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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: The end of film.
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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 07-20-2015 04:03 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
I just said it was a rarity for a car to go over 100,000 and I was right on that. In the 80s and prior, most people would trade them in or junk them long before that. Notice I said MOST people, there would always be exceptions.
If we all had to switch back to 1960s-era cars, I think there would be a wail of protest that would be heard to the moon and back. The comfort/luxury/convenience improvements alone would be enough to convince most people that today's cars (and especially pickup trucks) are vastly better.
Absolutely. While most American cars were relatively easy to fix, there was always something wrong and many people with decent incomes would always trade-in their cars after two years, rather than suffer through the unreliability. American manufacturers especially produced a lot of incredibly awful cars with major defects.
Ever notice that in spite of how much mechanics can get today to fix cars that there are actually relatively few places to get cars fixed? When I was a kid, every gas station did repairs. Now few do. That's mostly because cars have become so much more reliable (recalls aside). My current car isn't even scheduled for a tune-up until 100,000 miles. My bicycle has given me more problems than my car.
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As far as digital projectors go, yes, they won't last anywhere near as long as 35mm mechanical projectors. So what? The technology is going to radically change over time anyway so they don't need to last.
All this moaning about the end of 35mm is ridiculous, IMO. Whether good or bad, it's over - digital won, get over it. They'll be a few stragglers that will hang on for a long time by playing just what's still available on film and many museums and universities will keep their 35mm projectors, but I think anyone who doesn't think that we're already living in a digital world is living in complete denial. And while a well-maintained theatre playing new prints by a trained projectionist could be a great experience, the fact remains that the average theatre has far better presentation today than during the film era. There was a holdout in my area and the last 35mm presentation I saw there was really kind of awful. Without renovating the theatre, they recently (and surprisingly) switched to digital. I saw "Love & Mercy" there and was really impressed at how good the presentation was. Of course the theatre was still empty, so I don't know if they're going to last anyway.
Having said that, I'll be very interested to see "The Hateful Eight" in 70mm Ultra Pan.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 07-20-2015 05:55 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
There just isn't a whole lot going on in a film projector. As such, there isn't a whole lot to keep them going.
Conversely, in a digital projector EVERYTHING must be running near perfectly or the whole thing just stops. Heck, you have self-inflected injuries with the whole KDM debacle. There are MANY shows that don't run because there is a problem with KDMs...how they are made or how/when they get there. Who hasn't lost shows due to a KDM issue?
It's a bit of a surprise, but I do get that there's still an undercurrent of resentment about digital. To quote a former Secretary of State... "what, at this point, does it matter?"
I'm an owner. I felt the pain of writing a check for 3 big Barco machines. I still haven't scrapped the old gear, but I'm starting to accept that the day is coming.
Having made the transition, comparisons to the trusty old Simplexes are pointless. It's a new world now, and the reliability of the digital gear will be determined, at least to some extent, by the new maintenance regimens that we have to apply.
In the 3 years I've had my digital gear, I haven't found them difficult to maintain, only different.
It really doesn't matter how long a digital projector will last, what it costs to keep it going and what kind of education you need to do it. This is the new normal. Get used to it.
Oh... I have yet to have a KDM problem. Guess I'm just lucky. I make sure I have my drives and keys by Wednesday or I find out why. That gives me Thursday nite / Friday morning to check keys and QC the film.
I've had more trouble with delivery than anything technical. Fortunately, I have a good relationship with one of the indoor houses in my area, and have borrowed drives from them on 2 or 3 occasions over the past year or so.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-21-2015 06:30 AM
quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
Just curious, are hardware parts still available for series 1 projectors?
Depends on the projector. Some of the very first generation series 1s are now not 100% supported. For example the Barco DP90 and DP100 is no longer supported but they share a LOT of parts with the DP3000, a late model series 1 so, as such, they are supported to a great degree. Likewise with Chrisitie. The original series 1 Christie's were not RoHS compliant so those original parts are no longer available but it shares a LOT (perhaps all) with late model CP2000S and SB...which ARE supported. At this point, I believe all of the late model series 1 projectors are fully supported.
quote: Jack Ondracek
Having made the transition, comparisons to the trusty old Simplexes are pointless.
