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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 :)

Good enough...

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Mark Phelan said:
And why is it that some feel the "absolute" compulsion to dictate what is good enough for the rest of us? I've seen 4K and it's WAY better than 1080p, no question.
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I'm not the one dictating what is and is not good enough for the rest of us. I'm simply saying even if you like 4k better, you need something to put onto your better screen. You need a screen which is mass produced. You need a player which plays popular formats and you need content. I don't have much faith in the content producers to shell out the $$ to make it happen. I don't really have confidence in them to deliver quality 1080p.

And I still also don't consider XBox Live or Netflix Streaming to be "popular" I don't even consider Hulu popular. Live and Netflix streaming are both really impressive, and both really small niche markets. There are 20m Xbox Live subscribers. Every single one of them would have to be watching TV on a single night to be a significant market. Both are also limited to US customers.

As to Earth's success on Blu-Ray. Of course! It's mostly just eye candy. Every single person on earth who owns a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player owns Earth. It's the demo disk you reach for to show off your fancy new TV. If you watch it on normal DVD, it's just another nature documentary and we all know how well nature documentaries are at moving product. :D

You tell someone in charge of programming that you have a new camera that costs less, has a great workflow and produces amazing imagery and they'll say "where can I buy one?"

On the other hand you go up to someone and tell them that you have this great new camera but you'll have to get the Consumer Electronics Industry to sell them a new TV. The Cable companies and the Satellite dish providers will have to sell their customers a new receiver. The Editors have to upgrade their software. The VFX companies are going to charge them more money. They won't be able to use any of their existing switching gear anymore for live broadcasts. Uou can't broadcast it over the air. Oh and customers don't even know what it is or why they should want it, they might not even be able to tell the difference.... how do you think that meeting is going to go?

The only people who would profit from this brave new world would be RED and the display manufacturers. There is no incentive for the studio to spend more on something consumers aren't asking for. I just don't see the people with the pocket books getting behind the 4k rally cry.
 
The whole point of this is that you can easily scale down your original content. Scaling up... not so easy. The other point is that what is "good enough" today may not be good enough tomorrow, depending on what you shot it on.

If 4K was 4 times more expensive than shooting great 1080P, that would be a significant factor. But it isn't. In fact, it is easier and cheaper now to shoot and post the best 4K digital than it is to shoot and post the best 1080P.

Jim
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
There is no incentive for the studio to spend more on something consumers aren't asking for. I just don't see the people with the pocket books getting behind the 4k rally cry.
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They pumped a lot of money into Dark Knight for IMAX sequences and that paid off hugely. No one was asking for it. Fox gambled half a billion dollars on a 3D CGI film when "no one was asking for it" and it paid off massively.

If 10,000+ new 4K projectors are being installed around the US, how on earth could the studios not back 4K?? As Jim pointed out: it's not like it's really costing them any more than film or even 1080p with something like an F35. I'm doing realtime editing of 4K R3D files right now on a PC I built for $3000 bucks using CS5. Surely, the studios can handle 4K.
 
Tom Lowe said:
They pumped a lot of money into Dark Knight for IMAX sequences and that paid off hugely. No one was asking for it. Fox gambled half a billion dollars on a 3D CGI film when "no one was asking for it" and it paid off massively.

If 10,000+ new 4K projectors are being installed around the US, how on earth could the studios not back 4K?? As Jim pointed out: it's not like it's really costing them any more than film or even 1080p with something like an F35. I'm doing realtime editing of 4K R3D files right now on a PC I built for $3000 bucks using CS5. Surely, the studios can handle 4K.
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The studios? They shot in IMAX with the Dark Knight because the DIRECTOR asked for it, they shot on 65mm in inception because the DIRECTOR asked for it, they shot in 3D because JAMES CAMERON aka THE DIRECTOR asked for it.
Ultimately it comes down to the filmmaker, you shoot on what your comfortable with and some people are just more comfortable with an F35 than a Red one.
4k? 1080p? It's just a number and a letter! It doesn't make films better it just makes them blow up more gracefully.
 
