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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 :)

The Big Mistake...

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If you use the law of large numbers, which is what Red seems to be largely based on, and put that together with More's law... then you could have 4k receivers for $250 in a few very short years.
 
Technological change in the media/communications sphere has impacted business models in dramatic ways in the last decade or so, most disruptively I would contend, by the internet revolution. As microprocessors, bandwidth, "screens", data distribution infrastructure and other specific tech advances I expect even more shifting of the sands. That said, IMHO, underestimating the value of compelling content, no matter how delivered, is not seeing the forest because of the trees.

FWIW I have spent several hours chatting with Mike M. about technology and its future so I can say with some authority that he is VERY aware of the implications of technological advances. He may not reach the same conclusions that Clint or others do, but it is not due to lack of perspective or a closed mind.

In any case, I look forward to wide availability of 4K (or QHD) display tech, even if it starts with LCD computer monitors with crude picture metrics (color accuracy, contrast, tone response granularity, etc). The journey to the kind of picture quality I have seen on Jim's 4K Sony T-420 has to start somewhere.

Cheers - #19
 
Just keep in mind that people are still going to be watching "Casablanca" more often than they are going to be watching "Lord Jim", even though the second one was shot in 65mm Super Panavision as is more amenable to this 4K future, whereas I doubt that the original negative to "Casablanca" would measure out to 4K, not to mention, it's a 4x3 b&w image. So if the content is popular enough, people will still want to watch it -- if "Avatar" is still loved in 20 years (and I have no idea whether it will be or not) then it will still be watched just as people still watch "Casablanca", regardless of being limited to its 1080P origination. People don't chose what to love based on how sharp it is.

That said, there are a lot of good reasons to shoot and archive at the highest practical quality level you can, and there are a lot of good reasons to make 4K the industry standard, the sooner the better.
 
I think there IS a point at which something does become unwatchable, although for me it's way lower on the food chain than old b&w negatives. Cheap 70's sitcoms shot on tape? Can't do it.

Although I think that probably has as much or more to do with degradation than the format's original limitations.
 
Lee Saxon said:
I think there IS a point at which something does become unwatchable, although for me it's way lower on the food chain than old b&w negatives. Cheap 70's sitcoms shot on tape? Can't do it.
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I can still watch episodes of Soap and love every moment of it. Yeah, the look is crap, but the content is still enough to make me look past that.
 
i think jim is absolutly right about 4k becoming the gold standard. 4k displays are just around the corner. apparently the 2nd gen ipad is to have the retina display. Thats over 2560 lines of resolution on an 11in screen! (well im pretty sure it is :) but apple would have no problem porting that tech to a 50in home screen. infact it would be well past 4k. i wont be surprised to see an ad for a sporting event BEING SHOWN IN 4k! then all of the sudden theres a line of 4k tvs in best buy. its guna happen so fast
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Just keep in mind that people are still going to be watching "Casablanca" more often than they are going to be watching "Lord Jim", even though the second one was shot in 65mm Super Panavision as is more amenable to this 4K future, whereas I doubt that the original negative to "Casablanca" would measure out to 4K, not to mention, it's a 4x3 b&w image. So if the content is popular enough, people will still want to watch it -- if "Avatar" is still loved in 20 years (and I have no idea whether it will be or not) then it will still be watched just as people still watch "Casablanca", regardless of being limited to its 1080P origination. People don't chose what to love based on how sharp it is.
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Amen.

Noah
 
The World Cup this year was broadcast and recorded in 3D - probably not a huge audience however. If cable and/or satellite wants to carry 4K to special boxes to those that have that capability it wouldn't be that big a deal.

A year ago Netflix streaming looked like VHS - now it looks as good as anything I see on cable HD. That is all on my Playstation 3. If they wanted to carry 4K it could probably be carried on my 12 Mbs cable internet with a better box. There are Roku Boxes now, Google TV, the time is coming were traditional networks can be completely ignored.

Traditional broadcasting usually follows cable and satellite, not leading. I worked in 2 different large market network affiliates in the U.S, as head DP of production/promotion in the mid 1990's. Both stations ignored cable like it didn't exist, and were resistant to digital technology. Meaning that did not see non-linear editing as viable and they didn't use personal computers. At one station I had to bring in my own Macintosh computer to do proposals because they didn't have computers. These stations have annual capital budgets and more so the Networks. But cable and satellite, and the entrepreneurs in new media will do it first, then the Networks will try to catch up and then the local affiliates will be last. An iMac today is over 2.5k resolution.

I remember in 1993 stations were paying $60K plus for high end SD BetaCam SP 600 cameras. In 2003 I almost paid $35k for a DSR 570 DVCAM, so small companies doing industrial films and broadcasters alike are very accustomed to buying expensive gear for decades. That was all standard def as well.

