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Topic: I'm curious to know why many on Film-Tech seem to be so negative on digital cinema
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Andy Frodsham
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 238
From: Stoke on Trent, Staffs, UK
Registered: Nov 2006
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posted 07-26-2008 01:52 PM
While I am not afraid of this new technology, I am afraid that this is going to be one more example of yet another product being hyped under the ever magical 'digital' umbrella.
I am hopeful and willing for this new technology to move forward to such a point that it does indeed look better than 35mm film! But, when I write this, I do indeed mean better in every way - not just a still picture comparison. I want to see a system that no only has high resolution (better than or equal to film) but also has the ability to cope with the subleties of colour rendering and contrast.
Finally, as if this were not enough, I want to see a system where the storage medium is up to the task (not dependant upon heavy, crude compression). I personally cannot see the point of super high resolution if the data produced is so large that it cannot be stored faithfully. The pressure must be on the distributors to keep the storage media small - who can imagine a situation where each new individual 'print' arrives in a box of five or six hard disk caddies!!
On a more personal basis, those of us working in reel to reel, changeover theatres, share a quite intimate relationship with the two projectors sitting in our projection box - like any pieces of machinery, with which one works day-in and day-out! Swapping all this for a server and humming electronic light emitting box will inevitably change the nature of the experience. I suppose it's like CDs versus vinyl, photographic film (and paper) versus a memory card - the relationship is somehow less tactile!
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-26-2008 03:20 PM
I think Bobby hit most of the points pretty well.
But lets look at this interesting question and what the person statd:
quote: Justin Hamaker
But as a manager and projectionist, I can help looking forward to the more hands-off aspect of digital cinema. I like the fact that I won't have to train kids to properly thread film and rely on them to get it right every time.
Now if you look in another thread...this person can't seem to deal with reels that are tails out.
These things don't have anything to do with the presentation of the media (digital or film) but have everything to do with how one views the mechanics of presenting the media. That is...they don't want to be bothered with it. It is to the point of overlooking objective benefits or deficiencies. The bottom line I see in their posts is "why can't I stay at home and just get all the money I need/want?" Don't get me wrong...busy work for the sake of busy work is, for the most part, wasteful of one's time. Work that achieves improvement should not be viewed as a negative.
A constant I've seen with people is the more hands-off and "automated" things are made...the dumber they become...their brain's atrophy for they are not being worked. Conversely, tampering hands can definately bring about havoc too. The key is to strike a balance.
Now lets look at our LITTLE industry for that is what it is. The number of movie theatres/projectors is a very tiny industry that, on any given year, does not support large scale manufacturing.
The technology of film projection is EXTREMELY simple. You look at the earliest hand cranked projectors and look at today's mechanical projectors and they are virtually identical in the manner in which they show film (not that there has not been refinements that have resulted in improvements). Just about any machine shop could, if they wanted to, make a film projector...the market is too small to bother though.
Look at the predominate film projector manufacturers (pick any of them...which ever is your favorite)...look at the film side and chronical the changes since their first model to the current model...just how different is it? For some companies, you are talking about 50+ years, if not 75+ years. There hasn't needed to be too much R&D on film projectors in the last 50 years.
Christie, the relatively new kid on the block with film projectors (30-40 years) has changed very little on the film side and mostly changed the gear side to improve its reliability.
Kinoton (60-years) has advanced the film projector with their "E" series but again...the film side looks pretty close to the FP20 that goes back nearly 50 years.
quote: Greg Anderson
Any further technological breakthroughs in 35mm film will be very subtle.
Well, just last year in 2007, the E premiere line of Kinoton incresed film steadiness 4-5 times and increased light output by nearly 20%....not too subtle. In film itself...despite it being an "obsolete" technology, it too has been advanced with finer and finer grains, deeper contrast, wider color gamut. It has gotten so good it is often used as the reason Super-35 can outperform anamorphic photography of a short period ago! Or that 35mm of today can look better than 65mm of yesterday. Agree or not (I don't) but DPs seem to see much more than a subtle difference in the film development.
