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» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Operations   » Digital Cinema Forum   » 70 vs. DC starring Larry Myres (Page 45)

 
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Author Topic: 70 vs. DC starring Larry Myres
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

- posted 03-18-2006 01:04 PM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I agree many theaters aren't even handling 35mm right. But the problem of theaters not handling 35mm right is no justification to ban 70mm. Some exhibitors are building huge theaters where 35mm projection, even done right, is totally insufficient for projecting a properly bright, steady image. A theater with a 60', 70' or 80' wide screen absolutely needs 70mm projection capability. There is no other alternative. 35mm will not work. Video will not work.

Now, if exhibitors can't clean up their act with regard to presentation quality -and want to insist on using that as an excuse to refuse 70mm- then they just need to quit and find something else to do for a living.

The "good enough to get by" attitude is stinkingly widespread in American business culture. It is the main reason why we are getting our asses kicked in the "global marketplace." If theaters cannot aspire to higher standards of presentation quality then they are simply not going to last. Home theater keeps making big strides forward. Other forms of entertainment (such as video gaming) are carving out ever larger shares of the average person's leisure time.

With all those factors weighed in, I have a hard attitude toward that "we can't handle 70mm" thing.

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

- posted 03-18-2006 01:10 PM      Profile for Manny Knowles   Email Manny Knowles   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I'm all for improved presentation.

I'm just saying that, for now anyway, there's a lot of room for improvement with the current model. I'm also saying that DLP represents an improvement in many instances. I'm all for improvement.

In the absence of regular 70mm releases, I think that building those huge theatres -- and equipping them with 35mm gear -- counts toward doing 35mm wrong.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

- posted 03-18-2006 01:25 PM      Profile for Brad Miller   Author's Homepage   Email Brad Miller       Edit/Delete Post 
Lots of new theaters don't even set up for interlock capability anymore. Even if they have the capability, most projectionists couldn't handle it...and that's a lot easier than running 5/70mm properly.

5/70 is dead, even though I feel it is the stupidest thing this industry has ever done. This IMAX DDR nonsense is just stupid and a tremendous waste of real estate on the filmstock. 5/70 is the ideal format for normal movies, with 35mm being a good second choice for small theaters and multiplexes.

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Ron Curran
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 504
From: Springwood NSW Australia
Registered: Feb 2006

- posted 03-18-2006 08:02 PM      Profile for Ron Curran   Author's Homepage   Email Ron Curran   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Should Manny Knowles' post be copied to the IMPROVE 35 thread?

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David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

- posted 03-18-2006 08:40 PM      Profile for David Stambaugh   Author's Homepage   Email David Stambaugh   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I said this 3 years ago (in a thread that I can't seem to link to):

quote:
Rather than talking about 70mm (which just isn't realistically going to happen in mainstream cinemas), I would ask them if it might not be more productive to work closely with exhibitors and printing labs to upgrade the 35mm experience in existing cinemas. There is MUCH that can be done. Instead of spending $150K on a new projector for every screen, what if they instead invest in film cleaners and Film-Guard? And make sure there's adequate illumination. Replace bad optics if necessary. Install optical-quality glass in the ports, not to mention cleaning the port glass regularly. And get labs to squeeze more resolution into release prints and raise image quality to the theoretical maximum that 35mm is capable of. This would be a hell of a lot less expensive for exhibitors, while significantly improving the quality of on-screen presentation across thousands of screens, without making their current technology obsolete.

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Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001

- posted 03-18-2006 10:58 PM      Profile for Michael Coate   Email Michael Coate   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Louis Bornwasser
Sound was used in the past to justify really horrible 70mm DeLuxe prints. I know, I did a world premiere of Superman 2 at the Uptown and had 4 prints in 70mm. To get all channels to work, I had to disregard color. The cape was purple, violet, anything BUT red.
Louis,

I doubt the image quality on the 70mm prints of "Superman II" was entirely the result of having been enlarged to 70mm. Sure, some films simply didn't look great in their enlarged form, but in the case of the "Superman" movies, there were lots of color problems throughout that I imagine were more the result of less-than-stellar optical compositing. I'm not even certain Warner Bros. was using DeLuxe for their 70s back then.

