Resolution, IBC and 4K +

[Ketch Rossi]

Hi Ketch,
Funny you should say that as I happened to be at the Arri presentation at IBC where Mr. Deakins was invited to speak about his experience with the Alexa. It was mostly very positive, this was THE camera he thought was good enough fo him to want to shoot digitally. Call him old fashioned, but he really loves an optical viewfinder. On the whole, his presentation was very positive, of course he is immensely talented but also came off as a nice knowledgeable generous person. I did note a couple remarks though, such as he would like to have a little more resolution (by the way the 4k copy of the new James Bond is uprezzed from the raw 3.2K of the Alexa, not from 2K). He also said he did NOT like the 70mm Imax copy, it was too grainy. I said he liked the idea of adding grain in post, but for the only two digital films he's shot so far (In Time and Skyfall), he chose not to do that because he likes the grain free image. And he went on to add, laughing, he probably shouldn't watch the previous movies he's shot as the grain would probably bother him. I'm looking forwar to seeing Skyfall.

Cheers,
Damien

Yes Damien, and I said what I said as I know well of his statements and tastes, also of the fact of the Alexa's capacity which is not exactly 3.2k either, but i did said, the Alexa "or": 2k...

HOwever the Alexa's uprez'd images to 4k all produce a much less cleaner image and grain free then any images I seen come from the Epic originally shot at 5k, including tests done personally with Alexa teams and my self on field and studios with very high budgets, so for this I know personally exactly what Roger talks about, and there is Grain there, is impossible not to have any when uprazing form Alexa's files to 4k, but if He is happy then cool, fact is that I don't and outerly disagree with his assessment, and He him self will come to disagreed or learn that at the time might have agreed with him self but later He will disagreed with him self once He shoot Epic, then He will do as some very highly regarded professional which uses extensively both, but one only for one purpose, which is not Movies, and the other for Movies...

At the end of the day they are both great and very capable cameras in the right hands, just that one is better then the other with clear visual differences...

And now, while Alexa claims some with their Arri Raw module, the Meisler Module will make other claims of its own, closing the gap even further and leaving the Alexa further behind...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Ok, I'm going to have to go on a bit of a rant here because I'm not a fan of straw men.

Does Arri actually claim that "2k is good enough for all time and forever" or are they actually saying "2k is very good and the currently good enough for film production."

Most people who own a RED or an Alexa are delivering in 1080p for TV. The rest are delivering for lower (YouTube commercials are generally 720p) or a little higher for 2k feature films. Even RED's crown jewel demonstration of what RED is capable of, Prometheus, is only in 2k and will most likely only ever be 2k. So Arri isn't wrong to say that "ultimately everything is finishing in 2k right now and will for the next couple years so there is no persuasive case for 4k at this point in time."

If we're throwing out 'production norms' and saying "we need the maximum quality" then RED should have released an IMAX sized chip and everything should be in 16k and projected in IMAX sized screens. 4k isn't future proofed for future full-field-of-view 180 degree exhibition. But it's easy to see that we're heading towards a more immersive virtual reality like experience. You can't future proof for every future. Silent films didn't record an audio track in case sound came along. I highly doubt someone is even going to ever take Prometheus' raw footage and redo the vfx at some point down the line for a 4k re-release. Perhaps with the exception of Star Wars it's extremely rare for a film to get updated after release. So both RED and ARRI are really in the same boat. They both are releasing 2k cameras and hoping in the future it becomes easy and normal for 4k projection and then hopefully after that 8 and 16k projection. But essentially the only difference between Alexa and Red's 2k cameras is that Alexa converts to 2k from 3.5k and Red from 5k before going to the VFX houses.

 

[paulherrin]

has something changed or is the 5k RED projector a typo in the studio daily article?

 

[Peter Moretti]

Hoisted by their own petard.

What a great phrase I've now learned !

 

[Corentin de Tonnac]

But the part that stumped me was the comments from someone at ARRI where that person seems to really think 2K is enough.

I was there and I smiled when I heard that.
To quote this person properly, he said "Good pixels are better than more pixels".

But if those pixels were so good why they didn't keep 3.2k for the screening ?

