Sound FX Recording

Not much new to report on the movie progress, as we're still working on the musical score. I did, as promised, make it in to Andy's Darkhouse Productions recording studio to do a few extra sound effects for the movie, including ripping a broaster chicken limb from limb (to simulate bones cracking,) and recording children screaming. I posted a guest blog on the subject over at the Darkhouse MySpace page, which you can find here.

DVD Package Almost Complete

Well, I've resolved the issue with the chapter skip button; turns out it was a problem with Encore itself and a quick update solved it. The DVD is basically locked down. I've made a test disc to make sure all of the navigational links work correctly and think it's shaping up pretty nice. We should have a bunch of cool features for you, including a commentary track, a deleted scene (audio only - since I never did any animation for the sequence), an alternate version of the main title sequence, an alternate version of the movie made up of quick Poser test-renders, the teaser trailer (2D and 3D), the trailer (2D and 3D), trailers for Raven and Raven 2, and a never before seen trailer (2D and 3D) for Raven 3-D, which was made from test footage.

All that's left to complete the package is the soundtrack.

Speaking of which, tomorrow I am due to pay a visit to the Darkhouse Studio to generate the final couple of sound fx and begin work on sweetening the fx and vocal tracks.

Stay tuned...

As Good As It's Gonna Get & DVD Authoring Problems

I've settled on an anaglyph version of the movie that's going to have to do... it works reasonably well on my Panasonic HDTV and very well on my CRT monitor. This will be the one going out on the DVD.

And, speaking of the DVD...I'm using Adobe Encore to author the disc, but despite the playback preview offered up within the Encore program itself, when played back on a set-top DVD player the disc does not match Encore's file directory. In fact, many of my programmed commands seem to be completly ignored.

For instance, I've programmed the disc so that when a user clicks the special features menu a short intro plays, and when that ends the special features menu appears. If the intro is allowed to finish, the disc does as it's supposed to and launches the special features menu. However, if the user presses the chapter skip button the disc jumps ahead to another video file on the disc. If the user keeps pressing chapter skip, he can continue through all the video files on the disc without encountering the menu at all (which is the desired result when the chapter skip button is pressed.)

I'm reading the Adobe help logs and forums to see if there's a solution to this problem...

3-D Headaches Continue

I've made multiple test discs now and tried them out on multiple NTSC monitors and none of them produce satisfactory results. I've been doing my research and determined that, as far as I can gather, there is no foolproof way to get perfect anaglyphic stereo reproduction on a television monitor. Two factors that figure into this are a) your NTSC television screen, and b) limitations of MPEG 2 video encoding.

From what I've read, MPEG 2 bleeds a bit of the green & blue channels into the red channel, resulting in a red channel that is not 100% red, and therefore it is impossible to reproduce the red that is needed to be cancelled out by the left eye of the 3-D glasses.

I am having better success playing the DVDs back on my HDTV display, which makes the ghosting more tolerable but still not a complete success. I am still frustrated that I cannot replicate the effect that I get with the Windows Media-encoded version that I stream from my PC to my Xbox 360.

What's more baffling is that on the same computer monitor, I had fine results watching the DVD using Cyberlink's Power DVD player and so-so results (more pronounced ghosting) via Windows Media Player's DVD player!

This raises all sorts of issues. I have prepared at least six different versions of the movie now, and testing suggests that there will never be one that works in all situations. I do have a version that works better on a computer monitor, or one that works marginally better on a TV set - which version do I put on the DVD? On a computer monitor, the effect is noticably better. There is still some ghosting, but it's within a tolerance range that I am willing to accept. Do I make the DVD for computer viewing and put a disclaimer on the front of the anaglyph version? I notice that the Spy Kids DVD has a similar disclaimer.

The field-sequential version remains unaffected and the preferred way to experience the movie in 3-D. The question remains about how this latest problem will affect theatrical exhibitions of the movie... if a theater can project the movie off of the Windows Media file, they'll get the best result. But can most of the film festivals take digital files? Will the DVD work better if projected?