Also, would you mind clarifying your statement, "To get all channels to work, I had to disregard color."?

[Minor nitpick: The world premieres of "Superman I" and "III" were held in Washington, DC, but "II" premiered outside the U.S. in 1980 with Warner Bros. delaying its U.S. release until the summer of '81. So, it appears you worked the U.S. premiere not the world premiere.]

quote:
And, of course, the fact that it's been stated previously by several of you makes the statement correct..?

What-EVER!
In this case, yes. [Razz] Jeez, I didn't realize I was on your shit list, Manny.

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Ron Curran
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 504
From: Springwood NSW Australia
Registered: Feb 2006

- posted 03-19-2006 12:51 AM      Profile for Ron Curran   Author's Homepage   Email Ron Curran   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Some films have been shot using a variety of cameras and film stocks without destroying the look. Perhaps this doesn’t happen so much now with digital intermediate.

For instance, the Indianna Jones films used VistaVision cameras for some shots, Nikon still cameras for stop motion and 35mm movie cameras for the bulk of the film. The films were released on 70mm and 35mm prints.

As far as shooting 65mm, there could be a case for second unit to shoot scenes that would benefit from the extra fidelity, while the bulk of the picture was shot in 35. If 70mm prints were to be made, would it be a problem if those knockout scenes looked better than the rest of the film? Depending on the subject matter, there would possibly be no jarring comparison.

Remember Stanley Kubrick saying that, in the wide shots showing the Spartacus and Roman forces, each person would have been bigger than a grain of 35mm? Relevant, though a slight exaggeration.

This might be a way to encourage some 65mm camera work without committing the whole production and frightening the accountants too much. The producers might even want to see how those scenes looked with 70mm projection on a BIG screen.

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

- posted 03-19-2006 01:03 AM      Profile for Mark J. Marshall     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
At least some of the goofy color problems in the Superman movies were a result of trying all sorts of tricks to effectively blue screen a man in a blue suit. They talk about this ...somewhere. Maybe it was the Superman I DVD commentary or some of the behind the scenes DVD stuff. I forget.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

- posted 03-19-2006 02:32 AM      Profile for Monte L Fullmer   Email Monte L Fullmer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
..after seeing Disney/Pixar's "CARS" in DC at the ShoWest screening at the Paris that Tuesday night, and saw how fantastic that picture looked on that big FLAT screen (even though the presentation was in CinemaScope..) - crisp and clear, no picture weave, no light flicker, no shutter strobing..and no cuemarks and spice joints (lol) - in a house that can easily hold a thousand plus, I can easily say that DC is the way to go in the future of the cinema and really sad to agree with Brad that 5/70 is dead as can be.

-Monte

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

- posted 03-19-2006 02:53 AM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
That video projection screening of "Cars" at ShoWest, I'm sure, was likely presented under very optimum conditions. First, we're talking about a computer generated movie -the best kind of feature for showing off digital projection. Video projection has a more difficult time dealing with regular live action movies. The hardware in the screening room is probably top of the line stuff, all carefully set up. The movie was probably encoded and presented at a pretty high bandwidth as well.

I have strong doubts that all digital cinema setups will offer identical quality. Theaters that have to record their movies in pretty highly data compressed form via satellite will probably not have the same picture quality as those that have a bunch of DVD-R discs or hard drives hand delivered and installed in the theater's media server.

Regardless of the compromises that will likely occur, video projection is going to replace 35mm in most theaters.

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

- posted 03-19-2006 08:36 AM      Profile for Frank Angel   Author's Homepage   Email Frank Angel   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Bobby Henderson
First, we're talking about a computer generated movie -the best kind of feature for showing off digital projection. Video projection has a more difficult time dealing with regular live action movies.
How right you are. I saw JURASSIC PARK III and it had all kinds of ugly stuff going on....lack of detail in dark areas made long shots of actors running across a field look like they had globs of black paint on the top of their heads instead of hair; contrast was all over the map, most scenes looked ok, but some were so badly contrast-starved that it looked like there was a scrim over the lens. Then there was this weird thing going on --shots of the sky bloomed with blocks of white squares in the middle of the blue, similar to what used to happen if video plumbicon tubes were overdriven. Clearly this was example of DLP in the REAL world, not the super-tweaked stuff that happens at SMPTE or ShowEast/West demos, with their bevy of 8 to 10 techies hovering around the equipment and of course, those nano-modules are fresh out of the box and not units that have been in use day in and day out for a few years of having 7500w of light energy pumping at them (and without the benefit of a shutter giving them a rest 24 times a second). But here's the proof of what Bobby's saying -- at this screening that I am talking about, they ran a preview of TOY STORY before the feature and no question about it, computer-generated images really do show off Deee Cinema....which is great, if all you want your theatre to book are Pixar cartoons.