If 4k was to be transmitted over-the-air it probably would not be that big of a deal. The original HD bandwidth was allocated for analog HD and with the advent of digital HD we have markets like here in L.A. with channel 4-1, 4-2, 4-3 etc. These stations ended up with enough bandwidth for multiple channels. Still the broadcast HD is uncompressed compared to cable and sat.

The only hurdle I see in large format sports and broadcasting is the operators having such high resolution and shallow depth of field. This is the only argument for smaller chips I can see, that you have a better margin of error on focus. You don't have top notch focus pullers like you do on feature films. The smaller broadcast chips help the operator with greater DOF. As we have all seen in 4k anything out of focus is really apparent.
 
M Most said:
No, I don't. And the Monty Python shows don't live on "a stack of U-Matic tapes." But then again, you seem to be missing the entire point of just about everything I said. And I don't see my views being rooted in "the past," I see them as rooted in reality. Concepts such as "the past" and "the future" are inevitably brought up when anything like this is discussed here, and are usually used as polite ways of saying "old" and "young", but I see it more as "reality" and "unproven fantasy." There is nothing any more permanent or magical about HD or 4K than there was about standard definition video, or color, for that matter. All formats are products of their time, and all get supplanted, sooner or later, by something better. That doesn't make the material that exists on those formats any less vital, any less creative, or quite frankly, any less marketable if the material itself can stand the test of time. "Monty Python" has proven that it does stand the test of time. "Riptide" and "Manimal" didn't. Monty Python was created on videotape. Riptide and Manimal were both shot on 35mm film. Which is more valuable I leave up to you to decide.
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I took your point to be that a quality product like Monty Python's Flying Circus does not diminish in cultural or entertainment value as technological advancements supersede the means with which it was captured. I thought you were trying to make the further point that people would continue to see the value of that even while it is surrounded by lesser material captured with a vastly superior image quality.

Maybe I got that wrong, if I did I would appreciate it if you dumbed things down for me... what was your point if not that?

We are in agreement about the non-magical nature of acquisition formats. For me it is simple mathematics. If something is captured with a resolution of X and then delivered at 1/12X, there is then a tangible reason for it to be delivered again at 1/4X- and again at X as the technology allows it. If it is captured at a resolution of 1/12X and delivered at 1/12X... what possible reason would anyone have to pay for it in a distribution channel that is 1/4X or X?

There is no format or resolution that will magically be good enough forever- but they do have a marketable lifespan that is dictated by that resolution. Once it has been seen at the best it will ever be seen- anything above and beyond that is pretty much closed off to them. If you walked into the office of an HD network and offered them a free license to air Monty Python what would they do with it? Seriously, what can they do with it? As good as it is, it looks truly horrible and they really don't want "looks truly horrible" associated with their network. Most of them would pay to air re-mastered Manimal in HD before they would air Monty Python for free because, while they may not be able to see that Manimal is crap, they can all see that Monty Python looks like crap.

If they can offer it in a measurably better package they can resell it.

The comparatively minor increase in quality from VHS to DVD meant billions in sale... you may not have noticed but that really did happen. Now DVD sales are starting to slide - for the first half of this year, sales of TV Season sets on DVDs were down 14%.

During the same time, TV season sets on Blu Ray were up 84%. Sure the respective installed base means it isn't yet taking up the slack but it points to their being a crossover in the not to distant future. Friends and Seinfeld will enjoy another round of sales on Blu-Ray and there is a chance that they will get another boost in sales when we get to 4K since they were originated in 35mm.

But there is no chance for Monty Python.

As far as I know, the very best quality it ever existed on was U-Matic tapes- everything else is a lower quality dupe. No matter how great it is, there will be no Blu-Ray disc and no network 4K premiere for Monty Python. Youtube and XBox Live won't be streaming it in 4K. Those potential revenue streams simply do not exist for Monty Python.

Entire distribution channels, the channels with the greatest quality, are closed to Monty Python. Nobody will care how good it was, there is zero added value to the distribution channel or the consumer so they will spend zero additional dollars on it.

You are so pessimistic about HD channels, Blu-Ray sales or future 4k channels that you're sure any new revenue is going to be close enough to zero that it doesn't make any difference that Monty Python was mastered on (at the very best) 280i?

I'm figuring that the additional distribution channels will lead to revenue which is significantly higher than zero - and so it would make sense to spend about the same amount of money and capture at 4-5K rather than 1080p.

