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Author Topic: DVD - 35MM Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-10-2007 11:55 PM                        That only has to happen to you ONCE, my friend, like it did to me, and you will change your mind in an instant about the innocent looking little silvery disk. It's EVIL, I tell you. In the middle of a DVD presentation that I was forced against my will to show of THE HAUNTED MANSION for a group of 100 plus screaming kids, the DVD stuttered and then just stopped. Wouldn't go forward, wouldn't go backward, wouldn't skip to a new chapter (do they still call them that?). Believe me, as Scott said, you'd wish you had a video tape instead of that DVD spaw from hell. There you are, like a freakin jackass, with kids screaming so bloody loud you think your ears are going to explode and you're squeezing the remote with every ounce of pressure you could muster, wondering why the damn thing isn't shattering in your palm, and you're pressing the Play button over and over...play....PLAY...PLAY YOU SON OF A BITCH. I promise you, Jamie, in that moment you would gladly offer up your right nut if only the thing would get unstuck. The only way I could get it to play was to GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING and fast forward, with the kids and their parents (who did NOTHING to shut the little brats up) laughing at me as I tried to get the thing to the spot where we left off. Finally it played, but with English subtitles which, just as Scott said, wouldn't come off, and of course I dare not STOP it again. At this point I didn't give a crap. Just let them read the subtitles. All I was doing was praying that it wouldn't stop again, like at the climax in the last reel....or what would have been the last reel. So Jamie....you want to tell us what terrible thing did you do in your past life that you feel the need to punish youself in this fashion? But seriously, I would strongly suggest you look more closely into used 35mm equipment and just go straight with film. Remember, if you are showing to the public, even if you charged NO admission, you would STILL be required the same royalty licensing fee to the distributor -- matters not if you can walk into a rental store and rent the DVD for $3, you still will have to pay the same as if you had booked the 35mm print. So if you've got to pay the Piper, make the Piper fork over a 35mm print. Why not get the best for almost the same cost (little extra for shipping a print)? And besides, you yourself said, you were a projectionist and liked film ways; you said you miss 35mm film! So go with what you like -- after all, it's your theatre!  |  IP: Logged Phillip Grace Expert Film Handler Posts: 164 From: ACMI. Melbourne. Australia. Registered: Mar 2004 posted 12-11-2007 02:41 AM                     Maybe the issue is 35mm print availability? If its an old film with hard to find screening prints, DVD is likely to be an option, unless the film is known to have had a restoration, or a new print made in the recent past. Given the state of some of the prints in circulation on the repertory circuit, (faded, scratched, dirty, full of splices) any other screening media with the possible exception of VHS would better serve the interests of the audience and the film maker. That being said, the only way to get 35mm quality on screen is to screen 35mm.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-11-2007 07:09 AM                        Agreed, but you would be surprised how many prints still are running on the art house circuit. Most of the major studios have classics departments and the inventories are not all that devastated. I run 20 and 30 year old titles all the time. But you are right; you will come across prints where you have to say, no, that is just too far beyond what I will show. In such cases, yes, DVD, and now HiDef DVDs could very well be the lesser of two evils. But then again, it's nice that titles will becoming available on hi def, which ever one of these formats finally wins. But to really take advantage of those better quality videos (which goes without saying are not the level of DCinema by any stretch of the imagination), even to for that quality, you need VERY expensive video projection equipment. You can't grab one of those $2000 consumer DLP unit and think you are doing the audience a service. Well, you could, but you would be very very wrong.  |  IP: Logged Phillip Grace Expert Film Handler Posts: 164 From: ACMI. Melbourne. Australia. Registered: Mar 2004 posted 12-11-2007 11:48 PM                     Absolutely no argument there! "Digital Done Right" is just as important a concern as "Film Done Right". The most difficult aspect of digital imaging is the amount of smoke and mirrors the sales reps want to throw up between us and the screen. How about "Motion Imaging Done Right" And Thank God for Film-Tech BTW!  |  IP: Logged Evans A Criswell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1579 From: Huntsville, AL, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 12-14-2007 01:04 PM                        I saw an earlier comment that even VHS is more reliable than DVD. As much as I hate the time-base errors, the heterodyned color, and the 3 MHz limitation on luminance bandwidth (and around 300 KHz for color), I must admit that I've never had a VHS machine stutter or stop on me unless the tape was severely damaged. I cannot find a new DVD player than can play a movie without a skipping or stuttering or without some kind of blemish (dancing staticy rectangles) somewhere in the movie. The early players were far more reliable than the new ones, but their picture quality was not as good.  |  IP: Logged Jamie Glossop Expert Film Handler Posts: 100 From: Nottingham Uk Registered: Jan 2004 posted 12-15-2007 10:56 AM                        VHS died years ago. Im still shocked its still around...  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-15-2007 11:06 AM                        The problem with VHS is that there is no direct replacement for a widely available and inexpensive format which allows the end-user to make recordings that can be reliably interchanged between players, and which will last for 10-20 years when sitting on a shelf. There are also many pre-recorded tapes that have been released on VHS that are still not available on DVD; many will never be available in any other format. (I can't believe that I'm defending VHS. It's a really crappy format that probably should be put out of its misery. On the other hand, home DVD burners still leave much to be desired.)  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 12-15-2007 11:27 AM                        quote: Evans A Criswell I cannot find a new DVD player than can play a movie without a skipping or stuttering or without some kind of blemish (dancing staticy rectangles) somewhere in the movie. Are these rental DVDs that have been "previously abused"? I never rent DVDs, only ever play ones I own, and I've never had any problem with stuttering or skipping or "dancing staticy rectangles". Sometimes there's a split-second pause at the layer change on dual-layer discs but that's it. I've owned 4 DVD players: 3 Sony, and now an Oppo. The Oppo even seems to be able to make the layer transition seamless. All the players have worked flawlessly with all my DVDs. I'm pretty picky too -- If the format was as bad as you describe, I'd be the first to dump on it. Note that I'm referring to glaring playback problems, not inherent issues like MPEG compression artifacts.  |  IP: Logged Cameron Glendinning Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 845 From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia Registered: Dec 2005 posted 12-15-2007 02:57 PM                     David, DVDs are that bad. I have had many onscreen problems exactly as described. Not a big issue at home, but when you have a cinema full of customers, playing a DVD either made by a distributor or TV studio for the purpose and it plays up, freezes or stutters. Well the experience for the projectionist is pretty horrible and very memorable!  |  IP: Logged Richard Fowler Film God Posts: 2392 From: Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 12-15-2007 03:42 PM                     Burned DVD's for corporate and private screenings are a "heart attack" as well. I hope for color bars and audio tone at the front to set up the playback...but I have done many "on the fly" color correction, aspect change, audio clean up....with 300 - 500 people in the audience for the ride  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-16-2007 03:03 AM                        quote: David Stambaugh Note that I'm referring to glaring playback problems, not inherent issues like MPEG compression artifacts. And MPEG artifacts are an aweful lot of elephant poop to ignore. It's intrusive, it's random, it's so apparant that it never drifts into the background of the content. At least with VHS, the lack of resolution and the color anomolies are steady-state. You know they are there but you can tune them out. It's like the difference between pops on an LP and hiss on audio tape. Hiss is steady-state and can almost sink below consciousness; LP pops are like someone hitting your toes with a hammer -- no way you can ignore it. The very first DVD I ever saw was 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I couldn't believe my eyes -- the inability to resolve VERY single fade-out and fade-in but instead got these dancing squares of blacks and grays as big as freaking milk crates (oooh...am I supposed to be black or gray?...hmmm, I guess I am gray, no, black, no gray; oh hell, I can't make up my mind...I'll just jump back and forth) and those aweful, stepped concentric circles around light objects that are supposed to be a smooth, step-less glide but are as obvious and distinct as the Warner Bros circles around the W in the Looney Tunes opening logo. To me, all of that junk is intolerable. And what was worse, EVERYONE just raved about how GREAT this new !DIGITAL! DVD looked. I am thinking, is this a case of the emperor's cloths? Or has everyone just gone crazy....or blind? They think this is better than U-Matic or Laserdisc? Given THAT experience, is there any wonder why I was VERY skeptical and highly cynical whenever I heard the word "DIGITAL" applied to cinema projection? Imagine how I had to hold back from up-chucking lunch when I heard (Lucas interview, CBS Radio, circa 1999) that this spanking new digital cinema projection (1.3K mind you) was much, MUCH better than 35mm film ever was or could ever hope to be....and that there wouldn't be any film in cinemas within 5 years!? Is it any wonder why it got to be that every time I heard the word "digital," it soon became synonymous with snake oil and televangelists promising heaven for a $1000 donation? No...better: it was like the promise of getting 40 virgins for blowing yourself up in a car bomb, only to find out the virgins were all billy-goats.....and ugly ones at that. [ 12-16-2007, 08:24 AM: Message edited by: Frank Angel ]  |  IP: Logged

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