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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 Window Effect - Immersive Viewing

Phil you teach us everyday. One way or another we always learn from you so thanks for your constant collaboration for the RedUser Community and to all of us that are in this Journey since RED came out. In my case when I got my Red Scarlet...

Thanks for your support!
 
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  • #42
Alain M said:
Phil you teach us everyday. One way or another we always learn from you so thanks for your constant collaboration for the RedUser Community and to all of us that are in this Journey since RED came out. In my case when I got my Red Scarlet...

Thanks for your support!
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Thank you Alain. If anything this should help moderately explain where image definition comes into play at these various standards. There were a lot of question marks regarding 4K for some time. A great deal of production out here is happening at 4K or 4K+ on the acquisition side nowadays. A good chunk of that is aiming to finish at 4K as well. Times are certainly advancing finally as certain voices have been slowly muted by the visual gains we see in high resolution motion pictures. And more viewers/consumers are on board now thanks to those providing 4K content into homes already. It's an area of exponential growth at this point. There's a ways to go still, but with devices, displays, and the many theaters already supporting 4K it's just a matter of pushing out more high resolution content for people to enjoy.
 
Thanks Phil; love how you've framed this as immersive viewing because the fundamental points (and arguments) about resolution really need to take a back seat at this point of the collective digital cinema camera journey and we start referencing technical advancement in relation to viewer experience. Because that's what cinematography and filmmaking has always been about.

The actual objective for most of us remains purely thus - give me an image capture mechanism that faithfully conveys a story, message or experience to a modern audience. I specifically said "modern" audience as the perception and reception of what you produce is, for better or worse, either enhanced or tainted by how it meets their base expectations of image quality. For many decades now cinema was cinema and TV was TV because the base expectations of image quality in both mediums remained leagues apart and relatively unchanged. Personally, I still harbor childhood conflict of being exposed to a vertically squashed TV transmission of Lawrence of Arabia on local broadcast TV to 'faithfully adapt' it to 4:3.

In my POV cinema and TV collided in the late 90's through a triage of HD standards, media digitization and content channel competitiveness (across online/cable/etc). HD became mainstream through a combined push across devices (PC/Mac, PS3, XBox etc.) and consumer TV devices (flat screen HD TV's that went from $'000s to $'00s in just a year or two). And cinema kind of moved in a lag response to everything great that was going on in their audience's homes...

A lot of people remark to me about how 'cinematic' or 'realistic' high budget TV shows are now, and how 'poorly produced' some movies are. The fact is perception of quality amongst the masses has, for the last 10-15 years, been driven by technology; particularly consumer technology. My Macbook has a 2880x1800 native res on a 15" screen. A kind of dance between what consumers are viewing content on - across a wide spectrum of experiences - and what content producers have in their arsenals to meet their expectations.

I admittedly get bugged when people express disappointment like "the Weapon 8K sensor doesn't provide faster frame rates".. and take solace in the fact the RED ecosystem has advanced technically enough to now focus on aesthetics whilst still progressing the technical format and capabilities in logical tandem. We'd all love faster frame rates; insane frame rates if it was an option. Give me 1-2k fps please.. but at what cost ($ to producers) vs potential benefit across the content consumption market? What is critically beneficial to viewers - and thus, capabilities RED delivers to its customers as content producers - is the commercial content market in the coming 18-24 months.

When you say "8K as well as some future technology on the horizon" - if we could just put pace and technology in perspective for a moment: Jim announced the Red One in 2006; a year before the iPhone was announced.

I believe 8K is highly relevant and wholly flexible to deliver to a largely end-user 4k+ UHD content market we're producing for right now in 2015, definitely - but firmly believe in the next 2-3 years (which I don't consider a 'horizon' but rather the immediate landscape we need to be considering in current projects) - DCI technology plays a large part, and we play a large part in keeping the wow factor in cinematic experiences.. but more importantly, I see a significant shift of consumption of online and streaming content from connected devices with limited screen real estate to connected TVs with significant screen real estate, UHD 4K as relatively cheap and standard, and 8K being the new emerging UHD standard; along with plenty of 8K producers having an edge over 4-5K limited producers by using the larger format to both 'create wow factor' on the standard 4K UHD market as well as exercising significant cost advantages in 4K UHD production pipelines. Whilst having +4K at their fingertips for the future market.

So your 'immersive experience' perspective struck chords with me ... because it frames the objective of creating 'wow in the now' whilst also enforcing the very real need of 'wow in 2 years from now'.
 
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  • #44
smpteConf2015.jpg


I have something on my mind this evening and it relates to this fancy post I made a bit ago.

Today I was at the SMPTE Conference (thank you Stacey) and was closely inspecting a few things.

Above at the Colorfront booth were two Sony BVM-X300 DCI 4K (4096x2160) displays. On the left we have a 1000nit Rec.2020 image and on the right we have a 100nit Rec.709 image. Their demo was particularly impressive, especially when it came to adjusting the character of the motion blur on HFR material.

HDR right now is the wild west of the display technology world, but there are a great deal of people who are very focused on making it a reality in homes and theaters.

I also re-watched the Dolby Vision demo on the Vizio 4K reference display and checked out SpectraCal's calibration tool set on the new 4K Canon reference displays.