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

- posted 03-19-2006 10:12 PM      Profile for Lyle Romer   Email Lyle Romer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Bobby Henderson
Theaters that have to record their movies in pretty highly data compressed form via satellite
I don't think the compression will be all that heavy. In a dts release touting their JPEG2000 Variable Bitrate Encoder they were making the point that their encoder could encode at 150 Mbps the same quality of image that a constant bit rate encoder can encode at 250 Mbps. I doubt they pulled these bit rates to compare out of thin air so I assume that the 250 Mbps number is something realistic for use. I can only assume that they are talking 2k material here. Since HDTV is considered good quality with an MPEG-2 bitrate of 20 Mbps, it seems that D-cinema should have an order of magnitude higher bit rate.

I do think that compression ratio and quality should be explicit in the DCI spec so that the distributors can't decide to save money down the road by lowering the picture quality.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

- posted 03-19-2006 11:46 PM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
That compression rate will be a critical factor on image quality. However, I do not put it past some bean counters out there to skimp on data rates to save a buck on satellite bandwidth fees and just hide behind the "DIGITAL" term to hoodwink customers.

HD-DVD movies will have a bitrate of anywhere between 15Mb/s and 30Mb/s. The folks behind Blu-Ray are talking more about that 30Mb/s rate being near the norm. D-VHS also operates around that level.

Now, if the D-Cinema folks actually use bitrates around 150Mb/s to 250Mb/s on the 2K video stream then it should look noticeably better than HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content, especially in any side by side comparison. However, the temptation is definitely there for the bean counters to decide it will be more profitable dropping that 2K stream down much closer to 30Mb/s or even less. They will be tempted by that "good enough to get by" thing.

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Frank Angel
Film God

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From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

- posted 03-20-2006 12:39 AM      Profile for Frank Angel   Author's Homepage   Email Frank Angel   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
And that's one of the issues that I see with DC -- the quality can vary widely, much more so than with film. There is no way a ticket-buying public will know 1) what level projection is being used -- 1.2K, 2K, 4K or even the "pre-show" consumer projector. And then, 2) who knows at what bitrate the stream it will be pumped into the projector.

At least with film, the image rez was a given across the board. Sure, keeping bulbs burning long after they should be replaced is a "cost cutting" temptation in 35mm projection that can impair the quality between 35mm theatres, but that temptation will still exist with DC. And hey, doesn't Regal refer to their preshow infrastructer as their "beta test" for DC -- that is going to be too tempting for some bean counters to look at as "good enough" for some of the lower performing screens. Yet the customer will still pay the $10.50 per ticket no matter what the video quality is -- especially the bitrate being used -- in any given cinema. But damn...that low quality, people-with-globs-of-paint-for-hair-on-their-heads video image won't have JITTER, which we all know is the one thing that people site as the cause of why they don't go to the movies any more. [Roll Eyes]

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

- posted 03-20-2006 08:27 AM      Profile for Lyle Romer   Email Lyle Romer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Regarding compression, I found the following in the DCI spec. This is pretty much all greek to me. Can anybody that understands it tell if this prevents the bean counters from deciding to run at lower bit rates?

