HBO pioneer writes off 4K prospects

[Jeff Kilgroe]

This is all a bit pointless when you consider that there isn't likely to be any legitimately adequate data pipe for 4K. We still don't have one for HD (Blu-Ray comes the closest), so what makes you think we're going to get one for 4K?

HDMI 1.4 handles 4K just fine. HDMI 2.0, due in the coming months, handles full-4K frame packed 3D and other things. In terms of transmission or broadcast, the solution is much easier than you think. As CPUs become faster, we can use more elaborate compression schemes, such as REDRAY wavelet or H.265 for compression. Via H.265, it's possible to transmit 3840x2160 within the same bandwidth that we currently send 1280x1080 "HD lite" for broadcast and with less artifacting. REDRAY delivers visually lossless 16bpc 4K in less than half the peak bandwidth of Blu-Ray video spec and in as little as 9Mbps (DVD).

Any increases in network data capacity go to more channels of crap, not image quality.

The crux of the biscuit right there. Thankfully these advanced compression algorithms rely on more pixels and detail to increase their compression ratio. 4K compresses a lot better than 2K, in a nutshell. Many of the broadcast types were buzzing over 4K at NAB this year... Network execs are probably groaning. And will be until the quantity over quality attitude for content changes.

Then there's the plain old waste: Cable companies are still wasting bandwidth on SD versions of channels that exist in HD. This is especially pointless when you consider that cable boxes already downscale HD for the (presumably) small number of people using composite outputs.

Yes, tons and tons of waste. Not to mention duplicate programming across channels on the same network. And as much as they whine over bandwidth, many don't even come close to maximizing their bandwidth use. Last I heard, DirecTV is operating around 65% capacity. Not sure what it is now, but I haven't seen any large number of new channels being added or other things happening to increase data use.

Yes, there will be something branded as "4K" coming soon. But it'll be the same mottled pastiche of artifact-ridden garbage that's being peddled today as "HD."

Of course. In the end, it's going to be up to services like REDRAY/ ODEMAX and others who jump onto the platform to deliver high quality. That's a requirement of the platform. Same with Sony's upcoming 4K media player. As for cable and satellite networks, we'll get a few channels in 4K to start, just as we have a few channels in 3D. They'll look promising, but quality will be only passable and content will be sparse. 4K isn't going to be driven by the TV market. It's going to be driven by the home video distribution and console gaming markets. Two large industries that are chomping at the 4K bit at the moment. So I'm not so eager to embrace such a grim prognosis. 4K is a natural progression and will gradually take over. Unlike 3D where no matter how many times they try to spin and re-package it, it's still a gimmick. Until I can walk into a Star Trek "Holodeck", I'm truly not that interested. 4K is different. I haven't been able to finish anything for my clients in less than 4K for almost 2 years now. Mostly high-end corporate clients. 1080p/ 2K isn't high enough resolution for their laptops or tablets, I'm shooting all 4K+ anyway for the past few years now, except for GoPro. They like to pull stills constantly. They are all comping at the bit to buy 4K displays for their workplaces and for their homes. I do have one client who put the 84" Sony in his home a couple months ago, I tried to talk him out of it... But that's a different story.

 

[Michael Brennan]

"This is all a bit pointless when you consider that there isn't likely to be any legitimately adequate data pipe for 4K. We still don't have one for HD (Blu-Ray comes the closest), so what makes you think we're going to get one for 4K?"]This is all a bit pointless when you consider that there isn't likely to be any legitimately adequate data pipe for 4K. We still don't have one for HD (Blu-Ray comes the closest), so what makes you think we're going to get one for 4K?

No data pipe for HD? you don't consider Apple TV or Netflix? Streaming 4K on these services has no tech barriers.


According to their PR, buy a Sony 4k set and their media player and you'll get ten 4k movies bundled in.... The media player is said to be capable of recording 4k content from the web and Sony have said numerous 4k titles will be available from their library soon.

No doubt this will drive others to provide 4k streaming options which will hopefully play into RED's media player ambitions.

The LG 86 inch was a show stopper here in Oz at Christmas, screening gorgoeus 4k timelapse that screamed from 20 meters across the shop.. BUY ME.

