2K Projected codec?

[Tim Hole]

Have a film that is to be projected (not my cinema) that originated on 8mm. It has been mastered on digi-beta.

The options for projection are 2K digital, Beta SP, DVD.

Now I am presuming that they have all the formats hooked up to the 2K projector, otherwise they must have small 1080p projector hiding away.

My best thoughts are to get her to see if their projector is set up for unencripted files and dump a playout straight onto the projectors drive. Question is arent the drives that are sent around high bit-rate mpg2 or JPEG2000 files?

TBH though if it is mastered to Digi-Beta then that is 720x576 max anyway so there would really be little difference between DVD and Digi-beta if it was a decent play out. If it is going through a 2K projector then there will be so upscaling going on either way isnt there? Can you even hook up a Beta-SP VTR to a 2K projector?

Am I way off on my logic here?

 

[Tom.Wong]

playing out from a 2k projector might actually make it look worse, if there is any kind of artificial upconverting at all other than simply blowing up the image to be bigger and stretching it out, you may get artifacting if the up conversion isn't done right. You really wouldn't see much of a difference either way, digi beta IMHO is probably best, the compression ratio between digi beta and dvd is slightly less I believe so you'll get that "little bit" extra quality out of it. In all likely hood you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between all 3... so go with what's easiest.

 

[Ryan Sims]

A professional 2K projector will do scaling/up-resizing great. Don't worry about that. Some film festivals still want to play only a Digi-beta tape, so having one won't hurt. A DVD will look not much different, but DVDs are not as reliable.

Think about it, which do you think would be better: the 1080p up-scaler in a $60 DVD player from Best Buy or a built-in scaler in a $10K to $75K projector whose sole job in life is to make great images.

I've never had a problem with a good cinema grade video projector and its scaler.

If you do take a DVD, try taking a DVD player as well with component out that you know will play the DVD as encoded. Component will look better than S-video, and much better than composite. HDMI or DVI connections might work great, just don't count on it.

The projector doesn't play 2K files, some type of player is connected to it. My guess is that you don't know how to create a DCP (Digital Cinema Package) that is encoded with JPEG2000. I've worked with unencrypted DCP files on this player - http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=jmp9600&search=9600 JPEG2000 looks great. Wavlet based like REDcode. But I seriously doubt that you could encode a file without knowing what the player is. Even if the player they have will take a unencrypted DCP, its going to cost $$$ since so few people do this right now. It's not worth the trouble.

Digi-beta or DVD is will be just fine.

 

[Tim Hole]

Thanks for the responses. All makes perfect sense and along the lines of my thinking.

 

[Ryan Sims]

Re-read the options.
Beta SP will be fine as well.