Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Muting eye/lens on Sony SRX-R320 3D Lens

This is topic Muting eye/lens on Sony SRX-R320 3D Lens in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Matt Skilton (Member # 5288) on 08-30-2011, 04:58 PM:

I've got a special event next week and it will involve using our Sony SRX-R320 projector to display third-party content via the DVI input. However, the lens on the projector is the 3D lens and I've been informed that this may reduce the quality of the presentation. I've heard about being able to mute one of the eyes/lens' which will help. Does anyone have any experience doing this (i.e how to actually do it) and any tips to get it looking as good as possible with the 3D lens??

Thanks for any help.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 08-30-2011, 05:15 PM:

Your options are (AFAIK):
1) Change out the 3D lens for the 2D lens
2) Make the bulb run hotter/brighter to cover for the fact that the 3D lens will lead to light-loss.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-30-2011, 05:49 PM:

Not even .. leave the lens setup alone. If you wanna play safe, put a new bulb in.

"Yellow Journalism" really gets spread around by the media and hurting the cinema business with what they think they know.

If you're doing VGA or other output, you need a scaler to convert that source to a DVI out. Sound just patches in on the Non/Sync of the processor.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 08-30-2011, 06:55 PM:

Pretty much what Monte said. If the lens was installed properly and the convergence is nice and tight, all formats will look great. If not, all formats -- cinema and non cinema -- will suffer. All that needs to be done is to set up a projector Function that uses Input A, which is DVI. If you are not familiar with SRX controller and/or authorized to make configuration changes to the projector, you should leave this to a technician.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-31-2011, 04:22 AM:

Get a notebook or Desktop computer in the booth with DVI Out for a quick test before.

If you feel good about playing 2D content through the 3D lens - why should you bother?
If you're concerned about DVI image quality through the 3D lens - you should be concerned about leaving the 3D lens on the unit for 2D cinema content just as well.

- Carsten

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 08-31-2011, 11:56 AM:

If it's truly a special event, a showing that someone is paying your cinema a fair amount of money to hold, it is your cinema's responsibility to give those people the very best presentation possible. And if that means swapping out the 3D lens for the 2D lens, even if it means having to spend some time recalibrating the 3D again when you swap the lens back in after the event, so be it.

And frankly, I am honestly shocked anyone active in this forum, people who are supposed to be for giving customers the best presentation possible, every single show, no matter the format or equipment used, is brazenly suggesting it's okay to just leave a lens on that is proven and acknowledged to degrade light output. It doesn't matter if it's 80% or 20%, someone who is paying you to show their movie deserves nothing but THE ABSOLUTE BEST presentation possible. I mean, we should be doing that regardless the circumstances, but it shouldn't even be a question if your theatre is being hired for an event. The mere suggestion of willingly giving a less than best presentation makes me [puke]

Posted by Chase Pickett (Member # 5975) on 08-31-2011, 12:06 PM:

I'm with Edward on this. Swap out the lens. Putting in a fresh bulb and leaving the real D lens installed still won't give you near the light as swapping in the 2D lens. Also, muting an eye does not have a profound effect on light output. In fact I've only seen a very slight change in light output with an eye muted. Swapping out the lens will take you 20 minutes without you doing it before. Just make sure you have either your tech there to do it or the proper password to be able to get it calibrated properly.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-31-2011, 02:21 PM:

quote: Chase Pickett
Also, muting an eye does not have a profound effect on light

"BZZT! Wrong answer, Hahns!"

Since the unit only has the one chip and both images are being used from that one chip, you mute out one eye, your light output drops in half.

Ever cover up one eye when you're shooting a 2d image on a screen and see how the pict suddenly drops in light quality?

Also, who has the tonnage of fundage to purchase a single lens setup from Sony? Hope the pockets are lined with green to do so.

You'll be fine with a twin lens setup for your event...

-Monte

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 08-31-2011, 04:32 PM:

Yellow journalism? How about yellow projectionism?

Playing a movie and putting up static images are two different animals...the static image is harder as the eye is more apt to pick off the problems. Put up a 1-pixel wide cross hatch pattern and go down to the screen and see just how well those two lenses are converged over the ENTIRE picture.

Depending on the type of images being put up the problem of imprecise convergence of the two images will either be a big deal or not-visible (if you have a power point with big blocky letters...anything will do).

Next comes the resolution...what is the source resolution? A Sony with the 3D lens in place is only an 858 pixel tall projector...sufficient for XGA (1024x768) but insufficient for 1400x1050, 1920 x 1080 and a host of Mac formats. With a 2D lens, you should be able to output pixel for pixel most any format the computer walks in with since you have 4096 x 2160 pixels available.

Ever used the digital keystone corrector when displaying from a computer source on a data projector? You move that one tick and the picture immediately smears. On a movie, you are not going to notice it nearly as much as if someone has some picture or drawing up on that screen.

So...when a Sony gets a signal on the DVI connector...does it scale it to fill the imager or does it just put up a pixel-for-pixel version (or do you get a choice)?

-Steve

Posted by Chase Pickett (Member # 5975) on 08-31-2011, 04:39 PM:

quote:
"BZZT! Wrong answer, Hahns!"

I was speaking in the adverse. As in it does not increase light and I was being a bit facetious. [Razz]

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-31-2011, 05:32 PM:

An external scaler box, connected inbetween the source output and DVI out to the projector when programmed, scales up the image to fill the portion of the chip for twin lens usage.

