Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: New "Theatres Going Digital" article

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-24-2003, 10:43 AM:

I noticed this on CNN this morning:

Link to CNN article

"The digital image is brighter, sharper, the colors are more crisp and the image is a bit steadier" -- That sentence let's us know how well-researched the technical aspects were. A bit steadier, yes. Sharper -- if they mean visible pixels and artificial sharpness by edge enhancement, probably so. Brighter -- it depends -- isn't the recommended minimum brightness for digital 12 foot-lamberts rather than the 16 for film? Colors more crisp? Depends on the film print quality vs. the digital mastering job. For movies originating from digital sources, maybe, but for movies originating on film, probably not.

Article text (as required by forum rules):

quote:

Movie theaters going digital
Report: Number of theaters showing digital flicks expected to double

Wednesday, December 24, 2003 Posted: 10:15 AM EST (1515 GMT)

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Grab the popcorn, cinemaphiles. You may be about to sit through one of the best movie sequels in years: digital cinema.

"The digital image is brighter, sharper, the colors are more crisp and the image is a bit steadier," says Patrick von Sychowski, an analyst with Screen Digest, the British-based media research firm.

After years of Hollywood hype, 2004 could truly be a watershed year for digital cinema. A recent surge in investment by theater chains and technology companies means the number of digital projectors in cinemas will more than double to over 400 in the next 12 months, Screen Digest reports.

There's no guarantee the technology will make the next Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck film more watchable, but at least the final product will look better.

As always, whenever art and technology collide, snags emerge. Installation costs for cinemas are high and the major studios are slow to churn out fully digitized blockbusters until technology standards and anti-piracy measures are resolved.

But cinema operators, eager to show off their new digital projectors to the public, aren't waiting for Hollywood. A host of European chains have begun to show digitized rock concerts, documentaries and features from independent filmmakers.

"The new technology, we see, gives the local filmmaker the chance to exhibit to a bigger audience. Those films that do not get a chance under the 35-millimeter distribution model, will get a fresh chance," said Steve Perrin, deputy head of distribution and exhibition of the UK Film Council.

The film council has committed some $39 million (20 million pounds) to pay for the roll-out of 250 digital screens across Britain by 2005.
Blockbuster on demand

Since the mid-1990s, champions of digital cinematography such as George Lucas and Steven Soderbergh have hailed it as a triumph over the 19th Century breakthrough of celluloid film.

Stored as a digitized image file, the technology offers a better medium to enhance special effects, and playback quality will not deteriorate over time.

A digital film can be beamed to theaters via satellite, optical discs or fiber optic networks, potentially eliminating that exasperating several-month lag overseas viewers must endure for a big Hollywood production. And subtitles can be swapped in and out minutes before show time.

At the theater, a digital film is stored on a computer server connected to a digital projector. The projector is equipped with a state-of-the-art computer chip that cleans up the image -- capable of showing 35 trillion color variations.

Since the Lumiere brothers and D.W. Griffiths pioneered the medium 100 years ago, filmmakers have had to live with the reality of scratches and hairs marring some frames, and hisses and pops distorting the sound.

Digital cinematography promises to remove these headaches. What you will get is ear-popping digital surround sound and crisp images. "It's great for your standard Bollywood song and dance," von Sychowski said.

It's not surprising then that India has embarked on one of the most ambitious digital cinema investment programs. Mukta Adlabs Digital Exhibition Limited and Hong Kong-based Global Digital Creations Holdings Limited this year have teamed to wire up an average of 20 Indian cinemas per month.

New investment is also under way in China, Britain and Sweden, making it likely that Europe and Asia will quickly surpass the United States -- the early digital cinema pioneer -- as the new world capitals.
Rewriting the Hollywood script

The biggest advantage for the movie goer, says Peter Wester, project manager for Swedish cinema chain Folkets Hus och Parker, will be most visible not on the marquee -- not necessarily the screen.

