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Author Topic: QuVIS closes doors, 29 unemployed Kevin Fairchild Expert Film Handler Posts: 125 From: Kennewick, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2008 posted 12-26-2008 03:09 PM                     Demetris, I agree with you when you say "You cannot beat precision mechanics with boards!" Yes many 70 year old projectors run great, but how about the prints? How many mass produced prints are made with "precision?" Plus, when you have other projectionists at the theater that scratch prints, digital just works better (here at least.) People seem to notice the difference so far, we have been getting compliments on how great the picture looks, espeially how vibrant the colors are.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-26-2008 05:21 PM                     Ironically, color is one area where d-cinema is way behind the curve compared to 35mm. Maybe these are the same people who talk about how good computer-generated posters look when they have huge in-your-face pixelation because somebody blew up a 72dpi image to 300dpi. (Maybe your d-cinema projector is a lot brighter than your 35mm projector?) --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Kevin Fairchild Expert Film Handler Posts: 125 From: Kennewick, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2008 posted 12-26-2008 05:49 PM                     Really? I thought that colors were supposed to be much superior on digital. If I'm not mistaken, isn't a 3-chip DLP system supposed to have no fewer than 35 trillion colors? (But yes, our digital screens are using a brighter bulb)  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-26-2008 05:58 PM                     quote: Kevin Fairchild Plus, when you have other projectionists at the theater that scratch prints, digital just works better (here at least.) You hit the nail on the head! It works better here too! Thats why the majority of 1st run screens in the Salt Lake City area are now digital, close to 70 I believe. I'd wager that less than 10% of the film locations I service really care about print handling and proper care of both film and equipment... let alone would they know it or not if the old mechanical projector is even working properly to be able to report trouble. This is much more the reason why film has gotten bad... the 35mm prints I saw running of "Day The Earth Stood Still" looked excellent to say the least... much better than the digital counterpart... however the 2K digital counterpart will ALWAYS stay looking like new, while the filum condition will quickly deteriorate, sometimes in just a matter of a half dozen showings at some locations. As for the color I believe that JPEG 2000 is on a par with the color spectrum that Eastman Negative film can resolve... Lets not forget that film is also limited in its color resolving ability. Digital just can't do the deep blacks that film can... yet! Mark  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-26-2008 06:07 PM                     My understanding is that there are two facets of the color issue that apply to d-cinema versus film. Perhaps some of our colorimetry experts will weigh in... The first is that the ability of digital projectors to reproduce color is more limited. In fact, you might see colors that look more vibrant simply because they are not the correct colors. On the other hand, you will see more consistent colors on a single projector throughout a feature. Various people complain on this site with some regularity about the inconsistency of the labs' color work from one reel to the next; not an issue with d-cinema. (And to be honest, whether the projector in screen 3 has the same colorimetry as screen 17 is less of a big deal. It is the transitions that are the most objectionable). The second is compression -- one of the first places compression gets applied is in color space. So when you see a gradient or blend from one color to another, look closely and see if you can discern transitions or steps in the color. Look at, for example, a blue sky. Maybe slightly different but related is contrast. It's tough for d-cinema to get the same contrast ratio that film can produce, and that leads to an (effective) narrowing of the color space. log2(35 trillion) is 45 bits...that doesn't sound right to me. DCI specs 12-bit color (that means each red, green, or blue pixel has a value between 0 and 4095). I'm out of my depth here, but I think a good d-cinema projector will have trouble reproducing that 12-bit color definitively. --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Richard Fowler Film God Posts: 2392 From: Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 12-26-2008 07:26 PM                     In a perfect world the Digital Cinema DMD chips with proper processing should handle 16 bit. 12 is good, especially looking a 8 and 10 bit displays. Color space of digital is not as wide as a perfect 35mm print; you can see the difference on a file running on a 3 chip projector, cyan ( blue-green ) is less precise. I recently ran a digital press screening with forest foliage and foggy blue skys which was knocking on the cyan end point too much. What impress many people with digital is the edge to edge illumination ( due to the integrator rod optics ) which make the image seem more colorful and brighter than a typical 35mm cinema projector with a hot spot.