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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: When will we see 4k dlp from TI?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 10-30-2003 11:40 PM
quote:
First off, I don't agree that customers won't pay a premium for 70mm...they will and have.
I drove 200 miles from Lawton to Dallas on a number of occaisions to watch movies in 70mm. "Baraka" and "Vertigo" are a couple examples. I drove the 200 miles to watch a 70mm DTS version of "Titanic" rather than just drive down the street to see a 35mm DTS version.
To address the TI technology, the DLP micromirror device is pretty cool for what it does. However, the technology is also hopelessly limited. The rotating mirrors and other moving parts greatly limit how small DLP chips can be produced. That affects cost, because you're only going to fit so many chips on a wafer of silicon. It affects limits on resolution since the chips can only be so big you can only fit a limited number of mirrors on the thing.
TI's DLP chip has been stuck at the 1024 X 768 and 1280 X 1024 levels for several years now. The 2K chip is finally fixing to be released after a very long wait. How much longer can we expect to wait for TI to develop a DLP chip running at 4K, quadruple the number of pixels of a 2K chip? Other competing technologies are certain to upend the DLP method of digital display.
I strongly expect a lot of foot-dragging in terms of getting things like 4K digital imaging systems up and running. The big thing pulling resolution down to low limits is the consumer electronics angle. Outside of high resolution computer graphics display, there are few applications in home video and computing that require any higher than a 1080 X 1920 pixel display. Many companies may simply stop at that level. TI claims it will limit use of their new 2K chip to commercial theaters, but I don't buy that for a second. There's just too much money to be made in the consumer electronics business and too many competitors out there looking to make that buck if TI doesn't try to capitalize on it.
Another thing that will prevent digital projection getting much higher in rez is self-imposed limits in film production. In spite of much more powerful computing technology and ever increasing storage capability, much of the film production end is still holding to the belief that 2K is good enough. With the studios taking major releases and flooding the market with several thousand prints, drastically shortening the time it takes a film to get to home video release, they feel even less pressure to pursue any standards higher than 2K for any CGI work.
48 frames per second? It will never happen, at least as long as movies are produced on film. We can't even get the industry to endorse 30 frames per second or even more simple things such as shipping films on 6000 foot reels. There are already well established film production and presentation formats, like 70mm, which are vastly superior to 35mm yet are being virtually ignored.
And considering the rapidly advancing pace of computer graphics and home video technologies I find it shocking and short sighted on the part of the film industry to not shoot more movies in 8/35mm and 5/70mm formats. What better way is there to "future proof" your $100 million product than using a highly superior analog format which can gracefully transfer up to any super high rez video process to be developed decades from now? This would be an even grander equivalent to what Warner Bros. Records is doing for DVD-A MLP high rez audio titles, grabbing master analog tapes of classic rock albums that can be more gracefully digitized into 24/96 format than some 16-bit digital master.
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John Pytlak
Film God
Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 10-31-2003 07:16 AM
Mattias wrote:
quote:
Concerning bigger film formats is it not the case that with today emulsions you get the same quality with super35 as you did with 5-70 many years ago? To me this suggest that 35mm of today can provide a superb picture quality
Yes, film emulsion technology has made significant advances (Kodak T-Grains, VISION2 2-electron release sensitizing, etc.) in the last few decades. Some have used the improved image quality to gain economies and flexibilities of smaller image area formats (Super-16, Super-35 for "Scope"), but others have continued using larger image area formats (65mm/70mm, anamorphic 35mm cinematography) to put all that improved quality on the screen.
Camera and projection lenses have likewise improved dramatically in the last few decades. On the film side, the lenses certainly support more than 2K resolution.
As far as "digital intermediate" and digital effects, as computing power increases, and costs of scanning and recording come down, 4K is already becoming a viable option, as it was used for scanning and recording pictures like "Stuart Little 2":
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/forum/featureFilms/stuartLittleP.shtml
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 10-31-2003 07:58 PM
quote:
Anyone...and I mean ANYONE that has told you that Super-35 or Anamorphic 35 of today is anywhere NEAR 70mm production of yesteryear is flat out lying to you.
You can go back 50-years with 70mm and compare the sharpness/grainyness of the pictures and 70mm will always come out on top. It is sharper, steadier and just generally looks right.
I totally agree, especially when it comes to Super 35. Every Super 35 film I've seen looks like complete crap, IMHO. The grain is bigger than the eyeballs on closeups! I know that many cinematographers prefer Super 35 to Anamorphic because of lens selection, but I bet they almost never see their films projected in a theater.
On the other hand, when Far and Away was shot (and presented) in 65/70mm, audiences couldn't tell the difference.
Aside from IMAX and special venues, we're never going to see 70mm again. Even in the 70mm revivial of the 70s and 80s, the only reason we saw so many 70mm blowups was to get 6 track mag sound.
And DLP (or another electronic cinema process) is (eventually) going to happen. While I am predisposed to prefer film, I have to admit that the DLP presentations I've seen so far have been amazingly and surprisingly good. On the other hand, I just read something about some film festival where the electronic presentation screwed up constantly.
