Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Newsweek article on Digital Projection

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Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 03-27-2001, 08:33 AM:

At last, A mainstream news magazine that doesnt think digital projection(in its current form)is ready for prime time!

This link from the current issue of Newsweek:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/549585.asp

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-27-2001, 10:20 AM:

But they still got the facts wrong. First, they didn't distinguish between the capture format (film or electronic) and the presentation format (film or electronic), which don't need to be the same thing. Second, they fell in to the trap of "digital is cheaper" which, at film resoution, it isn't. For about $30k, one can shoot a feature on 16mm, which has roughly the same resolution of HDTV when shot with slower film and good lenses. That compares _very_ favorably with renting HDTV cameras and editing equipment, plus you end up with a 16mm print that can be projected or a negative which can be blown up to 35mm for $10-20k, rather than an HDTV tape that would cost about $40k+ to transfer to film at 4MC or similar.

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 03-27-2001, 12:29 PM:

dont forget the fact that they are still calling people filmmakers when they are not using film at all.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 03-27-2001, 01:16 PM:

But at least its not gushing about the clear superiority of the image, which is what one normally gets in these articles.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-27-2001, 01:51 PM:

It's great that they got into the fact that the brain doesn't process the digital image as fast as a film image, which makes it more "work" to watch a digital movie. Roger Ebert has been saying this for a couple of years.

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 03-28-2001, 12:17 AM:

I think the notion of the brain having to do extra work to construct an image based on the pixels from a digital projector will only be true if the resolution is too low. At a high enough resolution, that problem will go away. Here is the relevant quote:

quote:
Then there’s the matter of our eyes, which are just not used to gazing at pixellated data on a large screen. “Your brain has to work a little harder to construct the image,” asserts cinematographer Allen Daviau, whose credits include “Empire of the Sun” and “E.T.”

That problem can be solved, since if the projector has high enough resolution, the images won't look pixelated. Of course the question is, will we get to actually see that kind of resolution in theaters, or will we have to put up with "good enough"? At the moment it sounds like the answer is, sadly, the latter.

That was a strange article. You're right, Scott, there was absolutely no distinction made between shooting and projecting, even though the two are completely independent of each other. The article also talked about digital images looking "flat" and "two-dimensional" -- which is just a complete non-sequitor. Both film images and digital images are going to look that way ... because they're both 2D media! Duh. I don't know what the author was thinking when he wrote that.

On the other hand, I was extremely pleased to see this statement in print:

quote:
The technology has also not yet overcome large gaps in resolution—the amount of picture information carried by digital pixels is still a fraction of what is contained on a frame of 35mm film.

It's about time somebody got around to putting that into a news article. I'm sick of all the hype about how if something's "digital", it's just got to be better. If it doesn't have enough pixels, it's not better! I'm very glad this article was willing to point that out. (And for anyone who might be reading who thinks the extra resolution of film is somehow negated by the limitations of projectors and lenses, I would direct your attention to another thread in which John Pytlak explained how, in Kodak's screening rooms, they are able to measure a resolution of 80 line-pairs per milimeter even when the film is being run through a projector as normal. For a standard 35mm frame area, that works out to nearly 4K resolution. Put that in your digital projector and smoke it.)

And let's not forget the fact that Lucas shot Episode II in 1920x1080 HDTV, while the DLP-based projectors Technicolor is talking about installing in 1000 theaters for free (as part of their roll-out plan) have a resolution of just 1280x1024. So those 1000 theaters will not even be able show the full resolution of Lucas's movie, but those theaters showing 35mm prints will be able to, due to the fact that film can hold every last pixel of an HDTV image (and more). After the digital data has been output to film with a laser recorder, it will actually look better that way, rather than trying to show it with an electronic projector that doesn't have enough resolution. Unless theaters start installing digital projectors that are capable of showing full HDTV resolution, the best way to watch Episode II will be on film, not electronically.
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Aaron Haney
Professional Complainer
Apple Computer, Inc.

Posted by Mark Lucas (Member # 791) on 03-28-2001, 04:44 PM:

But wouldn't the downsized digital version in theaters be more accurate in terms of color fidelity and overall steadiness? Printing to 35mm introduces it's own artifacts if I'm not mistaken.

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 03-28-2001, 07:42 PM:

The digital projector displays at 24 fps just like film.