Stay tuned.

The House of Cards Begins to Fall

It looks like when I said that the MPEG-2 compression did not affect the red/blue 3-D effect, I was wrong. I've had time to make a test disc and try it out on my progressive scan 16x9 TV and two other standard def NTSC television sets, and in all three cases we have massive ghosting - so much so that the anaglyph movie is almost unwatchable.

How did this happen?

My original test movie was rendered out from After Effects via the Windows Media 10 codec, and streamed to my TV via the Xbox 360 - and it looked perfect. The best red/blue 3-D I've ever seen on a television. (This version, incidentally, will be made available for download - likely via BitTorrent.)

This new version is rendered out via After Effect's MPEG-2 compressor, and it appears that it has subtlely altered the shade of red. This MPEG shade is darker than it needs to be, so the red eye of the glasses can't filter it out properly, resulting in double images.

Yesterday, I went and rendered out another MPEG 2 compressed version. For this one, I cranked the Red Gamma of the left eye channel up from 1.5 to 2.0 (a significant difference.) When I tested it on my home TV, it actually did work much better. Not quite 100% ghost free, but acceptable. The downside is that all color information is completely lost. The movie is basically purple, and the red eye version is starting to get a bit washed out.

I've sent this disc home with Andy for testing on a standard TV, so we'll see how he says it works. In the mean time, I got to thinking that since the luminance of the red needs to be brighter, what would happen if I increased the Red Gain instead of the Red Gamma? So, I've rendered out yet another version! This one resets the gamma to 1.0 but boosts the red luminance, resulting in an extremely bright red. The image retains more of the original color information, so hopefully I'm on to something that will work.

Unfortunately, I'm out of DVD-Rs at the moment.

MPEG Videos Created + Subtitles!

It's been a while since I've made an entry here but work continues! Andy's been hard at work on the score to FvTWM. I've heard a couple of demos of cues so far and I'm told it will sound even better once it's given the full orchestral treatment through East West.

In the meantime, I've made the DVD-ready MPEG 2 video files for the three versions of the movie: a 2D version, 23.976 frames per second, progressive 480p 16x9; an anaglyph 3-D version, 23.976 fps, progressive 480p 16x9; and a field sequential 3-D version, 29.97 fps, interlaced 480i 16x9. I haven't been able to test the field sequential version yet but the other two are working quite well.

Recently a new 3-D DVD hit the market, a remake called Night of the Living Dead 3D. The 3-D effects are better than some videos I've seen, but the producers solution to ghosting images (where you see double images even with the glasses on) is to keep the depth in the frame pretty shallow. Frankenstein vs the Wolfman sometimes uses "super-depth" in it's images so I had to work to find another solution.

I've outlined this process in a prior blog entry but I use the Night of the Living Dead 3D disc as an example: in each sequence of that movie, when you close your blue eye and look through the red lens, everything appears extremely dark. My solution was to boost the gamma of the red eye view so that the picture through the red lens appears as bright as that seen through the blue eye. This has served to lessen the effect of ghosting and produce a more satisfying anaglyphic 3-D experience.

I'm happy to report that the MPEG compression's color matrix did not have an adverse affect on how the red and blue colors are reproduced (unlike the YouTube video compression - which I believe is Shockwave Flash.)

Also, I've been working on subtitling the movie, using Adobe Encore. It's a pretty nice setup, allowing you to type your subtitles directly onto the monitor window. These subtitles will only be available on the 2D version of the movie (they ruin the 3-D effect on the 3-D versions) and can be chosen by selecting the subtitle track once the movie has started.

The Trailer Has Landed

The moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived - the brand spankin' new trailer for Frankenstein vs the Wolfman is live! You can download high quality Windows Media versions by visiting the Trailer page of the site; watch lower quality (either 2-D or 3-D) versions via YouTube below; or you can visit Veoh.com and download versions for your iPod.

Frankenstein vs the Wolfman trailer 2-D

Frankenstein vs the Wolfman trailer 3-D