Why many says that Alexa has real 11,5 stops and Epic only 5,5 indeed?

[Brice Ansel]

The film "look" will not be the standard in another twenty tears, any more than there are very many people are left who argue the superiority of vinyl. Film is at the peak of a 100 year evolution. Digital is in its infancy with an unlimited future.

I think the vinyl is having a revival period today.
Wich is good, I only bought vinyls since ever. ;-)
B.

 

[James T Mather]

Interesting perspective Blair.

All I know is that somehow the image seems too "present" recently - this disrupts my suspension of disbelief constantly and draws me out of the film. This is a similar effect that interlaced video creates or 100hz TVs. (120 in the US). Will I get used to it? Sure. Will I like it? Definitely not. It seems to me to make the job of films being convincing harder - maybe it's a lens thing - because it seems to come and go depending on the film. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn't have it. Total Recall does. Social Network no sign, Ghost Rider 2 and Drive Angry it was very present.

There's an interesting article in this months edition of Stuff Magazine (it's about stuff n' stuff) in which they cover the genesis of visual effects. There is a sidebar on future developments. Bear in mind this is a broad gadget magazine for a wide audience - not an audio visual magazine.

By the way Blair, ever time I see your name, I feel an urge to chant "His name is Blair S. Paulsen" but it's probably due to a "club" I used to belong to. I can't talk about it.

 

[Jason Comparetto]

James, I definitely know what you're talking about. But I wonder if there are other factors involved. For example, if the theatre is projecting the movie on film or if its a digital projector. Also I've heard some talk about how the digital acquisition is transferred during various steps of the post-production could affect it. So I just wonder if its not necessarily the camera's fault, but rather what they do afterwards.

And as a personal example, I thought Lord of the Rings in the theatres was amazing, but when I watched it on DVDs years later it was hard for me to watch some of the visual effects they almost seemed like a cartoon at times. Perhaps I grew as a technician and I see things differently, but I still think that what they did on the DVDs was not as good as the projected film.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I think the vinyl is having a revival period today.
Wich is good, I only bought vinyls since ever. ;-)
B.

Haha - I knew there would be at least one person who would call me on this and claim, "vinyl IS better and always will be." I'd suggest that vinyl is DIFFERENT, and always will be. Whatever you believe to be the level where digital sampling can capture every possible nuance of a sound and all of its overtones and harmonics (192kHZ, 384? - 24bit, 48bit, 96?) , I think it would be hard to argue that vinyl is "better." Analog recording is not likely to improve too much from here. Digital is in its infancy. C'est la vie.

 

[Dave Blackham]

I profoundly disagree. Perhaps we should label this the argument to familiarity (if anyone knows Latin can you please translate that?). I grew up with both interlaced video and projected film. And when I became aware of the difference as I grew up, I found that the film (or at least the telecine) was superior. In every case. Of course, telecine transfers are almost always 'clean' so that had nothing to do with it.

Im not so sure about the Telecine being clean. I had a share in a Spirit once which gave very clean images. If we compared a transfer on virtually any tube telecine and then a Spirit transfer the Spirit won every time. We always thought Spirit showed film at its very best and actually extended the life of film in our region for a while for Television. Im told the issue was mostly from the fixed pattern noise from the tube, If you have some previously shot film and only ever seen a transfer on a older tube telecine Id recon a Spirit transfer or possibly a film scan would give you a very much cleaner transfer.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Analog recording is not likely to improve too much from here. Digital is in its infancy. C'est la vie.

FWIW:

"Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space. There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement."


http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Im not so sure about the Telecine being clean.

I will of course defer to experience. It bears repeating that the cleanliness of the image doesn't have much to do with my choice of interlaced video versus non-interlaced capture. But when I watched a 'good' VHS tape or LaserDisc, the telecined image was relatively clean - as I remembered it. When Twin Peaks finally made it to DVD, those discs were pretty much the reference for image quality for some review sites I think.