A cinema can download a digital version of the film on a computer hard drive and show it as long as the audience shows up. No longer are theaters bound to the major studios' distribution schedule, he said.

"The average rise of income for us is 25 percent after one year," he added.

It can cost thousands of dollars for a cinema to get a Hollywood blockbuster film at or near the release date. A theater operator, therefore, often has little choice but to show the movie as often as possible before returning it to the distributor.

A digital version, because it can be easily reproduced, shipped and stored, costs less than $20 per copy, according to cinema exhibitors. It also allows the cinema operator to free up their viewing schedule, perhaps opening up the odd week-night slot for an art-house title.

And, the build-out is expensive. It costs a cinema operator an estimated $125,000 for the equipment and installation of a digital projector and server. The costs are decreasing, with widespread roll-out expected to halve deployment cost.

The biggest obstacle though is Hollywood. The Walt Disney Co., through its partnership with Pixar Animation Studios Inc., and Warner Bros., are the only studios producing blockbusters in digital film.

The Disney-Pixar film "Finding Nemo" and Warner Bros. "The Last Samurai" were two of a handful of big digital releases this year. (Warner Bros. is a division of CNN's parent company Time Warner Inc.)

"That's the big unknown," von Sychowski said. "It's a matter of how much will the major studios commit to this."

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 12-24-2003, 11:27 AM:

It's all over.

Posted by Kevin Baglow (Member # 721) on 12-24-2003, 06:09 PM:

at CINE ASIA convention -all the movies were shown with the new 2K chip, except for a screening of RUNAWAY JURY & MATRIX 3 in IMAX which i enjoyed. I did not enjoy any digital movie i saw.
The picture quality was not good either.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-24-2003, 06:40 PM:

As more and more "digital cinema" articles get published the more I think the press is overrun with amateurs who have no justification working in that field.

Did any of these press assholes ever consider a thing called RESEARCH!!!??? Idiots!!!!

Balance that stupid CNN article with the events like that scumbag over at the New York Times who got busted for publishing news stories with details he just made up!

I wonder if any respectable film critics read any of the threads on this forum. Roger Ebert, are you out there? It is high time some film critics with at least a modicum of technical knowledge came in and cleared up a bunch of this bullshit! "D Cinema" or "digital projection" or whatever over-balleyhooed term some dicklick idiot comes up with next is nothing more than a cost cutting compromise against quality. I want to give the writer of that CNN article such a smack with a ball pean hammer.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-24-2003, 07:21 PM:

See the 'Filmophobia' thread started by William Hooper, which quotes a post by me on another forum talking about the Film Council and their digital cinema initiative.

From the article posted by Evans it would seem that they now realise that they've blown millions of our tax pounds on a fundamentally flawed technology which the industry and anyone who values the 'gold standard' of 35mm (in comparison with current and short-term-forthcoming electronic projection systems) is rejecting, and are getting mighty defensive... [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-24-2003, 10:16 PM:

I'd say the guy that wrote that article is a boob at best. Sharper image....ha? It just ptoves that as long as you're at least two years old you can write for a major news organization
Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-25-2003, 10:04 PM:

quote:
A cinema can download a digital version of the film on a computer hard drive and show it as long as the audience shows up. No longer are theaters bound to the major studios' distribution schedule, he said.

This is crap. The reason studios force six or eight-week commitments for supposed "blockbusters" is because they don't want to see their screen count decrease after one or two weeks. This will not change. If you want to play the latest Star Wars or whatever on your D-Cinema, you'll still have to commit all showtimes on that screen to that movie for some ungodly period of time.

Oh sure, they may allow some schedule juggling now in the "promo" stage, but that will disappear as soon as (and "if") the studios have paid for the industrywide rollout of digital.

Posted by Bill Carter (Member # 156) on 12-26-2003, 10:22 AM:

On these forums, we often discuss the decline in quality in the exhibition industry. The same trend exists in journalism. Except for the very highest level, you have mostly inexperienced and poorly paid college grads expected to produce content by the pound.

