This is the most ridiculous thing about Netflix. So many great brains there yet none of them can perceive a world where not everyone has a high end home cinema.
I mean, this isn't for movies that are bought by Netflix from an existing rights holder, it's movies and series that are commissioned by Netflix. It seems reasonable that they'd want to capture as high quality as possible for as much content as possible, as you can always lose quality in post (or distribution). I don't suppose this would preclude directors using cameras that wouldn't work otherwise when needed (like clip from a cell phone camera).
I also have a hard time believing Netflix would be ok putting up money to capture a picture/series all in 16mm film (or that anyone would suggest the commercial success or artistic vision demanded it).
So it doesn't stifle creativity, it future proofs Netfix for the lucrative high end market, AND Netflix is paying (at least indirectly) for that level of quality. I don't see the problem here.
You may have mixed up where you're responding to: This particular comment thread is not really about the cameras that are in use, but instead about the sound. (Sound recorded by the camera itself -- if it can even record sound -- is essentially never used.)
The problem is that the camera requirements are defined, presumably to try to have some lower bound on the quality of the visuals, there is no requirement for audio such that it sounds good on stereo speakers, which is probably what the majority of consumers are using.
The idea that Netflix have such a strict definition on camera quality is also a bit of a farce, given how woeful the image looks after it goes through their incredibly overenthusiastic level of compression, but that's neither here nor there.
I think the compression complaint is very fair. It totally negates the excellent camera quality! It doesn’t matter if your camera has excellent dynamic range if dark scenes in Netflix are compressed to shit and look terrible.
Compare to Disney+. As much as I dislike Disney, they have 4K Dolby vision for no extra cost, and quality is excellent. Prime and Netflix could both take examples out of their book. (Some of the compression in recent Amazon shows has also been very bad. For example, the trees in the background of the wheel of time were often a mess of compression artifacts even at 4K.)
I think you're right, I mistook OPs comment about the video, not the sound. Does seem weird they wouldn't have minimum sound quality, but it is a tricky thing moving 5.1 to stereo, so that's more about the mixing.
Sadly the requirements for sound mastering state that having only a 5.1 mix is fine, and if you’re doing a stereo mix it’s alright to just slap the centre/surround channels into left/right after dropping the volume a bit. https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...
That last point means that dialogue is likely to be quieter than sound effects and music, since dialogue is usually on the centre channel.
This pretty much ended around Blu-ray/HD-DVD switch from DVD. It was pretty standard to have a dedicated 2.0 Lt/Rt (sometimes a Lo/Ro) mix that was typically included as the first (default friendly) audio track on the DVD. This was convenient for people that did not have a surround system. Ideally, these were separate mixes vs automated downmix. They typically sounded good in stereo only. With the HD formats, it became the norm to no longer include the stereo source on the disc. Now, the expense of this specific mix could be avoided.
Still, Bluray discs with the downmix metadata set correctly should still sound better in stereo than a streaming source that was downmixed without dynamic range and mix preference metadata.
The technology is old enough to be long out of patent either way.
Dolby's DialNorm setting was their true bit of gold. Incorrectly setting that value on surround encodings had a huge impact. Correctly getting that DialNorm value required Dolby gear. Many people could not afford that gear, so a -27 value was set across the board whether it was correct or not.
When the sound design is targeted for 5.1, most of the dialogue comes from the center speaker.
This is great if you have one.
However if its downmixed on the fly (ie done on the client side) the center channel is often just played out of both speakers. This means that sound can be muffled, because its drowned out by the incidental noise that comes from the left/right channel.
When you master for 5.1, because you have the centre speaker, you can have dialogue at 100% volume, then out of left and right, you can have incidental noise, be that music or "atmosphere" also at 100%
(its been a while since I've mastered in 5.1) However, two channels of 100% volume (well 0dbu) is louder than just one channel. Which means that if you have lots of music, wind or other foley it'll drown out the dialogue.
It requires artistic choices from the sound team to make work properly.
Yeah I read the same comment you did, but if you're taking a signal with 6 channels, and only have two channels out, you don't really have any option but send the middle channel to both outputs, else it'll sound far too intense in a single ear.
You mix the dialog louder for the entire piece, and every other sound in the middle. No extreme highs, no extreme lows. General compression with dialog forward choices.
Blueray supports downmix metadata that I think lets you mix volumes with the full 6x2 matrix, and I don't remember if there's EQ but there may be. Also a 5.1 AV is like 500 bucks if you have the space. I don't think what other innovations you need. The technology to stream different audio streams and let the user choose is there.
Thing is most studios now do only one mix for theaters and also most streaming providers don't give many fucks about audio. It's not an innovation problem it's a product problem.