HBO pioneer writes off 4K prospects

[Eric J Robbins]

Red is my favorite cola too but a lot of film clips(trailers) we saw at Red NAB were originally mastered in 2K including "42"(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453562/technical?ref_=tt_dt_spec) unless you have specific info on the trailers being mastered separately in 4K for Red. So 2K reel on a 4K monitor in .red looks pretty good. i concur. so it works both ways whether you sub-sample from 4k to HD or upscale 2K/HD to 4K Why I am so confused...jeez!

The non-studio film reel was all 4K footage, I believe. It was by far the best looking thing I saw at NAB.

I will say that I've seen upscaled 1080 material, as well as 4K material, screened on the massive screen at Red Studios. The image we saw was roughly a third of the bitrate of a blu-ray, and it looked fantastic, nearly comparable to a 4K DCP. And this was early, early, early work done in .red; I've heard there were additional enhancements to it that I haven't seen yet.

As for HBO, let's remember that this is the company whose president said last year that streaming was a temporary thing.

 

[Michael Brennan]

Even though "Oblivion" was shot in 4K on Sony F65, the studio decided to release it solely in 2K (2D). I guess they will release it someday(futureproof) in 4K

Early days to say if the 65 provides a decent 8k "future proof" image.

"Shot in 4K. The DI was done in 2K and it is released in 2K. Yes, we shot in 4K. It’s all captured in Sony’s 4K RAW format. We have the full RAW so I guess with their new de-mosaicing you can now go 8K if you want. It’s all a matter of how you de-mosaic the image, but our original intent was 4K."
Claudio Miranda

http://www.fdtimes.com/2013/03/29/claudio-miranda-asc-on-oblivion/

Some scenes were shot on Epic.



Mike Brennan

 

[Eric J Robbins]

Some scenes were shot on Epic.

My understanding is that the Epic was used only for cloud plates, which were used in the projected images he's talking about.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Ummm... Where are you coming up with that 2TB number? You can fit 2 hours of 5KFF sized *UNCOMPRESSED* camera RAW in approximately 2.1 TB! 5KFF 24fps REDCODE at 5:1 compression is just under 128MB/s. The .RED finishing codec is RGB, not RAW, and several times more efficient and tightly compressed than R3D RAW.

I did a quick Google search, and that's the number I got for 4K Redcode file sizes. I just checked the Red Quick Reference Guide, and it looks like a 4K HD file at 4:1 would only require 512GB; I think the 2TB number came from uncompressed files, which would work out to almost exactly 2TB. Given that you'd need a file format with effects, color correction, titles, and so on, I think 2TB is still a reasonable number to start with for a finished film.

From the numbers I have, a DCP using JPEG2000 is already well over 100GB just for a 2K file, and it's going to be more like 300GB or more for a 4K file. Given H.265 in another couple of years, it's possible it will get smaller. But the data caps and bandwidth limitations are still very real problems to contend with, unless you have a dedicated T3 line -- and even then, it'll take 16-24 hours to download or upload a file this size, assuming a 20mbps connection. Explain to me where I'm wrong on this.

 

[David Kuhn]

2TB or 200GB... both are well out of reach of 99% of internet users (and infrastructure for that matter), my family is considered a bandwidth hog for consuming 350GB/month. Personally I think web services for feature length 4k will not be viable without destructive (to image quality) levels of compression (for the near and mid term). I expect some sort of mail service (Netflix4K)will likely be the best bet for a workable business model. There have been demos of removable media with 1TB capacity. Early on, the BluRay consortium showcased a number of 1TB recorders - but they've not done much since 2007 on that front (from what I can tell). I suspect they didn't think there was a market for the tech (especially the write only media)... 4k will give them that market.