I don't see how it would make the brain work harder.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 03-30-2001, 10:29 AM:

Paul, it is not the frame rate that will make the brain work harder. It is the spatial quantization, not the temporal quantization, that will make the brain work harder in this case. When detail in an image approaches the resolution of film, degradation of the detail takes place in a way that the brain handles easily.

Since the grain is randomly distributed on film, and the grain is different in every frame, the brain is good at integrating (averaging) out the grain over several frames, which can allow details captured poorly by the film to still be easily discernable. If something in the image is not moving, the difference in the way the object gets "rendered" on film can actually allow more detail to be seen than one single frame may capture. Interestingly, studies have been done that have determined that the human eye and brain can more easily extract detail from images that have a slight bit of noise present! Film grain may actually aid the human visual system in seeing detail more easily in an image!

With a digital system, the pixels are in the same locations for every image, so that these types of still objects in the image with details approach the sampling limitations of the device get rendered the same way, with the same artifacts (lack of detail or aliasing artifacts) in every frame, with no variance in rendering so there is nothing for the brain to average to get more detail out of the picture or reduce the artifacts. This is compounded by the digital device having a much lower resolution than film.

The brain is quite good at extracting detail from low-resolution images, but it takes work and having to do that sort of work for the length of a movie may cause headaches in many people.

Distractions during a feature cause the brain to have to do more work to watch a movie, and being distracted by some attribute of the presentation, such as noticing rows and/or columns of pixels, or alaising artifacts or beat patterns produced by the use of uniform spatial quantization, will make the brain have to work harder.

Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 03-30-2001, 10:45 AM:

Thanks.

You have been very informative about this.

Paul.

Posted by Ethan Harper (Member # 472) on 03-31-2001, 11:51 AM:

What the hell is that crap about film only being good for 100 runs?

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--"That's my story and i'm sticking to it!"--

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 03-31-2001, 01:23 PM:

Been playing traffic for about twelve weeks now with over 250 runs on the print and it still looks great. Don't have film guard here either. Have tried to get it but have been unable thru normal channels.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-02-2001, 07:49 AM:

"Film Done Right" will stay clean and scratch free for hundreds or thousands of runs.

The Disney theme parks run 35mm and 70mm KODAK ESTAR prints tens of thousands of passes. I have a sample of a 70mm print that was shown at EPCOT 60,310 times!

Yes, if you "do film wrong" you can scratch a print on the first pass. But you can also trash a DVD by handling it improperly, scratch or stretch a D5 tape on poorly maintained equipment, or suffer a head crash on a hard drive. Whether it's film or digital, it still takes skilled and caring people and well-maintained equipment to avoid problems.

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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 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 04-04-2001, 09:43 AM:

John, you've made a very good point. Most people think that digital will last forever because accessing the data does not degrade it (like playing a CD or DVD over and over as opposed to playing a vinyl record or running film through a projector repeatedly). What people don't think about are the physical devices that are storing and retrieving that string of numbers that makes up the song or movie. Physical devices, regardless of whether they're storing analog signals or digital information, can fail, and it is very important to have backups.

If the data is preserved and copied to new media as old media start to go bad, then digital seems to be the way to go for archival. What many people don't realize is how fast standards of encoding and decoding digital information change. What is really scary about the copy protection and encryption craze is that many years from now. people may be able to read the string of numbers from some digital media, but not be able to make sense of what the numbers represent because the data was encrypted and the key was lost, the algorithm has been lost, or some piece of proprietary hardware necessary for the decryption is no longer made and none are available or in working condition.

People generally can not physically observe digital media and tell what's on it. With a vinyl record, it doesn't take too much mechanical ability to figure out that the vibrations of the groove are a fairly direct encoding of the sound recorded. With a piece of movie film, it doesn't take too much insight to just look through the film to see the recorded image and figure out what's going on, or shine light through it to make a bigger version. Suppose someone finds a CD or DVD many years from now but no players are available. They might have a chance at figuring out the CD if they rig up a divice to extract the bitstring, but the encrypted information on the DVD would probably be hopeless to figure out. If all of our analog media go away and everything becomes digital, I believe a lot of our history and knowledge (including movies and songs) will be lost if we're not careful.

Evans

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 04-16-2001, 08:11 AM:

Your analysis was impressive Evans

May I ask that you extrapolate your analysis a little further please?

How does the brain perceive TV by comparison with film and digital projection at theatres? Your analysis concludes that digital projection is harder to watch than film at 24 fps but how does TV compare?