One of these devices is what you need. Course, this device is for VGA computer output and not for composite.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-31-2011, 06:59 PM:

How about you rent a DLP and do the job right instead of just getting by???

Mark

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-31-2011, 07:28 PM:

I still suggest a simple test ;-)

- Carsten

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-31-2011, 08:07 PM:

Well, if the customer is renting out the auditoriums and is supposed to have the ABSOLUTE BEST, I'm going to have to side with Mark here.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-01-2011, 03:51 AM:

By all means, I agree as well - it's their money..

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 09-01-2011, 06:31 AM:

The absolute best on a Sony then would be a computer with 4k output. So what kind of 'best' are we talking about?

No one knows what this specific machine will show on screen if a standard DVI input source is displayed through the 3D lens, because no one knows which formats have been configured on that machine. Connect and see, then decide what to do.

- Carsten

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-01-2011, 12:01 PM:

DVI content from a computer via a scaler through a twin lens setup looks excellent!

Image is scaled up to do a flat presentation

No complaints on this side why I'm not fretting about all of this.

Posted by Matt Skilton (Member # 5288) on 09-02-2011, 07:03 AM:

Thanks for the input everyone. I should perhaps explain the situation a bit more.

Firstly, I've literally only just started working at this site so I'm still finding lots of things out. No one has been shown how to change a lens either because we've just started our Sony rollout and no one's fully made their minds up yet about lens changes (this is because our internal structure has changed meaning only one tech person per site). So changing the lens is not an option.

The reason why I was concerned was because I've found some notes by my predecessor, which mentioned they did a show with the 3DL and the client wasn't satisfied due to the image on screen not being as sharpe as expected, so they tried muting the lens to improve this and then increased the light output to make up for the loss of light caused by the muting. I haven't been shown how to do this and was curious.

I have since connected a Cine-IPM to our other 3DL Sony and connected it via the DVI output on the Sony and it looked good to me. However, the screen which will have the presentation is much larger than the one I tested so this may not be an accurate reflection.

I'll change the Xenon because the current one would have done 400 hrs (it's a Ushio 4K XL) and will try and test it next week. Sadly I just done have the opportunities to do as much testing as I'd like as I have to run operational shifts too.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-02-2011, 11:13 PM:

Do the bulb change, then do the test with your devices on that screen mentioned .. and you'll have to go from there...

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 09-04-2011, 04:50 PM:

I agree with everything Edward said except this:

quote: Chase Pickett
Putting in a fresh bulb and leaving the real D lens installed still won't give you near the light as swapping in the 2D lens. Also, muting an eye does not have a profound effect on light output. In fact I've only seen a very slight change in light output with an eye muted.

Montey is pretty much on the money here, as usual.

The difference in light output at the same level from 2D lens to 3D lens is < 1fL.
I would also inform you that I have an SR220 running 2D thru 3D lenses giving 18fL at 50% lamp power; it won't go any lower than that!

If the 3D lens was installed properly you should not see any bluriness in the image whether it is motion or static.
Again, the type of content shown is very important here.

By properly installed I mean the following:
- The projector is as close to square with the screen as possible (side-by-sides cause issues here).
- The projector is centered on the screen (some techs are not careful about this and rely heavily on electronic shift, which I find annoying)
- Both lenses are zoomed the same (this is VERY important for convergence at the outter edges of the picture)
- The convergence is set as close as possible by the hardware on the lens array.
- *The software fine-tuning of convergence is done from inside the auditorium since it can be hard to see the lines from the booth.(I use a 100' crossover cable so I can sit in the room with my laptop).

* The electronic convergence adjust is independent for each function memory so if it's good in SCOPE doesn't mean it's good in FLAT, DVI, or whatever else you set up.
The function memory can be set up with any number of options to deal with aspect ratios as well.

However.

I did recently have a renter that had a weird bluray that just didn't look right in any of the ratios I could set up in software, thus I swapped the 2D lens on and set up a custom function memory, zoomed to fit her image. Looked fantastic.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-04-2011, 06:40 PM:

quote:
that I have an SR220 running 2D thru 3D lenses giving 18fL at 50% lamp power; it won't go any lower than that!

..what's wrong in going higher percentage in bulb use and putting more fL's on the screen (and with a silver screen which it wouldn't help ramping up some fL's in the first place), for you know, 50% power is cutting it a bit thin for bulb life in itself, esp for big bulbs.

I'm usually shooting well over 20fL's on a silver screen in 2D mode ...

(maybe, that's why that bulb popped on you last week or two - was it running a bit too low ..?)

-Monte

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 09-04-2011, 11:48 PM:

Monte,

The bulb the blew had been at full power actually.

Previously we were installing them and running at about 85% through the entire life of the lamp.

I'm trying to keep the light output consistent over the life of the lamp but setting it for 16fL in 2D per Sony's recommendation.
Each time you run the automated luminance adjust, it will teak the light output to bring it back up to the luminance value it had when you set it in SRX Controller. So if I set it for 16fL at, say 54% power the next time I run luminance adjust it will try to hit that same level by adjusting the current up.

I thought I read somewhere that over-lighting the image is bad for some reason? Did I imagine that? Entirely possible...

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-07-2011, 04:26 PM:

Maybe over lighting for Real-D is bad since that'll expose the "ghosts" - why the luminance is so low so we don't see the 'ghosting' as bad...then, the Real D box does the rest to do the "ghostbusting" process.

..but I have Barcos hitting between 20 and 30fL's and have a great picture on the screen with regular 2D stuff.