For those who haven't experienced HDR up close and personal yet, it's all about making beautiful images. Rich, deep, colorful, vibrant, bright, and shimmering images. Outside of the contrast and luminance characteristics, colors that really couldn't be displayed before are now happening on these displays that support the 10-bit and 12-bit Rec.2020 color space. Neon colors are the most obvious, but there's certainly a richness to browns through reds and popping blues.

The Sony OLED displays impressed me the most, and they should for $40K a pop. I believe they cover about 80% of Rec.2020 and the images do indeed jump out at you in a unique way with their pure blacks and HDR mode. I also had some interesting thoughts on how this effects texture/noise/grain across the tonal range as well as motion cadence. HDR can be a place where HFR really sings differently as it will eliminate the optical impact effect of judder a bit in certain situations.

It's fascinating stuff. It's in line with my Window Effect concept discussed here and I do think it's where this is going fairly shortly.

We now have support for Rec.2020 these days in the RED world. Something to consider.
 
Dariusz Wolski said something interesting related to this thread about "the Martian" and Ridley's approach in the recent asc magazine :
"He likes to have the camera back slightly, observing what is taking place. That also allows for a lot of spontaneity from the actors..."

I think the audience appreciates this windowed approach, as you can tell by the box office ... Ridley has really mastered this.
 
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  • #48
Beejeezus!! I could pretty much just walk into that 8K frame and live there happily ever after..
 
Phil, you just sold about a thousand 8k sensors I think.

And probably has everyone thinking IMAX.
 
I was just doing some testing with HTC Vive, anyone in the industry needs to buy/test this stuff to get a feel for it, as it will dramatically effect the financials in the industry. I need a better source to keep up with this then reduser, I really like Phil's page http://www.phfx.com/articles/theWindowEffect/ , but am looking for a forum that keeps up on this. I do go to the major conferences, which has been helping me out a lot, but am looking for suggestions on forums where people are focusing on immersive cinema and making that real.
 
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  • #54
Interesting read. I wonder how something done like this will translate to some of the new large TVs or laser projectors? There's no doubt we are seeing generational changes in how much clarity is tolerated by an audience.

In a personal way, I find myself occasionally stopping and fixating on an object in my field of view instead of just scanning. At the end of the day I feel rewarded with a greater awareness rather than just another passed day.

Maybe this will create more mindfulness for a movie goer rather than "Oh, I just watched a movie about some stuff."
 
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  • #57
It's been a few years hasn't it?

Today is real special day. Today I not only watched UHD 8K in my home, but was also able to do an apples to apples UHD 4K and UHD 8K comparison with two 70" displays.

First, instagram from Jarred:

28155308_153040135402250_7719383637799469056_n.jpg


instajarred - A very special 70” 8k monitor that we are working together with Sharp to make available to all you 8k R3D camera owners....
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This is actually a lovely circle as I shot some content for Sharp some time ago that was featured worldwide on their UHD 4K televisions. In fact, it's part of the reason I have a Sharp UHD 4K TV at home.

At CES 2018 I wrote about being able to see the difference even beyond "recommended viewing distances" between 4K and 8K and you know what, well hell, I'll show you:



Here's my extremely fast slap in the face response to that comparison from the gram:

Today is a very special day for many reasons, but for the first time I was able to compare a direct apples to apples UHD 4K and UHD 8K image in my living room with two displays from Sharp. Same distance, same content, different appearance. TL;DR - yeah, you can see the difference. I'm at 7 feet here which is within the ideal viewing distances for a 70" screen based on THX's numbers and with my naked eyes I can see the difference at about 2.5X that distance somehow. I attempted to show that effect via this 28mm shot at 400%. It's basically like looking at a decent fine art print versus a really good one. 62.9dpi versus 125.8dpi which according to the Window Effect algorithm I wrote some time ago is the difference between "very good" and "excellent". This is a special project between RED and Sharp, more info soon there. Thank you @instajarred for making this a special day. The world deserves to experience this level of quality out of their motion picture content. I will run many tests, but the hard truth is February 2018 I can stream content and view it in 8K. This television has a built in upscaler, which in general I'm not fond of, but because the pixel pitch is so fine it looks decent from 4K to 8K, but the difference is pretty clear. For over 2 years I've been shooting in RED 8K and finally being able to enjoy it in 8K here has revealed much of what I've been working so very hard towards.
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In short, 8K is very pretty. I can't see the pixels from my couch which is great and in the zone to THX's recommended viewing distances, actually near the long end if I'm sitting back. In this zone somewhere between a 70-85" set will do you well. I'm certain somebody else will come out with something perhaps slightly larger even.

Here's a link to my Optimal Viewing tool describing the distances you should sit and my Window Effect rating:
http://phfx.com/tools/optimalViewing/optimalViewing.cgi?resolution=7680x4320&resX=&resY=&diagonal=70

I'm happy that algorithm works as intended actually.

The proof is in the pixels, or better yet, the lack of seeing them. Pixels are most effective when they are unseen.
 
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Hey Phil,

What media player or output card were you using to drive the 8k image?

Curious to know what our options are these days as it seems like consumer manufactures are just now catching up with really solid 4k media players.
 
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