Room Acoustics with Joe Kane
Dolby Podcast Episode 46 - August 28, 2008
Find out the why room acoustics and the visual quality of the room is at least equal in what you see and hear to any of the home theater equipment you have from home theater expert, Joe Kane, in this second interview. Plus find out what equipment Joe currently has in his home theater and Craig answers 3 listener questions..
Don't miss Part I of this interview with Joe Kane, creator of the home theater calibration disc, Digital Video Essentials.
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Mentioned in this Episode
Craig Eggers: Streaming to you from our headquarters in San Francisco, this is Dolbycast, the insider's guide to entertainment technologies from the experts at Dolby Laboratories. We're here to give you the straight talk and news on everything you need to know about technologies that excite your eyes and ears.
And welcome back to Dolbycast, I'm Craig Eggers and we are delighted to have you with us on this episode. We have a very, very special program planned again. A returning guest if you will, Mr. Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions. Joe graciously agreed to return. We had a lot more questions to ask him about home theater set up and Joe will join us in just a moment.
But before we get to Joe I thought we'd spend just a little bit of time speaking to you and your listener mail.
Alejandro writes, "How do I get more volume from the center channel speaker in my home theater system? I'm always turning up the center channel speaker, but it's never loud enough." Alejandro, I've been giving this some thought and here's a couple of suggestions.
My first question to you would be is your center channel speaker matched to the performance of the rest of the speakers in your system? This is really, really critical especially with the center channel speaker, because it reproduces the majority of what we hear in a movie, which is dialogue. It needs to have the same frequency performance and capabilities as the main speakers in your system. So my first question to you is make sure that your center channel speaker is matched to the other speakers in your system. That's point number one.
Point number two is where is the speaker in your system? Is it above your television set or is it below your television? If it's below your television set, you might want to do what I do in my home theater system, which is to slightly tilt that speaker up towards you so that sound is literally being directed towards you. I found that in my home theater system that really helped to increase the intelligibility and a perceived gain of that center channel speaker.
Finally if those two things don't work, I'd suggest going back into the menu of your AV receiver and reducing the volume of your left speaker, your right speaker and surrounds. What you'll be doing in effect is rebalancing your system by turning the main speakers down, you'll be perceptually elevating the volume of that center channel speaker.
So those are 3 possible solutions to your problem.
Our next question literally comes from half a world away from San Francisco. It's from a gentleman by the name of Rom who's in India. Rom writes, "I recently got an entry level home theater system. It's a Phillips system with Dolby Pro Logic. I'm trying to get my TV output through the home theater system. The TV set gets analog cable and I've connected the TV audio left and right to the audio in on my home theater system. How do I get surround sound?"
Very, very simple, Rom you have Dolby Pro Logic II in your Phillips system. Go into your system, set it up so that you're assigning Pro Logic II to the input that your television set's connected to.
Most movies that debut theatrically and then come out on television sets aren't coded in surround sound. Even though they're stereo, they have Dolby Surround sound information in them. When you connect your television set to your Pro Logic receiver, engage Pro Logic II and you get a stereo television program that is Dolby Surround encoded you should be able to enjoy surround effects in your home system.
I would also say that a lot of stereo programming is not surround encoded can similarly be enhanced by Dolby Pro Logic II. You can still get a surround impact from the programming albeit not as powerful as if the movie itself had been Dolby Surround encoded.
Rom, I hope that answers your question. Write us back and let us know if you're enjoying surround sound in your home theater.
Our next question comes from Brian and he has a question about 7.1. Brian writes, "Hey, I love the podcasts", Thanks, Brian. "7‑1 sound, is it 4 channels in the front, LFE plus 2 rear surrounds or something else?"
It's interesting that you ask that question, it's a really, really relevant question, Brian. Right now 7.1 especially in Blu-ray is utilizing your speaker configurations very, very similar to what we introduced with Dolby Pro Logic IIx. That is: a left speaker, a center speaker and a right speaker in the front. Then you have a left surround and a right surround speaker, those are traditionally at 90 degree angles to the front. Then you have a left back and right back speaker traditionally in the 135 degree area.
Basically, 3 speakers in the front, 4 speakers in the back and this kind of become a de facto standard. A lot of your Hollywood studios are utilizing this configuration as we speak. There are other possibilities for 7.1, but this is the mode right now if you will that the studios seem to be going with at this present time.
Thanks for the questions. Listeners, keep those questions rolling in and we'll answer them to the best of our ability and as soon as possible.