Craig W. Bickerstaff said:
The studios? They shot in IMAX with the Dark Knight because the DIRECTOR asked for it, they shot on 65mm in inception because the DIRECTOR asked for it, they shot in 3D because JAMES CAMERON aka THE DIRECTOR asked for it.
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The point was, if a director and DP want to shoot and finish at 4K, the studios have no real reason to deny them.
 
Tom you keep on insisting that 4k is the limit of film and yet WB are scanning their classics in 8K the latest one begin Doctor Zhivago, I'm sure 8K is oversampling but still if we already are going 8K I guess that's where we are heading. http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1771

Now, I'm no resolution hound, there are so many more aspects of an aesthetic pleasing image, I have Doctor Zhivago on DVD and even in that low resolution, it's still a beautiful film.

And the notion that things acquired on anything lower then 4K would be useless is very strange, I mean Fawlty Towers is still hilarious despite it's low fi capture,(I guess Betacam but I'm not 100% certain. 16mm for outdoors)

On the other hand David Lynch's Inland Empire looked horrible in theaters and on DVD, but if the DV technology didn't exists, that movie would never been made, which would also be a shame so there is always two sides to a coin.

This is great article about good enough, concerning frame rates in video games http://www.insomniacgames.com/blogcast/blog/mike_acton/1503082, I really don't have an opinion on it, but it's an interesting read.

I agree with you that in theory good enough is never good enough, but in practice it always wins out.

1. 70mm never took off because 35mm was good enough.

2. Technicolor dye transfers die out because Kodak was good enough.

3. Photochemical finish almost died out because the convince of DI even if it means you locked your films in 2k forever.

4. Film stock for TV has taken a severe hit because digital accusation is good enough. ( And of course SAG, AFTRA rules.)

Now I don't like any of the above facts, but it seems like price/performance always gets the better of you in the end.

And good luck with your film Tom, looking forward to seeing it.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Basically, the rate of technology adoption is increasing. So while it took almost 50 years for every American home to get a landline telephone, with cell phones, full adoption took place in less than a decade.
.
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Hi Tom,

Car phones date back to 1960
1g phones came out in 1979, full adoption took a lot more than a decade, the reason it was so quick is the customer rarely paid full price for the handset.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones

Stephen
 
Alex Lindblom said:
1. 70mm never took off because 35mm was good enough.

2. Technicolor dye transfers die out because Kodak was good enough.

3. Photochemical finish almost died out because the convince of DI even if it means you locked your films in 2k forever.

4. Film stock for TV has taken a severe hit because digital accusation is good enough. ( And of course SAG, AFTRA rules.)
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Many of the issues you have raised are specifically related to the limitations of chemical film running through mechanical cameras, and to celluloid film projection. Many of these are not applicable to digital technology and its ability to scale in terms of sensor size, resolution, projection, etc. 65mm is very expensive and heavy, and 70mm projection theaters are few and far between.

Not the case with digital.

Jim is getting ready next year to put out a FF35mm digital Vista Vision camera that shoots 6K 3:2 RAW, which in my opinion will come close to matching IMAX film when projected on 4K projectors from a clean 4K RGB finish. That camera will probably only weigh 10 pounds! It will use incredibly light, sharp, fast stills-converted glass.

In terms of scanning old films at 8K.... maybe they are scanning them at 8K, but the will not see any gain in image quality by scanning TO anything above a 4K finish. I don't care what anyone tells you, 4K RGB is basically the upper limit of 35mm scanning. Now, maybe you could squeeze 6K RGB out of a recent anamorphic film, but that would be the exception, not the baseline standard for 100 years worth of filmed entertainment.
 
Tom Lowe said:
They pumped a lot of money into Dark Knight for IMAX sequences and that paid off hugely. No one was asking for it. Fox gambled half a billion dollars on a 3D CGI film when "no one was asking for it" and it paid off massively.

