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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 :)

Why 4K?

Stephen Williams said:
Hi,

Having always made my decisions during the shoot, I actually don't want to be able to make a scene shot as night day. Underexposing by 3 stops always got the pictures I was being paid to make!

Stephen
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Hi,

The point I was trying to make is that it is not always possible for the DoP to control what happens to the material after the shoot. I think we are agreeing.
 
4K acquisition

4K acquisition

You have just made a very good argument for not shooting 4k.
I do not want mt shots reframed ever, even if the editor would rather everything was exactly in the centre of the frame!
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So how does that differ to the existing 35mm to tape workflow? In the telecine suite you can re-frame ...
 
Irmeli R said:
i'm with stephen on that one. we even thought about a workflow for our raw files where the DP's color grading info could be encrypted so the post house has to stick to it. of course no studio and no post house would accept this. :)
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I have been saying for some time now that DPs need to fight to be included more in post. With RAW, acquiring the material is only half the battle. The other half is in post. DPs have been asking for payment and more inclusion in post for decades. I remember an article by John Toll about this. As RAW becomes the standard (just as it has in professional stills) there needs to be a push by the ASC and other such organizations to include the DP in at least the initial phases of post and grading. That's the bottom line.
 
Tom,

I think there has been a push, but producers don't want to pay for it and often the DoP may be shooting something else during the post work. To some degree, the DoP can be involved in the early phase of post by using 3CP, SpeedGrade On-Set or DP Lights, if time allows.
 
Tom L said:
Sorry but I don't buy this at all. You get out what you put in. If this was the case, why would anyone ever shoot on Epic?
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I said 'visually indistinguishable' and that's not very true..sorry.
What it will be a 'bigger' 3k image that retains what the lens and sensor see.
Bigger sensor and bigger faster lens is always better for all those technical reasons.

Down res'ing takes a larger amount of data and makes a 'lesser' amount that is better. Taking more frames gives more data to make the upres'ing better.

My bad for that.

Sorry just me having a brain fart..D'uh...
 
RedRay is a fascinating wildcard. How wide of a market is Jim going for? Will he strike the huge biz collaborations necessary to make it a viable BluRay competitor? Or, is the purpose of Redray a much more narrow professional goal of 4k distribution to theaters and for the film production process (dailies and so forth)?
 
Andrew Thomas said:
I don't really get your POV Jim. You ask why somebody would shoot a 5D right now, with its far less than 4k finishing resolution, when you're right around the corner from selling a camera that is seemingly designed for 2k finish.

How does you question about shooting on <really any 1080p cam> not equally apply with a product you yourself are about to release?

Or are you suggesting that the 3k resolution scarlet is not fit for feature work either?
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Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall Jim saying anything about the 5d in this thread (and frankly the 5d's dynamic range and recording medium are, IMO, a bigger problem than its resolution). I believe he's speaking more in reference to other cinema cameras like the F35, Genesis, ect. As for the 3k Scarlet, it seems pretty obvious (given its sensor size) its meant to be something like the digital equivalent of 16mm which means one shouldn't be expecting to get the quality of a 35mm digital equivalent, i.e. the Red One. In other words, it's like asking why people shoot 16mm when 35mm's better.
 
Dave Archer said:
Down res'ing takes a larger amount of data and makes a 'lesser' amount that is better. Taking more frames gives more data to make the upres'ing better.
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But stealing half the temporal resolution to bump up the pixel resolution introduces its own problems: 48fps 180° shutter material re-timed to 24fps 90° shutter is not going to look the same as 24fps at 1/48th.
 
As Im only going to finish on blueray in near future, I'm guessing 3K will resolve in really good 1080p. Hoping all tests is going good so we can get Scarlet 2/3 out asp. Im not satisfied at all by the 1080p of hvx200 (finish in dvd watched at small television looks nice, 40" doesn't).

Also working in the same rez im finishing in is something I want to forget soon!
 
I once showed a youtube video (back in the pre-HD-youtube days) in a cinema. People still got the message. 4K is probably the future (how near is just the question). But the avarage person can't see the difference between 2K and 4K or at least don't know it unless it's pointed out. People don't even know what the difference is between 8mm, 16mm, 35mm or 70mm. Plenty of films have been upscaled from 16mm to 35mm without a lot of people being aware of it. I strongly believe the same process can be applied from 3K to 4K. A 3K image can be resized to 4K size in Photoshop with a result that makes it hard to see the difference. Sometimes it's the case of the Emperor's New Clothes. You tell people it's better and they will assure you "Of course it is." I wonder how many people can really tell the difference between ordinary Dolby Digital Surround Sound and Dolby TrueHD - probably not the tons of people who doesn't sit in the sweet spot in the cinemas where the sound is made to sound perfect?