When we return, we will be joined by Mr. Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions, so stand by.
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Announcer: Thanks for listening, this is Dolbycast. Be sure to log on to dolby.com/dolbycast to dig deeper into today's topic.
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Craig: And we are back at Dolbycast and as promised, we have a very special guest who's consented to return to Dolbycast, Mr. Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions. Joe, welcome back to Dolbycast.
Joe Kane: Thanks it's good to be here again.
Craig: Joe, we spent a lot of time in our previous podcast talking about the system in the environment, but I want to spend some time talking to you about the environment in the home. The environment is really, really critical to a high quality picture as well as high quality audio experience, isn't it?
Joe Kane: I certainly believe that and in the programs that I have put out for the consumer, I try to let them know that the room acoustics and the visual quality of the room is at least equal in what they see and hear to any of the equipment that they could be putting in the room.
I start my programs out by saying, "Let's get the room right and we'll put the equipment in it later".
Craig: Interesting so the environment is very, very critical as we know in terms of audio, audio reflections, getting the very best sound out of your system and I found it interesting Joe, most people in the industry associate you as being a video guy, but you do spend a lot of time on your discs talking about getting the audio environment right to get the best presentation.
Joe Kane: I certainly, once again, even no matter where I go I emphasize this is a communication system. We're nothing without the audio. The picture alone doesn't tell the story, we need the audio and especially since a 3-dimensional sound has come to audio way ahead of it's being pushed hard in the visual. It's really important that the consumers get the acoustics of their room right.
Craig: So, let's talk about video treatment. I suppose the white walls are a bad thing to have in a home theater environment, aren't they?
Joe Kane: Well, certainly…
Craig: [laughs]
Joe Kane: When you talk about in generally especially if you happen to have a projection home theater type of room.
Craig: A front projection system.
Joe Kane: Yes, a front projection system. But actually the area around the set needs to be fairly neutral in color, which actually you mentioned white. Grey, white anything that is neutral in color, because our perception of color is relative. We decide what we see as color based on the environment of the color.
In the program, I actually do examples of that where we put something fixed in the middle of the screen and we change the environment around it and almost everybody perceives a change in color in the display based on the environment of the display.
Craig: So white walls would not be a bad thing necessarily. Grey walls would be better?
Joe Kane: Something that is neutral in color in the field of view of the display. When you look forward and look at your TV set, whether it's a rear screen or a front screen or whatever, when you look forward towards that display, the environment of that display should be neutral.
It shouldn't be a bright red or a green or a blue or something like that, because that's actually going to influence the way you perceive the picture coming from the display.
Craig: So I know you're a fan of viewing in dark environments, but you also advocate a light source in the room. What you refer to as an ambient light source within the field of view. Can you talk about that for just a sec?
Joe Kane: Well, when people accuse me of being in favor...
Craig: Living in a cave? [laughs]
Joe Kane: Living in a cave, yes, thank you very much I knew that was going to come out.
Craig: I'm sorry.
Joe Kane: No, no, no people do. Even in my office people accuse me of living in a cave, because what I'm actually doing is controlling the light that hits the display itself.
Craig: OK.
Joe Kane: That is one of the important parameters. You can actually have a bright room for displays and sometimes it's necessary, the display is so bright and puts out so much light, that the room actually has to be bright in order to accommodate that display.
But if you want a good contrast ratio from the display, if you want a really great distance between black and white and you want a punch in the picture, you can't flood the display itself with a lot of light.
Or if you do there's got to be something in the display to take that flood of light away so it has nothing to do with what you're seeing. When I get accused of living in a cave and wanting dark viewing environments, it's because the display devices that I'm using can't compete with a lot of light hitting those displays, so I make sure there's no opportunity for light to hit.
There are plenty of circumstances where you can have bright rooms - rooms where you can be playing games, reading the newspaper, whatever you want to do while the picture is up on the display. As long as the light isn't hitting the display itself to destroy the contrast ratio, you're home free. You've got the best of both worlds. You've got a great big bright room and yet you've got a display with a fantastic contrast ratio.
Craig: So the bottom line, Joe is, if you have a display device, you don't want light reflecting off that display device. If you have a screen, you don't want light literally reflecting off the screen.
Joe Kane: Yes, you don't want ambient or room light hitting that screen. Now the amount of light that's in a room, of course, is dependent on how bright the display is.
Craig: OK.
Joe Kane: If you've got a front projection system, you remember back in the CRT projector days where you couldn't get a very bright picture? You didn't have a choice to really bring that ambient light down, because there wasn't enough light on the screen.