The salient point is not if people can see the difference between 4k and HD, but what premium are they prepared to pay?



Mike Brennan

 

[david farland]

Wow...this thread got dark pretty fast.
An old man of tv predicts 4k ain't coming to the home anytime soon.
a couple of kids have a format fight.
blockhead here asks Red why they're sold 20,000 x 4k 'cinema' cameras for the home
And then it's light's out for 4k broadcast/viewing
jeez...here's to hoping the >4k future ain't that bleek!
so someone tell me what is it?..without the bull$&@
i get the whole film to digital cine thing but I'm guessing 95% of your cameras aren't for cinemas.
So what's the business case 'now' for 15 stop, 5/6k cameras for home/internet viewing.
Dave

 

[Ed David]

Also Glee,

As far as I'm concerned, we're still not seeing great HD pictures at home on cable or satellite, because of the relative lack of bandwidth, 8-bit 4:2:0 color subsampling, and compression. The thought of seeing ultra-compressed 4K at home makes me cringe.

I completely agree 100%. They can't even get 720p to look good - imagine what 4k will look like.

 

[Charles_Z]

4K compresses a lot better than 2K, in a nutshell.

Who sold you that line? Sorry, but less picture information compresses better than more.

 

[Björn Benckert]

If this is true then why would any tv series still be shot on film?

Like say, MADMEN.

because more resolution looks better when it gets shrunk down to those "tv" sizes.

HD is the new SD


david

Film or not film etc, is not the same as viewing resolution.
Film looks good in HD, PAL and so on since the picture is subsampled from a neg of approximately 4k and more importantly the very high DR of film.

The question here is if you are able to see the difference of a film scan that has been downsized to 1280p and then upscalled to 1920p compared to a filmscan that has gone straight to 1920p.

There is of course a difference but it's quite subtil on smaller screens, especially if you add the broadcasting into it. Alot of TV stations use the same bandwidth for 720p as for 1080p in other words your full HD picture is compressed much harder than the smaller 720p signal in that case. Also it might be that your TV then internally upscales your 720p to 1080p. That internal hardware upscale is usually far from good.

So the true difference of the two in full SDI signal / ref monitor etc are only seen by a few on the online suite or such, then further down the line, dubing, broadcasting etc, the material is differentiated from it's original and usually, today, it's sad to say, that 1280x720 a lot of times comes out in the telly as something better than is actually broadcasted in 1920x1080...

 

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

Who sold you that line? Sorry, but less picture information compresses better than more.

Not really to a certain extent some form of compression need a certain level of information before they will even start to work. Many steadily increase in efficiency and then plateau at a certain level.The new H265 and .REDs are much more efficient and higher quality than their predecessors, and though H265 could improve HD transmission a lot it will likely face issue in broadcast for HD as no-one will want to run it for HD as how would they differentiate it from normal HD transmissions as they can't just switch it in as many boxes and tvs won't be able to read the codec. Where it would see broadcast use for HD is for HD content bulking out 4k channels.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Who sold you that line? Sorry, but less picture information compresses better than more.

I believe Jeff is talking about the ratio of original file size to compressed file size and the qualitative difference between them. Due to mathematical functions in the compression algorithms and perceptual metrics of viewing, it is orthodoxy that higher resolution images can withstand greater decimation. Beyond that, the difficulty in determining what is high frequency detail and what is noise is the bane of efficient compression so a better original usually results in a better resulting image after compression if the deliverable bit rate and frame are consistent.

Cheers - #19

 

[David Battistella]

I totally get this, but what I am saying is, "acquire" in 4k or film, so that as you deliver in lower resolutions you start with more, like maybe it would not make sense to acquire on Varicam (a very capable 720p HD camera) because they are only going to uprez to 1920 when broadcast.

im sure it could be done and could look great, but what do you do with that when you want to convert it to 4k?

Acquiring on film, or red, gives you a bit more delivery leeway up to 4k, so it makes sense to acquire in a format that is 4k capable.

david

Film or not film etc, is not the same as viewing resolution.
Film looks good in HD, PAL and so on since the picture is subsampled from a neg of approximately 4k and more importantly the very high DR of film.