Other than film as a media, this industry is all but powerless to effect any technology changes...it is just too small.
No matter what smoke and mirrors some will put up...digital today costs more than film (for an exhibitor). Digital presentations will not and can not sell one extra ticket. Digital isn't the reason someone will decide to see a movie or not...it may affect their choice which cinema to go to however. From a business standpoint, it is just plain silly to install it in mass.
The stupidness of it all is waving right in front of everyone's face...VPF. The exhibition industry expects the studios to either buy or help buy THEIR equipment. That violates the "golden rule" of "he who has the gold, makes the rules." Where does that end? "Hey, I'm buidling my 20-plex...give me some of those free projectors!" It is just ludicrious.
Look in Boxoffice Magazine (July 2008)...the President of NATO threw a temper-tantrum over not getting his VPFs as planned. Grow up, if the business can't support the cost, it is a bad venture. Throwing money at a belief my be philanthrophic but it makes no business sense and will result in bankruptcy.
Access IT has been the biggest underwriter of the DCinema roll out. Wanna look at their numbers.... AcessIT Stock Would you invest in that company with THAT trend line?
BTW...note, I've yet to talk about the technology yet...just the $$$s of it all.
But lets look at that. There can be no question that DCinema is very primitive at this time. 2K resolution being then norm for now. It is, at best, 1/2 the resolution of film, its color space is smaller and it has less contrast.
Who makes DCinema projectors? It is a trick question...unless you want to bank on Sony's ledgendary technology and support in the Cinema industry, you have TI's DLP division. This industry is single sourcing THE technology that lets it all happen at the 2K level. Anyone in the semiconductor industry knows that single sourcing makes you VERY vunerable. While some choose to ignore the trend of DLP sales and focus only on their very small part of it, DLP sales are dopping progressively fast. The only industries that are hanging on to DLP are Cinema (and we are way too small to support it), large venue projection (also relatively small) and high-end home (also too small). Less expensive technologies have out sold it because those people are not so picky about image quality.
If TI shuts down DLP due to lack of profitability...what happens to DCinema? I know, one that has championed that TI has made improvements to the 1.2" chip as proof of long-term viability...but this is the same guy that was touting HD-DVDs and all the new features/benefits as proof that Toshiba wouldn't pull out. The reality is, the market will dictate what the company has to do...DLP is a shrinking market.
quote: Greg Anderson
All of the disadvantages of Digital Cinema will be fully addressed and very soon.
This sort of statement generates anger. Why? It is a "matter-of-fact" statement with nothing behind it. Lets just start with the resolution...why has 2K been a stopping point for DLP? Well, look above and see...the market is dying. The broadcast industry is stopping at 2K for now. As such, the largest user base will not need more than 2K and developing 4K would need to be done on the cheap because those markets are WAY too small to support the R&D of a full-scale design. Picture a world with all 2K digital projectors and then 4K DLP comes out...how many sales/year do you think TI could expect? 100s? 1000s? Still not enough...they are looking for millions and there are not enough screens in the world for that! There are enough consumers for that! But they are not looking for 4K (or not enough of them)...maybe after they get used to 2K they will desire more.
So where is this magical technology coming from? Do you have inside information about some break-through?
The one that actually anger's me the most are the virtual threats of lack of print availability. The "Buy DCinema or else."
If I have a film based cinema that is putting out superior shows to yours, why should I buy inferior equipment just because? If the reasoning is that "everyone is going digital, thus film will be dead." Then all you have created was a self-fufilling prophacy. Conversely, if exhibitors said "no" to digital at this time, DCinema would die for now.
I certainly DO believe digital will replace film for presentations but what is being offered at this time is a poor substitute.
While I have no fear of technology and have actually been putting in video for quite some time now, I want my quality of life to always be improving, not settleing for what mediocrity is offering at the time. This is why I will continue to champion 65/70 systems...they are the best for today and easily achievable at the theatre level. It isn't a film/digital thing for me. For me, the best always wins. Today, film wins. Bigger film, wins bigger!
As to film damage...it speaks to the exhibitor, not the media. Film can certainly play blemish free for the length of the run and archivially, exceeds digital for now. DCinema has actually opened a new market to get "born digital" elements on film for archiving!