As I don't know the situation in the states, I can only speak for me and my country. A lot of our cinemas are very small 30 seats or less - at the same price. These screens are too small, for people to see the big difference between 2K and 4K. In the big cinemas; you might either sit too far away from (or even too close to notice) the screen that the same problem may apply. Yes 4K is better than 1080p, 2K and 3K. But everything comes down to the story. If you've got a great one, your film will probably still be showed in the cinemas. IRMC
 
I find it interesting how they can take James Bond films from the 60's and re-scan them to Bluray 1080P... and maybe in the future to 4k... but with all these movies filmed at 1080P now (e.g. star wars)... they're stuck permanently unless we find a crazy algorithm to upscale to 4k (and beyond) that isn't a simple "resize 400%"

And let's face it, we're going to 4k and maybe even higher later... I've heard people say you don't really need more than 1080P but I bet if they saw a 4k viewing they would retract that statement. I can't even stand watching regular DVD's on a big screen anymore... the sexiness of bluray has taken its toll on me lol.

I do think, however, that eventually on a home-size television there will be a cutoff point... but maybe then we'll have 3d projections/3d tv's, who knows.
 
Chris Clogg said:
I find it interesting how they can take James Bond films from the 60's and re-scan them to Bluray 1080P... and maybe in the future to 4k... but with all these movies filmed at 1080P now (e.g. star wars)... they're stuck permanently unless we find a crazy algorithm to upscale to 4k (and beyond) that isn't a simple "resize 400%"
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One, you're assuming that a typical 1960's 35mm movie even resolves 4K, even if you scanned it at 4K or higher, and two, these 1080P movies today aren't going to get worse-looking, they will just look the way they do now.

And most of what you see on a 4K Sony projector in a theater these days are from 2K DCI files. So scaling from 2K to 4K is not hard to do properly.

It's only that things originated and finished in 4K are going to look even better in comparison, not that the older 2K and 1080P projects are going to look worse than they do today.

You already watch a wide range of resolutions today in movie theaters and on blu-ray, HDTV, whatever, regardless of the resolution of the display format. Not every shot in a 4K movie is going to resolve 4K. Not every shot in a 35mm movie has the same measurable resolution even if scanned at a single resolution. And the truth is that as long as there is enough visual consistency and the overall quality is decent enough, your eyes get used to the display resolution, assuming the movie can hold your attention dramatically and your mind doesn't wander and start trying to count pixels or something.

So I wish people here would stop promoting this lie that decent 1080P and 2K photography shown in 4K isn't going to look good in a few years. If that were really true, we can throw away a lot of cinema history, other than the old movies shot in 65mm. One of the most gorgeous movies ever shot was "Black Narcissus" and I seriously doubt that it, or most of the 3-strip Technicolor movies of the 30's and 40's, really would resolve more than 2K if someone had managed to shoot a chart back then on those cameras and on those film stocks (even if these movies should be scanned at 4K -- I think the scanning should be at a higher resolution than the original to avoid aliasing).

What's actually going to happen is that audiences are just going to get an even wider range of visual quality out of movies than they currently get. Even today, people are watching movies on everything from their iPhone to IMAX screens. I don't see this world of variable quality and resolution disappearing just because we get even higher resolution options. And I don't see sales necessarily driven by the level of resolution; if that were the case, the sharpest movies would be the biggest box office draws.
 
A thought just struck me. In future will there be the technology to watch a movie from a chosen point of view? That is, will we be able to watch a high resolution scene focusing on different characters or differing parts of the overall scene? I've seen so much change over just the past decade that nothing would surprise me on the visual front. Something like this would make the highest resolution master available very much in demand as content... if the story were good.
 
Well, that sort of starts to fall into those types of "interactive" cinema where the audience can choose where the story goes, in the sense that you are talking about cinema where the audience chooses what to look at, what to zoom in on, what angle to see the action from, etc.

While that may happen on an experimental basis -- and it's the basis of gaming -- it works against the basic act of storytelling, which is that the storyteller selects the tools and the technique that he feels best tells the story, and that story is an expression of his artistic vision based on the creative choices he makes.

So giving those creative choices (shot size, etc.) over to the audience sort of works to diminish the power and importance of the storyteller. One would assume that most audiences want to be told a story by someone better at storytelling than themselves, just as most people would want to buy a house built by someone who is better at designing and building houses than they are, or would want to go to a doctor who has more medical knowledge and skill than they do.
 
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