"Future Proofing" claims ?

[Tom.Wong]

I know you're talking about displays here, but I would humbly suggest that every broadcast and cable network owned by either ABC/Disney or Fox - and that amounts to a LOT of feeds - is delivered in 720p/60 and will be for a number of years to come.

"Future proofing" is a rather presumptuous enterprise, because unless one has a time machine there is no way to know exactly what the future will bring, nor is there any way to know what consumers will want, demand, or be willing to pay for. I would think that what's far more important than "K's" is some sort of storage format that will last, be supported now and in the foreseeable future, and be recoverable. Without that, it doesn't matter how many "K's" you've got.

not debating those facts as all, broadcast has always lagged behind in all these fronts, all for very good reasons. but there's always other venues of distribution other than broadcast. my personal feeling is that it will start and get popular with computer screens first, viewing content via streaming, and of course gaming which is a huge factor in pushing for higher resolutions. a lot of people discount the fact that people get full hd televisions so their xbox and playstation 3 games will look better. it's all just part of a trend that has already happened, and most likely will continue to happen. I don't think broadcast is the only route to beyond hd resolution consumption. creative thinking and the people's want for higher quality in one way or another will pave the way. how long it will get there, I'm not the one to say.

and archival is another hot topic as well, which just really shows the state of flux the industry is in, and how many issues we all have to deal with day in and day out. acquisition is getting much bigger, archiving is getting much tougher. delivery has no standardization, and business models built for over several decades aren't working so well anymore. it's just something to get figured out with time, and in the meantime, while still shooting content, K's are part of the equation for a longer lasting business model. but I don't believe it to be the end all be all, just another piece of the puzzle to put together in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

All those people shooting black and white film decades ago made the decision to save money and not shoot color. They didn't future-proof. Then some of those movies turned out to be great content and that meant that Ted Turner had to spend a lot of money to get them colorized. Would have been much cheaper to just shoot color. And it's probably even less of a cost difference to future proof a project now than it was then--thanks to RED--whether using Epic or Scarlet. If you can... why not?

Couldn't the exact same argument be made for HDR or stereo today? Everybody is compromising somewhere.

 

[Jay Birch]

Once the C.S.I crime labs release their resizing algorithms to the general public we can rescale SD to perfect 8K anyway.

No need to future proof.... Just wait for Grissom to leak the software

 

[Jay Birch]

Couldn't the exact same argument be made for HDR or stereo today? Everybody is compromising somewhere.

and 24p...

 

[Tom Lowe]

>>>You can scan most films to 4K. You cannot scan standard 35mm to 6K, or 8K, etc. <<<

I must disagree. You can scan any analog film medium to any digital resolution. You may start to see diminishing returns, i.e. the 8K version may not look any different than the 6K version, but film remains a universal standard.

I said most 35mm can be scanned TO 4K. I did not say AT 4K. Let's be clear about language. You can scan any 35mm film AT any resolution. You can scan it AT 20K res, if you like. But you cannot scan 90% of the filmed entertainment from the last 100 years TO any resolution past 4K. Some recent films, and 65mm films, and some recent anamorphic films, 15-perf IMAX, etc, MIGHT be able to scan TO 6K, but those represent only a tiny fraction of the overall filmed entertainment from the last 100 years.

So.... your 8K TV will not do you any good at all vs a 4K TV for 90- or 95% of the filmed entertainment from the last century. Thus, 4K becomes the new gold standard for a while.

 

[Jay Birch]

Films are not the driving force behind home entertainment though. Sports are.

If 8K and 60FPS is the "decided" standard for sport, then that is what will be pushed. Then you will have a clamour for 8K content in other sections, including feature films. That is why future proofing is just a buzz word, in my eyes.

Shoot good content with the best image attributes you can afford (resolution being one of many attributes... For instance i'd choose to shoot on a F3 over a RED1-M... As I would forego the resolution for the DR and lowlight).

The Epic is certainly as "future proof" as you can get, right now... Perhaps alongside the F65.

 

[Harry Clark]

Hi Tom,
Not trying to start trouble
I think we are trying to say similar things in different ways. You can scan film to 6K or 8K. You WILL see a difference to a certain point. I bet a slow-speed black and white film from the 1960's would resolve out better than an early high-speed stock from the early 1980's.
Where I disagree with you is on your statement that "you cannot scan standard 35mm to 6K, or 8K, etc."
There is no clear cut-off, as far as I know. You will still see a difference, and resolve more detail, as you scan a negative at higher resolution. It will be diminishing returns after a certain point. The Arri 4K whitepaper shows (in figure 20) a definite increase in detail on the 10K scan versus the 4K scan, all the way down to 80-100 line pairs. There may be some scientific-type people who post here that can quantify some kind of cut-off, but it will be a generalization at best, I think. Unless some scientific study of the subject has been done I would not put a number on it. However, it's quite possible I'm wrong.
Do you have a source for that 90% figure you mention?
Always looking to learn...
Cheers,
Harry

 

[Michael Dalton]

This is great to hear, hopefully we'll have a bunch of options for acceleration soon at different price points. NAB?

