Glossary

Radiance Films’ Glossary Guide


FORMATS

  • Blu-ray (BD) - The standard high-definition disc format (almost always 1080p resolution)

  • Ultra-HD Blu-ray (UHD) - A higher-capacity format supporting 4K (2160p) resolution, HDR, and greater quality. Requires a UHD player. UHD Blu-rays are supposed to be Region Free.
  • Dual-format - Releases which contain both a UHD disc and BD disc.
  • Region Coding - Blu-ray discs may be locked to Regions A (USA, Japan), B (UK, Europe, Australia), or C (Asia excl. Japan). Most Blu-ray players native to these territories can only play Blu-ray discs with the same Region Coding (i.e. an American Blu-ray player will be a Region A player and only play Region A discs). Blu-rays can often be a mixture of Regions, such as AB (see a list of Radiance’s ‘Region Free’ releases here: https://boxd.it/Bc5vc).
  • Region Distribution - The territories a particular Blu-ray release has official domestic distribution within. For Radiance, this is the difference between an UK/US release (i.e. Confessions of a Police Captain) vs. a UK-only release (i.e. Matador).

    UK/US titles are therefore released in both countries, with the only difference typically being aesthetic ones such as lacking UK-mandatory BBFC markings and spelling differences (although different standards between the countries will occasionally lead to inherent changes).

    Often this is due to different licensing rights per territory but not always. Note that while Region Coding and Region Distribution are often aligned they are not always identical (Matador is a UK-only release but Region Free (ABC)).

 

PACKAGING

  • Scanavo cases - a type of Blu-ray case that allows for our full-height wraparound cover art. Distinct from Amaray cases used in standard edition Blu-rays.

  • O-card - Thin, removable cardboard sleeve that wraps around a plastic Blu-ray case.

  • Obi strip - Removable strip of paper to provide information and certification around a film which can be later removed. Named after the Obi sash belt in Japanese culture, they have often appeared on Japanese CDs and vinyl. 

  • Spine Numbers - The numbers on the spine of Blu-ray releases. Such numbers are also used to keep internal track of releases, leading to the creation of Catalogue Numbers (RADXXXBD) and why some releases (like box sets) will have multiple numbers.

  • Perfect Bound Book - For these books, the pages are stacked and glued towards the spine, rather than stapled to each other as in smaller booklets.



DISPLAYS

  • HDR / High Dynamic Range (HDR) - A new type of video signal that better utilises the capabilities of modern flat panel screens. It allows for more photorealistic images including brighter highlights that contain more detail (for example, car headlights), more steps of gradation in dark areas, and a wider range of reproducible colours.

  • Dolby Vision - An advanced form of HDR that gives specific instructions to displays of how the disc should look (via ‘dynamic metadata’) scene-by-scene.

  • LCD TV - A “Liquid Crystal Display”, this is the most common TV technology. It works by a backlight of LED panels behind a screen producing white light, which is then filtered through a layer of liquid crystals (LCD panel) which filter the light into the appropriate colours for the displayed picture.

  • Mini-LED TV - A type of LCD TV, that uses thousands of small LEDs as a backlight, allowing much finer control of the brightness than traditional LCD TVs.

  • QLED TV - A “Quantum Light-Emitting Diode” TV, which uses a ‘quantum-dot layer’ that allows the LCD display to be cleaner and purer than other versions, although it still relies on a LED backlight.

  • OLED TV - An “Organic Light-Emitting Diode” TV, where each individual pixel creates their own light - rather than using a backlight behind the screen - which means higher resolution, contrast and picture quality (although a possibility of ‘burn-in’ if left too long on a static image).


AUDIO

  • Uncompressed PCM Audio - PCM stands for “Pulse-Code Modulation”. This audio type is also used in studio masters, and can be passed through to the Blu-ray Disc directly.

Since it's entirely uncompressed, LPCM audio can quickly occupy large amounts of space when a large number of audio channels (higher than Stereo) are encoded.

  • DTS-HD Master Audio - Audio from Digital Theatre Systems, which is perfectly reconstructed from the Source Master. The audio is compressed losslesly using a Variable Bitrate (VBR) encoding method, meaning that quiet portions of the audio occupy very little space. This means that Surround Sound audio (5.1 and higher) can be efficiently stored, leaving more room for higher video quality or bonus features.

  • Mono Audio  - Single channel audio (although this can sometimes be duplicated onto between multiple channels, the audio content itself is only singular).

  • Stereo Audio - dual-channel audio, split between the left and right.

  • 5.1 Audio - Five-channel audio (with one subwoofer)

  • 7.1 Audio - Seven-channel audio (with one subwoofer)

  • SDH Subtitles - Subtitles for Deaf and Hard-of-hearing, meaning the subtitles display both spoken dialogue and other audio cues (like sound effects, music or who is speaking off-screen).

 

AUTHORING AND RESTORATION

  • Encoding - The process of taking the Source Master and reducing its file size and bitrate (compressing) by more efficiently describing redundancies in the image, and doing so in a way that can be understood by all Blu-ray players.

For example, the background of a typical film scene does not change much relative to the actors moving within it, and does not need to be described in full for each frame. This process can have a large effect on the final image quality.

  • Bitrate - The amount of bits per second used to encode video or audio. With video, a higher bitrate means fewer details are dropped or approximated during the encoding stage.

Blu-ray's maximum video bitrate is 40mbps, and UHD Blu-ray's is 100mbps, whereas uncompressed HD and UHD video have bitrates of 1490mbps and 5970mbps. 

Video compression achieves dramatic drops in bitrate that allow high quality video to be made available to consumers, and done well, the difference between the version on the disc and the gigantic uncompressed original is only slight.

Content with high amounts of complex textures, such as film grain, need higher bitrates to avoid introducing compression artefacts/visual errors.

  • Authoring - The process of assembling the final Blu-ray components - including the film itself alongside the disc menus, subtitles, extras etc. - into a playable disc. Radiance uses Fidelity in Motion for our authoring.

  • Restoration - the process by which original film materials are restored to preserve them. Traditionally this involves restoring the film materials themselves and the journey to digital media - on a DCP (Digital Cinema Package) for use in cinemas, or digital masters (for use on discs, television, streaming) - is a by-product of that process. 

  • Original camera negative - The film material first ran through the camera when the film was made. This is the original source of the film, and therefore of the highest image quality. The camera negative, as a fragile and singular object, is copied and this element is called an interpositive.

This interpositive is colour-graded and is a back-up of the negative. This interpositive is then used to create a third element called an internegative and from this 35mm prints are created. With each use the internegative degrades allowing the original two elements to be preserved.

Although not all films follow this practice, sometimes secondary or tertiary elements are not created or are used to make prints leaving them to become degraded. Improper storage can also cause them to degrade, and as the film decomposes it can smell of vinegar. Should a negative be lost, have missing elements or have other issues some of these other elements are required for restoration.