I spent 14 years in the TV news business, and saw it decline right before my eyes. As federal regulations and business models changed it became all about cost control and efficiency, instead of being all about serving the public interest.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 12-26-2003, 12:01 PM:

Wouldn't, then, the best reaction be to show people how good 35mm projection can be?

I'm probably preaching to choir because those here who work the booth obviously care about the presentation, but there are many theaters out there that can't get film done right.

A recent showing of LOTR at Marcus Westown in Waukesa, WI is evidence of this. The image not only jittered vertically (common and to be expected from many theaters in this area), but it also jittered horizontally. It was slight, but it gave a soft look to everything on the screen and was just tolerable enough to prevent us from walking out and demanding our money back. The credits were pretty much unwatchable.

When questioned about it, we were told that a new projector had been installed three weeks before and they were still "working out the kinks" in the system. A part was on order, but not due until this weekend.

So, yes, digital cinema can look sharper if it means that it's not jumping all over the place while you're trying to watch it. In my experience, the lack of jitter in the digital presentations were very welcome and an improvement in the image I am accustomed to seeing.

So long as there are presentations like the above, articles such as this have merit.

Posted by Kamakshipalya Dhananjay (Member # 1391) on 12-27-2003, 11:51 PM:

Anyway, I am not at all surprised to read that article. It is indeed true that the number of digital venues for 2004 is well expected to breach the 400 mark.

I disagree with much of the discussion in this forum that has to do with rating film as better over digital. Also, there are a number of other people in this forum who also feel that digital is far superior to film.

Such disagreement alone should be sufficient enough to lend enough validity to articles such as these.

I wish the article explored further on whether some of the Hollywood majors who do not currently support dlp standards have definite norms that they want the standards to meet before they too debut on the dlp or whether such studios are overwhelmed by fear or ignorance of the dlp cinema.

There were a number of independent films in 2003 and the media, particularly the film critics, for what they resent the studios' control over Hollywood (it is increasing by the day, for most critics to target a studio executive for the finality that a film reached), may only be expected to lend more voice and support to the dlp cinema.

Europe and Asia are going digital with full throttle and at the end, I do not really think Hollywoods' aceeptance of the dlp cinema is going to be at the heart of worldwide acceptance for this medium.

Like Hollywood has always done, it will initially pretend to be under full control, deny with all of its powers and will eventually, when it fully realises there is not much it can do, quietly come along.

As such, with so many precedents to suggest that Hollywood's position over anything is not completely thought through but is more like a knee jerk reaction to stick through, it is equally unsurprising that the said article does not even suggest that the reluctance of the other major studios to release in digital is anything significant at all.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 12-28-2003, 09:48 PM:

quote:
Like Hollywood has always done, it will initially pretend to be under full control, deny with all of its powers and will eventually, when it fully realises there is not much it can do, quietly come along.

As such, with so many precedents to suggest that Hollywood's position over anything is not completely thought through but is more like a knee jerk reaction...

Could you cite some specific examples?... also the precedents you mention above. That would be interesting to consider as well.

Thanks!

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 12-29-2003, 02:06 PM:

Don't forget, most theaters presented at least two films digitally this year:

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
Once Upon a Time in Mexico

and four if you count these:

Finding Nemo
Brother Bear

(not sure what the source resolution was for these two, but I'm pretty sure that the first two were the same resolution as digital cinema projectors are right now)

Does this mean that, if all digital cinema sucks in the quality department (a position I do not agree with), all theaters had lousy presentations for the weeks they were showing these films? [uhoh]

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 12-29-2003, 06:58 PM:

quote:
Don't forget, most theaters presented at least two films digitally this year:

Ummm, no. Most theatres presented these titles on film, not digitally. Digital origination does not 'digitally presented' make.

