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  • 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 :)

"Future Proofing" claims ?

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Bill Anderson

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Regarding Red's position on the ongoing "K" wars:

I am as positively passionate as the next guy when it comes to the creative possibilities afforded by larger and larger sensors and the likes. However:

with an eye to currently developing viewing technology, and, if you feel bold enough, to future developments in viewing parameters, why should 1080 and 2K imagery be considered as not future proofed?
 
Same reason that SD is not future-proof. 4K displays are being released now.

Film can be scanned at 4K and the difference is clear. See Arri's tech explanation. They said it best.

Jim
 
It's more than possible that the future will be 8k! There is already a television standard being developed for this and it's likely that 8k will become the origination standard at some point. I guess 4k is closer to 8k! ;)

But who can know for definite.
 
Jannard said:
Film can be scanned at 4K and the difference is clear.
Click to expand...

This is the key to understanding why 4K will be the gold standard for a while. You can scan most films to 4K. You cannot scan standard 35mm to 6K, or 8K, etc.
 
Yes, 4K display are being released ( thank god) but there are many popular alternatives to viewing imagery.

Bear with me a sec, I'd like to understand the implications of future proofing with regards to the big picture:

When the likes of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams were using 8X10 cameras, Andre Kertesz, Bill Brandt and a host of other greats were using 35mm cameras. (I never once heard one group disparage another for its choice of tools.) But that was stills and, unlike cinema at that time, stills offered many finishing sizes, from 2 inch contact prints, to murals.

Filmmaking tools are now beginning to offer an unprecedented variety of finishing sizes, and yet I get the feeling that no matter what the acquisition format, it is commonly expected to meet the largest viewing criteria, i.e cinema, or 5K TV's.

I am currently working on a personal 1080 project. The aesthetic is based on 1080 viewing, just like a Weston image was perfected to suit an 8X10 contact print, or Adams' pre-visualization was often based upon a 16X20 enlargement. This approach might not be so common today, but I think it will prevail, now that the filmmaker's canvas dimensions are of his choosing - if one gives a hoot about the filmmaker's intent that is. Is it unreasonable to believe that this is a part of the future?
 
future proofing is kind of a dicey term. you only future proof as far as you can predict, and that is usually the goal. 4k you see isn't just around the corner, it's here. 4k projectors are in theaters, the tv's are coming out. RED's been doing it acquisition wise for over 5 years, film has natively been doing it for a 100. i don't really see it as a K's war anymore, all the high resolution cameras competing with RED right now, introduce "more k's" just to get the best downsample for 4k. same reason why they do a 6k scan on film to down rez it to whatever they want. the future proof portion is that your film, commercial, music video, whatever, can be re distributed up to 4k when the time comes where the masses want it.

as Jim said, everything purely shot on SD uprezzes to HD horribly, so putting them on blu ray now would look as bad if not worse than a simple dvd on our current HD sets. 720p came and went really fast, the difference to 1080 is highly visible, full hd displays discontinued 720p ones really fast, and only a handful linger around as smaller cheaper panels.

honestly the best future proofing there is is just making amazing content. people will watch it at vga quality if the content itself is good enough. 4k just offers more avenues for re distribution when the time comes. those re mastered 1080p blu rays right now scanned from film, are downrezzed from 4k-6k scans. and all stored on huge raids, ready to go to a 4k medium. something like blade runner will be making the studios a lot more money over the next few years. and the idea is, you don't want to be locked out of it.



as for 8k, that's a territory that i'm sure will be dived into soon as well :)
 
Tom.Wong said:
720p came and went really fast, the difference to 1080 is highly visible,
as for 8k, that's a territory that i'm sure will be dived into soon as well :)
Click to expand...

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.
 
>>>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
 
The visual difference between SD video and HD film transfer is huge.

The difference between HD and 4K -- both with similar dynamic range and capture technology -- is not huge.

I'm sure the future will ignore Avengers because the resolution isn't high enough. We're bordering on the ridiculous. A 2K finish is a professional quality that audiences have shown is perfectly acceptable.

The only "future proofing" that really matters is to write a movie that the future will want to click on.
 
I rest easier at night, knowing that Fran Drescher in her ultimate wisdom, insisted on taping "The Nanny" in HD before there was even a standard for it.