 

[Bill Anderson]

This "future proofing" rhetoric is not so much about what will go forward, or what is the new "gold standard", as it is about implying that anything less will be left behind. I want the option of more K's, as many as is practical, and I'm confident that RED will help usher us into a brilliant future, but I also know that choosing 1080 or 2K will not automatically relegate me to some inferior tribe on the edge of extinction. We need more understanding/harmony in this regard.

 

[Les Dittert]

I say this often nowadays, but anyone doubting 4K theater presentation should see "Samsara" at 4K. The detail in just the first scene will blow you away.
"Samsara" was scanned at 6K from modern 65mm negative and downrezed to 4K. It's a true 4K.

As far as future proofing, part of the equation is to update the current RedCode and go with something less lossy.
The limiting factor is the enormously compute intensive demands that compression burdens the camera with. That's part of the reason the current cameras exhaust hot air like an f16 on after burners!
Interframe compression ? Limited burst variable bitrate ? Who knows.

 

[Phil Holland]

"Samsara" was scanned at 6K from modern 65mm negative and downrezed to 4K. It's a true 4K.

Samsara was scanned at 8K, although you can indeed scan up to 11k these days, for a 4k DCP finish.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=93727

Also, remember that not all 65mm is created equally. Samsara was 5 perf while traditional IMAX content is shot 15 perf. 5 perf 65mm can approximately resolve between 8K and 12K depending on a million factors and likely who you talk to. IMAX 15 perf negative is around 70mm wide where 5 perf is around 52mm wide.

Either way, when you see any of these 65/70mm projected they are just beautiful and emphasize why resolution is important towards "our" cause.

Interestingly enough when you see a film projected on 65mm that's been digitally scanned you typically aren't using a laser recorder and what is being used is an older Solitaire CRT based film recorder which can export up to an 8K image. We had two at a studio I worked at many moons ago and occasionally we would swap out heads on them toss on the 4x5" head for production stills to get to media outlets. The 65 head's had a vacuum plate to keep the negative flat during exposing which when I did that work took around 90+ seconds per frame. That's when Unix and proprietary hardware was pushing the images to the Solitaires, but really not much has changed over the years on this front.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Hi Tom,
I think we are trying to say similar things in different ways. You can scan film to 6K or 8K. You WILL see a difference to a certain point. I bet a slow-speed black and white film from the 1960's would resolve out better than an early high-speed stock from the early 1980's.
Where I disagree with you is on your statement that "you cannot scan standard 35mm to 6K, or 8K, etc."

The numbers I have seen over the years for 35mm non-anamorphic film have always been in the 2.5K to 3.8K range. That means the maximum resolution is less than 4K, so it is not possible to scan that film TO anything above 4K. To = maximum. IE, "up to". You can scan it at 1 million K if you like, but it will never resolve TO anything more than 3.8K.

My 90% number is an educated guess on what percentage of filmed entertainment over the last 100 years has been shot at anamorphic 35, Vista Vision, 65mm 5-perf, 15 perf, etc vs 35mm, S35mm, or even 16mm. Do you think my estimate is high or low?

 

[Phil Holland]

I don't think it's too high or too low Tom. When it comes to the actual resolution captured on celluloid it's really going to vary depending on the film stock and ASA if we take optics and camera maintenance out of the equation. When referring to the captured negative 3.8K to 4.5K would be a safe overall assessment. When scanned at 6K, S35 grain is globular and has a "fluffy" feel to it typically. Low speed Kodak Vision3 picks up a lot of detail with very little grain, but many prefer to shoot 250 or 500 overall for flexibility.

Intermediate stock is the finest grained film out there, but you'll never shoot it through a camera on a production. It's designed for post dupe and film recording work with a focus on maintaining the highest image quality possible.

There are other factors though that do indeed degrade film as it goes further down the pipe of mass duplication. Then there's typical wear and tear of running that print film through the projector a million times.

So 3.8K isn't a bad opinion. It's just really hard to track a "hard number" from negative to projector with all of the variables along the way.

This for me is one of the allures of a pure digital pipeline from capture to projector/monitor.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Samsara was scanned at 8K, although you can indeed scan up to 11k these days, for a 4k DCP finish.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=93727

Also, remember that not all 65mm is created equally. Samsara was 5 perf while traditional IMAX content is shot 15 perf. 5 perf 65mm can approximately resolve between 8K and 12K depending on a million factors and likely who you talk to. IMAX 15 perf negative is around 70mm wide where 5 perf is around 52mm wide.

Either way, when you see any of these 65/70mm projected they are just beautiful and emphasize why resolution is important towards "our" cause.