Today with our modern display technologies, even in projection, we can put a 2,000 watt light bulb in the projector and we can put a lot of light on the screen.
In that case, if you have that much light on the screen then ambient light is going to be critical to a good viewing environment. You've got to have ambient light. You just have to keep it away from the screen.
Craig: Gotcha, so Joe, you're a founding member of Imaging Science Foundation. My question to you is this, should consumers get their television sets calibrated?
Joe Kane: There is no question that consumers should take the responsibility for how their display looks and I got started with the Imaging Science Foundation partially because we were telling consumers in magazine articles that if they adjusted their set, they could get a much better picture. They could see the kind of quality we were seeing in the post-production environment.
Of course, I immediately got phone calls, "Well, I don't want to be the person to adjust my set or I don't know how to adjust my set and can you come out and do it for me?"
Craig: [laughs]
Joe Kane: And I actually, before the Imaging Science Foundation, I was actually going out and calibrating a lot of people's TV sets and so I was doing it before I decided, "Gee, we need a lot more people doing this than just me."
Craig: Gotcha.
Joe Kane: "We need to have somebody else out there." That was the beginning of the Imaging Science Foundation.
Craig: So it really is about creating accurate colors isn't it?
Joe Kane: It is really about making the communication system work. Making your display at home match the canvas that was used to create the program and it takes some effort. Manufacturers don't deliver TV sets that are picture perfect when they arrive and so there is a certain amount of responsibility on the part of the consumer to get that display device as close to system standards as it can go.
Craig: A personal anecdote, to your point about it being about the whole medium, I'm taking digital pictures, I've got Photoshop and I've got a really incredible HP printer but getting what I have on my display device to look like what comes off of the printer is really a challenge. My goal obviously is to make sure that entire system communicates effectively and what I see on my monitor is what I get out of my printer.
Joe Kane: There is an entire generation of computer savvy people who I would also like to communicate with. I'd like to reach them and say all this stuff we're talking about setting up the display, setting up the environment is equally important to them as it is to watching program content that comes on Blu-ray disc or DVDs or over the air.
Theirs is a medium as well. The pictures, the digital pictures they take, the color in those digital pictures isn't going to be right, isn't going to look proper if their display is way off, if the display isn't doing what it's supposed to.
Heaven forbid that they decided, "Oh my gosh, I want to make color corrections to this picture" and they do it on a monitor that doesn't reflect some sort of standard. Just as soon as they send that picture to someone else who looks at it on a completely different display, adjusted in a completely different way, they're going to look at that picture and say, "My gosh, what did that person have in mind when they made these color corrections?"
Craig: So it's all about creating the art form and communicating the art form accurately.
Joe Kane: Yes and it touches people in their own personal lives especially when they get out their digital video camera or their still camera, and they shoot pictures. Everything we do, everything we advocate when we say it's all about the art, it's about their personal art as much as it is about Steven Spielberg's art.
Craig: Exactly. I want to take a quick break here and when we come back I want to talk to you about color temperature, because color temperature is very important to display device in terms of getting all the colors right. Then I want to finish out with what are some of the ideas that we can do to maximize our environment.
This is Dolbycast and my special guest is Joe Kane, we'll be back in just a moment.
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Craig: Hey listeners, got a question for Dolbycast? Contact us at dolbycast@dolby.com or our new toll free number 888‑6‑DOLBYC. "C" as in Dolbycast.
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And we are back at Dolbycast with Mr. Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions.
Joe, let's talk about color temperature. We often throw this number, D6500, what does that mean and why is it important?
Joe Kane: Answering your question directly, D65 or D6500 is a color of grey.
Craig: OK.
Joe Kane: There's the concept where almost everybody falls short and says, "OK, what is color of grey?"
It turns out that as human beings, we see colors relatively. As an example in an incandescently lit room, we can have a white sheet of paper and everybody identifies paper as being white. We can take that same piece of paper outdoors on either an overcast day or a brightly lit sunny day and we can look at that piece of paper and we say "it's white". But it is a completely different color. What's happened is there are a lot of colors of white.
In putting together a communication system, in order to define a quality, define what we're doing, you have to pick a particular color of white as the foundation for the canvas on which we create our content. Otherwise, there...
Craig: Help me with this Joe, help me with this though. You start out by saying that D6500 is the color of grey, but now we're talking about the color of white. Can you smooth out that transition for me?
Joe Kane: Ah, okay and thank you for bringing that important point up. We treat white as a peak level of grey.