I think you just jumping into a discussion in the middle. It is just a discussion that drifted into the reliability of one technology versus another and in particular if you had to guarantee that a show would go on and your choice is a well maintained film projector versus a well maintained digital one...which would you choose? I stand by that even if you are VERY familiar with the digital projector and perhaps not very familiar with the film one...the film one still has a greater likelihood of showing the movie from beginning to end. And more to the point...if a problem did show up, the odds one can overcome it on a film projector is MUCH higher than on a digital one. When that red tail light pops up on your digital projector and the show stops..what are you going to do? You reboot the projector (the first step, typically)...still red still no show...what are you going to do? You can open up the projector and see everything connected and the boards are all spic and span...what are you going to do?
The discussion was strictly on the inherent reliability of one technology versus another and, as a consequence, the longevity of one versus another. It is not a discussion of the big mistake we've made by going digital. Honestly, in the past couple of years, unless you are a special venue, when people have asked to keep both film and digital equipment side-by-side in their booth I've rolled my eyes and asked "Why?" "Is it for booth tours?" "Do you really think you will be running film again?" Because, first off, if you don't have 2-projectors, no archive is ever going to loan you a print and just because you do, doesn't mean you'll be on their list of approved places. Without the films, there is no point in having both systems integrated. It is a total waste of time and money.
We have our dual systems where it makes sense...the American Film Institute, for example...they still run film regularly and they do have their connections to just about every collection that will loan out a print. Examples like this can be found around the country but they are so few and far between.
As to you two not having KDMs problems...I'm almost shocked. Anyone that deals with KDMs on a large scale deals with the problem on a weekly basis. If you are associated with film-festivals...both drive formatting and keys can be a nightmare. If you do screenings, those KDMs can be just a few hours long and I'm not the only one that has expired mid show...nothing like seeing the status going red on a studio screening. Yes, it will play through once started (unless it takes more than 6-hours) but if you have to stop it...that show is dead. But I consider the KDM thing self-inflicted. Once a title hits home-video, there really isn't a point to KDMs on older titles because who are you stopping? The thief will just rip the movie and the honest person is going to pay your money anyway.
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 07-21-2015 07:26 AM
I am sorry to say, we never had an issue/glitch with our Sony+AP20, trying to remember the last 2-1/2 years of operation... No, not with KDMs/content, not with the equipment, and it is operated by 'normal staff' most of the time. Yes, we did have a dead board once that was swapped out within a day, that was the only single lost show. Festivals and KDMs - yes, that's certainly a completely different story. But what would a 'traditional festival' without DCI projection look like? Yikes!
Yes, you can do much to keep problems away by establishing structures that help running operations properly. Dedicated email addresses for KDMs, backups, calenders, logbooks, assigning certain operations only to staff with a higher level of training or routine, attaching stickers to switches, don't mess around with gear unnecessarily, etc.
I know we would have issues if we would assume our normal staff being able to ingest content properly, create SPLs and run a show. That is done only by our core team. So, reliability depends on proper work structuring, not just the equipment.
When I try to compare this with the 3 years of operating our 35mm gear before the conversion, it is hard to compare it. Never a lost show, yes, but quite a few glitches, but that was a fully manual booth, so the 'more or less trained' projectionists had a lot more options for making errors.
Actually I prefer the tighter control about show presentation we have now. I can adjust playlists at night to run perfectly smooth down to light and curtain timing, sound levels, etc., and that is repeated for every single show. Yes, that would have been possible with a modern, fully automated 35mm booth as well, though certainly not to the same degree of flexibility. Which is the real benefit of the digital systems, much more flexibility, we are doing a lot more shows and different shows now with digital projection. 35mm limited us to commercial movie releases only.
- Carsten
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-21-2015 12:27 PM
D-cinema is a win for festivals, if only because, by the time it became common, most festival "content" was coming in on some video format, anyway, and I like not having to install rented video projectors for each festival and then un-install them afterwards. At least now the typical theatre already comes with permanently installed high-quality video projectors, so the festival just needs to bring in playback decks and connect them. Further, D-cinema projectors allow the configuration of format and lens presets, which makes multi-format shows way easier than in the past, and allows, for example, a 2.39:1 feature to be shown correctly after a 1.37:1 short.
