Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How many Theaters can show 4K Dcp s

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Posted by John Rizzo (Member # 1289) on 11-10-2014, 05:46 AM:

One of my clients is trying to decide to make a 4k dcp vs a 2k dcp so my question is...
Are most Theaters capable of projecting 4K DCP s or is 2K pretty much the standard?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-10-2014, 06:22 AM:

ALL DCinema projectors/servers can handle the 4K DCP...if that is the question...that is a requirement of DCI...both projectors and servers must be able to handle it. What happens in 2K theatres is that the 2K core is extracted and it is shown in 2K. This ensures 100% compatibility.

So if there is 4K or better content in it...then definitely master in 4K, regardless of screen count in 4K.

I don't know if there is an accurate list of 4K versus 2K but there is a substantial 4K installation base since AMC, Regal and Cinemark all went 4K...that is nearly half the screens in the US. Among the rest...I hear world wide, 4K is closer to the 10-20% range.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-10-2014, 07:45 AM:

What Steve said...

If the master is in 4K or if you can afford to have the master made in 4K, go for a 4K DCP release.

What you definitely shouldn't do is up-scaling from your side, it will only make things look worse.

The only other reason I could imagine you'd want to do a 2K release instead of 4K is size, which could be a factor, depending on your method of distribution.

Posted by John Rizzo (Member # 1289) on 11-22-2014, 05:24 AM:

Hi All
What I meant to ask is how many theaters have 4k projectors vs 2 k projectors.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 11-22-2014, 09:31 AM:

Not many. I would guess at around 1 in 100.
You can try searching for the answer as well as I can, and I'm not doing it for you.
I don't think there is any central repository of what projector is at what theatre.
I could tell you how many 4K systems are in the cinemas I deal with, but that's meaningless. Plus, for some of them I really can't imagine why they bought 4K; some are on quite small screens. I can imagine that 2K projectors were in short supply and they got the 4K units at a deep discount to make an opening day: all the projector companies were doing this stuff during the mass conversion to prevent "the competition" making a sale. I work on quite a few 4kW systems where a 2 or 3kW projector would be ideal: the smaller one was not in stock when they had to convert, and they got the big one for the price of the small one.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-22-2014, 07:00 PM:

We as a 15plex have two 4k units for our 65ft wide screens.
The other screens have the 2k units.
All can use 4K DCP's.

-Monte

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-22-2014, 08:05 PM:

Here's an illustration of just how unusual 4K DCPs are.

One of the two theaters in our organization has a 4K projector; the other is 2K only.

The 4K site recently received a 4K DCP (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso). It was unencrypted, so the projectionist there ingested it immediately, tested it, and emailed me reporting that the picture looked severely cropped.

The projector simply has one "Flat DCP" title, which has 2K PCF and screen files linked to it. So if you try to screen a 4K DCP using it, you'll blow up a 2K-sized box in the middle to fill the screen and crop off the rest, which is what he was doing. So I set up a new title and preset button for 4K flat, using 4K PCF and screen files, and all is now well.

However, this was the first time this theater had received a (non-3D) 4K DCP since that projector was installed (which was before I was hired, but I understand was several years ago), because it's the first time that anyone discovered that the "Flat" title/preset is no good for 4K.

The point I am trying to make is that 4K DCPs are very unusual - we really don't get them that often. The only other one I've seen recently is the Sony restoration of Dr. Strangelove which, maddeningly, played in our 2K-only house.

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 11-22-2014, 09:01 PM:

Leo, 4K is actually common for first run theaters at this point. I recall a good number of recent releases being 4K including Fury, Gone Girl, Interstellar and currently Mockingjay.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-23-2014, 01:31 AM:

"Mockingjay" looks great being shot through a BARCO 4K 32B projector on our 65ft wide screen.

Image is pretty tight and sharp looking.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-23-2014, 02:46 PM:

Yes, there seems to be more 4K releases than 3-D at the moment and I am just fine with that. 3-D sucks!

Mark

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 11-23-2014, 02:59 PM:

It's a pain for places with older servers that don't have a lot of storage room. And a pain to retrofit larger drives!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-23-2014, 03:06 PM:

Thus far, all of the server's we have dealt with can handle at least 1TB drives. So one should be able to get nearly 2-3TB of storage on them (Depending on the drive count). Anything semi-modern should be able to handle 2TB drives...so 6-8TB of storage.

The tough ones are the IMS types where one may be limited to how much storage the "laptop" drives can handle at the moment.

Truthfully, the 6TB storage, unless you run festivals, is way more than one could need. Elsewhere it has been posted where one changed out their RAID card, loaded the DSS200 up with 8 2TB drives to get just shy of 16TB for a festival situation.

It also really depends on the studio...WB seems to compress the crap out of their movies.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 11-23-2014, 06:48 PM:

I did a private screening of "Maze Runner" the other night in 4K & ATMOS.

The sound was incredible, but the room only has a 25ft wide screen,
so I'm not sure the 4K image adds that much to the overall experience.

At that screen size, I doubt the average viewer could tell the difference
between 2K & 4K (Although people at this event were not "average viewers".)

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-23-2014, 06:52 PM:

Most IMSes also handle external NAS storage. I guess it's supposed to move all to a central NAS device with one or more 10 GBit uplinks to and from your central NAS, with all the risks and potential pitfalls included.

Here in Europe, Sony is somewhat of an underdog, so most installs are on 2K. Although 4K is slowly creeping in for the high end/big screens. I guess a figure somewhere between 10% and 20% is accurate, but it will probably at the bottom end of that range. Like Steve already mentioned, in the U.S., both AMC and Regal went into a partnership with Sony, so most of their screens will have projectors that can do 4K. Still, it doesn't mean all screens are configured to show in 4K, because chains are notorious to leave their 3D gear in place.

Up until now, Interstellar was the only movie I remember that really used 4K as a differentiator. For the average moviegoer it's already hard to tell if a particular release will be in 4K and often even harder to check if their theater of choice will show it in 4K.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-24-2014, 12:13 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
Truthfully, the 6TB storage, unless you run festivals, is way more than one could need. Elsewhere it has been posted where one changed out their RAID card, loaded the DSS200 up with 8 2TB drives to get just shy of 16TB for a festival situation.

For a server in a 5-10 screen multiplex that shows the same movie each day three or four times, I can't see how you'd ever need more than 2-3TB for the whole place.

However, as you point out, for a rep/arthouse/festival type venue, it's a different story. We did the 8x2TB RAID in the Egyptian's server, and the most it's ever been so far is about half full. We're also going to need to do something similar at our other place pretty soon, because we ran out of space a couple of weeks ago (4 x 500GB drives in the RAID, so 1.4TB ish usable) during a mini-festival and had to juggle DCPs around on portable hard drives and USB sticks. To avoid the need for a new RAID card I'll probably go the 4 x 2TB route, as I can't see us needing more than 5TB, even if 4K DCPs become the norm.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 11-26-2014, 01:47 PM:

With Gone Girl running, and a Hunger games marathon loaded... the 1.8TB Doremi RAID data partition you get with 3x1TB drives doesn't look so spacious. The older ones with 3x500gB drives...?