Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: New Non-Digital Projection System

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Posted by Kenn Fong (Member # 118) on 08-16-1999, 12:26 AM:

Brad,

I thought your readers might be interested in this story from the Los Angeles Times about Maxi-Vision. Apparently it uses more of the print because it eliminates the analog track.

New Non-Digital Projection System http://www.latimes.com/HOME/BUSINESS/COTOWN/t000071357.html
Maxi-Vision (sidebar) http://www.latimes.com/HOME/BUSINESS/COTOWN/t000071358.html

I have no opinion on this. I'm just an usher in a movie theatre who writes screenplays at night. I read your forums because the projectionists are the smartest people in the theatre. It helps me understand them. (Not brown-nosing. Some of the concession people are aggressively stupid -- one high school grad couldn't mix soft drinks properly because she didn't know there were four quarts to a gallon. As she wasn't the least bit ashamed.)

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Kenn Fong http://qwertyuiop.net
Screenwriter's Home Page

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-16-1999, 08:30 AM:

It sounds interesting, and I would like to see it demonstrated. But that is about it. There are several reasons why this process will probably never see wide release. One of which is that everyone will have to modify their projectors to run the film. This reminds me of CDP, or COMPACT DISTRIBUTION PRINTS that United Artists Theatre Circuit was trying to develop. It used 2 and a half perfs per fame, instead of 3 that "MaxiVision" uses. I just don't like that. It would eliminate anamorphic lenses (good) but the image area of the film would still be less. But it runs twice as fast, doubling the detail? I didn't know that you could interlace film. I really can't have a true opinion until I see it demonstrated, which probably will not happen.

Also, why is it called "MaxiVision"? I think they could have come up with a more professional sounding name. It sounds like a tampon or something.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-16-1999, 11:49 AM:

Those that have seen the 48fps MaxiVision demo (e.g., Roger Ebert, Dean Cundey ASC, etc.) have been very impressed. Ebert even featured it on his TV show. There is no doubt that higher frame rate and larger image area improve presentation quality.

Joe Redifer is correct that a new "Switchable Format Projector" is required, which has a switchable pull-down (3-perf and 4-perf), and variable frame rate (up to 48fps). The proposed system also uses a "Super 35" format, where the analog soundtrack is eliminated to allow more image area for the picture.

The MaxiVision website is at:
http://www.maxivisioncinema.com

I personally like the concept, but think it will be a "hard sell". It demands 100% reliability from the digital soundtrack (no analog back-up), and would require "dual inventory" prints for quite some time.

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John Pytlak

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-16-1999, 09:36 PM:

I have been reading and thinking more about MaxiVision and I must commend and condemn it.

I commend it because it is using film, not digitally compressed video (yuck). I am glad that they believe in film enough to try to improve it. Digital "film" will be horribly compressed, even more so than DVD. And I hate the picture on most DVDs because it is so noisy and has tons of artifacts!

I must condemn it for the 48 frames per second thing. Why? More is better, right? Not always. Our brain does quite a bit of interpolation when we watch a normal 24fps movie. Even when we watch that same movie on TV. Looking at something running twice as fast will look much different. There will be less interpolation by the brain and it will look more like footage from COPS or a soap opera. I think that 48 fps would look too "real" to be acceptable for viewing a fictional movie. When I shoot video with my Canon XL1, I always shoot in 30 frames per second mode as opposed to 60 fields per second. Sure, it is a bit more jittery, but 60 fields per second just looks too much like camcorder footage, news footage, or cheesy soap operas.

I also don't like the $17,000 price tag to convert a single projector to run MaxipadVision.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-17-1999, 11:29 AM:

Still $17,000 is a lot less than the cost of a DLP system

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-17-1999, 02:49 PM:

Does anyone know today's "street price" of the equipment that was used for each of the "Star Wars Episode 1" electronic cinema screenings?

I heard the DLP projector was a specially tuned prototype version of the SXGA DLP projectors just coming on the market at somewhere near $125K. I heard the Pluto 360-gigabyte drive was about $100K, and the D/A converter was about $50K. Not to mention the custom MMR-8 24-bit digital sound system, or specially modified lamphouse, or server, or...

Am I out in left field? (I suspect I may be too low in my estimate).

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John Pytlak

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-17-1999, 06:21 PM:

The only price I've heard was right from the TI rep's mouth. That was $80,000 for the projector alone, and does not include any hard drives or source playback hardware of any kind.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-17-1999, 07:28 PM:

No, John. The prices that you list are for the HOME VERSION of digital cinema! The real deal will cost 10 times more for absolutely no reason

Posted by George Roher (Member # 91) on 08-17-1999, 09:59 PM:

And don't forget the Technician getting paid $50 an hour to run those special screenings. The reason those shows actually looked good is because there was a full time Tech getting paid a ton of money to run that one show, constantly tweak everything, and make everything perfect. Of course, TI was trying to sell their product so they had to make it look good. AMC and Regal won't have that obligation.

