Barco LS4K

[Ryan Gallagher]

I wonder how they got around building code. There is supposed to be 30-inches between a film machine and any other boundary except on the lens side. For machines that are side-by-side, their 30" boundary may overlap (you don't need 60" between machines. California, I'm pretty sure, adopts the International Building Codes. This one, in particular would apply:

Haha, 30" would be a luxury I could use between the Christie and our No2 JJ, the gap is about the width of the Strong switcher which sits there too, which you have to climb over sideways if you need to service anything on the motor side of that Century. I'm hoping we can improve that spacing once digital upgrades to something that permits warp-files, which we need anyway to correct our keystone.

That sounds like a stressful phase in your booth Jim, to say the least. I'm betting the logic was "we can still show film while upgrading digital, they don't overlap". Like hell they don't.

[Steve Guttag]

Christie Cine-Life+ projectors do have warping capabilities and the keystone correction works out-of-the-box, at least that is my understanding. The first site I installed one, the projector was dead-on center so it was not needed (nor was lens shifting, pretty much). But the keystone correction was showing as available (not the traditional screen files of cropping like an aperture plate).

Here are the two settings for cropping versus keystone:

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It's too bad that they don't also include curve screen correction. That would help SOOOO much for theatres with curved screens for the "grin." One can purchase "Mystique" to get that sort of functionality but normally, people that need that also need to be able to stitch projectors together and do fancier stuff than just deal with things like Keystone and Curved screens (common to cinemas).

[Ryan Gallagher]

Christie Cine-Life+ projectors do have warping capabilities and the keystone correction works out-of-the-box, at least that is my understanding. The first site I installed one, the projector was dead-on center so it was not needed (nor was lens shifting, pretty much). But the keystone correction was showing as available (not the traditional screen files of cropping like an aperture plate).

It's too bad that they don't also include curve screen correction. That would help SOOOO much for theatres with curved screens for the "grin." One can purchase "Mystique" to get that sort of functionality but normally, people that need that also need to be able to stitch projectors together and do fancier stuff than just deal with things like Keystone and Curved screens (common to cinemas).

Yeah ours would likely remain off-center, and maybe with proper keystone adjust we could avoid having to use the periscope mirrors, though I think the main reason for that was to accommodate the tilt limits on the liquid cooling in the series2. I did get to witness a Cine-Life+ being configured in our theatre using Mystique for a premiere. It's good to know the Mystique license is not necessary to generate keystone files, just the warp files. Though we did utilize a warp file that day (complete with camera assisted targeting/calibration). Really we would only need a couple warp files, so the tech could generate them and most of our formats would inherit, if keystone alone was not cutting it.

They could just as easily opt to put it dead center, if we shuffle the centered JJ elsewhere (made sense during platter era), but that involves remodeling the wall and port arrangement, I'm doubtful that level of overhaul is in our cards when the day comes.

[Ryan Gallagher]

PS it's been 24 hours since Jim's post and worry about the upcoming film engagement amid barco install. He has not reappeared to say he survived. Should we have someone go check on him. ;-)

[Marco Giustini]

I feel keystone should never have been allowed on DCI projectors. It wasn't there for a reason. It's an awful lot of rescaling.
Having keystone correction will convince cinemas their projectors don't need to be centered anymore. Bad idea - IMHO.

[Steve Guttag]

I disagree. As the resolution of the projectors go up, the ability to "afford" the image softening due to warping becomes more tolerable.

So, here is an image from an old theatre where the projection room is at the top of a balcony. Maximum lens shift is being used. The screen is a rolldown:

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The stretch is so severe that the center circle is an oval and the screen, that is 2.39:1 in ratio, cannot be filled on the sides. Is it better to keystone correct to get a proportioned image or to achieve maximum resolution with a significantly distorted (geometrically) image?

Do I think that keystone correction should be the first line of defense? No. I don't think it should even be used by Christie for "convergence" until one has exhausted correcting using mechanical means. I'll admit, I'v been on a time-crunch and have used the pixel shift feature of the ICP once or twice to make a severe problem "go away." I think it should all be tools at one's access.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I disagree. As the resolution of the projectors go up, the ability to "afford" the image softening due to warping becomes more tolerable.

Yeppers, that is us too, though with the benefit of a real screen/masking and a periscope setup to go beyond lens shift limits. I’ll have to share our test patterns sometime so folks with regular theatres can see what we are dealing with. The extra optics of the periscope mirrors don't help any either for sharpness.

There is also a benefit when you have a visiting projector for premieres (or a backup). Historically we have installed those outside the booth on centerline on a riser in the balcony, killing a ton of seats. But if full geometry correction was possible they could go in the booth, we have room for one, but a ways off center.

Last time we had the CineLife+ unit in a hushbox in the balcony... the box was literally at a 40deg angle, would hate to have seen that keystone without the KS/warp features. Also revealed just how much taller our 2k image is without those features, cause was in use as a hot backup projector.

There are definitely situations where the geometry correction would be preferred to pixel perfect scaling, given a 4k image to start from.

[Marco Giustini]

Do I think that keystone correction should be the first line of defense? No

If all techs and integrators and project managers and cinema owners were called Steve Guttag, I'd be happy to have all possible adjustment tools available on cinema projectors.

