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What is the real reason K does not always have the current 3D Audio Track?

If you read the few posts on the subject starting HERE, there are those who are saying that K gets the correct audio track (as do all of the streaming services since they all get the same file) but chooses to not include it (due, for example, to the additional licensing costs they choose to not invest in).
Let me answer that as diplomatically as is humanly possible. It’s horseshit.

If we can get lossless immersive audio assets for a movie, we include them. To my knowledge, no other movie service has lossless immersive audio, so this is not a matter of “everybody gets the same thing”. It’s a matter of Kaleidescape getting something unique.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. Sorry to be slow in responding. I’m on vacation in a national park at the moment. ☺️
 
(The forum software is not letting me edit my post to add: my “diplomatic” response is directed at whoever posted the misinformation, not at audioguy, who asks a completely reasonable question.)
 
Thanks for clarifying. Too many comments on ”other forums” suggesting there is only one file sent to all digital services. And those services picks and chooses what to include. Sounds like K gets a unique file which includes lossless audio, etc. SJ
 
Thanks for clarifying. Too many comments on ”other forums” suggesting there is only one file sent to all digital services. And those services picks and chooses what to include. Sounds like K gets a unique file which includes lossless audio, etc. SJ
This!

And thanks @MikeKobb for clarifying!

John
 
I'm not 100% positive, but I could be that none of the AVS posters I referenced were/are actually Kaleidescape users. Maybe just "haters", "trouble makers" or even

Troll.jpg

I didn't mean to cause a ruckus but this particular subject has been floating around for a really long time (with, as it turns out, incorrect assumptions), and I was interested in "just the facts". Thanks for everyone's helpful responses.
 
The other comment which I find hard to believe is that K makes ZERO profit from the store and that all K profits come from hardware sales. I have seen a comment from a K senior leader stating that this is a “thin margin business” (like most content distributors - which you kind of expect). Recognize that K may not be able to comment, but just hard to 100% believe…. SJ
 
I'm not 100% positive, but I could be that none of the AVS posters I referenced were/are actually Kaleidescape users. Maybe just "haters", "trouble makers" or even

View attachment 2913

I didn't mean to cause a ruckus but this particular subject has been floating around for a really long time (with, as it turns out, incorrect assumptions), and I was interested in "just the facts". Thanks for everyone's helpful responses.
That's exactly what you've been dealing with. The main protagonist has never owned Kaleidescape, but has a whole load of opinions - most of them incorrect.
 
not sure if this is the right thread to ask this question... but I was just watching Mission Impossible MI-5 and noticed I was only getting the master 5.1 audio feed, not the Atmos audio.
So I pulled up the store to look at the details and noticed that the HDR version of the movie only offers the 5.1 feed and the HD version of the film offers Atmos. Why would this be?
 

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not sure if this is the right thread to ask this question... but I was just watching Mission Impossible MI-5 and noticed I was only getting the master 5.1 audio feed, not the Atmos audio.
So I pulled up the store to look at the details and noticed that the HDR version of the movie only offers the 5.1 feed and the HD version of the film offers Atmos. Why would this be?
There are several examples like that. I've also wondered why that is.
 
not sure if this is the right thread to ask this question... but I was just watching Mission Impossible MI-5 and noticed I was only getting the master 5.1 audio feed, not the Atmos audio.
So I pulled up the store to look at the details and noticed that the HDR version of the movie only offers the 5.1 feed and the HD version of the film offers Atmos. Why would this be?
Same answer as my answer at the top of this page, basically. We are not able to get the lossless Atmos assets for the 4K version of that film as of yet.

To expand on that answer up top a little bit -- Kaleidescape is the only service offering lossless Dolby Atmos for Internet-delivered content. Other services that offer Atmos are offering a lossy variant that is more suitable for bandwidth-constrained streaming. Many people are not aware (I certainly wasn't) that content licensors often have separate business units for physical media and electronically delivered media. In some cases, the licensor's physical-media group may have created a lossless Atmos track for, say, their Blu-ray disc, but that asset is not readily available to the electronic-media group, which means it's not available to us. Since no other service was asking for lossless audio, the electronic-media group didn't bother to make one.

Happily, we have made significant inroads on this in the past couple of years, and we are usually able to get Atmos assets with new 4K releases. With older titles, it's a matter of working our way through the catalog. Adding an Atmos track to an existing movie is a significant investment of time and resources that puts such work in direct competition with getting new releases finished as rapidly as possible. I'm sure you guys noticed that we're starting to get TV series in 4K (Jack Ryan, Game of Thrones S1, etc.). That requires many hours of content production and review time, which has to be balanced against revisiting movies we've already processed.

I hope this answers your question at least a bit.
 
