Site created 12/15/97. |
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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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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