"I just saw Avatar" Thread

[Tom Lowe]

Well Mr. Most, that's a discussion for another thread. But suffice it to say that many of us believe that 4K displays for homes are coming, and sooner than most people realize. I truly won't be surprised if we see some kind of announcement from Jim himself about a 4K LCD or projector in the next 12 months. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Sitting here watching a 42" HD plasma. I have exactly zero desire to see a close up of an actor at any higher resolution than this. I don't see any demand for a 4k home display.

Nick

 

[Craig Parkes]

This is a forum that has a whole lot of people who believe that 4K display is the way of the future. A great deal of time and effort have been spent talking about the future of display resolution, what exactly it takes to shoot in 5K+ and master at 4K, in order to "future-proof" upcoming projects. So when someone shows up here and states flatly that a new film will "not lose one penny" if it is mastered at 2K instead of 4K, that warrants a response, since these are issues that are in fact taken seriously by many of us here.

But if that film is Avatar, then he is right...

It has nothing to do with Avatar itself.

But this is a thread about Avatar... and he didn't say ANY new film mastered in 4K wouldn't make one penny more, he said Avatar wouldn't have. Again, he'd be right.

This has more to do with future-proofing projects or not future proofing them. And it's not personal in any way.

I think Jim Cameron future proofed his project enough by making it one of the biggest, if not the biggest box office hits ever, and by making it the movie which will hold it's place in history as the title that turned the tide for digital 3D and performance capture...

There are advantages to finishing in 4K, especially for projects which have a long shelf life, I'd say especially for documentary and once in a lifetime events because it makes the valuable footage even more valuable/re-purposable.

But dramatic productions where the rights holders hold tight control over the original material and re-use is going to be limited to very well thought out and specifically budgetted reissuings, then the delivery is always going to be measured against the cost of production to achieve such delivery, you CAN'T look at in isolation, it is pointless to do so.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

I hope pixel lust comes to an end quickly. I think 4k is sufficient for a finished product FOREVER, for home or theater or anything. Alright, maybe 8k for IMAX and gigantic, but 4k for everything else. Just like on audio they hit a limit where more bits of audio got you nothing

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Well Mr. Most, that's a discussion for another thread. But suffice it to say that many of us believe that 4K displays for homes are coming, and sooner than most people realize. I truly won't be surprised if we see some kind of announcement from Jim himself about a 4K LCD or projector in the next 12 months. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Coming a lot sooner than a lot of people think. Quad HD / 4K desktop PC monitors are literally just around the corner. I know of a few that will be shown at CES here shortly. HDMI 1.4 as well as the new incarnations of DisplayPort don't have 4xHD / 4K support by accident, ya know.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Jeff... careful with your "wild speculation." Most of the usual suspects at c.com are still claiming that 4K displays are "decades" away! hahahah.

They are almost like that Iraqi Information Minister now. Even though thousands of 4K projectors are slated to be installed in AMC and Cinemark theaters, they still claim 4K is "unnecessary." I think they will literally have to be sitting in front of a 4K display inside their own house before they admit it's coming! :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Mark Collins]

I would very much love to see 4K in the home. If I had the cash lying around and if I had a big enough space, I would grab a Sony 4K projector.

Unfortunately I don't have over $100k to spend on a home theatre system, nor do I ahve a big enough space for it so, that'll have to wait.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Modern TVs are doing 240hz. That's well beyond the needs of any TV standard. I imagine as soon as the framerate war reaches an apex they'll shift to "up-rez ultraHD".

1080p was insufficient for IMAX 3D. It slightly broke the immersion and made everything feel slightly out of focus. Which is true of all films converted to IMAX but in 3D where it's trying much harder to be immersive than cinematic it was more problematic imo.

As to rendering 4k taking 4x longer. Not necessarily true for the 3d passes. We render 4k now for most TV commercials. The render times aren't that much longer since the min sampling often is still super-sampled even for 2k it's just not as oversampled at the minimum settings for 4k. It's sort of like wavelets in that regard. So much of the world is low detail that you won't notice the difference between 9x super sampling at 1080p and 4x super sampling at 4k even though it's the same number of samples. Renderers are really smart about adaptively only sampling where necessary. Rendering at a higher resolution but lower sample rate allows you to often get a much larger image in similarish render times.