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-27-2008 12:47 AM                     What is with this hot-spot myth? My film systems are no less even in illumination than my digitals...sheesh...Sure, you CAN get hot-spots on film...that is normally due to lamphouse and lens choice. Whereas the digital folks have the luxuary, for now, of having a small enough platform (what do we have, 1.2" and .98" chips designed from a common supplier, regardless of who's projector it is in) to have an easier time to design it all, you should be able to have nearly identical illumination characteristics, film or digital. As to color...film's color space is notably larger than DCinema's (there are several CIE charts out there that show the various color spaces). It is true, the color of DCinema is more like a technicolor type color...there is a certain phoniness to it at the same time it is very vibrant. Then again, a typical release print's color has a certain dullness to it. Color uniformity from reel-to-reel...DCinema wins, particularly in a release print situation. As to print degredation...while yes it is possible to have it degrade in a few shows...there is no inherent reason for it...there are many venues that do not suffer such degredation. I too believe, if you sucked at film cinema...you will end up sucking at DCinema. Caring is not technology dependant. Steve  |  IP: Logged Richard Fowler Film God Posts: 2392 From: Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 12-27-2008 02:30 AM                     As a myth buster most lamphouse systems have a 75 to 80% bright spot which can be defocus to flat with in limits based on lens / optical bench / size of bulb. I have set up plenty of screening and grading rooms which are flat....if you throw enough money at 35mm projection systems you will get better results. How many cinema lamphouses has glass compound reflectors or integrated xenon lamp module that Kodak had patented a system? CIE color space rendering for D Cinema does seem to exhibit Technicolor / Kodachrome bias on much of the product. Using LUT programs to set up the limits for display are becoming more common.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-27-2008 09:47 AM                     quote: Steve Guttag Sure, you CAN get hot-spots on film...that is normally due to lamphouse and lens choice. Steve, I absolutely disagree! I believe you'd find most lamphouse/ projector/lens combos are capable of at least meeting SMPTE illumination specs... some screen installations are poorly designed and or installed properly but the main culprit is due to the many booth operators who just don't know how to properly replace a lamp... not that doing so is necessarily easy! A few lamphouses do make this job easy but most do not. There are some lamphouses with clumsy adjusters such as the Super Lum-Ex or Super 80. Old Christies with cracked or broken nylon gears and many consoles that have their adjustments more or less hidden... or you need a three foot long allen wrench slid in past AC wiring to get to an adjuster. Myself, I blame most of the manufacturers for the uneven light on the screens across America because of the difficulties involved for a novice during lamp replacement. As for digital... it certainbly doesn't cure this woe 100%, especially in a projector like the BARCO DP-100 where replacing a lamp can be a daunting task for even a trained novice but a couple of manufacturers, NEC and Christie have made very large strides towards making lamp replacement much easier and adjustment highly accurate. Is digital illumination flatter??? I'd say that except for a handful of screens such as Steve's that do receive proper maintainance... yes, most digital screens have much flatter illumination than the 35mm predecessor that was previously installed. I also find the light much more pleasant light to look at. quote: Richard Fowler CIE color space rendering for D Cinema does seem to exhibit Technicolor / Kodachrome bias on much of the product. Using LUT programs to set up the limits for display are becoming more common. Richard, Thats one advantage of the use of todays Digital Intermediates. The final color mix is determined by the colorist, director, D.P., it has nothing to do with being digital or film. I can remember many a film with highly saturated colors and there exist many a digital release with muted colors. You can go either way with either system. One thing I will note here is that D-Cinema is far more capable of presenting the look of I.B. Technicolor properly (excepting the blacks) than any I.B. transfer to Eastman stock will render. There are still colors that Eastman can't do such as certain greens, yellows and violets that I.B. was fully capable of and D-Cinema has no trouble reproducing them. Mark  |  IP: Logged Geena Phillips Expert Film Handler Posts: 198 From: Norcross, GA / USA Registered: Apr 2006 posted 03-10-2009 11:14 PM                        quote: Mark Gulbrandsen I'll predict that the next one to bite the dust will be Qube... What do you base that on, Mark? I ask because it looks like Qube will be our company's server choice for our first three screens of digital.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-10-2009 11:28 PM                     The cube is a excellent server and there encoders are used in many post production houses so they will probably hang in for a long time  |  IP: Logged

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