Here in Australia we have PAL colour which I understand is 625 x 625 pixels. Your NTSC systems is similar but has a lower number of pixels. Is TV harder to watch than film or vice versa? Are you more likely to get headaches watching TV?

Thanks Peter

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 04-17-2001, 07:38 AM:

Mark Lucas wrote:

quote:
But wouldn't the downsized digital version in theaters be more accurate in terms of color fidelity and overall steadiness?

By "color fidelity", I assume you mean color accuracy? Well, that's not necessarily going to be better on a digital system. It's true that every time you read the data off a disk, you will get the same value, but it does not automatically follow that the projector will actually produce the same color twice in a row if given the same input value. And I've heard that color calibration on DLP can be a nightmare. The data itself may be exactly the same each time, but it's still up to the display device to reproduce it correctly. That doesn't mean that digital can't still be more accurate than film, just that it's not a foregone conclusion.

Now, when it comes to color range, film definitely has the advantage. I've never seen a video projector, DLP included, that can produce the kind of rich reds that good film prints (especially dye-transfer) can. It's not impossible for a digital projector to catch up to what film can do, but again, it's up to the display device -- and I don't believe there are any currently available that can do that.

True, digital projection would almost certainly be more steady, since there is no possibility of film weave, although it's not guaranteed that it will be 100% steady (there could be flicker from the Xenon lamp, vibrations from who knows what shaking the projector, etc.) Really, steadiness is not that big of a problem with a good film presentation. Usually when I go to my local theaters, the picture is so steady I can fix my eye on an object or a subtitle near the edges of the screen and still not detect any movement. Poorly tuned film projectors can be bad about that, but if the theater does a good job, it's not an issue.

quote:
Printing to 35mm introduces it's own artifacts if I'm not mistaken.

Of course it does -- no one's saying it doesn't. No display system is perfect (despite what salesmen from digital cinema companies will tell you), but what I'm saying is that the advantages of film outweigh the disadvantages. I'd much rather enjoy the extra resolution, color, contrast of film (not to mention the lack of compression artifacts), even if it does have a few of its own disadvantages.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 04-17-2001, 10:03 AM:

quote:
How does the brain perceive TV by comparison with film and digital projection at theatres? Your analysis concludes that digital projection is harder to watch than film at 24 fps but how does TV compare?
Here in Australia we have PAL colour which I understand is 625 x 625 pixels. Your NTSC systems is similar but has a lower number of pixels. Is TV harder to watch than film or vice versa? Are you more likely to get headaches watching TV?

This is an interesting topic. I'll see what I can find on this topic, as I'm sure it has been fairly well researched in the past.

In my earlier post, I may have indicated that TV or digital projection was harder to watch than film, but I didn't mean to. I was stating reasons why that would be the case if it is. I don't believe the problems with headaches would occur unless people had to strain too much to see picture details due to resolution being too low for viewing distance, picture being too dim, picture being unfocused, etc.

I will see if I can find anything analyzing the difference in the way the brain processes sweeping scan-line types of displays vs. film projecton.

quote:
But wouldn't the downsized digital version in theaters be more accurate in terms of color fidelity and overall steadiness?

Color fidelity and accuracy are interesting issues. How many of you are familiar with color gamuts for different devices? Film has a greater gamut than television displays because the only colors a television can reproduce lie in a triangular area on a CIE Chromacity diagram between the three primary colors used for the phosphors in the picture tube. Colors outside that range cannot be reproduced faithfully. Film has a larger gamut than television, so there are colors that film can reproduce that cannot be reproduced on TV. Most TVs don't use the standard NTSC specifications for red, green, and blue, and use a more restrictive triangular area in order to get brighter pictures. Color on TV, HDTV, or digital projection devices may be more consistent, but their color gamut will be more restrictive than that of film.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 04-18-2001, 06:19 AM:

Evans, here is an interesting diagram which lays out exactly the differences in color gamut you are talking about:

http://home.earthlink.net/~demografx/colorimetry.html

Unfortunately, there are no numbers or measurements to go along with the diagrams.

That apparently comes from a proposal back when the FCC was still trying to decide on digital TV standards. I really like the idea of an RGGB color space -- too bad the FCC declined that and other good suggestions (such as a proposal from ASC to make the aspect ratio 2:1 instead of 16:9 (1.78:1)).

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 04-18-2001, 09:26 AM:

Aaron,

Yes! Those diagrams are very similar to some that I saw a few days ago, but could not find again. Thanks for posting the link. "A picture is worth a thousand words."

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site