The question here is if you are able to see the difference of a film scan that has been downsized to 1280p and then upscalled to 1920p compared to a filmscan that has gone straight to 1920p.

There is of course a difference but it's quite subtil on smaller screens, especially if you add the broadcasting into it. Alot of TV stations use the same bandwidth for 720p as for 1080p in other words your full HD picture is compressed much harder than the smaller 720p signal in that case. Also it might be that your TV then internally upscales your 720p to 1080p. That internal hardware upscale is usually far from good.

So the true difference of the two in full SDI signal / ref monitor etc are only seen by a few on the online suite or such, then further down the line, dubing, broadcasting etc, the material is differentiated from it's original and usually, today, it's sad to say, that 1280x720 a lot of times comes out in the telly as something better than is actually broadcasted in 1920x1080...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Who sold you that line? Sorry, but less picture information compresses better than more.

Um, no one "sold" me that line. You might want to read up on wavelets and H.265. The more repeatable or pattern-able structures that can be identified within an image frame, the better. More pixels typically allows for increased compression density by pixel area. This is not a new concept or some hypothetical. It's indeed how it works. You can feel free to ask Sony if you want, their compression gurus should confirm it. Or you can ask Graeme. He's actually said the same thing here on the forums just recently. You can peruse through the H.265 literature and technical docs outlining the specification.

Another way to look at is that I'm talking about compression ratios, as Blair stated. If we look at H.265 and we can compress a UHD resolution file by 10:1 with given settings, the same applied to a 1080p file may only render us an 8:1 ratio. Yes, the 1080p is still going to be considerably smaller.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Yes, there will be something branded as "4K" coming soon. But it'll be the same mottled pastiche of artifact-ridden garbage that's being peddled today as "HD."

Well-said, Palmer. And that's what I'm afraid of: we'll get something called 4K, but it'll be material that looks like a half-step above YouTube.

Another way to look at is that I'm talking about compression ratios, as Blair stated. If we look at H.265 and we can compress a UHD resolution file by 10:1 with given settings, the same applied to a 1080p file may only render us an 8:1 ratio. Yes, the 1080p is still going to be considerably smaller.

At the moment, my understanding is that 2 hours of Red files take up about 2TB of space (rounding off). Even assuming 20:1 further compression (beyond the Redcode compression), the file is still going to be 100GB. Sony is already quoting 100GB for their 4K movies for their dedicated server. I know there have been DCPs shipped that were much bigger than this for theatrical release.

I don't doubt that more efficient codecs could make the files any smaller. But even if it were 50GB, how long will this take to deliver to somebody at home? Again, the problems of limited bandwidth and data caps are very real, and are not likely to be solved in the next couple of years. 5-7 years... maybe. 10 years for sure. But not soon, not for home delivery.

 

[Norbert Jalitsch]

I had a similar skepticism, until I saw some sharp 4K on an 86" LG monitor.
David, have you seen 4K on a good set ?

Until 86" sets are cheaper, I ordered a 50" for 1300 USD to edit with.

where did you order a 50" 4k screen? this is what i want !!!

norbert

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Well-said, Palmer. And that's what I'm afraid of: we'll get something called 4K, but it'll be material that looks like a half-step above YouTube. (snip)

Sadly, this is exactly the trajectory we are on. Over compression is the bane of modern distribution topologies focused on convenience and cost containment. MP3 audio files at 96 or 128kb/s are a crime. The cable and satellite companies cut picture quality so egregiously by far exceeding the design envelope of MPEG-2 compression that they drained the quality moat that should have held off OTT uptake. I'll admit to feeling like their coming collapse is just desserts.

In theory, the RedRay/.RED/Odemax program is an effort to hold the line on quality. By using a more sophisticated and harder to decode format (.RED) - which (at least for now) requires the $1,400 RedRay hardware - RED chose a strategy to maximize UHD/4K IQ at ~10mb/s, likely pegged as the highest practical bit rate near term.

