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Old 07-06-2021, 08:07 AM
ric982 ric982 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Tucson, Arizona, USA
Posts: 79
Default Re: Dolby Vision/Dolby DAPS on a Budget

Thanks for the responses. I had watched some of the protools expert series on ATMOS, but I just watched the 6th module which was helpful though didn't answer my questions above. And I've done some looking around about Blue Ray authoring which hasn't exactly led to anything promising so far. I'll have to look into the MP4 path some more.

I think what I'm really poking at here is a budget transport layer (i.e. personal distribution channel) for HD AV content. As I was looking for Blue Ray authoring mechanisms, I bumped into to a few items pointing to the "death of blue ray" - Samsung, the primary player vendor, is dropping out of the BDP business and Warner Brothers plans to stop physical media releases in 2022. Oppo dropped out of UDPs a while a go. Cars don't have CD players anymore. Many of my friends watch most of their content on streaming services and perhaps eventually, none of them will have a player for whatever media is to be had. This may not be the end of physical media, but it may be the beginning of the end. So perhaps using a streaming transport layer is the most likely path to survival.

HD source data is big. I've already bumped into limitations on email servers trying to distribute stereo audio to friends. I've resorted to Dropbox and have used free SoundCloud in the past for limited distribution. Internally, I'm using media servers to get between various mix and monitoring setups, but I haven't explored using video other than through major internet streamers (Netflix, etc), but my ROKU DLNA client handles video. I guess streaming transport (versus physical media) is where where my thinking is heading now.

Looking at ATMOS, I bumped into AVID Play which, for a fee, will accept ATMOS music content, distribute it to whatever streamers you want at whatever level of resolution they support. Looked like say $5/year or $10 perpetual for a song (on the order of a few copies of physical media). And they feedback streaming revenue 100% from the streamers. This seems like it has a lot of possibilities. Perhaps someone will perform a similar function for HDR AV content or some of the major uploadable streamers will step up to HDR AV content.

The path I've been on was Stereo -> Surround, but if surround, why not home theater, and if home theater, why not video/surround, and therefore why not Dolby Vision/ATMOS as the simplest way to cover the span of formats emerging with a single mix. It seems sort of compelling from a creator standpoint. Not sure how much the Dolby cut is out of this, but ...

In reality, its going to take me some time to convert. I'm working on room treatment now (DIY) and I'm setting up for ATMOS monitoring. Then there's the whole Dolby DAPS only on Apple debacle that's forcing a migration to Apple which is in the middle of silicon conversion, and which Protools is trying to track with some delay, and Dolby hasn't said one way or another if it will support (though I'd be really surprised if they didn't). And maybe Media Composer will come along for the ride and support Dolby Vision. This is potentially an expensive exercise in frustration, but I don't see me making a second pass at the room, and I'm trying to be a bit open to future possibilities.

Mostly I'm just trying to get a handle on where the world of content is evolving to and what it takes to play in it - I suspect I'm not alone. My engineer side is kind of enjoying the ride.
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