Interestingly enough when you see a film projected on 65mm that's been digitally scanned you typically aren't using a laser recorder and what is being used is an older Solitaire CRT based film recorder which can export up to an 8K image. We had two at a studio I worked at many moons ago and occasionally we would swap out heads on them toss on the 4x5" head for production stills to get to media outlets. The 65 head's had a vacuum plate to keep the negative flat during exposing which when I did that work took around 90+ seconds per frame. That's when Unix and proprietary hardware was pushing the images to the Solitaires, but really not much has changed over the years on this front.

Great to hear your story. I was fiddling around in the same field back then...

But luckily I sold our highness scanners back in 2004. Had one Kodak Genesis and a Quantel Domino. The genesis was to me one of the most quality scanners ever made. even though it was a bit slow.. 16sec per frame at 4k 16bit. But, then again you have to consider it did a true 4k image, not using a Cmos sensor, instead it did 3 passes one for each frame using a RGB color wheel scanning each color in one pass each. So I would say that the genesis scan was in comparison to RED cameras at least 3 times the information.. no debayering pattern.... To me it was quite clear that the 4k scans made held up far more information than the negative themselves... every little silver grain looked like 3 dimensional giant rocks when zoomed into 1:1...

Around 2005 the spirit 2k kind of took the market and people did not care so much for resolution since they did DI for the whole film and not just intercutting the EFX scenes and the Titles / opticals. So they kind of went for the happy colors of the spirit and the millienium and forgot about resolution, but now we all know the race for resolution is just about to start...

I think when people see Dragon full sensor material interpolated to 4k shown in a big cinema with laser 4k resolution... then the only question they can think of would be something like... if this is 4k how does 10k look... or 20k with a large format sensor etc. The standard of 35 and 65mm will be blown away. The industry will come up with ways to shoot super large format and project in resolutions far bigger than what is discussed today...

So I think a few years from now we will all laugh when looking at this thread about "future prof resolutions"...as 4k will very soon be like packman compared to future resolutions looking more like Battlefield...

 

[Les Dittert]

Actually Björn, The Kodak Genesis used white light and a trilinear sensor to capture color.
I have a Genesis optical sensor block/ light guide on my desk

I was a true 4k for sure. 16 seconds was kinda fast for those days !

Kodak spent $100 million R&D to beat HD back. They were successful in doing that for a number of years.

 

[Michael Daz]

>>>You can scan most films to 4K. You cannot scan standard 35mm to 6K, or 8K, etc. <<<

I must disagree. You can scan any analog film medium to any digital resolution. You may start to see diminishing returns, i.e. the 8K version may not look any different than the 6K version, but film remains a universal standard.
However, I would not obsess too much over format. As Tom Wong points out, content is king. I was just watching an episode from the first season of SNL. 4x3 SD? Check. Comet tails, and smeary 60i video? Check. Did I notice for more than a second? No. Why? Because I was immersed in the content.
The trouble with the DV revolution of years past was not that everyone was suddenly making movies on crappy SD Mini-DV cameras, the trouble was that 99.999% of the "movies" getting made were crap. And they will not age well. Will the "democracy" of film making from the past 5 years, when 4K + has been available, be any better? I'm not so sure...
My two cents.
Cheers,
Harry

Great response!
Content is defintely King!
Great way of delivering your insight!

 

[Björn Benckert]

Actually Björn, The Kodak Genesis used white light and a trilinear sensor to capture color.
I have a Genesis optical sensor block/ light guide on my desk

I was a true 4k for sure. 16 seconds was kinda fast for those days !

Kodak spent $100 million R&D to beat HD back. They were successful in doing that for a number of years.

You are right. It was the domino / oxberry that had the spinning 3 colored filter wheel... Im mixing them up.

Thinking of the Domino, it was crazy what it did.... The domino scanner module scanned in ( i think 4k) and then downsampled to 3k 8bit with quantels patened dynamic rounding. Then laying the material out to SD D1 tapes... simply by dividing one frame into 16 PAL frames. So first frame on the tape was pixel 1, 16,32 etc and second frame pixel 2,17,33 etc. back then if felt so clever. Now, today it all seams like a big joke..

So with that in mind. 10 years from now we will sit and laugh at 4k as a format, at our low sensitive overweight epics, our Stupid workflows involving Red Rocket cards, DIT stations, Super slow SSD mags etc all back from 2012 when we where shooting 5k and not 500k

 

[Les Dittert]

Lol ,
We need a scanner that scans in a script and spits out an original and compelling story on the output!

 

[Justin O'Neill]

Here's the way I look at it: if I shoot 4k/6k now, when people watch it in the future on their 28k displays, it will look at least as good as all the stuff that was shot for the previous 100 years.

 

[Phil Holland]

Great to hear your story. I was fiddling around in the same field back then...

I was very fortunate to begin my career in the industry back in 1999 and at the age of 19 having access to a 4K film scanner and high quality 4K film recorders. That very first year I learned so much my head almost exploded. I was totally spoiled and addicted to that level of image quality. I yearned for years for somebody to develop a high resolution motion picture camera that could play in that cinema sandbox and that's pretty much why I chose team Red.