Scott, there is a vast difference between digital origination and digital projection. Usually (but not always) the resolution of the originating hardware is far higher (but not as high as film) than any of the DLP projection stuff currently out there. 'D-Cinema' as the article and many of us are arguing about is specifically referring to the projection aspect of the medium.

-Aaron

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-29-2003, 07:42 PM:

Evans criticized the characterization of "brighter, sharper, the colors are more crisp and the image is steadier." I would urge some more caution in the criticism.

Yes, the recommended brightness is 12fl for digital, but that is because it is measured differently. For film, we measure it open gate, with no film (16fl target). With transparent film stock, it should be about 12fl. And of course, von Sychowski is giving you his opinion, indirectly through Reuters' quotation. If you want to know what he really thinks, and the context he said it in, perhaps you should call him up and ask.

Sharpness and crispness, I think, are attempting to express the lack of visible grain and image degredation that digital has to offer over film. You can debate what the terms should mean, but I think that's what he is expressing.

And of course, digital wins in image steadiness.

If you're going to criticize digital, and pro-digital articles in the press, I think a lot more technical accuracy could be accomplished. But realistically, I'm not sure what customer-visible areas film beats digital on other than resolution and color depth.

--jhawk

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 12-29-2003, 08:42 PM:

It would be my guess that the reporter was quoting someone who has money invested in digital, and will go to any length to "sell" it.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-30-2003, 10:05 AM:

quote:
Yes, the recommended brightness is 12fl for digital, but that is because it is measured differently. For film, we measure it open gate, with no film (16fl target). With transparent film stock, it should be about 12fl. And of course, von Sychowski is giving you his opinion, indirectly through Reuters' quotation.

Good points about the brightness measurements and the "quotations through the press" (I've experienced my own statements being distorted to a degree that way myself).

We've had film vs. digital threads before, but I've never had a satisfactory answer to the question of, from an information theory standpoint, what digital resultion, using a rectangular lattice, is required to have the same information present as film. This is really two different question with two different answers:

1. What digital resolution and pixel color depth are required to capture the information from a scanned film source (say full aperture 35mm scope filmed anamorphically, to maximize resolution)?

2. What digital resolution and pixel color depth are required (assuming digital source and projection) to portray the same information as is present in, say, an anamorphic 35mm film source (full aperture scope)?

I believe #1 will require a higher resolution than #2. And by "portraying the same informaton", I dont mean "looks the same to a human viewer from a certain distance" -- I mean "has the same inherent amount of information". I know the answers vary depending on film stock being used. People have mentioned thatscanned film sources do not look nearly as good projected digitally as movies generated totally from a digital source.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-30-2003, 10:35 AM:

Evans asks, "1. What digital resolution and pixel color depth are required to capture the information from a scanned film source (say full aperture 35mm scope filmed anamorphically, to maximize resolution)?"

Hopefully John Pytlak can chime in here.

Off the cuff, I wonder: would you care to nominate a methodology for measuring this? Perhaps a lossless compression algorithm we could apply to scans of sucessively increasing resolution until the algorithm's output stops growing?

The issue is complicated by differing film stocks and generational loss. The camera negative will have more information (or rather, information with less distortion) than the IP than the IN than the release print.

--jhawk

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 12-30-2003, 02:21 PM:

As with any technology, you gain something and you lose something with digital presentation. As I've written before, I have been extremely surprised at how good the digital presentations I've seen have been. And I was inclined (and still am) to hate it.

With digital, you lose print grain and you gain steadiness. This really does make a big difference. I walked out of a digital presentation on one screen and into a 35mm presentation on another screen (of the same film) in the same theater and the 35mm seemed so murky in comparison, at first I thought there was something wrong with the 35mm, until I got used to all that grain again.

However, with digital, you lose color dynamics, especially deep blacks. And although I haven't noticed it so far, I'm sure there will be movement and other artifacts. I haven't noticed any pixilation, which other posters in other threads have claimed were obvious.