One aspect rarely mentioned on this Board is that while there is frequent criticism of anything digital, especially in terms of image, the fact is that digital intermediates are being used more and more often as part of the production process. So film is being converted to digital for effects and color timing and then back to 35mm for presentation. I suspect I don't hear any complaints about that (and there shouldn't be because the resulting images are incredibly good) because you're usually not aware when it happens. I saw a demo of this at a SMPTE meeting the other night at Technicolor in New York.
quote:
Very few moviemakers deliberately set out to make a bad film. Some just turn out that way. I don't think the ratio of hits and misses really has changed that much over the years. Enjoy the hits, and hope for a few great masterpieces each year too.
I think that's being excessively kind to the major studios. More than ever before, films are made to cater almost exclusively to 18-35 year old males who have spent their lives playing videogames. In addition, more than ever before, those films are based on television shows or other films in order to establish franchises. The most important aspect of many films is whether or not they can do joint marketing with Burger King. I think in decades past, there was more of an attempt to make films that appealed to different segments of the market. It's not the failures, like Gigli, that bothers me so much -- Gigli was simply this decade's Ishtar. I'm more concerned with the successes, like The Hulk. It decades past, there were many garbage films, but they were usually small films. What shocks me today is when we have a $100 million film and one has to wonder if anyone actually read the script.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 10-31-2003 10:17 PM
quote:
One aspect rarely mentioned on this Board is that while there is frequent criticism of anything digital, especially in terms of image, the fact is that digital intermediates are being used more and more often as part of the production process.
Digital technology, as it pertains to film production and presentation, deserves the criticism it gets. The marketing people always spin digital as "perfect". Someone has to step in and let people know there are many varying degrees of quality with all things digital. Audio and visual data is often highly compressed and degraded in quality. Often the audio is not "CD quality" and the image is not "as good as film." Digital likes to throw numbers out in its marketing. I must insist on throwing the numbers right back at it. DLP might provide a nice looking image. But at 1280 X 1024, it is no better at all in terms of resolution than looking at a compressed JPEG photo on a 17" computer monitor. Film holds a lot more detail than that.
quote:
Some scenes did not live up to the potential of the 65mm format (shallow depth of focus was sometimes an issue, especially on dark interiors). But the landrush scenes were full of sharpness and detail best appreciated with a 70mm print on a huge screen.
I drove 2 hours to Atlanta to see "Far and Away" in 70mm back in 1992. Yes, some of the darker indoor scenes and even some of the cloudy outdoor stuff (like the pistol duel scene) was a bit soft. But there were plenty of other sequences in the show which demonstrated a much sharper image than 35mm 'scope could offer.
There's also the issue of "learning curve" involved with the shoot of "Far and Away." DP Mikael Salomon was using new Kodak films with a wider variety of film speeds along with using a newly designed 65mm Panavision camera. Those differences had to add some issues. And shooting 65mm/70mm is not for the faint of heart. The larger negative does require bigger lenses and a lot more light to get better depth of field levels. I got a chuckle out of a "Tron" documentary where Steve Lisberger talks about the challenges of shooting in 70mm. Regarding the limited depth of field his DP would ask, "do you want front of the actor's eyeball in focus, or the back, or the eyelashes?" Anyway, the 70mm format has its challenges but those challenges are not impossible. With good planning a movie production can use 65mm/70mm to create moving images with better quality than 35mm and way better than videotape.
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Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 10-31-2003 11:33 PM
Sometimes, on a movie set, one of the more annoying things you hear is the A.C. shouting, "Camera reload," just when everyone else is primed and ready for the "one more time" take that the director just asked for. Yes, reloading the camera is a "necessary evil" of film production but sometimes it kills the momentum of the cast members and the "one more" take becomes at least two takes. I can't imagine how annoying the camera reloads would be if, at 48fps, they were necessary twice as often!
The old call for a "Sound reload" used to be somewhat often when the mixers were using 1/4-inch tape but, now that most of them are using a digital format, they can go for hours and hours between reloads. (...and the mixer is usually really careful about timing his reloads to be least disruptive to anyone outside of his own department... since so many people are perpetually annoyed by the sound department's needs already.)
And, of course, when you're on a set using digital 24p cameras, the reload intervals are lengthened too. But, in my experience, the decision to use digital 24p cameras is based only on saving a little money. Therefor, you're already in a low-budget situation overall. So, rather than getting a world class Director of Photography, the producers probably hired a D.P. who only ranks as a camera operator on "big movies." And, if the guy is over age 40, he never bothered to learn anything about video in his career. The results? Usually the A.C. is the one who takes the initiative to learn the system while the D.P. just gets frustrated when he hears about anything electronic which he doesn't understand. It can be tense when a proud D.P. is forced to admit he knows less about how to use the camera than his subordinates do!
My prediction: The number of people who'll try shooting film at 48fps for mainstream movies will be small if it's greater than zero. There just won't be enough cinematographers calling for it and, therefor, no producer will ask for it either. Most of today's cinematographers have spent years learning to do what they do with 35mm film at 24fps, and they don't want to learn any new systems if they don't have to. (And they don't want to make a high-profile stumble in front of all their peers like Salomon did on Far and Away.) Still, the number of productions being shot digitally will slowly increase. When the guys who are in college today are old enough to be hired as cinematographers on "big movies" they will embrace digital shooting in droves. Perhaps some of their classmates will be powerful in the manufacturing end at that time and they'll answer the call for superior technology to support the art.
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