That sentence pretty much boils my point down to its essence.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
HDTV is broadcast MPEG2 @ ~20mbps isn't it? Far from uncompressed.
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I've seen the "broadcast is uncompressed" claim elsewhere as well. Seems to be a widespread belief, which is funny when the difference between broadcast HD and Cable/Satellite HD is something like 20 Mbps for broadcast and 10-12 Mbps for C/S... Both broadcast and C/S should start using a better delivery codec than MPEG-2, though getting enough decoders to the population is still a problem.

--

Graeme or someone said that the realistic bitrate of 4K RedRay was 15 Mbps last time I heard.
 
H. Farberg said:
though getting enough decoders to the population is still a problem.

Graeme or someone said that the realistic bitrate of 4K RedRay was 15 Mbps last time I heard.
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So the good news is that the bandwith is sufficient as it is, the bad news is (so far) that not a single piece of the infrastructure supports a new codec...

And that's what RED may have been working at behind the scenes the last 2,5 years, if this thread is any indication...
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Just keep in mind that people are still going to be watching "Casablanca" more often than they are going to be watching "Lord Jim", even though the second one was shot in 65mm Super Panavision as is more amenable to this 4K future, whereas I doubt that the original negative to "Casablanca" would measure out to 4K, not to mention, it's a 4x3 b&w image. So if the content is popular enough, people will still want to watch it -- if "Avatar" is still loved in 20 years (and I have no idea whether it will be or not) then it will still be watched just as people still watch "Casablanca", regardless of being limited to its 1080P origination. People don't chose what to love based on how sharp it is.

That said, there are a lot of good reasons to shoot and archive at the highest practical quality level you can, and there are a lot of good reasons to make 4K the industry standard, the sooner the better.
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Ooooh I want to see Casablanca after it is scanned in and mastered at its full resolution. I have it on VHS and DVD but I would buy it again on RedRay disc in a heartbeat- even if it was pillar-boxed and "only" resolved 3000x2250. If it had been shot on 8mm I would have to be happy with the DVD... and I would be.

What I wouldn't be is interested in buying it on RedRay, or even Blu-Ray for that matter. Most people who would want to own Casablanca already own Casablanca and they need a compelling reason to buy it again. Can you think of a compelling reason other than a huge increase in image quality that will get you to open your wallet?

As for the image quality floor today, HD networks don't really like programming SD material. Unless the material can be remastered to HD I expect that, as there are fewer and fewer SD outlets, fewer and fewer people will be exposed to many of the classics. That is a shame.
 
Gunleik Groven said:
So the good news is that the bandwith is sufficient as it is, the bad news is (so far) that not a single piece of the infrastructure supports a new codec...

And that's what RED may have been working at behind the scenes the last 2,5 years, if this thread is any indication...
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Jannard said:
The delivery mechanism is coming.
Jim
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Seem like a rationionl therom to me :)
 
Clint Johnson said:
There is no format or resolution that will magically be good enough forever- but they do have a marketable lifespan that is dictated by that resolution
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I disagree. If we're talking about the art of 2D (or even 3D) cinema, at some point the standard resolution for video the size of a large living room wall will peak—in other words, upping the resolution any further will have no perceivable effect on the image. Throw in all the other advancements in cameras that allow reality to be captured more accurately and you've got something solid to last through the ages. The reason film was so great (with Epic here, I think saying "film was so great" is appropriate!) is because the potential of the film source far exceeded the output methods available back then, and even today!

The Big Mistake, like Jim said (and like you're saying, I think), was going digital because it was "good enough" for the output resolution, as if the standards of the time wouldn't change and there was nowhere to go beyond HD. Digital was great for indies that couldn't afford using film, but a lot of stuff that should have and could have been shot on film was shot digitally. It's kind of weird that a lot of older movies look great on Blu-ray, but some more recent movies don't. And that gap is going to be far more evident when 4K+ is standard.

I haven't read through this thread but it seems like you and Most are talking about different things. I think Flying Circus is the greatest comedy there is (right above Karl Pilkington), and artistically, the way it was shot and stored will have no cultural effect, but from a money-making standpoint… yeah, it will have an effect, for sure. I already own the big DVD set, so why would I bother upgrading? It's already as good as it gets. On the other hand, when Barry Lyndon comes out on Blu-ray next year I will absolutely be buying it, and when it comes out in 4K I'll buy it again along with 2001 and A Clockwork Orange.

So the way I see it, from a marketing/business standpoint, you should go overkill when you shoot. From an artistic standpoint, it depends on what you're shooting, and in the case of Monty Python it wasn't important—there's even a vintage appeal to the crappy video, I think. But what are we arguing about? Just like film was/is overkill for output methods hitherto, Red is going bigger and better as fast as they can. Even if we're thinking really long-term and worrying about whatever comes after 4K, it won't be long before overkill digital cameras become affordable.

I'm not sure if I responded to anything or just went on a rant, but there you go. :biggrin5: Cheers!
 
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