But since that is not the case, I'm more of a "Sony" person where not even motorised lens shift is considered!

[Steve Guttag]

I come from a place were people are free to make bad decisions. I don't like some overlord deciding what is best for me without being able to see the conditions I'm in. As such...if you don't want to use keystone correction...don't. I remember a day with S1 projectors where people did fix their lens for say scope on a constant height screen and then scale Flat to fit within that. Was that better? Probably not. Did ANYONE complain about the significant scaling going on? Nope (at least those out of the studios).

People need to make do with what the situation they are in. Why not have all of the possible tools available? For the image I showed above...would you crop the crap out of it so any Power point performances would obliterate the "Start" button (which Windows 11 seems to have addressed ). Cropping doesn't change the keystone inherent in the picture. rectangles will appear as trapezoids. Buildings/people will appear to be leaning in. You can't fill the screen because that would crop even MORE image. If I were to have a projector with keystone correction and I put up a rectangular image that fit the screen versus a cropped image, what percentage of people would vote for the keystone corrected (scaled) over the cropped but 1:1 pixel? It is a 4K projector, by the way.

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed that the mixed use venues where Powerpoints, TV news with chyrons, etc. (in other words, content that will make a keystone glaringly obvious to the untrained eye) are being played as well as DCI movies, are the absolute nightmare scenario for managing a keystone. If that venue happens to be a 1930s style picture palace with a balcony, and that 7-8° down angle is simply unavoidable, expectation management becomes a challenge. In those situations, I usually create both "uncropped but with visible keystone" and "cropped but fills the screen" presets for the alternative content inputs.

But I also agree with Marco that for new builds, architects should be encouraged to create the room such that the projector has a straight shot on both planes to the center of the screen, so that it's possible to achieve a no crop/no keystone image without having to resort to digital video processing. They seem to be getting good at this for post houses now, but I've still installed at new build cinemas where the projector is high enough that lens shift will not quite do it, and I have to physically angle the projector down a bit.

[Steve Guttag]

That room predates 1930! And the down angle...is it probably on the order of 20 degrees. Yes, it is at the top of a balcony with the booth up a short "ships ladder" on top of that!

I have no problem encouraging people to build things on center line. I do have a problem with a 1-size fits all sort of rule. Hey, I'm in favor of anamorphic lenses too, for constant height screens. I would really like to see the actual tradeoffs of warping for a curved screens too.

[Marco Giustini]

I come from a place were people are free to make bad decisions. I don't like some overlord deciding what is best for me without being able to see the conditions I'm in. As such...if you don't want to use keystone correction...don't.

But everything you do every day is decided by others. Your freedom is very limited
Keystoning is just one piece of the puzzle IMHO.

I remember a day with S1 projectors where people did fix their lens for say scope on a constant height screen and then scale Flat to fit within that. Was that better? Probably not. Did ANYONE complain about the significant scaling going on? Nope (at least those out of the studios).

Well, if a motorised lens is not available or very expensive, that's the lessen of the two evils.
But correct me if I am wrong, the following generation all had motorised lens available (more or less as standard, I believe Christie did not? But I don't remember installing a series 2 without the ILS).

For the image I showed above...would you crop the crap out of it so any Power point performances would obliterate the "Start" button (which Windows 11 seems to have addressed ).

Powerpoint is HDMI, happy to have keystoning and linearity correction on HDMI

Jokes asides, I've done auditoria worse then that and yes, on those I don't disagree that the lessen of the two evils is the keystone correction.
But on some other rooms where I had keystoning correction available and the keystone was minimum, I decided NOT to use it and to keep a 1:1 mapping on screen.

Give keystoning correction (and more) to everybody and you'll find projectors installed on the side of the auditorium in a pod "we can fix that via software"

And yes, I am in favour of forced upgrades on Windows as well - because when MS gave the user the ability to switch them off it didn't go well!

[Steve Guttag]

You and I are in different places, for sure.
Christie S2 projectors had motorized lens as an option on most of their projectors. But even in the S1 days, where there were motorized lenses, I saw installations where they opted to resize the image. It isn't something I did on S1 (definitely on "S0" aka Mark VII).

And no, I still don't have updates on Windows machines, unless I want them...all of the way through Win11. I even have Win 7 machines out there...still working.

But you do you.

[Shibu Paul]

The Christie Keystone option is available starting from version CineLife+ 2.3.0.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Very much in danger of veering off topic, but outside of powerpoint, I also find in general that people making still image graphics for the big screen don't quite "get it" presentation wise, regularly ignoring action and title safe areas (that exist for this very reason, among others), constantly giving you content for pre-roll or Q&A that doesn't match the feature ratio, etc etc. Even those that should know better, studios are often guilty when providing slides, big film festivals that let their logo sit in the far bottom right corner for example. hah.

I do tend to pivot between both crop vs no-crop approaches, depending on the content/context of the show (as Leo suggests). I "understand" why providing a 1.78:1 slide is more generally useful on everything except the big screen, but your feature is SCOPE!!! lol. Not everyone has masking automation or a working ILS. Perfect world they would always provide at least 3 versions, F185, S239, and F178... and if the film is something otherwise, make sure it still looks fine when cropped to that otherwise by another preset, if you don't make a 4th version that is exact.