So one issue is that for the average film-goer, which will look better? I hate to admit this, but I think that digital will be perceived to be better, if presented properly.

One strange thing I've experienced when comparing 35mm screens to digital screenings is that the sound seemed inferior on the digital presentations. I don't quite understand the reasons for this - aren't the bit rates on the digital presentations at least as good as 35mm SR-D, DTS or SDDS?

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-30-2003, 09:45 PM:

Here's the questions I'd like answered:

In the scope aperture 0.825 inch by 0.690 inches, how many "film grains" are there on the film within that area on typical 35mm stock used today?

Does each grain either "develop" or it doesn't, or are there more possible levels of development for each individual grain?

Are there are separate grains in each of the three layers (magenta, cyan, yellow), and the grain density is different, then how many are within that area within each layer?

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-31-2003, 12:39 PM:

Evans asks some questions about number of film grains, and levels, etc.

This is a very complicated topic, and I bet John Pytlak will do a much better job of trying to distill it than I can (I sort of regret even trying...). Kodak has some extremely in-depth documentation on this topic (see below), but it's kind of hard to assimilate and distill into direct answers to your questions.

First of all, the grain size is not constant, it ranges from 2e-3 mm to 2e-4 mm. There are different grain densities within each color layer. The apparent grain resolution is a function of contrast and exposure and lighting, and what you see on the release print is a combination of all these factors from the camera negative to the interpositive to the internegative to the release print.

For each of their film stocks, Kodak publishes a "Modulation - Transfer Curve" and a "Diffuse RMS Granularity" curve. You can find them in the spec sheets for the different film stocks. i.e.:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/negative/ for negative films.
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/postProducts.shtml for intermediate and release print films.

What do these curves mean? Well, this is documented in some detail in the mammoth Kodak publication Kodak Motion Picture Film: H-1.

Specifically, two subsections seem to be most relevent, both under "Selecting Your Films."

Exposure Information, specifically "Image Structure," "Understanding Graininess and Granularity," and the subsequent sections.

Also, Sensitometric and Image-Structure Data.

I'm not sure that resolution is a meaningful concept when you're talking about different sizes of dots (grains), so I don't know how you come up with a good answer to the question you phrased. Obviously there has to be some effective resolution that a film scanner should shoot for, but I don't know if it needs to be far higher than the average number of grains per unit distance/area. I guess this has to be known territory for comparing halftones with straight 1-bit-depth bitmaps, so there are probably some industry-standard approximations.

--jhawk

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-31-2003, 12:49 PM:

There's more to resolution than the actual information recorded on the film, too. Lenses tend to be sharper in the center than at the edges, and the steadiness (or lack thereof) of the camera, printer, and projector mechanisms is significant in "apparent" sharpness of a motion picture image.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-31-2003, 12:59 PM:

Kodak image scientist Dr. Roger Morton and his group have presented and published a series of technical papers evaluating image quality parameters for film and digital imaging systems:

Comparison of Film and Digital Origination

Morton SMPTE Paper #1

Morton SMPTE Paper #2

SMPTE Presentation

Dr. Roger Morton

Cinematographers Test

Bottom line: You need much higher than 4K resolution to completelly capture the image detail on a 35mm negative. Digital artifacts are often a more obvious problem than perceived lack of sharpess if lower resolution scanning and recording are used.

Digital cameras like the 24P Sony HDCAM use an anti-aliasing (Nyquist) filter to reduce moire and other objectionable artifacts, cutting their resolution by over a factor of two from what the pixel count implies. Plus you lose detail and introduce artifacts by the subsampling and compression required for the recording system.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-31-2003, 01:08 PM:

John, you know that the 3 links you posted that presumably have the most relevent technical detail are all restricted to SMPTE members (very few such people here on Film-Tech)? I assume that electronic reprints are not available?

You suggest "much higher than 4K resolution" -- what does that mean? It's very open ended...between 4K and 8K? or upwards of 16K? or...? It would be nice to have an upper bound rather than just a lower bound.

