio, allows Image to retransfer the film from scratch. This was recently done for Bull Durham, They Live and Prince of Darkness, all of which were redone in 16x9 anamorphic format to take full advantage of DVD. And perhaps the best example of the lengths to which Image will go to obtain the highest possible quality, is their forthcoming Dances With Wolves. As many of you know, a promotional, 'flipper' version of this film was distributed on DVD with RCA DVD players. When it came time to produce that disc, Image's Post Production Supervisor, Dennis Rood, traveled to Europe to obtain the 6-track sound elements used in the film's theatrical release there (when originally released to theaters in the US, Dances With Wolves had only 4-track sound). Image is currently hard at work on an RSDL dual-layer version of this DVD, which will appear in stores later this year. And they've gone a step farther to improve upon it. Image's Dennis Rood, at work on Dances With Wolves There are two versions of Dances With Wolves, a theatrical version and a "long version". Image is currently preparing the theatrical version for DVD (as no 6-track stems are available for the longer version). Upon viewing the long version, however, Image's production staff determined that its transfer was of somewhat higher quality than the existing transfer. So, Image actually made a higher quality theatrical master, by editing down the long version to match it frame by frame. The process has taken several weeks, and even now, a special telecine session is required to transfer the last few pieces of footage necessary to finish the project. [Editor's Note: Shortly after completing this article, I was informed that Image determined that even this re-edit wasn't satisfactory. They are now doing a completely new, anamorphic film transfer of the theatrical version. The final DVD will include 16x9 for optimum quality.] Back to the process. Once the master is edited, it is then run through an elaborate Quality Control process, to look for potential problems. Image has 6 QC rooms in all (each running around the clock), where all the elements of a title are inspected for flaws. I observed as one inspector listened to the Dolby Digital audio tracks of a laserdisc transfer of Tomorrow Never Dies. Detailed notes are taken here, so any necessary correction can be made prior to production ("a slight drop-out in audio in left rear channel detected at 1:23:01," for example). When the master has passed QC, the disc's chapter stops are determined, and the project is passed to the graphics department. In-house graphic artists Greg McKinney and Alan Natale, begin designing the title's various menu pages, using Adobe Photoshop and the scanned artwork obtained from the studios. These too must be approved by the studios, an area which is becoming tricky with the advent of DVD. The reason is that, often times, an actor's likeness is used in the menu images. This is causing a number of sticky royalty issues within the industry. For example, does an actor get paid an additional sum for every time someone buys a DVD using his or her likeness in menus, in addition to being paid for their appearance in the film? A pair of workstations used at Image to create DVD menu pages. Finally, when all of the needed materials have been completed and approved, the Digital Betacam master tape, paperwork and menu files are sent to an outside facility for compression and authoring. Remember that a DVD is software in a very real sense. Program code is required to allow a user to navigate the disc's various features. Once the compression and authoring is done, it must again be run through Quality Control. The video and sound quality are again checked, and sample discs are tested to ensure that the disc works on all players, that all the buttons and features function properly, and that there are no bugs or glitches in the code. Finally, the DLT tape is sent to a replication plant, such as Warner's Advanced Media Operations facility (WAMO), where the disc is put into production. When the discs are packaged and ready, they are sent back to Image's distribution warehouse, which ships them to dealers and distributors all over the country. Having seen Image's production facilities, Garrett then introduced me to David Borshell, Image's Senior VP of Sales, Marketing and Operations. The three of us walked around the block, to a second, larger building, containing Image's distribution warehouse. This was the proverbial 'candy store'. Upon entering, one could see thousands of square feet of shelf space, containing a vast quantities of DVDs and laserdiscs, all packaged and ready to be shipped to dealers. Here were many titles yet to be released, some with street dates more than a month away. Garrett took me around the warehouse, explaining that, after the Northridge quake, just about everything was on the floor. And the product that had managed to survive the shaking, was later damaged when water got into the building. The countless boxes of laserdiscs had been covered with plastic for protection, but the discs themselves began warping anyway. Millions of dollars of inventory were lost. Of course, despite the fact that laser sales have plummeted, these are better times. DVD now makes up some 25% of Image's overall revenue. "The hope," Garrett explains, "is that as our laserdisc business declines, DVD will take up the difference proportionally." Image is definitely planning on smoother going ahead. They're nearing completion on a new, 76,000 square-foot distribution facility near McCarran Airport in Las Vegas; a project spearheaded by Borshell. And they're aggressively pursuing new DVD distribution deals, including a recent deal with Digital Theater Systems, for DTS-encoded DVD product. Back at the main office, I was introduced to Jeff Lewis, Image's DTS Product Marketing Manager. It was time to finally hear just what DTS has to offer DVD consumers. In a small screening room in their production department, Jeff played the DTS Demonstration DVD #2, which features a movie trailer for this year's Best Picture, Titanic. The disc's audio was encoded in PCM for demonstration purposes only, and is playable on all 1st generation players. The result was impressive: video and sound quality to die for. What I heard, was a smoother, fuller-sounding audio environment than I've ever heard on DVD. As the doomed ship split in half, the groans of overstressed iron and the ping of rivets popping could be heard all around. Of course, as a demo disc, it's possible that the material was encoded at a higher bit rate than actual production discs will allow. It will remain to be seen how the DTS DVDs offered to consumers will compare with existing DVDs encoded in Dolby Digital. However, I was impressed. And you can be sure that I'm very eager to conduct A/B tests of DTS's forthcoming Apollo 13 DVD, against the copy I'm already proud to own. All in all, my visit to Image Entertainment was enlightening. I believe I've gained a better appreciation of the difficulties involved in mastering a top-quality title to DVD. If you remember nothing else from this article, remember that DVD can be a very tricky format to work with. It's capable of amazing picture and sound. But thousands of hours of work is often required to get things right, let alone to push the format's capabilities. Making a DVD is not like editing a videotape (which I've done) or pressing a laserdisc - it's software, plain and simple, and must be treated as such. One industry exec accurately summed up the difficulty of producing for DVD, in a recent Hollywood Reporter article. "To put it in a nutshell," he said, "it's like doing a billion things in a row right." I do believe, that while mistakes will always happen (the audio trouble on Flash Gordon, for example), the folks at Image are as determined to produce terrific DVDs, as we are to enjoy them. They're now hard at work on DVD titles not scheduled for release until August and September, so there should be fewer cases of slippery release dates. And I feel confident in saying, that it would be tough to find a group of individuals, under one roof, that cares more about movies (and the quality of the viewing experience) than the folks at Image. As always, I welcome your comments. Bill Hunt, Editor The Digital Bits
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