Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: My Digital Cinema Thoughts (A little belated)

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Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 08-05-2002, 12:21 AM:

I meant to write this after seeing Episode II in DLP but didn't have time:

I saw Episode II in DLP at the Century Orleans 18 in Las Vegas. The screen was ~54 feet wide (based on ceiling tiles) and I sat about 1 screen height back (which was the first row of true stadium seating) like I normally do. I'll start with the good.

The Good:
-Very sharp focus
-No Dirt (obviously)
-No Jump and Weave (obviously)
-The sound was great (although the THX "storm" trailer sounds better on my T2 DVD at home but this could be due to the mix or theatre volume setting)

The Bad:
-Color seems a little off
-The screen was way underlit to the point that it was almost created eye strain to watch some of the darker scenes.
-Hello pixels. The stair-stepping on titles (including the DLP logo) was a little annoying). Also, during certain scenes I could clearly see verticle lines between each pixel. This was evident from the very beginning when the starwars logo disappeared into the distance, it seemed to have flickering verticle black lines in it.

Overall, it looked better than I thought, was grossly underlit and the lack of resolution in the photography was very evident at some points (the grass when Anakin and Padme were in the field stands out in my memory). I'd like to see the Kodak Digital Cinema system in action to compare and see if these problems still exist. I would say that if the quality bar is raised and the industry doesn't just settle for "this is good enough" then digital cinema should be able to surpass the quality of 35mm within a few years. I'm very afraid that the industry will settle on current technology which is not as good as properly projected 35mm (although, it's a lot closer than I thought it would be).

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 08-05-2002, 01:14 AM:

Your experience is a perfect example as to why quality control for DLP will be as much all over the map as film projection. The ZIEGFELD theatre in NYC ran rolling stock ads on 35mm film, and previews and STAR WARS: AOTC in DLP (Technicolor) and both were extremely bright showing on the full-width Ziegfeld screen. Of course, the DLP projection had the problem with crushed blacks (dark grey, actually), but the brightness was there.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-05-2002, 01:23 AM:

quote:
Of course, the DLP projection had the problem with crushed blacks (dark grey, actually)

That was one of the things which made the DLP show I saw so irritating: the masking at the sides was so much darker than the adjacent picture when it was supposed to be black.

quote:
, but the brightness was there.

This was not the case in the show I caught. Low screen illumination, exacerbating the poor contrast, but probably helping to hide the resolution problems & some coarse CGI stuff.

I'm trying hard to think of something comparable. Even the worst educational & industrial 16mm shows I've seen were better - even when the brightness was down, they were usually sharper black & white prints which are more easily "read". The only thing that comes close would be some showings of 8mm movies I've seen. I'm not joking. That thing gave me a headache.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-05-2002, 02:12 AM:

quote:
I'm trying hard to think of something comparable. Even the worst educational & industrial 16mm shows I've seen were better - even when the brightness was down, they were usually sharper black & white prints which are more easily "read". The only thing that comes close would be some showings of 8mm movies I've seen. I'm not joking. That thing gave me a headache.

You *are* joking, or at least exaggerating, aren't you? If not, then there was something seriously wrong with what you saw. 16mm, at its best, can look pretty god, but at its worst, can be really dire; surely the digital presentation you saw wasn't this bad, was it. From what I've seen, I would say that it's at least equal to a *good* 16mm presentation; but very much more expensive. It is not equal to 35mm, and nowhere near good 70mm.

I did once see super 8 projected on a screen of about thirty feet, using an Elmo GS1200 xenon projector. The picture was very dim, but in resolution terms, didn't look as bad as I exppected. It was a very good print, and the lack of brightness probably helped in this respect.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 08-05-2002, 10:23 AM:

Stephen Furley wrote:

You *are* joking, or at least exaggerating, aren't you? If not, then there was something seriously wrong with what you saw.

Exactly my point. If there is such a difference in screen illuminitation at this early point in the game, imagine the widespread quality differences if implemented on a nationwide basis. Digital is already proving itself to be lacking consistancy of presentation, especially when theatres shortchange on lamps and adjustments. Even in the same theatre, the first days showings may look quite different than the last day's.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-06-2002, 02:36 AM:

quote:
You *are* joking, or at least exaggerating, aren't you?

No, that's what it was comparable to. I'm not saying that it looked like 8mm projected +/- 40 feet wide, but the low resolution, dim picture was like the mush I remember seeing when over at some other folks houses when they ran dark, poorly shot 8mm on cheap projectors.