Hi Ketch,
Funny you should say that as I happened to be at the Arri presentation at IBC where Mr. Deakins was invited to speak about his experience with the Alexa. It was mostly very positive, this was THE camera he thought was good enough fo him to want to shoot digitally. Call him old fashioned, but he really loves an optical viewfinder. On the whole, his presentation was very positive, of course he is immensely talented but also came off as a nice knowledgeable generous person. I did note a couple remarks though, such as he would like to have a little more resolution (by the way the 4k copy of the new James Bond is uprezzed from the raw 3.2K of the Alexa, not from 2K). He also said he did NOT like the 70mm Imax copy, it was too grainy. I said he liked the idea of adding grain in post, but for the only two digital films he's shot so far (In Time and Skyfall), he chose not to do that because he likes the grain free image. And he went on to add, laughing, he probably shouldn't watch the previous movies he's shot as the grain would probably bother him. I'm looking forwar to seeing Skyfall.

Cheers,
Damien

How can you be so specific Damien, you were snoring half of the presentation =). I agree with everything you said about Deakins

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Rest assured that what is lurking behind closed doors at Arri is a camera with greater than 2K resolution. They're not saying it right now but we all know it's coming...eventually. It's not like Jim or Jarred are sleeping though. They like to build stuff. Look at the Epic Monochrome. What I suspect is they won't stop until they have tons of resolution, tons of dynamic range, and the most pleasing image to their eyes. RED has always been proactive, not reactive. I don't see this changing.

 

[Jarred Land]

Ok, I'm going to have to go on a bit of a rant here because I'm not a fan of straw men.

Does Arri actually claim that "2k is good enough for all time and forever" or are they actually saying "2k is very good and the currently good enough for film production."

Most people who own a RED or an Alexa are delivering in 1080p for TV. The rest are delivering for lower (YouTube commercials are generally 720p) or a little higher for 2k feature films. Even RED's crown jewel demonstration of what RED is capable of, Prometheus, is only in 2k and will most likely only ever be 2k. So Arri isn't wrong to say that "ultimately everything is finishing in 2k right now and will for the next couple years so there is no persuasive case for 4k at this point in time."

If we're throwing out 'production norms' and saying "we need the maximum quality" then RED should have released an IMAX sized chip and everything should be in 16k and projected in IMAX sized screens. 4k isn't future proofed for future full-field-of-view 180 degree exhibition. But it's easy to see that we're heading towards a more immersive virtual reality like experience. You can't future proof for every future. Silent films didn't record an audio track in case sound came along. I highly doubt someone is even going to ever take Prometheus' raw footage and redo the vfx at some point down the line for a 4k re-release. Perhaps with the exception of Star Wars it's extremely rare for a film to get updated after release. So both RED and ARRI are really in the same boat. They both are releasing 2k cameras and hoping in the future it becomes easy and normal for 4k projection and then hopefully after that 8 and 16k projection. But essentially the only difference between Alexa and Red's 2k cameras is that Alexa converts to 2k from 3.5k and Red from 5k before going to the VFX houses.

Hey Gavin.. you are using prometheus as the basis for your argument.. I will give you a little bit of insider info.. you probably should of picked another movie to use as an example.

Regardless... opinions are opinions. Debate is debate. We have been through this before. I remember when the Varicam came out and people that bought one each quickly developed their own script made up to tell why 720p was enough. Its called Cognitive Dissonance. And the Varicam wasn't very long ago.. fast forward 5 years later you probably couldn't sell a 720p movie to anyone. Now that you can goto a store and purchase a high end consumer 4K display or projector off the shelf.. it is the first time you could do that.. the game changes.

 

[Les Dittert]

2K is OK for the masses and bulk consumption of stories both good and bad.

But anyone who doubts the benefit of a true 4K theater presentation should see "Samsara" in 4K.
The very first scene blew me away. Stunning. Removes all doubt.

 

[Dave Blackham]

And another thing. Frequently for 3D we perform HIT and crop the image, same as the rest of the world we need the resolution for the post adjustments. Also for our 2D work often we do need the 4k or 5k resolution for cropping, keying and all manner of post processing. This isn't so much about the creative choices but 4 or 5, shortly to be 6k, allows us to do things in post we couldn't otherwise do to the same standards.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

Hey Gavin.. you are using prometheus as the basis for your argument.. I will give you a little bit of insider info.. you probably should of picked another movie to use as an example.

This makes me come back to what has been announced to be available with RED RAY: Loom... Maybe another one of the Scott Clan will be making his movie available at 4K through RED RAY

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I remember when the Varicam came out and people that bought one each quickly developed their own script made up to tell why 720p was enough. Its called Cognitive Dissonance. And the Varicam wasn't very long ago..

And the Varicam's DVCProHD recording wasn't even full 720p (1280x720) but 960x720. Similarly, the HDCAM that Sony was using was not 1920x1080. Sony kept very quiet about HDCAM being 1440x1080 for quite a while and it was only when I was doing a project with Panavision recording on HDCAM did I find out.