Not that this is without problems--home-made DCPs and non-working (or nonexistant) keys are annoying, but I will take this over the state of video circa 2002-2010 any day. I am actually hoping for the day when all festival video content is DCPs. That is probably a few years away, but it will be a win when it happens. Now, if only people would stop making left/right (only) sound mixes.... Oh, and I hope that the issues with subtitles and D-cinema get fixed soon, too.
I do wish that every festival venue had maintained at least some semblance of 35mm capability on at least one screen, but that has not happened in some cases, leaving filmmakers who actually did make films on film without the option of exhibiting them that way.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-21-2015 12:30 PM
quote: Carsten Kurz
I can adjust playlists at night to run perfectly smooth down to light and curtain timing, sound levels, etc., and that is repeated for every single show.
One of my favorite benefits of digital is being able to adjust trailers on the fly. If we're playing a kiddie movie, for example and happen to get nothing but older kids/adults to a show, I'll "copy" the current playlist, delete everything up to the feature, and insert whatever different trailers I want to play. Then at the end of the currently playing trailer, stop the proceedings, quickly load up the copied playlist and hit play.
This also works well to insert an extra trailer or two if the crowd is unexpectedly big and the concession is running behind.
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 07-21-2015 03:33 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
As someone that has sat in an audience for an industry screening on a Sony projector and the screening had to be cancelled since it couldn't be brought back on line in a reasonable amount of time that your experience is not "universal."
Oh well it seems to be quite universal, as I mentioned above that our system experienced such a breakdown as well and we were not able to get it online in that situation just as well ;-)
Aside from that, we had:
- no clogged log memory
- no wait for log download/cleanup
- no bricked enigmas
- no subtitles disappearing
- no 'wait before playback' license check nonsense
- no lost projector cues
- no long wait for lens adjustments (2-3s total)
- no playlist scroll bugs
- no 'insufficient space' for KDM errors, no need to delete 'all' KDMs to clean it
- no lens shake
- full 'always 4k' j2c signal decoding
- no dedicated 2k/4k/auto IMB presets with wrong scaling or subtitle placement
- no lens focus, size and position drift (and I mean NO lens drift in 2.5 years)
- no projector firmware unable to keep focus for a full year
- no flashes, image droputs, false colors, noise, grey pattern... you name it on screen or whatsoever. And I mean NEVER.
- no intermittent play, no sync issues, no watermarking audio distortion, no robosound, no click or plops, no spurious audio channel swaps
- thus: no hotfixes
- no unsynced projector/server software updates, unified single system updater
- no sloppiness on DCI/SMPTE definitions like messing with 64Bit signer certificate numbers
- no playtime firmware upgrades to enable HFR
- no encrypted logs
- no 2TB disc limit
- no havoc running show or IMB clocks
- no practical limits on frame rates, data rate, signal formats within DCI/SMPTE specs (interlaced HDMI video support)
- no short limit of format presets
- no abstract naming and assignment/selection of presets - all the same free assignable names on projector and server
- integrated server and projector GUI - adjust presets while using them
- no need to reseat boards to get it working again
- no lost 3D sync
- no burst lamps+mirrors
- no need to to manually input lamp serial numbers
- no risc to run lamps past warranty
- no coolant exchange, refill, or broken connectors
- no USB 2.0
- no slow ingest, dynamic ingest speed adoption between play&ingest and full ingest
- no low contrast/raised black level
- no premium for 4k
- no 2k only systems
- no cheap 2k only lenses
- no software RAID
- no 'TLS/SSL/connection to projector lost' playground
- no need to decide on or supply your own UPS or rewire for it
- no need to keep expensive spare lamps on site
- no need to keep spare discs on site (triple redundancy)
- Sub-SPLs and intermissions from day one
- no longish reboot times (around 1min)
- no need for proprietary remote client
- no licenses/KDMs for software upgrades
- no lack of power-off switch
- no unnecessary power consumption (1.1kW total server+projector+UPS for 10m screen), no need for HVAC
No, they are not perfect, certainly, no system is, and I AM missing some features (mainly for my private entertainment), but I have yet to find any obvious fundamental glitch in them of the above sort. And we are primarily talking glitches, not features, yes?
But I'll stop here before Darth Maul kicks me out for saying 'Jehova'. I went too far already... ;-)
- Carsten
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