--jhawk

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-31-2003, 01:20 PM:

Sorry, even though they are Kodak papers, the copyright is held by the SMPTE, so you either have to find the SMPTE Journals in a library, or become a member.

Student membership in the SMPTE is very worthwhile, and not that expensive (only $35 per year):

http://www.smpte.org/membership/individual/join_now/

If you read the papers cited, you will see that the upper limit on required resolution is a function of how many digital artifacts you can tolerate. Scanning and recording at 4K can look really good, but some will still be bothered by the visibility of the artifacts. And obviously, 2K is successful in today's movies (but 2K movies are often below my quality expectations, as well as the expectations of many cinematographers).

Posted by Gary Crawford (Member # 2038) on 12-31-2003, 01:24 PM:

Technical aspects aside, there are other things in here to think about. If the media and PR people convince the public this is the way to go, patrons will demand it or go somewhere else. (Think back...whattaya mean no sound? No CinemaScope? etc) Our method of projection hasn't changed for over a century if you think about it. Something shiny and new and the public will demand it although few if any will notice any differences.

In my other line of work I do satellite uplinking and I'm thinking about heavy cloud cover, thick cloud storms, snow in the dishes, solar outtages during the spring and fall equinoxes, moving tree branches in the way, a quick freeze-up when a plane invades the signal path, that all block the path of digital satellite signals (both up and down) not to mention the ease of tweaking an IRD (digital downlink satellite decoder) for pirating purposes.

My two cents.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-31-2003, 03:24 PM:

Comparing pixel counts to film rez is a bit apples & orangish since film rez goes on and on but at diminishing constrast levels til it disappears into murk (the interested should read up on modulation transfer function) while digital imaging schemes, like digital audio, is hard limited so it's difficult to draw a direct comparison. That disclaimer aside if it's said that 4K or more is required to capture what is on a 35mm negative then what is necessary to reproduce what is on a print? The print, especially one made from a dupe negative, will have much less rez than the negative. 1.1K projection isn't quite up to snuff. How do the 2K systems look?

Why, when the subject of satellite distribution is brought up, does someone trot out the same old nonsense about signal disruption? Give it a rest, already! Live feeds might be involved in sporting events etc. but I've never heard anyone advocate it for movies. Obviously the data would be sent in advance and cached on a drive array at the theatre. Packet switching & reassembly, error detection and correction, retransmission when needed, etc. would ensure delivery of complete files. I'm not an advocate of digital cinema but this business about planes flying overhead blocking the signal is a non-issue. Yes, the signal could be disrrupted but it would have no effect on cinema performance except to make the download, the day or night before, take longer.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 01-05-2004, 09:43 PM:

Aaron Sisemore wrote:

quote:
Scott, there is a vast difference between digital origination and digital projection. Usually (but not always) the resolution of the originating hardware is far higher (but not as high as film) than any of the DLP projection stuff currently out there. 'D-Cinema' as the article and many of us are arguing about is specifically referring to the projection aspect of the medium.

Yes, I understand the difference betwen digital origination and digital projection.

My point was that the films I mentioned were originated digitally, and therefore would have no greater resolution on film than they would if projected digitally. I apologize for not making that more clear, I should probably have put something in italics to emphasize that I was making a play on the words to make my point.

This would, of course, only be accurate if the cameras were the same resolution as the d-cinema projectors, but I assumed that they were both the same.

There is no way to "create" resolution, so if the cameras were 2k, then the movie was a max resolution of 2k no matter if it was on film or on d-cinema.

If the film was created at a higher resolution than the source, then interpolation or some other method of increasing the resolution came into play. That usually creates a soft picture unless sharpening and edge enhancement are applied, which degrades the image if applied too liberally.

So, whether you have a digital projector or not, most theaters showed a couple of digital movies in 2003. If I recall, they did quite well.