Graeme

 

[Phil Holland]

Let me add some mystery to this whole thing that many overlook on this specific subject.

The oddity of Arri's previous stance that "2k was enough" always confused the hell out of me. Mostly due to the fact that they literally make a 6k/4k Film Scanner and a 4k Laser Recorder, devices I've spent too much time with. Devices designed for years to focus on 4k. It is true that many post studios work at 2k and upscale and sharpen back up to 4k, but nearly all of them scan at a higher resolution and downsample. But if you choose to work at 4k you can. And they didn't just "add that feature in there", this was well thought out and planned. 4k and 4k+ have always been on the map.

And remember digital film scanning at 4k has existed for over 15 years now. In fact my old manager and mentor back in my studio days for over a decade was one of the guys who won the Technical Academy Award for creating a 4k CCD scanner back in 1994 and other manufacturers like Northlight, Arri, and Imagica followed suit. 1994.

It's nice to see they are "officially" coming around about 4k digital capture, or in this case projection. But honestly, they knew it and everybody else knew it. Anybody who didn't wasn't really paying attention to anything other than what our current display technology could achieve. Which shouldn't totally influence your image capture device at all.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

And the Varicam's DVCProHD recording wasn't even full 720p (1280x720) but 960x720. Similarly, the HDCAM that Sony was using was not 1920x1080. Sony kept very quiet about HDCAM being 1440x1080 for quite a while and it was only when I was doing a project with Panavision recording on HDCAM did I find out.

Graeme

Hehehe. Sad but true story.. Happened to me also when I approved a bunch of sonys for our department. when I checked the cameras and found out I first didnt believe my eyes only to get really mad right afterwards... oh well... Back to my beloved little RED and cuddle it a bit

 

[Dave Blackham]

And the Varicam's DVCProHD recording wasn't even full 720p (1280x720) but 960x720. Similarly, the HDCAM that Sony was using was not 1920x1080. Sony kept very quiet about HDCAM being 1440x1080 for quite a while and it was only when I was doing a project with Panavision recording on HDCAM did I find out.

Graeme

Recently a well known national broadcaster was retiring its HDcam kit as it was 1440 x 1080 but included in their new standard H264 1920 x 1080 ! Clearly they thought resolution mattered.

 

[Jarred Land]

This makes me come back to what has been announced to be available with RED RAY: Loom... Maybe another one of the Scott Clan will be making his movie available at 4K through RED RAY

Ridley is shooting everything in 5k on EPIC. Tony's last small project was shot in 5k on the Epic . The good thing is that the majority of the Scott Clan's movie was shot on film.. which all can be scanned at 4K for release. Not just for REDray, but the Playstation, which is the #1 device for playing back movies handles 4K. We have seen 4K bluray players. Youtube has a somewhat hidden 4K channel. Single HDMI cables can send 4K now. There really isn't an argument anymore.

 

[Peter Johnson]

My read of the philosophy behind what drives RED is that they have only and always been interested in creating a camera that can replace 35mm film. To that end they created the RED ONE and have been developing sensors to push the new digital film-making realm as far as they think it can go. To paraphrase: good-enough runs through the middle of every human heart. A pretty image will always be pretty whether is was created by Buster Keaton or Roger Deakins. Or Jim Jannard. If the idea is to replace and move beyond what 35mm film can do then 2K isn't enough, but if the goal is to tell a great story then grab a pad and make a flipbook for all I care. Technical specifications don't tell a story, but they do make for some damn fine looking pictures.

I, for one, welcome our new RED 6K overlords.

 

[John Marchant]

Youtube has a somewhat hidden 4K channel. Single HDMI cables can send 4K now. There really isn't an argument anymore.

Is there a better youtube resource or channel I'm missing? There seems to be a good amount of 4K material on youtube, but I've found it trial and error to track it down.

 

[Jarred Land]

Is there a better youtube resource or channel I'm missing? There seems to be a good amount of 4K material on youtube, but I've found it trial and error to track it down.

They are working on something right now to make it all make sense... right now that 4K button is just a test bed...

 

[John Marchant]

I figured as much. I've had on/off results uploading 4k in months past - sometimes the 'original' quality would go AWOL, other times ok.

 

[Petri Teittinen]

the Playstation, which is the #1 device for playing back movies handles 4K.

I doubt this very much - unless you're referring to PlayStation 4 instead of PS3.