Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

4K theater resources

Jake Bastian

Jake Bastian

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 17, 2008
Messages
667
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
SLC, UT
So I spent the weekend trying to find a theater that is currently projecting Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in 4K and it was incredibly frustrating to say the least. Thanks to this forum I was able to come across this website:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-di...t-digicinema-latest-webapp4ktheatregmap.shtml

I found that there is one theater in my state with Sony 4K projectors, and it wasn't playing GWTDT :(
I called around to my favorite theater chain and found that only some of their theaters had 4K projectors, but they weren't fully upgraded so no movies we currently playing in 4K. Most people I talked to on the phone treated the term 4K as a foreign language - it was really disheartening to have to educate the people working at the best theaters in town about how movies should be projected.

Would it be unreasonable to request a sticky on this site with known theaters around the globe currently playing movies in 4K (that were also mastered in 4K)? I personally thing it'd be a huge improvement in the signal-to-noise-ratio to have that kind of a resource here. I've never seen 4K projection and am dying to actually see what I've been shooting for 4 years...
 
Unfortunately, even though a theater has 4K projectors doesn't mean that they are actually playing 4K DCP's...chances are they are still playing 2K DCP's
 
Greg M said:
Unfortunately, even though a theater has 4K projectors doesn't mean that they are actually playing 4K DCP's...chances are they are still playing 2K DCP's
Click to expand...

Sadly, that is true.

I did receive an email from AMC, however, stating that while the projectors in all of their Los Angeles area theaters are 4K-capable, they will indeed be playing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 4K. So, I'm not sure if that means that each of their LA-area theaters actually have 4K DCPs... Curious, though. :)

By the way Greg, I looked at some of the photos of your facility on your site and it looks really cool. It's nice to see some visual effects studios that have Nintendo Wii rooms in them. =D
 
Matt Bowden said:
Would anyone working at the theatre know if the version they have is 4k? I have a cpl within an hour or so from my house but I'd like to call first. Should I ask if I can speak to the projectionist or something?
Click to expand...

That's actually one of the problems I've been running in to as I call around. The people working there aren't even sure of the term '4K' so it was somewhat of a task just to find the resolution of their projectors. You definitely need to be patient when asking around.


Greg M said:
Unfortunately, even though a theater has 4K projectors doesn't mean that they are actually playing 4K DCP's...chances are they are still playing 2K DCP's
Click to expand...

This would actually be a nice accompaniment to 4K theaters is a list of what current movies are seeing release in 4K so we're not wasting time asking about the wrong movies.
 
Why don't you just go see it and judge for yourself. If its 4K you should be able to see the night and day difference between that and 2K, Without any troubles.
 
Brian Iannone said:
They should be able to look at the DCP filename and tell whether or not it's 4K.
Click to expand...

I believe that the DCP that is being distributed (there's usually only one) is 4K. What determines the projection format. Is the combination. Of media block (aka server) and projector in use at the particularly theater. The DCI specification states that to be complant, a server must be able to play either 2k or 4k DCPs. A 2K server will play a 4K DCP as a 2k stream to the projector and vice versa.
 
Daniel Kunz said:
Why don't you just go see it and judge for yourself. If its 4K you should be able to see the night and day difference between that and 2K, Without any troubles.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but paying for the movie five times over and not finding any 4K DCP out there doesn't seem like such a great idea ;-)
 
I saw GWTDT yesterday in a theater with a 4k projector, but they were using a 2k source unfortunately... Really disappointing. I really liked the movie though.
 
Oh, you too? I am horribly pissed about this too. In a city where 4k shouldn't be.
 
I saw it last night in a 4K theatre in Dublin - Ireland

Looked really great - don't know if it was a 2K or 4K file though
 
Stick a 4K in front of me

Stick a 4K in front of me

It would be interesting to see both the 4K DCP/full 4K server output and the 4K DCP/ 2K server output either back to back or in a butterfly (split screen) on a 40' plus screen equipped with a 4K projector.

What would be the most obvious differences? I can make several educated guesses but I'd much rather see than guess.

BTW - I would suggest pixel peeping the credit roll to determine if you actually are being shown a full 4K pipeline. Smaller type with rounded high contrast edges is usually a good "tell".

Without a reference comparator the other physics of the exhibition environment beyond pixel count (not to mention the camera/DI/pipeline) will make it problematic to judge a 2K vs a 4K source. Did the projectionist nail focus? How close are you sitting? Projector optics? Screen material? Etc. I would guess this to be a particularly difficult metric to evaluate on GWDT due to intermediate framing choices during DI (as noted by Michael Cioni in other threads/interviews/blog posts) that fixed the native horizontal resolution to 3,000 pixels

While I imagine a good quality uprez to 4,096 holds a great deal of the available resolution (within other technical limitations of the pipeline) it is still an uprez step. IIRC the credits were done at 4K which might make them an even better indicator of the provenance of the image you are seeing, particularly since the theater staff may be unaware of technical details like whether the media block in service in a particular theater is internally downscaling 4K to 2K or not. According to Mike M. all DCI certified servers can read 4K DCPs but not all can actually output the full 4K signal, those that cannot simply scale it to 2K (or perhaps read a 2K extraction in the DCP?). This is apparently a function of the capabilities of the particular server in use and one would assume the newer servers are more likely to support 4K output than the older ones.

In any case, if 2012 really is the year of 4K I think its imperative that Red Users act as watchdogs for true 4K viewing experiences. With 3-D as a contemporary cautionary tale, it would be a shame to see 4K as a display format sullied by presentations that do not actually have full 4K pipelines. Perhaps the next use of 4:4:4 should not be as a shorthand color sampling metric but for material that is acquired at 4K (or higher), mastered at 4K and projected at 4K - kind of like the old DDD citation on CDs that had been recorded, mixed and mastered in the digital realm.

Cheers - #19
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top