Designing Video to Accompany Hi-Resolution Audio
-Toshi Onuki
Neil Young takes great care and is very involved in all the work Total Media Group does for him. One of the big points for Neil is the audio quality. This is number 1 for him, and takes precedent over everything else.
One advantage of Blu-ray is the ability to play high-resolution audio and also have high quality video at the same time while also navigating through different menu spaces, and accessing notes etc…(This is not possible with DVD specifications). All of these features are available only on Blu-ray and thanks to BD-J and BD Live.
So Neil wanted the pristine audio, and we also wanted to really leverage this wonderful new technology.
For the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1, we included a “Main Program” which allows the user to play the high-resolution audio with visuals.
The idea for the main program was developed with Neil when we worked on Greatest Hits album CD/DVD in 2004. We came up with the idea of video as “furniture” because visual footage for the recording did not exist. I thought of each scene as a diorama like you would see in a science museum.
We set up the original player for when the song was recorded - reel-to-reel, vinyl, cassette, and set up surrounding memorabilia and photos that were carefully picked by Neil. We taped the diorama in HD here at Total Media Group. I believe each visual scene has significance to Neil Young specific to each song.
I think the video of moving turntable is really seductive and it feels like looking at fireplace to me. The quality of the Blue-ray disc is phenomenal. I can see Neil’s fingerprints and dust flying around in the space. Neil Young’s studio also made a replica of the original tape, re-spliced and put on the original reel. That’s why you can see VU meter moving in sync with Music.
A lot of care and attention was put forward by everyone for this project.
You can check out the interface on this online tutorial:
http://www.neilyoungarchives.com/tutorial/tutorial.html