Steve
PS...sorry for the spelling errors/typos...I didn't spell check...I just typed.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-26-2008 03:25 PM
quote: Darryl Spicer
one thing I have been noticing here lately is during fast pan camera movements of scenes where the camera pans wide areas the picture is real jerky. I noticed this on The incredible Hulk and The X-files 2.
Unless there's something wrong with a digital projector setup, such as failing hard discs or something of that sort, there should be no jerking or stuttering of action.
A movie encoded in Motion JPEG2000 is fundamentally similar to a 35mm film print in that both really contain many thousands of discrete, separate, still images. JPEG2000 doesn't allow for inter-frame compression.
This doesn't stop problems from happening in how the movie is filmed or shot on video. 35mm cinematography will record every frame discretely, whether it's badly under-exposed or over-exposed. I've seen digital-sourced footage in movies, such as The Lookout or Collateral smear and drag a little when the camera is pointed at some challenging material -like fast motion in dark environments. I don't know how The Incredible Hulk or X Files: I Want to Believe were photographed, but it wouldn't surprise me if some digital video HD cameras were used in a few spots.
quote:
Finally, as if this were not enough, I want to see a system where the storage medium is up to the task (not dependant upon heavy, crude compression). I personally cannot see the point of super high resolution if the data produced is so large that it cannot be stored faithfully. The pressure must be on the distributors to keep the storage media small - who can imagine a situation where each new individual 'print' arrives in a box of five or six hard disk caddies!!
I think that's one of the smallest problems right now. The 300GB hard discs that ship to digital-equipped theaters aren't any bigger than the Western Digital "My Book" external drive next to my notebook computer. External drives are growing in capacity and 1 terabyte drives are now pretty affordable.
Data throughput is a bigger issue. Commercial theaters and digital projection equipment suppliers really need to strive for the 4K standard. Right now 4K has a trade-off with 2K in that a higher level of data compression is required because of bandwidth limits. To do 4K at the same relatively mild compression levels seen in 2K theaters would receive movie files over 1TB in size. Data ingestion times would balloon. And the current servers in place may have issues pushing that many pixels. Nonetheless, that's the direction where "digital" needs to go. Development should not stop at 2K.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-26-2008 04:43 PM
Tony...where did you get the 15-20 times number? I don't think the cheapest film projector against the most expensive DCinema projector comes close to 15 times the cost. Maybe used film versus new DCinema. When you add everything up, depending on the grade of film equipment you are used to, it is probably closer to 3 to 5 times at the moment.
Film systems don't tend to grow in price geometically as screen size grows. DCinema has certain plateaus that you cross. A film projector, aside from maybe water cooling, is the same projector for a little screen as a big one. With consoles, normally it is only the rectifier that is different and possibly the reflector.
One thing I left off my lengthy post above is the obvious ROE factor (return on investment). A film system, more often than not, lasts as long as the theatre. Most theatres tend to have about a 20-year life, depending on the market and there are obvious expections. The cost/year of film equipment pretty much comes down to "free." It may seem like a lot when you purchase it but cost/year over 10-years is pretty darn cheap and cost/year over 20-years is VERY low. Exhibitors could certainly use better equipment than they often purchase but who plans beyond the next quarterly report?
This is not the case with any emerging technology...which DCinema is...when a projector comes out, it is always using the latest and the best. How many different "grades" of projectors are there? There are different "sizes" but you wouldn't look at a particular model as inherently inferior (within a specific brand).
The cost per year of DCinema will remain high. What does an intermittent cost to replace? Now what does a light-engine or imager cost to replace? You are talking about factors of 10 difference! There is almost nothing cheap on a DCinema projector (at least not in the electronics) and it isn't likely to drop too far as there is relatively no economy of scale for them.
What is the life-cycle of a DCinema projector? If they follow the trend of other digital projectors...probably on the order of 7-10-years but that is certainly speculation. This means that the REAL cost difference between digital and film may be twice as large as you thought before, if you agree that complexes generally have a 20-year life.
