The HD Revolution?

[Max Jacoby]

Actually they don't. 4K digital capture is frankly better than 35; far lower noise and of comparable or higher resolution. Even if we were looking at this the other way around, you'd be screaming that 35mm makes 2K look bad - which it does - and contending that 35mm improve until the grain became invisible in 2K.

Phil

 

So you have seen 4k capture compared to 35mm?

 

Quite frankly to say that for 35mm 4K isn't needed is a gross misstatment. Are you familiar with the concept of random sampling at all? Everybody knows that 2K isn't good enough for 35mm.

[K Borowski]

Hi,

 

> Yeah, but they can also be played in theatres since they're shot on 35mm

 

Cite one example of a 35mm-shot sitcom being neg cut and projected.

 

> and they have the ability to be upgraded to whatever new standards emerge in

> the coming years.

 

Actually they don't. 4K digital capture is frankly better than 35; far lower noise and of comparable or higher resolution. Even if we were looking at this the other way around, you'd be screaming that 35mm makes 2K look bad - which it does - and contending that 35mm improve until the grain became invisible in 2K. The argument that 35mm is retransferable to "whatever" new standards emerge does not hold water. It won't take much more than 2K before people start to realise how objectionable the grain really is.

 

Phil

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm not saying one would ever give a sitcom a theatrical run, but try blowing up a seventies sitcom like Three's Company or transfering it to HD and see how good that looks. As for 4K being better than film, I totally disagree. Grain is beautiful, not objectionable. Pixels are objectionable.

 

~Karl Borowski

[Nathan Milford]

There are still B&W Televisions out there, why bother even broadcasting in Color?

[K Borowski]

Why make anything that is meant to last? Corporations make so much more money revising poop every three years, like digital camera companies are doing now. Still photographers who switched over to digital early are going out of business left and right. I only hope that television manufacturers have something better than HD coming out right after HDTVs gain popularity so we can replace all of those retrograde sets. Come on. HDTV is being forced on the vast majority of stations, and most people are perfectly happy with SD. The only people I know with HDTVs (besides rich movie directors ;-) ) are people that drive SUVs and Hummers and talk in a fake British accent. I found this interesting, but do you know that HDTVs will actually fade like photographs over three years time because the color pigments used in the displays are organic? That doesn't sound like an improvement to me. Also, I hate 16:9, emulating movies, but widescreen was in fact a gimmick to keep people from abandoning movies for TV back in the '50s. So why are we going 16:9? If anything, HDTV is going to hurt the theatres even more, which you people are supposed to be the biggest patrons of. poop, why not shoot everything on HD because there aren't going to be any theatres around with the stuff you guys are spending your money on. George Lucas is right. I hope that all movies don't end up looking like his.

 

~Karl Borowski

[Marty Hamrick]

  Many will say that it looks wrong and the like. WRONG.  It doesn't look wrong, it looks different than what the popular consensus (35mm) should look like.  For god's sake man! You can see the small fibers of hair on a blade of grass.  gorgous.

 

i say, Embrace HD.  Welcome HD, but above all, Respect HD.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What,like you can't see small fibers on a blade of grass in well shot 35mm or 16mm?There's another myth that says electronically produced images are sharper than film produced images when in fact they are not.If something looks "wrong",it looks "wrong" because it was wrong for what that particular look was supposed to be.I've shot stuff on video that was suited for video and on film for what was suited for film.I embrace new technolgies too,but I still don't see HD being a replacement for film.

Marty

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> do you know that HDTVs will actually fade like photographs over three years

> time because the color pigments used in the displays are organic?

 

Where did you get that little gem? The phosphors uses in HDTV tubes are exactly the same as those used in computer monitors and TVs since the inception of the technology. You may be thinking of plasma screens, but most of them are well below HD resolution despite what they're sold as.

 

And all this balls about grain being "beautiful." Obviously you're entitled to that opinion, just as much as my opinion that the video noise in the recent army recruiting ads shown here was attractive and appropriate for the purpose. However, you can't really get around the fact that grain is noise with a particular characteristic, just as CCD noise is noise with a different characteristic. You might happen to like that characteristic and that's fine, but it's not particularly relevant to a discussion on the relative technical merits. Surely it's better to start with the option of low noise and the ability to add it, as opposed to being stuck with grain you can't do a lot about without other compromises.

 

My contention is that doing film-2K-film DI does neither format any favours. 2K to 2K digital shoot to digital post looks better; 35mm to 35mm looks better. The static and dynamic picture element technologies fight making the filmout look soft and the digital image look noisy. I mean, seriously: if you presented a digital camera which had as much noise as 35mm puts into a 2K image, you'd be laughed off the trade show floor, let alone at twice the res.