If 10,000+ new 4K projectors are being installed around the US, how on earth could the studios not back 4K?? As Jim pointed out: it's not like it's really costing them any more than film or even 1080p with something like an F35. I'm doing realtime editing of 4K R3D files right now on a PC I built for $3000 bucks using CS5. Surely, the studios can handle 4K.
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Well I went and saw the Dark Knight because I thought Batman Begins was bad ass. And unlike most people, I think that Batman Begins as a whole was a much better movie. I really couldn't stand the HORRIBLE voice effects built into Batman's outfit. Batman became a robot.

But that's not really here nor there, just a personal opinion.

Was Avatar delivered in 4k? Seems people were pretty happy with that release having shattered all Bluray releases. Did it beat out The Dark Knight? At IMAX? Sure did. I think comparing the Dark Knight to Avatar is totally subjective as is your example.

Theatres going to 4k is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than the average household going to 4k. TOTALLY different issues.

"Good Enough" needs context

is 1080p good enough for most households? Yes

is 1080p good enough for theatre? Absolutely Not

is 1080p good enough for acquisition? No

Does ANYONE record audio in a studio at 16 bit if they are delivering to CD? I've never met one person that did. EVERYONE records to 24-bit.

I currently record in 1080p for delivery in 720p. I could not imagine shooting 1080p for 1080p. I would lose so many freedoms I get. Even something simple like steadying a shot that had a few bumps in it.
 
And I'll add this, the one problem with 4K delivery is ugly people just keep getting uglier. Jim, can you guys start some 4K make-up lines or something. Or maybe some new filter module that softens ugly people called FLUGLY :)
 
Rick Burnett said:
is 1080p good enough for most households? Yes

is 1080p good enough for theatre? Absolutely Not
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I totally disagree. If people enjoyed films at 4K at the cinema, they will also want to enjoy them at 4K at home. It's as simple as that.

In fact, recently, the 1080p Blurays at home have exceeded the average resolution of multiplex projection, which is closer to 720p (as pointed out earlier in this thread by another poster).
 
Tom Lowe said:
I totally disagree. If people enjoyed films at 4K at the cinema, they will also want to enjoy them at 4K at home. It's as simple as that.

In fact, recently, the 1080p Blurays at home have exceeded the average resolution of multiplex projection, which is closer to 720p (as pointed out earlier in this thread by another poster).
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If it's that simple, then why are the majority of home video sales greater on DVD?

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/

Money wise, DVD was 78% where 22% was Bluray AND this is with Avatar on Bluray still being a huge hit. Let's not forget also that Bluray cost more per release as well.

And that's 1080p.


(Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, I don't go to the regular theatre anymore for that exact reason, the quality is crap.)

Also, the visual perception of your 50 inch television is TOTALLY different than the visual perception of a movie theatre screen, as has been mentioned earlier as well.

As I said, I think the numbers speak for themselves. People already have access to higher quality media and they don't all have it. Most people on REDUSER care much more deeply about the quality of video than the average person. I mean, that's why I am here, I want a camera that does more quality for my money.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Because we are right in the middle of a technology transition from DVD to Bluray?
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If we're in the middle of a transition which started in 2006 does that mean we'll have transitioned in 2014? That's almost a full decade of transitioning.

As to Batman in IMAX? That's because they wanted to show it in IMAX. I go to IMAX and I enjoyed the IMAX scenes because they were huge and in 8k. I get nothing special out of them at home. My TV is too small. It has nothing to do with resolution.

And TV directors and DPs don't have any clout over the specs. When an episode of Law and Order is shot on IMAX I'll start believing 4k in the home is going to be common place soon.

Everybody with a 4k display at their desk at work or at home raise your hand. And we're saying that average folk will be having these "Soon". If by soon you mean in 5-10 years I'll buy the argument. When I think soon I think 2-3 years.