Same answer as my answer at the top of this page, basically. We are not able to get the lossless Atmos assets for the 4K version of that film as of yet.

To expand on that answer up top a little bit -- Kaleidescape is the only service offering lossless Dolby Atmos for Internet-delivered content. Other services that offer Atmos are offering a lossy variant that is more suitable for bandwidth-constrained streaming. Many people are not aware (I certainly wasn't) that content licensors often have separate business units for physical media and electronically delivered media. In some cases, the licensor's physical-media group may have created a lossless Atmos track for, say, their Blu-ray disc, but that asset is not readily available to the electronic-media group, which means it's not available to us. Since no other service was asking for lossless audio, the electronic-media group didn't bother to make one.

Happily, we have made significant inroads on this in the past couple of years, and we are usually able to get Atmos assets with new 4K releases. With older titles, it's a matter of working our way through the catalog. Adding an Atmos track to an existing movie is a significant investment of time and resources that puts such work in direct competition with getting new releases finished as rapidly as possible. I'm sure you guys noticed that we're starting to get TV series in 4K (Jack Ryan, Game of Thrones S1, etc.). That requires many hours of content production and review time, which has to be balanced against revisiting movies we've already processed.

I hope this answers your question at least a bit.
I think the question is, though, when looking at a handful of titles within the Kaleidescape store, there are a few where the HD version has a TrueHD Atmos track and the UHD/HDR version has a non-immersive track like a DTS-HDMA 5.1. See screen shot. Obviously the digital group has access to a lossless Atmos track, but K only has that track on a lower-quality version of the film.

Also, my additional question is why does a title like Jurassic Park Dominion have the DTS:X track on the HD version only, and an Atmos track on the UHD/HDR version only? I would love to have both available on both versions, or a user preference.

Screenshot 2022-11-01 at 9.58.35 AM.png
 
If someone at K could get some background info, as to why an audio track used for the HD version doesn't work for the 4K version, that would help explain the discrepancies between availability of immersive audio tracks between HD and 4K versions.
 
Yeah, this gets into some real subtleties.

For HD, in many cases under our license agreements, we are able to get the exact audio and video files that are on the Blu-ray Disc. So if the Blu-ray had Atmos, our HD version will as well. (This is not the case with all licensors, but it applies to many.)

This does not happen with 4K titles, and I’m not sure we’d want it to, since our current process allows us to do our own encoding from the master files, un-constrained by things like disc capacity. But, it does mean that we have to work with the audio assets that are available through that process, which may differ from what was created for physical releases.

The thing about the 4K versions is, those video assets may have been created years after the Blu-ray version was authored. There may have been a re-mastering process in there somewhere. So there’s no guarantee that the audio that was originally created for the Blu-ray would be a perfect match for the 4K transfer.

I hope that clears things up a bit.
 
Yeah, this gets into some real subtleties.

For HD, in many cases under our license agreements, we are able to get the exact audio and video files that are on the Blu-ray Disc. So if the Blu-ray had Atmos, our HD version will as well. (This is not the case with all licensors, but it applies to many.)

This does not happen with 4K titles, and I’m not sure we’d want it to, since our current process allows us to do our own encoding from the master files, un-constrained by things like disc capacity. But, it does mean that we have to work with the audio assets that are available through that process, which may differ from what was created for physical releases.

The thing about the 4K versions is, those video assets may have been created years after the Blu-ray version was authored. There may have been a re-mastering process in there somewhere. So there’s no guarantee that the audio that was originally created for the Blu-ray would be a perfect match for the 4K transfer.

I hope that clears things up a bit.
That helps a lot, for the first question, thanks.

What about the DTS:X question? Atmos is certainly the predominant immersive codec in use today, and Kaleidescape definitely seems to favor it as a top codec. Is there a reason, though, that we can't have that on the HDR versions for a film like JP Dominion? Are you simply not doing DTS:X encodes in-house?
 
The immersive audio assets are created by the studio, so it's entirely down to which immersive formats the studio chooses to include.
 
That helps a lot, for the first question, thanks.

What about the DTS:X question? Atmos is certainly the predominant immersive codec in use today, and Kaleidescape definitely seems to favor it as a top codec. Is there a reason, though, that we can't have that on the HDR versions for a film like JP Dominion? Are you simply not doing DTS:X encodes in-house?
If you want to compare the DTS:X soundtrack to the Atmos soundtrack on Dominion, you can just compare the 4K version to the HD version.

John
 
Is including the lossy immersive audio an option? Would not take up a lot of space. I would imagine upmixing the DTS-MA track would still be better for most.
 
If you want to compare the DTS:X soundtrack to the Atmos soundtrack on Dominion, you can just compare the 4K version to the HD version.

John
It’s not about comparing them. It’s more about having the X track available on the version I want to watch.
 
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