It’s fair to say that the initial announcement of Dolby Vision 2 left more questions than answers.
The press release was long, with lots of fancy terms and feature names, but precious little detail, and that left lots of people – me included – feeling rather sceptical about it.
There’s nothing quite like a bit of vagueness and, in particular, a few mentions of AI to bring out the cynic in a well-worn tech fan.
Having now had a lot of our initial Dolby Vision 2 questions answered, though – and in quite some detail – my scepticism has washed away and I’m now cautiously excited about the next-gen HDR-and-more format.
The crux of my change of opinion is that Dolby’s answers indicate that Dolby Vision 2 is far from the post-processing (as in, on-TV processing) that I initially expected, and a proper mastering-studio-to-living-room technology that has the potential to massively improve the home cinema experience, led by filmmakers rather than TV manufacturers.
Actually, a lot of the AI appears to be aimed at the movie-production end of things, rather than the viewer. It seems to be there to help studio professionals identify opportunities to improve content in the editing suite, to more efficiently make those improvements, and, perhaps most interestingly, to determine how the content should be adapted to the capabilities of different displays.
That last point is where the new so-called ‘bi-directional tone mapping’ comes in.
Dolby Vision HDR has always been broadly tailored to each TV’s contrast and colour capabilities, but this feature means the content creators themselves can configure how their movies and TV shows (and games, for that matter) will look on TVs that are either less or more capable than their reference monitors.
But what interests me even more than that is Dolby Vision 2’s Authentic Motion feature.
Again, this isn’t on-TV motion processing, which is loved and hated in fairly equal measure, but a technology that allows movie creators to reduce judder and blur in the studio.
I have requested more information on this from Dolby, but it sounds very similar to TrueCut Motion, which has been used in several movies, most notably Avatar: The Way of Water.
These movies have a higher frame-rate than the industry-standard 24fps, usually 48fps, but before you have flashbacks to The Hobbit in HFR and start screaming about the soap opera effect, it’s worth noting that for most of their running times, these movies have the look and feel of traditional 24fps video.
That extra frame rate is essentially there to provide the creator with the flexibility to smooth out motion only when required – through long panning shots, for example – while preserving the natural cinematic look with which we’re all familiar for most of the movie.
The reason we need this is that the TVs most of us now have at home are brighter and more responsive than the cinema projectors for which the 24fps standard was created, and those aspects increase judder.
Content creators have been loath to adopt higher frame rates, partly because of the sense of unrealness it can add, but also because it’s supported by very few cinema projectors and no home cinema sources, and those TVs that do support it essentially do so by accident.
TrueCut Motion has done a great job of proving that movies can be made smoother while still retaining their natural cinematic qualities; but Dolby’s involvement has the potential to take it to the next level, driving adoption by studios, streaming services and TV manufacturers.
If Dolby Vision 2 achieves that, it will be transformative for home cinema.
MORE:
We asked Dolby all the big questions about Dolby Vision 2 – and we have good and bad news
Want Dolby Vision 2? Our sources suggest you will need to buy a new TV
Dolby Vision 2 unveiled: AI-powered picture optimisation, creator controls, and more
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