Obviously the other path is to jump on the H.265/HEVC codec bandwagon. It will be interesting to see what the exact bit rate turns out to be for the .RED encodes, and what bit rate of H.265 will be its equivalent. Based on early estimates, it might take 30-50mb/s of H.265 or 80-200mb/s of H.264, to match the IQ of 10mb/s of .RED in UHD/4K. IF that turns out to be true after proper testing, then RedRay would be a reasonably practical avenue for downloadable UHD/4K content with legitimate quality.

Should be fun to see where we are 2 years from now in terms of picture quality, codecs and bit rates.

Cheers - #19

 

[Sulekh Suman]

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

If this is how it is in the theatrical space where there are 1000s of 4K projectors available and people pay a premium for this experience, television and online present a rather grim scenario. There is no denying 4K acquisition, where we go from there in the short, medium and long term is still to be seen in the television space.

In the meanwhile let's fly/march on with Dragon and go broke for our dreams!

 

[Tom.Wong]

oblivion like a lot of other films acquired in 4k pushing to finish in 4k usually get stonewalled by cost in finishing in 4k. mainly when it comes to vfx. vfx house told production that it would take another month or more to do all their vfx for a 4k finish and the cost was just too much for the studio. i think idealistically in a few more years when storage gets even cheaper, and computers get even faster this won't be so much of an issue anymore. an extra month or two now was months and months prior, and might be cut down to a week or two, and eventually as seamless as everything else.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

At the moment, my understanding is that 2 hours of Red files take up about 2TB of space (rounding off). Even assuming 20:1 further compression (beyond the Redcode compression), the file is still going to be 100GB. Sony is already quoting 100GB for their 4K movies for their dedicated server. I know there have been DCPs shipped that were much bigger than this for theatrical release.

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.

Optimum .RED (delivery coded for REDRAY) bit-rate is 20Mbps -- that's Mega *bits" per second. If we were talking MegaBytes, then it would only be 2.5MB/s. That's double the bit-rate of DVD video and less than half the peak bit-rate of Blu-Ray. At past RED events, we have seen .RED playing back on prototype REDRAY hardware/software at various rates from 9 to 20 Mbps. REDRAY is media agnostic, you can hand off files on DVD or BluRay, USB flash drive, SATA drive, whatever... The REDRAY player only has USB2.0 ports because there's plenty of bandwidth on USB2.0, over 20X more bandwidth, than what is needed to play .RED files.

I'm really wondering if people are paying attention here...

.RED seems to be a good deal more efficient than H.265. And both are are huge step forward over existing H.264 formats. People don't want to believe it and are very resistant to it until they get their hands on it. At NAB, the REDRAY reel playing on REDRAY players connected to 4K displays looked excellent. By far the best looking 4K showing anywhere. Sony had some pretty stuff to show too, but their consumer 4K player was curiously MIA.

 

[Tom.Wong]

wouldn't a .red file open up a can of warms in having to make that codec more open source to allow encoding across platforms and software? red has been very secretive about their compression scheme, and rightfully so. unlocking their encoding method across platforms might finally allow the competition to take a closer look.

or am i just out of my element here? perfectly ok if i am

 

[Sulekh Suman]

"At NAB, the REDRAY reel playing on REDRAY players connected to 4K displays looked excellent. By far the best looking 4K showing anywhere. Sony had some pretty stuff to show too, but their consumer 4K player was curiously MIA.[/QUOTE]"

Jeff,

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!

 

[David Kuhn]

Most viewers would need to be pretty close to be able to see the difference between 2k and 4k (6' or closer for a 50" screen assuming average acuity of 1 arcminute). Upscaled 2k is going to be even harder to discern since the filtering does a good job of fooling the eye into thinking there's more actual data. I find that I'm more sensitive to compression artifacts that to resolution (within limits), I suspect I'm not alone.

 

[Phil Holland]

.RED seems to be a good deal more efficient than H.265. And both are are huge step forward over existing H.264 formats. People don't want to believe it and are very resistant to it until they get their hands on it. At NAB, the REDRAY reel playing on REDRAY players connected to 4K displays looked excellent. By far the best looking 4K showing anywhere. Sony had some pretty stuff to show too, but their consumer 4K player was curiously MIA.

Couldn't agree more. There's nothing out there at this level of quality and size. .RED has the potential to change the delivery game, at least in my mind.