And because Stephen was so impertinent & reckless to imply that I might be indulging in hyperbole, I will now torment him with this photograph from the first day on the archaeology site.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-06-2002, 02:41 AM:

Pictures need to be emailed in unless it is time sensitive. Also, crappy hosting services such as Angelfire will not permit you to link outside of their pages.

Please read the FAQ on submitting pictures.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-06-2002, 03:39 AM:

William,

I have seen DLP twice, firstly at a normal screening at the Odeon Leicester Square, where the screen brightness seemed somewhat less than normal, and the definition was not as good as 35mm, and then, some time later, at a technical demonstration at the National Film Theatre, where various extracts were shown, on film and digital, derived from both digital and film original material. This time the brightness was better, the screen is considerably smaller, but the resolution was still not as good as film, though it did look better than I expected, from the published resolution of the system. During the NFT event the show was stopped for a couple of minutes for technicians from the suppliers of the system to tweak it, so I believe that what I was seeing that day was the best that the system is capable of.

My assessment of it at the end of the day is that all four possible combinations of film and digital origination and projection looked different, and I think I would be able to tell which I was looking at in each case. Of course, there are further complications when a film source is transferred to digital, and then back to film for presentation. Also, just about any manipulation of the image would be possible while it was in digital form.

I do not consider the digital projection system, as it existed at that time to be equal to good 35mm, and certainly nowhere near as good as 70mm. Some people point out that it is better than bad 35mm, which may be true, but I don't see the point in that argument; I don't choose to watch bad 35mm shows, only good ones, therefore, the compasison is irrelevant to me.

I have seen 16 mm shows from the very worst to the very best. At its best, a print direct from a 7245 camera neg run on a Kinoton projector with several kilowatts of lamp behind in on a good screen, and with stereo sep-mag sound it can look surprisingly good, not as good as 35mm, but certainly not bad, as long as the screen is not too large. I would say that you can get a reasonably bright image up to about 7 or 8 metres.

The DLP which I saw at the NFT was at least as good as the best 16mm which I have seen, and was brighter. It was certainly very far removed from being equal to the worst.

If you are being serious, and the picture you saw was as bad as you say, then something was wrong, and I find this worrying. As I said previously, I am pretty sure that what I saw is the best that the system is capable of, therefore, another show might not be as good, but, at the moment, the equipment is almost brand new and I would expect that the manufacturers, suppliers and promoters of this system would want it to be seen in the best possible light (pardon the pun) and that the equipment might therefore be maintained to a better standard than might be the case in a few years time. If things are as bad now as you say they are, then I can see no point at all in going to a cinema to see a film, you would be better off watching it at home. If that happens, then there won't be any cinemas.

Posted by David Rigby (Member # 1301) on 08-06-2002, 05:49 AM:

The show I saw was reasonably bright and pretty sharp. It also had obvious comrpession artifacts and looked lifeless like a giant TFT screen. 16mm doesn't have the resolution in terms of numbers when compared to cinema DLP, but I'd take it over that s*****y laptop image every time. DLP has got a VERY VERY long way to go in my book, and it doesn't simply come down to lumens or pixels.

David

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 08-06-2002, 10:13 AM:

DLP (or any potential digital projection system) is still in the infancy stage, but is rapidly improving. Within a couple of years the STATE-OF-THE-ART will surpass the standard 35mm release print that most theatres get. Now whether that pristine system will be translated into the AVERAGE theatre remains to be seen. Theatres who don't care about quality presentation today probably won't with digital projection, but that is a problem that has been around for years. Digital systems are not the cure all for what ails the theatre industry. Just look at digital sound. With digital soundtracks, all theatres have the potential to present sound as well as the best of the showcase theatres in L.A. and NYC. Yet we know they don't. They cut corners. But does this mean that we shouldn't then be using digital sound systems, because the lowest common denominator theatres have digital systems that are WORSE than what the best showcases theatres had with magnetic years ago?
Heck, with the financial boat that most companies find themselves in, it really may take years for widespread acceptance. Which will give the system a much better chance of being improved and perfected, while prices will fall dramatically.
And heralding film systems such as Maxifilm as being cheaper for the exhibitor completely overlooks the increased cost of the prints, not to mention production and post (rendering TWICE as many frames per second for CGI and compositing and/or finishing, etc). Remember the reason studios are driven to look at digital distribution in the first place.

Posted by Justin McLeod (Member # 1329) on 08-06-2002, 04:04 PM:

I saw Episode:2 at the Centry Orleans 18 back in june, it was the first time I had watched a movie in digital. It was different. Im not saying different as in better, it was just different. One thing I really noticed was no film grain and the second big difference were that some of the effects looked dramaticly better than from the 35mm version. The color (to me) looked better than the film version but I have still seen better presentations from 35mm.The screen illumination looked fine and the focus was always sharp. DLP is the way to see Episode:2 but i dont agree with using DLP from a 35mm source.