Based on reading this, it seems that 4k would be delivered at a much higher compression ratio than 2k. Am I reading that correctly? If so, how much better will a 4k image really look if it is compressed 4 times as much?

quote:
4.4. Codestream Specification
All codestreams shall fully conform with [ISO 15444-1:2004/PDAM 1 (soon to be Amendment
1)], as more fully constrained as follows:
• All image frames shall be untiled. More precisely, the entire image shall be encoded as a
single tile.
• The image and tile origins shall both be at (0, 0).
• There shall be no more than 5 wavelet transform levels for 2K content and no more than
6 wavelet transform levels for 4K content. There shall be no less than one wavelet
transform level for 4K content. Additionally, every color component of every frame of a
distribution shall have the same number of wavelet transform levels.
• Codeblocks shall be of size 32x32.
• The codeblock coding style shall be SPcod, SPcoc = 0b00000000.
• All precinct sizes at all resolutions shall be 256x256, except the lowest frequency
subband, which shall have a precinct size of 128x128.
• There shall be no region of interest, i.e., Region of interest (RGN) marker segments are
disallowed.
• Coding style Default (COD), Coding style Component (COC), Quantization Default
(QCD), and Quantization Component (QCC) marker segments shall appear only in the
main header.
• Packed Packet headers, Main header (PPM) and Packed Packet headers, Tile-part
header (PPT) marker segments are forbidden.
• The progression order for a 2K distribution shall be Component-Position-Resolution-
Layer (CPRL). Progression Order Change (POC) marker segments are forbidden in 2K
distributions.
• For a 4K distribution, there shall be exactly one POC marker segment in the main
header. Other POC marker segments are forbidden. The POC marker segment shall
specify exactly two progressions having the following parameters:
o First progression:
RSpoc = 0, CSpoc = 0, LYEpoc = L, REpoc = D, CEpoc = 3, Ppoc = 4
o Second progression:
RSpoc = D, CSpoc = 0, LYEpoc = L, REpoc = D+1, CEpoc = 3, Ppoc = 4
o In the above, D is the number of wavelet transform levels and L is the number of
quality layers. The constant 3 specifies the number of color components, and the
constant 4 specifies CPRL progression.
Note: This POC marker segment ensures that all 2K data precede all 4K data. Within
each portion (2K, 4K), all data for color component 0 precede all data for color
component 1, which in turn precede all data for color component 2.
DCI Digital Cinema System Spec v1.0a.doc Page 25
• Each compressed frame of a 2K distribution shall have exactly 3 tile parts. Each tile part
shall contain all data from one color component.
• Each compressed frame of a 4K distribution shall have exactly 6 tile parts. Each of the
first 3 tile parts shall contain all data necessary to decompress one 2K color component.
Each of the next 3 tile parts shall contain all additional data necessary to decompress
one 4K color component. The resulting compliant codestream structure is diagramed in
Table 7. Assuming D wavelet transform levels (D+1 resolutions), the box labeled
2K_i (i = 0, 1, 2) contains all JPEG 2000 packets for color component i, resolutions 0
through D-1. The box labeled 4K_i (i = 0, 1, 2) contains all JPEG 2000 packets for color
component i, resolution D.
Main
Header
Tile-part
Header
2K_0 Tile-part
Header
2K_1 Tile-part
Header
2K_2 Tile-part
Header
4K_0 Tile-part
Header
4K_1 Tile-part
Header
4K_2
Table 7: Codestream Structure
• Tile-part Lengths, Main header (TLM) marker segments shall be required in all frames of
all distributions.
Note: This facilitates extraction of color components and resolutions (2K vs. 4K).
• Distribution masters shall have exactly one quality layer.
• For a frame rate of 24 FPS, a 2K distribution shall have a maximum of 1,302,083 bytes
per frame (aggregate of all three color components). Additionally, it shall have a
maximum of 1,041,666 bytes per color component per frame.
Note: For information purposes only, this yields a maximum of 250 Mbits/sec total and a
maximum of 200 Mbits/sec per color component.
• For a frame rate of 48 FPS, a 2K distribution shall have a maximum of 651,041 bytes per
frame (aggregate of all three color components). Additionally, it shall have a maximum of
520,833 bytes per color component per frame.
Note: For information purposes only, this yields a maximum of 250 Mbits/sec total and a
maximum of 200 Mbits/sec per color component.
• A 4K distribution shall have a maximum of 1,302,083 bytes per frame (aggregate of all
three color components). Additionally, the 2K portion of each frame shall satisfy the 24
FPS 2K distribution requirements as stated above.
Note: For information purposes only, this yields a maximum of 250 Mbits/sec total and a
maximum of 200 Mbits/sec per color component.

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