In other words, we have a dynamic range between black and white. If there isn't any color in that dynamic range, there is grey in between. When we talk about a color of white or a color of grey, we're talking about how bright is it? If I say a color of grey is and D65 is an example, or color of white is D65 I can infer from that that white is the top end of this whole grey scale.
The color that we're seeing in this white paper is the same if it's dimly lit, in other words grey, or if it's brightly lit, in other words, white, we have dynamic of range all the way from black to white that is grey.
White is just one point so I often interchange grey and white when I'm talking about colors, perception of color.
Craig: Gotcha.
Joe: White is just the top end of everything that we see in dynamic range between black and white; it's the top end.
Craig: So why are we having this conversation about D6500? What is not being done, or what is being done?
Joe: Well, we're having the conversation about D65, because we're involved in a communication system. In order to be consistent in a communication system, we have to decide what we're doing and everybody has to play by the same set of rules.
There are a whole bunch of colors of gray or colors of white if you want to talk about the peak. I just explained as an example: I can look at a white piece of paper under candlelight and see one thing. I can look at it on a gray overcast day and see something completely different, but it's all white or it's all gray. It's different colors of gray.
If I create a program using one color of gray as a reference and then play it back using another color of gray, I'm going to tint that picture. As an example if I started out creating it with an overcast day, which is basically what D65 is, if I start by creating it in an overcast day and I show it to you in candlelight, the picture is going to be terribly orange compared to what it looked like when it was created.
Craig: So, we have to make sure that the standards of the display device match the standards of the system by which the content was created?
Joe: That's the ideal in a communication system.
Craig: Gotcha. So, why aren't television sets D6500 then? Why isn't this a moot point? Why are we having this conversation?
Joe: We're having this conversation, because we're going right back to the wall of monitors where manufacturers are trying to compete for your attention. So, if they make the color of gray or the color of white different from a system standard, they're going to make it look different, which they're going to hope will attract your attention.
Well, we happen to know as an example; a blue white is more attractive to human beings than an orange white. We've known this long before television ever came about. We were adding blue dye to laundry detergents over 100 years ago. We add blue dye to toothpaste, because a blue white is perceived as a brighter white.
So if I've got a whole bunch of TV sets out on the showroom floor and I want my set to look a bit brighter than the next set, all I have to do is I make the color of gray a little bit more blue and suddenly, "Oh, my gosh! That set's brighter."
Now, the irony of this is that if I make that set much more blue than the set next to it, then everybody is going to see the picture as being blue. So I can only go slightly more blue than every other set on the showroom floor or it will be perceived as blue and "Gee, we don't like cold pictures".
Craig: Gotcha.
Joe: Obviously icy cold blue, we don't like that. So manufacturers can't deviate too much away from what every other manufacturer is doing, but they try to deviate just enough to get you to say, "Oh, that's a brighter picture", not "that's a blue picture."
So we have lots of variations going on in the colors that the TV set manufacturers use to get your attention on the showroom floor. Once they've got your attention, if you really want a good picture from the display, you then have to reset it to industry standards in order to get the best quality out of the display device.
Craig: Gotcha. So the goal is to reproduce in the home what was created in the studio, what the artist intended you to see, and they way they wanted you to see it. Joe, that's absolutely incredible. It tells me that we need to go out there and make sure our television sets are calibrated properly, we're getting the right color balance out of them, because it is about the art form. It's about reproducing the art form in its most accurate manner possible.
Joe: Everything we're asking consumers, manufacturers, and production people, everything we're asking of them is all about the art.
Craig: There you go. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back I want to spend a little time talking to Joe about the Dolby Theater Exhibit at CEDIA. We actually engaged Joe Kane in this project, and he's got a display device that I wanted to talk about. So, we'll be right back at Dolbycast in just a moment.
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Announcer: For a more in‑depth look at today's topic, log onto dolby.com/dolbycast.
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Craig: We are back at Dolbycast continuing our discussion with Mr. Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions. Joe, in our original podcast with you, our first podcast with you, we actually talked about the fact that we were re‑energizing our exhibit for the CEDIA show. We have an incredible audio system in it.
I know that Jamie and team came to me and said, "What can we do?" as far as display was concerned and I immediately thought about you. You have a project that you've been working on with Samsung. There's a projector out in the marketplace, it's called the "Samsung SP-A800B Projector".
That's the projector we've got in our theater, and the projector that drove those incredible pictures we saw at CEDIA. Tell us about this projector. Tell us about your work with Samsung, and how did you get involved with this, Joe?