Posted by Martin Frandsen (Member # 74) on 08-04-2000, 04:42 AM:

Just wondering how it's going with the Maxivision 48 project? does it have a future? Can the projectors currently being used, upgrades to run at 48 frames, or does it require a special Maxivision projector?

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 08-04-2000, 06:38 AM:

Personally, I'd like to see an upgrade to 30fps. The image is markedly clearer and sharper. You really don't appreciate it fully until you drop back to 24fps and notice just how bad it really is. Kind of like increasing the current on xenon. It's not so noticeable on screen on the way up, but winding it down it is very noticeable.

PS: even dolby digital performs better at higher frame rates...not 30fps obviously, but at 25fps I can get a Kelmar basement reader to run at an error rate of 0. to 1. on a three week old print of (unfilmguarded) The Patriot. At 24fps its at 2. to 3.

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The Olympics are coming...RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

Posted by Kevin Crawford (Member # 469) on 08-04-2000, 11:47 PM:

Just sit back in the lazy boy, close your eyes, and imaging the knocking of an ultramittant running at 2X speed. And if you need to change a belt on a Christie every year, how about every 5 months? I don't like the idea.

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 08-05-2000, 01:41 AM:

Back in my college days I took a class in bio-engineering (actually a whole year of that crap). The human brain can only process 30 frames per second. Any more is just eye candy, and tends to overload the optical nerves. Thats why 30fps looks so much more realistic than 24fps. The human brain can see the choppiness in a 24 frame movie, but when you watch it in 30 frames you really never see it. A switch to 30 fps format for film would definately rock.

dave

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 08-05-2000, 02:42 AM:

But maybe not rock so much in a booth with 10 or so machines chattering away...bring on the earplugs!

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The Olympics are coming...RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

Posted by Pat Moore (Member # 380) on 08-05-2000, 05:44 AM:

Some other comments -- eagerly awaited, I know...
The price bandied about the street right now for the cinema versions of DLP Systems are a "List" Price in the low- to mid-$300,000 range. There will be plenty of deals available, of course, but that's still a sticker-shock number. I'm with John P., I just don't see much relief in the near future. Content is not there to justify prices near that level and the theatre's coffers are a bit short right now.
For Maxivision, I love parts of the concept, but also have to say that a lot of this has been talked about and proposed before. Maxivision kind of combines a lot of things that have been talked about before, using an electronic film motion system to cover the bases.
30-frame projection rates have long been advocated by many, many folks but the industry (production and exhibition side) wasn't too thrilled about needing 25% film stock to do it -- cost issue there. Projectors could be pretty easily modified and most recently manufactured mechanisms would take 30FPS -- I feel good saying that about our stuff, anyway. Either a fairly simple gearing change is required, or an 3-phase motor and inverter would allow either 24 or 30FPS operation by a switch. We even built a series of automations ten and twelve years ago anticipating that dual mode of operation possibility, but as we all know it never quite got there.
The industry got a little serious about 30FPS, but wanted to tie it to 3-perf pull-down to do it. Rationalization was that most release prints were in 1.85/1 anyway, and that 3-perf would cover that format. The conversion costs were pretty significant now, since intermittent and film handling pieces needed heavy modification, not to mention the problems of wrapping film around the smaller diameter sprocket and keeping the image steady. It wasn't easy to go back-and-forth between formats on regular machines -- that's why an "electronic" version of a machine would make sense.
So the potential benefit of 30FPS was offset by locking ourselves into the small image problems of the 1.85/1 ratio -- doesn't matter how fast you run it or what anamorphics you might put in front of it, it's still 1.85 with most of its problems.
There were some great demo's of 35mm running at 30FPS a few years ago -- wow. It's not Oklahoma on 70mm, but it was pretty damn good. Look at a scope image in that format and it's a wow -- a lot of movement and other image problems seem to go away, film flex effects are actually reduced and the 60IPS rate is really good to the eye. Problem was that extra film cost, especially on the production side. How much the "real costs" might be, I can't say for sure, but it's pretty high. If you talk to those folks about a 25% increase in negative stock and the resulting processing costs going to positives, etc., they give a small whimper in protest.
Maxivision's approach to use the whoile film frame is a great idea, if we could get away without the comfort level (and necessity in much of the market) of an analog soundtrack. But that's just good old "Super 35" -- again, something available today and talked about often in the past.
Those of us on the image side of things would love to see it in theatre's today. Run that at 30FPS, with or without an anmorphic for ratio changes, and you've got a formidable image projection system that any digital format would have a tough time dealing with anytime in the near future.
As it is, leave the soundtrack in place, use the whole frame and use a 1.5X Anamorphic for 1.85/1. John and others (myself included) advocate such a format -- again, use the whole film image and it's amazing how good it can be.
I hate 1.85/1 -- anybody notice?
Too early on a Saturday -- time for some coffee.