2c

 

[Desert Rune]

My favourite scene in Avatar has got to be the very emotional ending, when Neytiri rescues Jake's human body. When she jumped through the window, lifted up his lifeless body and saved him, will go down as one of cinema's greatest scenes. Anyone think so too?

On my third time watching it, I wondered whether they integrated live action with CG, but I later concluded that Jake's human body was likely a digital creation. I think the level of realism of CGI is indistinguishable from real life.

 

[Emery Wells]

Fascinating. Your RealD experience is exactly mine. It was fun, but wasnt a triple orgasm ya know? It was opening weekend with a jam packed audience with no applause at the end. They were just sort of 'huh, cool'. Now I wonder what IMAX is like on this. Was this real IMAX or one of the smaller lIeMax?

The IMAX I saw it on was a smaller, retrofitted IMAX but it was a new one. I think building these retrofitted IMAX screens is the best move IMAX has ever made. The experience is still phenomenal.

But really there was a definite difference between viewing this film on the two different sized screens. In IMAX, even on the opening shot I remember thinking to myself 'wow, this is just something totally different. Something I haven't seen before.' When I took my girlfriend to see it in RealD I was waiting for that feeling to come again and it never really did until the end.

 

[Emery Wells]

My favourite scene in Avatar has got to be the very emotional ending, when Neytiri rescues Jake's human body. When she jumped through the window, lifted up his lifeless body and saved him, will go down as one of cinema's greatest scenes. Anyone think so too?

On my third time watching it, I wondered whether they integrated live action with CG, but I later concluded that Jake's human body was likely a digital creation. I think the level of realism of CGI is indistinguishable from real life.

That was definitely my favorite shot. Very powerful scene.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Modern TVs are doing 240hz. That's well beyond the needs of any TV standard. I imagine as soon as the framerate war reaches an apex they'll shift to "up-rez ultraHD".

Oh my now they're demoing 480hz TVs at CES! WHY!?

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Oh my now they're demoing 480hz TVs at CES! WHY!?

To reduce visible pixel response time and by that reduce screen created motion blur on LCD technology.

Also, 3D roadmap requires faster displays for natural, eye-friendly shutter frequencies.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

4K in the home is coming. When it does arrive, the initial units will be cheaper than we think and it will propagate through the market faster. Its unclear if projectors will be the first to land, OLED is making gains that could put displays ahead of the pack.

 

[Matthias Hutter]

I just saw Avatar the first time today, whilst I agree that a higher framerate or resolution would have helped, I still got sucked up into the Pandora loop completely.
In fact, Avatar became my new favourite Scifi movie of all time.

Regards, Matt

 

[Michael T O'Connor]

Am I the only one who felt that the 3D required less resolution? I feel like if it had been regular 2D, I would have noticed the soft image more, but since it was 3D, there was a little more leeway in PQ.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

My theory is that the brain has a new element to pay attention to - the extra dimension - that and the way that the eyeballs are being monkeyed with tend to make the true resolution less obvious because your traditional ways of judging it by looking at fine details over surfaces is a bit distorted by having to deal with seeing 3D. Anyway, that's just my theory...

 

[David Wilson]

My theory is that the brain has a new element to pay attention to - the extra dimension - that and the way that the eyeballs are being monkeyed with tend to make the true resolution less obvious because your traditional ways of judging it by looking at fine details over surfaces is a bit distorted by having to deal with seeing 3D. Anyway, that's just my theory...

I agree and then added to that is the thought that, with 3D, the resolution is "per eye" - in other words each eye is seeing an image at the prescribed resolution which, it seems to me, enhances the resolution in yet another fashion.

 

[Joseph Ward]

BEAUTIFUL!!!!

Finally I have experienced this absolute beauty in IMAX 3D! I will see this again in IMAX 3D but will wait off the home experience until there is a real 1080P 3D Circular Polarize Blu-Ray and Circular Passive 3D 1080P TV to own. Anyway, I haven't seen a movie that made me feel so good coming to the movies in a long time. I wish, I had more time and money to see it before it is out of theaters. Thanks for everyone who have helped made that film and movie goers. Cheers.:smiley:

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Well just had the pleasure to see it again, in IMAX off course, just that this time was at my favorite Las Vegas Tether, the Brenden that is at the Palms, and what a difference it makes when the Projector is well calibrated, in perfect Focus, and the power out put on the Bulb set perfectly, incredible experience.