Joe: I got involved with Samsung in particular, when they came to me at least knowing my reputation in the industry for creating good images. Samsung was working in the DLP technology, that's the Texas Instruments Micromirror Imager. Lots of people, lots of companies are making display devices in that technology.
Samsung came to me and said, "How do we make ours better?" Of course, I laughed at them and said, "That's actually really easy, because there isn't any other manufacturer on the market that is actually doing what the communication system says they're supposed to be doing. They're all only interested in creating the display that is going to get the consumer's attention on the showroom floor."
Craig: That's a pretty powerful statement, Joe.
Joe: It is a point where I am telling each consumer, every consumer, that it is my belief that the majority of display device manufacturers in competing on the showroom floor, in trying to get your attention, have completely lost sight of what the communication system is all about.
Craig: Don't hold back, Joe.
Joe: Alright, please, yes. Well, I'm actually trying to bring that to the entire industry. This is not a message that I'm trying to keep exclusive to a single company. If you look at HD Basics, I'm trying to tell everybody that in their desire to compete they've lost track of what their real goal is.
That's not to say that maybe their goal is making money, my goal is all about the art. I want the art to look good, and I know what has to be done. To Samsung's credit, they took me literally. I handed them the standards documents and said, "This is what it's supposed to do."
I handed them test signals, so that they could verify that what they had done engineering-wise actually met system standards. So it was a combination of saying, "Here are the rules, and here is how you test for those rules to make sure you've done what you're supposed to do."
In the process, they've created one of the finest projects that is out there, and it's the finest because it matches system standards. It's really hard to get any better than what they've done, because it does what it's supposed to do, and any deviation away from systems standards is going to be less.
So, the fact that it conforms precisely to system standards means that it truly is one of the best displays that is out there.
Craig: So, Joe, I understand you just moved into your new home. Congratulations!
Joe: Thank you. It's been a long time in coming, especially here in southern California, where things are slightly expensive.
Craig: Just slightly! Now I would expect that the "Joe Kane Home Theater" would be massive. It would have great audio, great video. I understand you're in the process of assembling this thing, so tell us what you're doing.
Joe: Well, certainly I believe that it has great audio and has fantastic video, but it's not massive. The theater that I'm putting in my home is actually quite intimate. It's a theater that would probably accommodate 4 or 5 people in a really ideal situation, yet it's a practical room in that I wanted to demonstrate that you can have a room that's not quite dedicated to a home theater.
My home theater is an example. It's open on the back end to the kitchen and some of you know that I like to cook. I actually find it fascinating to be in the kitchen with all the lights on, at least enough light that I don't injure myself when I 'm cooking and I can still look into that home theater and I can see a fantastic image.
When I'm sitting in the home theater, I hear one of the best sound systems that I have ever known. With the assistance of my friends in the audio industry, I've come up with an acoustic environment that others have proclaimed one of the very best rooms that they have ever heard. I can't tell you how proud of the fact that I am of how good the audio is, because I have long tried to tell everybody that it is a major part of the whole program. I'm glad that I at least have it at home.
Craig: So Joe, tell our listeners, people are looking, you say you got the most incredible audio system. You've got this great video system and you have the lights on. What a revelation. Tell the specifics. Whose product are you using? What brand of speakers are you using? What kind of display are you using?
Joe Kane: I'm of course the Samsung 1080P projector because at the moment I think it's one of the finest projectors that out on the market. Oh, by the way it's relatively inexpensive, especially considering what it does.
Speaker wise, I'm going with the Revel product line, which is part of the Harman Specialty Group. I'm going in that direction partially, because I believe that they're some of the finest speakers that are out there and a long term association with people at the Harmon Specialty Group, who have been particularly important to me un that people like Kevin Bates who designed these speakers completely understands my position in the video, because I think he does the same thing in audio. He's after the best possible replication of what comes in in the audio system. I'm using his equipment for audio.
In the decoding, in handling HDMI, I've gone to Denon in their new equipment in the AVP in particular in using what's going on in my home. I've found their ability to handle the switching and in some cases, the up conversion of standard definition to high definition. They're doing a great job of this.
Craig: So you're using, so you're not using separates, you're not using amplifiers and prepros, you're actually using all-in-one AVR.
Joe Kane: No that's not... I misspoke if I led you to believe that. I'm still using separates; I'm using their audio video processor.
Craig: Gotcha.