Pat

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-07-2000, 01:36 PM:

Using a 1.5X anamorphic lens with the current "scope" aperture (0.825 x 0.690 inches) gives a 1.79:1 aspect ratio on the screen, and 1.5X the light of the current (wasteful) "flat" 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The concept was first proposed and demonstrated by Glenn Berggren and IscoOptic in 1984, and known as "IscoVision".

I will be presenting a technical paper and film demonstration at the SMPTE Technical Conference in Pasadena CA on October 20. The title is "Scope 1.5X -- Squeezing Even Higher Quality from 35 mm Prints". Here is the synopsis of the paper:

_________________________________________

The trend to larger, wall-to-wall theatre screens has made film's superior image quality all the more important. Movie audiences expect bright, colorful, sharp, and steady images on these huge screens, but are sometimes disappointed, especially for the most commonly used 35 mm 1.85:1 "flat" format. Recent surveys by the Lucasfilm Theatre Alignment Program (TAP) and the KODAK SCREENCHECK Experience program have shown that many theatres fall far short of the 16 footlambert screen luminance aim specified in standard SMPTE 196M.

Today, two 35 mm print formats specified in standard SMPTE 195 are most commonly used for theatrical presentation. About 70 percent of feature films use the 1.85:1 "flat" non-anamorphic format, having an image area of only 0.825 x 0.446 inches. About 30 percent of feature films use the 2.39:1 "scope" format, with a much larger image area of 0.825 x 0.690 inches, using a 2X anamorphic lens to fill the wider screen. Because of the larger image and more efficient utilization of the film image area and projector light, the "scope" format is almost always brighter, sharper, steadier, and less grainy than the "flat" format.

The origin of the "scope" format was the very successful introduction of 20th Century Fox's CinemaScope format in 1953. By using an anamorphic lens, CinemaScope was able to fully utilize the image area on the film to fill larger screens, without significantly changing the well-established and standardized infrastructure of 35 mm film with 4-perforation pulldown, shown at 24 frames per second. The "simple elegance" of using an anamorphic lens to more efficiently use the film image area was a remarkable engineering achievement.

Can the same approach be used to improve the less efficient "flat" format? Yes! In 1984, Glenn Berggren proposed and demonstrated "IscoVision", a 35 mm print format that used a 1.5X squeeze anamorphic lens to produce a 1.85:1 aspect ratio using the larger "scope" image area on the print. The new format offered improved brightness, steadiness, color contrast, and depth of focus. Presentations to the MPAA, Inter-Society Committee, and SMPTE clearly showed the advantages over the normal "flat" format. Despite initial enthusiasm from the movie industry, the format was never adopted. Many believe it was a "chicken or egg" problem: lens manufacturers would not design and build 1.5X anamorphic camera lenses unless there was an established market, and there was no market because theatre owners would not equip theatres with new lenses unless productions were made in the new format.

The recent proliferation of huge screens in "megaplex" theatres has created a renewed interest in this improved 35 mm print format. Recent trends to "Super 35" production allow the use of available non-anamorphic camera lenses for the 2.39:1 "scope" format. The same could be done for the "Scope 1.5X" format, doing the anamorphic "squeeze" during printing.

This paper will reexamine and demonstrate the many advantages of a "Scope 1.5X" format, and explore ways in which this format could be implemented today.

______________________________________

Pat Moore is correct: "Those of us on the image side of things would love to see it in theatre's today. Run that at 30FPS, with or without an anmorphic for ratio changes, and you've got a formidable image projection system that any digital format would have a tough time dealing with anytime in the near future. As it is, leave the soundtrack in place, use the whole frame and use a 1.5X Anamorphic for 1.85/1. John and others (myself included) advocate such a format -- again, use the whole film image and it's amazing how good it can be".

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-07-2000, 05:01 PM:

The only big problem I can see with ISCO vision is the fact a lot of cheap "theatre owners" will dig out there old Panatars, HilluxVal's, SuperSocpes, and Kalee Varamoprhs and use them rather than get the high quality optics the format deserves
The same mentality that is bantered around that a smal HID video projector "is good enough" for E cinema

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-08-2000, 07:01 AM:

Gordon: I hope these "museum piece" lenses remain in a display case, and not on projectors.

But the greatest challenge will be convincing theatre owners that a few thousand dollars for a new anamorphic lens is worth it to get 50% more light on the screen for the "Scope 1.5X" format. A theatre that is now struggling to get 11 footlamberts screen luminance will get 16 footlamberts by simply changing a lens. Also, originating in non-anamorphic "Super-35" format requires labs to print the master positive to duplicate negative stage on a pin-registered optical printer to do the 1.5X anamorphic "squeeze", which should improve steadiness and sharpness in the release prints.

Posted by Pat Moore (Member # 380) on 08-08-2000, 07:09 AM:

Gordon, I hope you're wrong but you never know. I've seen worse things happen so I imagine that could. I'd still like to get to that point, though -- let's get ISCOVISION going and see what happens.