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Comment by coretx | Hacker News Reader

Decreasing the gamut before encoding is not my definition of "advanced video encoding". I"d like to call it "ghetto video encoding" instead. What bothers me most about it, is that many people are slowly getting used to it. It also makes me feel sorry for the people who worked hard on the production. Very few people will ever see the true quality of their work.

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To be fair, the new test footage that Netflix released (into creative commons even) explicitly tries to protect against that to some degree. Some shots in the new footage use HDR to crank brightness up to a requested 4000 nits on the subject, while still having a mathematical-black background. (You can even compare the raw *.mxf to say, YouTube's 1080p version of it, and see the difference.

Variety's writeup has a bit more technical detail on it - https://variety.com/2016/digital/news/netflix-meridian-imf-t... .

It's pretty clever, many of the shots seem clearly designed to stress-test common encoder issues and failures -- they put thought and care into it, and it shows.

Maybe Netflix will lower its standards for production as well. Right now if you want to create content for Netflix you need to buy like a $30,000 camera .

What's the point of all that, if I can shoot 4K on a $2,000 camera and it's going to get compressed heavily anyway.

I actually think streaming would be best for lower budget productions, I'm not fully engaged when I watch something on Netflix anyway. It's kind of strange to see them spend $200 million or so on a movie knowing that I'm doing a million other things while it's on.

> Right now if you want to create content for Netflix you need to buy like a $30,000 camera .

Just noting that the official guide[0] lists a number of cheaper cameras, including one that retails for $2k (the Panasonic BGH1).

0: https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...

Good catch, you're probably still out closer to 3 or 4k with a lens, but it's definitely obtainable.

I'm more disappointed my cheaper Canon isn't eligible. When I think about it, there's no reason every single streaming movie even needs to be in 4K. It's going to be compressed heavily anyway .

> When I think about it, there's no reason every single streaming movie even needs to be in 4K.

I agree. I'd rather have better audio and actors not whisper their lines, forcing you to either turn on CC or turn up the volume. I wouldn't want to purposefully stream in 4k anyway - I don't really have a reason.

The content I watch on YT is, IMO, much more interesting than the netflix shows anyway, and recorded with much less expensive gear.

Partly future-proofing, partly you want to have the best possible input data so that your output data, even when heavily compressed, can be the best it can be.

But, for the future internet and compression compute 8-15 years later, the existing content will be streamed better. It's probably not too much to ask for if the cameras are available today for it.

Netflix standards are so dumb. They asked for a 4K camera before Alexa had widely available 4K outside of the huge Alexa 65, and they got a bunch of shows that look terrible for it since the whole industry had standardized around Alexa pipes and people were forced to use other cameras.

Chroma subsampling is a crime and I hate it.

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