If I went to the theater and saw "Movie Title (4k)" I would pay the extra. But I don't see kids going "Ooo mom I want to see Up, but sharper!". I just don't think it has the same marketability as 3D. 3D is pushing the boundaries of consumer willingness to spending, I think a lot of people are going to get it just because it's the same price as not getting it. I have questions as to the viability of home 3D, regardless of Avatar's success. Like IMAX it works great on the vision filling immersive experience-o-tron that is imax. But on a small will consumers buy in? We'll see. It's cheaper and easier to increase the refresh rate of a TV than it is to increase the resolution. If they are going to sell TVs at premium prices I would imagine the panel makers would prefer to exploit to charge premiums on upgrades which are easy to implement.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Because we are right in the middle of a technology transition from DVD to Bluray?
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And it's not happening overnight. And now you are talking about ANOTHER technology change when Bluray is not hardly a home standard yet nor do many studios produce great Bluray even for that matter. I don't see 4K as a standard into the home for A LONG time. Nor in any way do I trust studios to not just up convert into 4K cause they do it now to Bluray with older material.

Now if that 4K technology came in and replaced 1080p for the same price point, and the players and such did good upscaling and offered backwards compatibility both ways (1080p->4K and 4K->1080p) I could see that getting 4k quicker into the mix. Kind of like how 48k modems were replaced by 96k modems back in the day because the 96k were the same price almost identically (I know, as I bought a 96k at that time.) But like most formats, cost may play a huge role. Also add into the mix 3D technology and now 4 color pixel displays.

But I just don't see people running out to spend $5k on a 4k television, not when I look at the average prices of 1080p screens available today.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...stems_DM_3400_DM_3400_56_Professional_4K.html

At these prices, I am not sure why EVERY home doesn't have one yet :P
 
Gavin, what year did Bluray finally kill off HD-DVD? Up until then, adoption had been hampered by the format war.

I already posted evidence of an exponential transition curve underway. It took Dark Knight 15 months to sell 2.7 million Blurays. It took Avatar 4 days to sell the same number. I'd call that rapid progress.

I have a feeling 4K displays are definitely coming fairly soon. How are thousands of Red Epic X shooters, for example, going to post their films at 4K without an LCD? Sooner or later, the market will react and produce those LCDs. I have a hunch that Jim is watching these 4K LCD and projector developments like a hawk. Maybe he could chime in here with some thoughts about how soon they might be coming?
 
By the time this "transition" finally comes to a slow, discs will be obsolete.

$5k for 4k. They will pay it. Trust the market. And of course, prices will come down.
 
Tom Lowe said:
I already posted evidence of an exponential transition curve underway. It took Dark Knight 15 months to sell 2.7 million Blurays. It took Avatar 4 days to sell the same number. I'd call that rapid progress.
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I'd also say that the equation to all this is MUCH more complex than just comparing two movies sold 2 years apart from one another. It doesn't change the fact that only 22% of sales last week were Bluray. Even with the BIGGEST Bluray release ever. Let's look at Bluray sales in a month from now. Avatar will drop off and then where will Bluray sales be at?

But a step further, I believe that PS3 sales have REALLY helped Bluray adoption further. In fact, that is my path to getting into Bluray, as it's a hell of a deal to get Bluray and another console system. One has to wonder how fast Bluray would have moved without PS3. I personally know of NOT ONE person who owns a Bluray player standalone. Yet I can list of 10+ people with a PS3. With Sony's price reduction of the PS3 not too long ago, they have been hard to keep on the shelves. I know, I went to buy one twice and they were sold out. On amazon, they had a wait time of 2 months!
 
Jim,

please finally release RED RAY or however you are going to call it and put this entire and annoying discussion to an end.

HD has never been good enough, not even at the days I saw its first incarnations - analogue version.

What really hurts is that Avatar was 1080p (ok, stereo, which makes a HUGE difference for the human eye), but for 4:3 IMAX 3D screen (which made roughly 10% of the total income AFAIK) they made a CENTER CROP from 1080p. So Avatar on IMAX 3D was way less than full HD per eye I was told by a technician.

So I repeat myself:

Release RED RAY.

Then that darn discussion will be left over.

Cheers,
Axel
 
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