Fran Drescher, visionary extraordinare.
 
I'm hoping we don't see a K's race that becomes superficial. Especially in the consumer market where it's all about buzzwords and getting people to buy stuff. As we know 1080P doesn't mean the same thing across all products. Plenty of really bad 1080P cameras, TVs and projectors. Hopefully the focus will be on the quality of the pixels. I'd rather see 4K worth of quality pixels rather than 8K of poor pixels. In the world of digital cinema acquisition I think this will be come a major area of focus as the amount of cameras jumping into the ring is increasing. For RED, this will mean trying to stay ahead of the game with sensor design, RAW capture techniques, color science, camera ergonomics, lens designs, etc. A 6K camera with extended dynamic range, improved highlights, and best of class color science should allow RED to expand their user base, respond to competitive designs, etc.

And yes, content is king no doubt. But giving yourself plenty of resolution and quality pixels is also something that can help give you a leg up in future repurposing.
 
Bill Anderson said:
why should 1080 and 2K imagery be considered as not future proofed?
Click to expand...

Because 35mm film has more info in it than 2K, maybe? Last time I read about the tests, it was 3,6K or something like that. Maybe more, I'm not sure.
 
When scanned at 6K most low ASA film begins to exhibit globular grain samples that are larger than individual pixels.However, when downsampled to 4K, 2K, etc.. you get a very crisp image. Red is clearly pushing to make a digital film alternative. With the look and feel of what RedCode Raw produces they are on the right track. With Dragon's announced 6K resolution and dynamic range performance we may for the first time have exactly that. With what we've been told about the ISO 2000 performance we may even have something more.
 
2k is future proofed. Why? Because you'll probably be finishing in 2k for VFX. So it doesn't matter what the source material is. Also 99.99% of all RED content goes to TV or web which are both more often than not 720p and sometimes 1080p broadcast. TV budgets can't afford 4k and 99.9999% of that content is in the garbage bin by next month anyway never to be seen again. Also most people just turn on 120hz, crank up the contrast and run their HDTV to their cable box through a standard definition RCA cable and can't tell the difference. People are stupid and don't care.

And "future proofed" is silly. When 8k TVs come out 4k won't be future proofed either so it's an impossible endless quest. Personally I think people are going to be clamoring for HDR displays in the not too distant future as well. But I'm not shooting everything HDRx for that eventuality. Nor am I shooting everything in stereo even though it's clear that people will want 3D content in the future.

Whatever you're shooting today is going to be embarrassing to future generations. So make it look good. I don't see any special interest in 70mm films from the 50s vs 35mm films from the 50s.

Vadim Bobkovsky said:
Because 35mm film has more info in it than 2K, maybe? Last time I read about the tests, it was 3,6K or something like that. Maybe more, I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

By the time it makes it to the theater I've heard most audiences only get 1.5k
 
I see scalable delivery and displays in the future. Once the bandwidth is there, you will download the content appropriate for your display. Youtube/Netflix on steroids. Displays with advanced scaling algorithms so if content is only available at 1080P and you want to watch on your 4K display it will scale the video decently. Your display with be the hub, just run wire to it. Discs will eventually be the minority. You will download content and games onto advanced solid state storage built into display (or perhaps removable/upgradable). Download/stream the latest movies in 4K or perhaps 8K at some point.

There are so many possibilities for the future. It's almost to the point where we are no longer in awe of the technology, but rather expect these things. Even a new iphone doesn't have the same wonder that the first one did. I expect that we will see major advances in content viewing 10-20 years down the road. 4K is not future proof in the sense that it will most likely be superseded by something else. I think standards as we used to know them - SDTV, HDTV, etc may not fit into the same approach in the future, again because systems built around scalability will make it possible to support multiple standards. How big is your pipe and how much resolution can your particular system display? That's what will make it's way into your living room.

RED has done it's part to push resolutions that look towards the future. Now I think it will be their job to make the best damn pixels the industry has to offer. It's no small challenge.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
2k is future proofed. Why? Because you'll probably be finishing in 2k for VFX.
Click to expand...
At least you said "PROBABLY be finishing 2K for VFX". All those VFX guys over there need LOT more K's to achive realistic effects. Did you ask ? No offense here.
 
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?
 
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