The flaws I noticed were from the DLP technology itself.Jagged edges were noticeable on some closeup scenes amd almost all title art had the jagged edges. I wonder if using 3 seperate lenses would make a difference instead of using one.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-06-2002, 09:46 PM:

hmmmmm, three seperate lenses. Why don't we just add more cost to the damn thing.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-07-2002, 12:31 AM:

Well, it responds to editing the post only with a blank page.
Here's a link to the picture for Stephen:
http://www.geocities.com/rotoflex/misc/racks.htm

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-07-2002, 03:57 PM:

William, why do you seem to have a bench running across the sound rack? Why is there cross bracing also ruunning across the rack? Is this part af the bench which was put in after the rack was taken out of use? Has the rack indeed been taken out of use, or is some of this equipment still used? What is the light blue unit in the new rack on the right? If only the new rack is in use, why is there so little equipment in it? Is the box itself still in use? Where is this anyway? Has thiss installation been THX certified? Have you tried feeding digital cinema signals through this equipment on their way to the DLP projector? (This might explain the very poor picture quality you saw.

So many questions.

Is that an original Perspecta integrator I see before me, in the left hand rack, near the top, with its power supply in the same rack, just below the bench?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-07-2002, 04:05 PM:

That bench is a standard Kelmar rewind bench and the pale blue unit in that rack is part of a old Christie Sound A Around prewired rack

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-08-2002, 12:31 AM:

The booth has not been in use in several years. The picture was taken a couple of weeks ago on the first day I was there. It is my new proof-of-brain-damage project.

quote:
Is that an original Perspecta integrator I see before me, in the left hand rack, near the top, with its power supply in the same rack, just below the bench?

Come, let me clutch at thee!

Broo hoo ha ha ha!

Posted by John Scott (Member # 520) on 02-19-2003, 11:08 PM:

I saw my first DLP presentation today (I was actually going to see the hours but it didn't start for an additional hour, and I admit I have been curious about the DLP quality) so I saw DAREDEVIL for a second time.

My thoughts pretty much reflect those of most of you who have posted previously:

What was good:
The fact that there were no NCN commercials played, even though the complex that I went to has a contract with NCN .

The quality of the image for the Finding Nemo trailer, which looked quite good.

The fact that there was no jumping, no bleed-over onto masking, no ghosting, and no splices.

What was bad:

During the break between the shows the DLP projector remained on (is this normal) causing half of the screen to be projected blue. Granted, it was nice not to have to watch half of the slides being projected with the separate slide projector, its not what I'd consider proper presentation

The pixelization and artifacts on the screen. Some of the trailers were quite bad, almost to conventional projection system standards. Many moments of the movie also had these problems, although not to as great of an extent. But this clearly isn't as good as 35mm, and I did feel like I was watching a projection TV.

The coloring was also off. While some of the primary colors (red for instance) seemed to jump off the screen, other more muted colors seemed washed out and muddy. The screen also seemed underlit with this system causing it difficult to see dark scenes.

The focus seemed really off on anything conventionally filmed, like I was watching an image of an image of an image. But on the digital effects things, there seemed to be perfect clarity, which at least for me just emphasized the problem even more.

My conclusion is that I don't have any desire to see anything else in DLP, save for something like a Pixar film. The presentation just isn't there.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 02-20-2003, 04:55 PM:

SW:EP2 was mentioned a few times in this thread. Last week, I talked to a film lab technician about the release printing of SW:EP2 for the German market. He said they were surprised when they received their dupe negative which was underexposed and quite grainy. They had heard about the great advance in producing digital dupes and holding up good image quality in mass release printing, so they made an inquiry to 20th Century Fox. The next day they were informed that LucasFilm had checked every single dupe negative for the foreign markets, and that they would not get a better one.

I did not see SW:EP2 on the big screen since I don`t believe in giving money to people like George "Sony" Lucas [fu]

who are in my opinion trying to kill the cinema experience, but there were many complaints about the low image quality of that film. So if Digital is not good enough, just degrade the film experience until nobody knows the difference any more!

BTW, I saw the film on DVD last night, and in my opinion it often has a cheesy look and generally soft focus for a new film. Even mediocre Super-35 usually looks better on DVD!