Joe Kane: …to handle the switching and then I'm back with the Harmon Specialty Group in audio amplification, so that I'm driving my speakers with Harmon Specialty Group power amplifiers. I'm using the audio video processor to do the switching and the HDMI audio in particular the decoding of HDMI audio and putting that out where it belongs.
Craig: And that's a whole separate podcast. Joe, 5.1 or 7.1?
Joe Kane: It's funny you ask that because I'm doing 6.1. [laughs]
Craig: OK, OK that's fair.
Joe Kane: [laughs]
Craig: That's fair.
Joe Kane: 6.1 can be down converted to 5.1 and it can be up converted to 7.1. The audio that's on the disc is actually 6.1. Of course, the audio processor provides a 7.1 signal or can provide a 5.1.
Craig: I should say though that TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus both provide wonderful down mix capability and the ability to take a 7.1 source and present it as 2-channel, 5-channel, whatever you want.
Yes, so you got 6.1, that's cool.
Joe Kane: That's certainly what I'm providing in my disc. Go ahead. [laughs]
Craig: And we have 7.1 in our theater, so we've got a bigger screen than you and more speakers, Joe. [laughs]
Joe Kane: Most likely.
Craig: Oh well. So Joe, two final questions actually one question. If I come to your house and you want to show off your system.
Joe Kane: Alright.
Craig: What are your two favorite movies right now or sources that you use to demonstrate your system?
Joe Kane: There is demonstration material, I, as an example in doing demonstrations I want everyone to see black and white and so Casablanca gets used in every demonstration that I do or I want them to understand how good the system really is.
Craig: Is the transfer that good on a movie that old, Joe?
Joe Kane: The transfer right now Casablanca, of course, it is out on DVD, but I'm using the HD DVD version of the program and it will eventually be out in Blu-ray. I've read that that title has been announced for Blu-ray.
Craig: Wow.
Joe Kane: But the transfer of Casablanca is absolutely stunning. It is so good that a lot of people in Hollywood when they came into my place to see it for the first time said it was too good. I actually had to bring in a cinematographer who knew the people who originally shot that movie to help explain what you're seeing on the screen is what the cinematographer shot.
Now just because a lot of people haven't seen that in theaters doesn't mean that the presentation that's out in high definition doesn't fairly represent what the cinematographer shot.
Craig: Cool.
Joe Kane: That's the key is in the high definition formats, the art form that comes across is so stunning that some people say "this is too good". Well no, it isn't this is just the first time you've really been able to see the art.
Craig: [laughs]
Joe Kane: And so for that Casablanca: shock value. If nothing more seeing a 1942 film look absolutely gorgeous and stunning in its dimensionality and it takes on all sorts of properties that nobody ever thought that a black-and-white movie - nobody in this generation - ever thought that a black and white movie can do. Casablanca is always on the list.
Craig: OK so that's the black and white version, there's got be a color version in there somewhere.
Joe Kane: The color movie.
Craig: No, not a "color version". Forgive me.
Joe Kane: We're not doing...
Craig: Oh man.
Joe Kane: We're not doing a colorized version of Casablanca.
Craig: Sorry, sorry.
Joe Kane: Nor a 3D version. [laughs] In any event the, what I do in color ends up changing on a fairly regular basis. At the moment I'm using Seven Years in Tibet. Once again I'm doing it for its shock value, because the transfer is quite good.
People look back at something that's a little bit older, not the most current product on the market and they say, "My gosh, that picture is stunning. We had no idea that you could take an older movie like that, you could take a movie like that and actually get that kind of quality out of it."
Often times when I pick things in color, I don't necessarily pick the most current film that is out. I try to go for something where no one expects it to be that good.
Craig: Gotcha.
Joe Kane: It's the shock value. You've got to see what's out there. The rest of it comes in trying to show people how good any content that they want to put up can look if it's processed properly, if it's taken care of properly.
Standard definition DVDs as much as we get into the discussion of how much better high definition is - and it is a lot better, it's surprising how good standard definition can look as well.
So I try to include some standard definition content in the demonstrations to let people know that their entire library isn't going to become useless just because we've moved to high definition.
Craig: Joe...
Joe Kane: If you do a good job with standard definition, it also looks wonderful.
Craig: This has been terribly enlightening and we really appreciate you coming by. Thanks for being on the show. Joe Kane, video expert, calibrationist, author of Test Demo Discs, consultant to the industry, just an overall nice person. It's great to know you, Joe, and I'm glad that you're a part of Dolbycast.
Thanks for being on Dolbycast, I'm Craig Eggers, this is Dolbycast. We'll see you all next time.
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