Mind you, this isn't "negative" DCinema bashing...this is looking at this from a business perspective.
Steve
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Justin Hamaker
Film God
Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 07-26-2008 05:57 PM
Steve, I take serious exception to your characterization of my work habits.
I am the general manager of a 5 screen theatre AND a single screen drive-in. During the summer months I work more than 60 hours a week every week. In addition to my duties as the primary projectionist for both businesses, I also have to do work schedules, show schedules, orders, inventory, payroll, and more. And I have to find time for all of this around the time I'm waiting on customers and supervising my staff. And when I need to train someone to run projectors, it takes even more of my time.
Yes, I do look forward to the ways digital cinema will make my life easier. I will no longer have to worry about the young people I train making sure they get the film in frame and in focus every single time, 25 times a day. I will no longer have to worry spending several weeks training these young people how to properly thread a projector only to see them leave 6 months later.
And as far as my work upstairs goes, I may not obsess over whether my film is emulsion up or emulsion down or running Film-Guard over every fourth showing. But I do spend time every week dealing with a variety of maintenance issues and when the need arises, I can repair almost anything on my projectors. Thursday night, I was actually at the theatre until 4:45 in the morning filing a new flat aperture plate for one of my auditoriums because I realize the existing plate was showing picture about 18" into the masking.
You mock my complaint about the heads and tails about a print I received last week, but I think you failed to read my post. I wasn't complaining about the print being tails out - I would have LOVED for the print to be tails out. I was complaining about every other reel being a different orientation which meant build-up required even more of my time than normal.
And I complained about the film depot's inability to properly assemble the split reels to the cores so that reels have to be taken apart and reassembled during break-down.
Don't get me wrong, I have no illusions about digital cinema eliminating maintenance. But how can I not look forward to no more scratched prints resulting for a single mistake. How can I not look forward to having to move around prints Thursday night/Friday morning - especially having to move prints to the drive-in. How can I not look forward to projectors that do not leak oil like a sieve. How can I not look forward to projectors that do not have hundreds of moving parts that could fail at any moment costing me time and lost shows to repair.
Ok, digital projectors still have bulbs, exhaust fans, power supplies, and other components that can fail. And many repairs will have to be done by a tech instead of me being able to fix them. But I happen to thing the operational upside is bigger than the down side.
I'm sure the complaints about picture quality are valid (I haven't seen enough to know), but I know 90% of the customers coming through the door won't know the difference. But they do know when can't play Hannah Montana in 3D because we don't have digital projectors.
And by the way, the purpose for this thread was to seriously understand why some people have a negative view of digital cinema. Because from my perspective, I see a whole lot of upside once it's ready for prime time.
Steve
You also point out the "silliness" of expecting someone else to pay for your equipment. While this is certainly a valid argument for new theatres opening with digital projectors, I think it misses a very major point for existing theatres.
For theatres that already have film projectors, who does it benefit for them to switch to digital projectors? Why the studio - to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year not spent on 35mm film. Given that the studios - and not theatres are the ones who stand to save so much money, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to foot at least some of the bill for "upgrading" to digital cinema through virtual print fees. Especially since they don't make any money unless we're playing their movies.
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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler
Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007
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posted 07-26-2008 06:37 PM
For me, the issue is one of me having a job. I like 35mm presentation more, but the overriding factor in my dislike of digital is my like of getting paid. Frankly, based on my experience the one 2k system at my theater, I wouldn't be interested in heading an all digital booth, even if they were willing to give me the hours I get now.
From the actual owners' standpoint, the guaranteed obsolescence should be a concern. How long can you use that 2k system before it breaks or is incompatible with the other technologies that support it? Not as long as the trio of Simplex XLs in my booth, which I suspect are about 50 years old themselves, seeing as the casings were modified to accept a turret. Sure, film costs money, but as I understand it, the exhibitor isn't paying any less film rent on digital prints. My chain is starting to go digital, and I don't understand it at all. My presentation and the presentation at the other corporate theater I've been to are not perfect, but they certainly aren't bad enough to demand that film handlers be eliminated.
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