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-21-2003, 11:36 PM:

An underexposed duplicate negative might cause "smoky" shadows and lack of shadow detail in prints, as well as reduced color saturation. Labs normally use the Laboratory Aim Density method (which I developed) to optimize the "curve placement" of scene information on the duplicate negative:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h61/

Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 06-10-2007, 06:20 PM:

It has been 1569 days since the last post.

Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 06-10-2007, 06:20 PM:

I saw Knocked Up in Digital Projection at the Petaluma Boulevard Cinemas (Auditorium 5, 9:40, 07/09/07). The screen was small but not tiny.

Their website proudly proclaims: "When the lights go down... we're commercial free!" Of course, this actually means that there are non-stop commercials from the moment you enter the theatre until the first trailer starts.

Before the movie, there was an incessant rumble from an auditorium next door (Pirates 3, I suspect). Fortunately, I only noticed this once during the movie.

There was a trailer for Digital Projection from Christie and another from Texas Instruments.

I noticed some jagged lines in some of the titles, especially during the trailers. And the end credits seemed to "blip" their way up the screen with a bit of blur.

Overall, the picture was ok. It was rock-solid steady, which was nice. The biggest negative I noticed was that frequently I could not see the difference between the pupils and irises in the actors' eyes. Instead of a black pupil surrounded by a blue or brown iris, there was just a large, dark blob. Unnerving.

Despite all the money sunk into fancy new digital projectors (which are out-of-date now that 4k is here), large portions of the picture were projected off of the screen onto the maskings, on all four sides. (This was most distracting on the right.) There was also a stain or seam running straight up the center of the bottom half of the screen that was noticable in bright scenes.

This was my first digital screening in a public theatre. (I saw The Phantom Menace projected digitally at the Stag in 1999).

Posted by Tristan Lane (Member # 1169) on 06-10-2007, 11:19 PM:

quote: Geoff Jones
Despite all the money sunk into fancy new digital projectors (which are out-of-date now that 4k is here), large portions of the picture were projected off of the screen onto the maskings, on all four sides. (This was most distracting on the right.)

This is one of the stupidest things to find wrong with a [dlp]

presentation. (Not ragging on you Geoff) Cropping and "digital" masking are incredibly simple to set up on DLP, and rarely change afterwards.

This type of problem indicates that the system was poorly installed, or the cropping/zoom settings have been tampered with after being set up intially. You can trim the overspill of the picture by each individual line, and make the masking and the image seamless. Unacceptable in my book.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-11-2007, 06:26 AM:

Yes it can certainly be set up correctly but this DOES go to show that Digital installations do NOT guarantee a prefect show in theatres that were once sloppy...the sloth will continue in the digital age too. You know film can be set up correctly too but when the exhibitor doesn't care...they don't care...digital or film.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-11-2007, 09:46 AM:

When digital projection is set up properly it's not very easy to goof it up unless a member of the theater's staff is doing so deliberately. In the case of Carmike Cinemas, the booths are going to receive quite a bit more attention than they have in the past because of that service contract with Christie.

Goofed up settings are more likely to happen with a theater's sound system. That's one thing digital projection doesn't really address -although it's also my understanding Christie is supposed to be lending some support to Carmike in the audio area as well.

I have encountered theaters that were otherwise properly tuned but had employees who thought they knew better come back and fart with settings to make the room sound how they thought it should sound -always yielding worse results. [joe]

has told me similar stories of meddling personnel "fixing" audio settings after they had already been fixed.

Here in Lawton the reaction to Carmike's digital projection has turned out to be pretty positive. I was told the Carmike 8 beat its competition (Dickinson's Central Mall 12 plex) by a significant margin, more than 1500 tickets, for the opening weekend of the newest Pirates movie. Both locations had the movie running on the same number of screens, 4 each. The mall theater had often boasted better attendance numbers in the past by virtue of its convenient location in the mall. But its presentation quality standards are low. My theory is a growing number of viewers are searching out theaters with better presentation quality standards at least when it comes to big event movies.

My main complaint with digital projection is the resolution standard is too low. There are times where I feel the picture quality is just a tad bit soft. I seem to notice the difference even more during the end credits of a movie, but then I'm used to looking at lettering and graphics all the time. 2K might be fine for some small theaters. But it's still just too close in sharpness level to 1080p HDTV.

I don't miss jitter, side weave and other negative problems that come with less than optimal film projection. Otherwise, the most obvious thing missing with digital is that hint of organic film grain you see swirling around on the screen when the projection focus is really dialed in sharp. Any grain you see with digital projection is all artificial -just dither from some post process filter. The rough film grain look in parts of 300 didn't translate over to 2K very well. Maybe that was a goof in the digital intermediate process. Whatever happened, it didn't look natural. Perhaps 4K could solve that -provided if Sony can get 4K to work really well and get other studios to adopt it.

