Terminator 2 Diary - Back in DTS


	In this exclusive section we will follow the development of Artisan Entertainment’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day Special Edition.” In irregular updates we will keep you informed whenever new developments occur and new information becomes available, so make sure to check by frequently to keep up with the latest development on this highly anticipated title.

		by Guido Henkel May 15, 2000


	ome time has passed since we last checked in with Van Ling on the production of the Special Edition of “Terminator 2.” Sometimes it is hard to describe how progress is made on a specific title, as much of the work is just very laborious and takes its

time, without yielding too many visible results.

As we reported in our last installment, “Terminator 2” will be released as a DVD-18, which is the technical term for a DVD that has dual-layer surfaces on both sides. Only a handful of titles are currently in the market in this format, one of them the Stephen King min-series “The Stand” with which Artisan Entertainment had already pioneered the DVD-18 development. One side of the disc will feature the film’s actual presentation, while the second disc will be filled to the rim with extras that grow on an almost daily basis.


	Since our last entry in the Production Diary a lot of testing has been done to evaluate whether the DVD could actually hold a 5.1 Dolby Digital and a DTS audio version of the movie on the same side. After plenty of testing and evaluation, the decision has now been made to actually have both versions released on the same disc. This decision inevitably begs the question whether it will be possible to

maintain a top-notch presentation of the movie, especially given its considerable running length.

The answer is yes. THX, Lightstorm and Artisan have all evaluated and approved the quality of the movie and according to producer Van Ling, it helps enormously that the anamorphic video source material the disc is created from is of extremely high quality, which translates into a video stream that is easier to compress. Authoring facility WAMO is also using Sony’s encoder for this DVD, which is renown for its superior quality while keeping data throughput manageable.


	nother reason why this is suddenly possible has to do a change in the way DTS is approaching the DVD market. Originally, DTS audio tracks used an incredibly high bitrate, decoding the audio data stream at 1536 kps. A high end Dolby Digital audio

track by comparison runs at a bitrate of 448 kps which is substantially lower.


	Since DTS had been running into a lot of obstacles because of the real estate their audio tracks used up on DVD discs, they had to rethink their approach and took their technology back to the labs. After conducting countless listening tests, they found out that the data throughput could actually be reduced quite a bit, still without introducing noticeable degradation of the material.

Now, DTS tracks can be encoded to run at a bitrate of 768 kps, which is much more storage friendlier than the original specifications. “Of course everything has a price,” you say, suggesting that with the downscaling of the specifications, a loss in quality would be imminent. You may want to reconsider this however when you hear that one of last year’s hottest DTS DVD titles was encoded at the new lower 768 kps bitrate. The title is Dreamworks’ “Saving Private Ryan.” The disc is clearly touted as one of the best DTS enabled DVD releases in the market and stands as a reference for the format.

To ensure the sonic quality of the DTS encoded track is still perfect, the encoding/decoding technology was perfected in the DTS labs and it appears that there is no soundtrack that cannot be handled with the 768 kps decoding. If you wonder what other titles have been using the new DTS standard, as a rule of thumb you can simply assume that every DVD disc that contains a Dolby Digital track and a DTS track alongside the movie presentation on the same disc is inevitably following the new specifications.

As a nice side effect of the lower bitrate it is now finally also possible to better compare Dolby Digital and DTS audio tracks, as their technical requirements and specs are coming closer together, and we are no longer comparing apples to oranges. Like some other titles in the market, the “Terminator 2” disc will make an excellent disc to evaluate both sound formats side by side under comparable conditions.


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