Finally, another complaint I have with digital projection is not really a complaint about the projection itself. It's a complaint about the potential for the technology to allow poorly produced video content onto the screen.

I'll give you an example. Carmike has what I think is a pretty cheesy looking promotional spot for digital projection currently airing in its theaters. It's meant to show off the virtues of digital projection, but some of the video-originated material is so badly produced I think it does the opposite. The spot had the sort of feel I'm used to encountering with small market TV commercials. Even the logo on the spot was badly reproduced. The whole thing made me think of other terrible theater snipes, like United Artists' famed cartoony dinosaur trailer.

Posted by Damien Taylor (Member # 4255) on 06-11-2007, 10:07 AM:

Let me preface by saying I have never seen a DLP show, it is simply not here yet.

When all this is over I think I will truly miss jitter, weave, grain splices and dirt. Without going overboard, I don't know if I would go to the movies much at all once everything is digital. I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but if its just [dlp]

I can do that at home. Digital just seems like it would be a bit like Paris Hilton. No soul.

[thumbsdown]

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 06-11-2007, 11:41 AM:

I have this theory (that I have no scientific data to back up)that DLP affects the brain and a persons emotional response to a feature. I think the brain sees light projected through an image as "real life" where DLP is just a bunch of pixels. I think that I am more emotionally affected by a film presentation than DLP.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 06-11-2007, 12:50 PM:

Sean; life seen at 48 pps is more "real." Louis

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-11-2007, 01:39 PM:

quote: Sean McKinnon
I think that I am more emotionally affected by a film presentation than DLP.

Roger Ebert wrote an article about that exact thing a few years ago. I think it might be archived here somewhere...wonder if it's still on his website?

Posted by Bret Abel (Member # 3398) on 06-11-2007, 01:59 PM:

I was able to find Ebert's position from an article in Variety back from 1999. I would personally love to see some scientific evidence that backs up his alpha state/beta state claims... besides, if it's true, couldn't digital projectors somehow be designed to provide artificial "film-like flicker?"

quote:
Possibly the most important yet least quantifiable point that concerns film lovers is primarily emotional. Roger Ebert, the film critic I know who seems to have given all this the most thought, was telling anyone in Cannes who would listen that, although there is only sketchy science to back him up, film and electronic images reach different parts of the brain and therefore affect human beings in different ways. Very roughly speaking, film creates an alpha state of reverie due to its imperceptible flickering, therefore creating a more emotional and intense reaction Television, by contrast, creates a beta state that is constant and more hypnotic, which is why people can sit in front of the TV screen for hours at a stretch.

The hidden danger to the industry, therefore, is that, while digital projection will soon look just as rich and sharp and beautiful as 35mm film, its emotional and imaginative impact over the long term will not be the same. I am very aware that, whenever there has been a perceived threat to the theatrical motion picture business, the doomsayers have been proven wrong and that audiences have always demonstrated their need to share a communal entertainment experience with strangers. The difference this time is that, without even knowing what's happening, audiences might gradually absorb that the digital images they're watching in theaters are no different than what they see at home, that they're actually just watching TV with more people. And that could be the end of movies as we know them.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-11-2007, 03:40 PM:

Actually I think it was the recliner that enabled people to stare at TV for hours at a stretch. (I know that did it for me.) [Big Grin]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 06-11-2007, 06:21 PM:

Mike; don't forget the really good full-featured REMOTE. Al (Bundy) and I wouldn't be without one! Louis

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-11-2007, 06:55 PM:

So Mike,

This means that when you go Digital we get to sell and install all new deluxe recliners in your place???? [thumbsup]

Put me on the list for some of those Greystones when they are pulled out!! Not sure what we'll do for remotes though... let Louis work that out. But I warn you his remotes will be as large as a Chevy S-10 van.

Mark

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 06-12-2007, 02:03 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Finally, another complaint I have with digital projection is not really a complaint about the projection itself. It's a complaint about the potential for the technology to allow poorly produced video content onto the screen.

Poorly produced video content finds its way onto cinema screens via 35mm film prints as well; so does well produced video content. One of the advantages claimed for the Digital Screen Network in the uk is the ability to screen 'alternative content', which does not exist on film. Given the three options for screening video originated material in cinemas, conversion to film, video projectors or digital cinema projectors, then the digital option can be a good choice.

If this leads to a wider range of material being screened, then I am in favour of it; if it leads to poorer quality production standards, then I am not.

Of course, at present, the vast majority of cinemas do not have digital projectors, so this option isn't available to them.