 

Phil

[Max Jacoby]

And all this balls about grain being "beautiful." Obviously you're entitled to that opinion, just as much as my opinion that the video noise in the recent army recruiting ads shown here was attractive and appropriate for the purpose. However, you can't really get around the fact that grain is noise with a particular characteristic, just as CCD noise is noise with a different characteristic.

Grain is not noise, grain is picture information.

 

My contention is that doing film-2K-film DI does neither format any favours.

I agree with that. After all digital and film colorspace is different. But a DI still looks better than a digitally shot film.

[Guest dpforum1968]

Yes the only other real example of a "big change over" we have in the world of TV sets is when colour TV was introduced over B&W. Not sure how long it took for the world to go colour over B&W.

 

But I will point this out...to the average Joe Blow walking down the street after a long day of working in the office for his barely middle class paycheck, seeing colour sets in a store window next to B&W sets would look like a HUGE improvement. An easy sell. Of course you'd want to watch TV in colour that was a very basic thing.

 

HD is different...I think that most Joe Blows out there are happy with their SD colour TVs. They see no reason to toss their 4-5 year old SD TV in favour of HD. When viewing the HD and SD TVs side-by-side in the Sony store I don't see such a huge difference that HD is going to create a stampede toward junking SD sets in favour of HD.

 

What I am seeing is that HD is becoming more of a "specialty" TV and not mainstream at all for the massess. Sports freaks are buying HD to watch the "big game", and a few Discovery Channel lovers are buying HD.

 

But the masses are standing pat. The HD revolution can't happen on a huge scale until HD TVs cost the SAME as SD TVs. Maybe that's five years off? Maybe two?

 

The corporate pricks who are trying to ram HD down every ones throats so they can buy a fourth corporate jet are forgetting that many people have to work very hard for their money. A teacher making $35,000.00 a year isn't going to make an HD TV a high priority. (Film nuts who post here don't count, you are not part of the main stream viewing public, sorry. :-)

 

Saying that VCRs which where first a toy for the rich and then became common place, is the same as how HD will take off is crazy. VCRs and DVD players are delivery systems of the product, they are not the display device like a TV is. There is a difference.

 

I also still maintain that it won't be long before some one comes out with "Super HD", which will be double the lines of HD. Then here we go again! If you can make sets that are 1080X1920, then why not 2160X3840? And beyond?

 

In the stock footage world I can tell you that even now 90% of producers reject shots acquired on HD tape. They want shots with a 35mm neg back-up. The reason is that they think they'll be screwed down the road going with a tape shot when that tape format becomes obsolete. And EVERY tape format become obsolete eventually.

 

Bye bye shoot tape originals of "Attack Of The Clones" Mr. Lucas, it won't be long before you can't find a deck to play them back on. Hey I have a stack of one inch and 3/4 tapes here I want to view, hmmmmm, how am I going to do that?

 

DC

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> Grain is not noise, grain is picture information.

 

What? Don't make me quote the dictionary at you. Grain is an artifact of the recording medium, superimposed on the image. It's noise - "A disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal." The pixel boundaries of a digital image are also noise, to a degree and spatial coherency dependent on the subsampling characteristic of the sensor which acquired the image. Since each grain particle (or dye cloud) in a 2K image is typically discernible as a shape occupying several pixels, each being 12 microns square, I consider grain to be the more objectionable artifact. It's certainly true that the film is capable of recording finer detail, since several particles may overlay one another and vary in colour within a particle, but the noise artifact is large and visible.

 

Phil

[Michael Most]

The HD revolution can't happen on a huge scale until HD TVs cost the SAME as SD TVs.  Maybe that's five years off? Maybe two? 

 

It can happen the same way the CD revolution happened. When you can't buy anything but HD sets - at least for anything over about 27" diagonal - you have no choice. That's already happening. Or haven't you stopped by your local Best Buy lately?

 

The corporate pricks who are trying to ram HD down every ones throats so they can buy a fourth corporate jet are forgetting that many people have to work very hard for their money.  A teacher making $35,000.00 a year isn't going to make an HD TV a high priority. (Film nuts who post here don't count, you are not part of the main stream viewing public, sorry. :-)

 

I really don't understand why people have such a problem with companies making money. If companies don't make money, nobody works. Simple. The advent of consumer HD, while pricey for now, is certainly a way for an industry to make money on a product that had become a commodity. It is also an opportunity to offer the consumer a superior viewing experience. The price of HD sets has come down by a huge margin over the last 12 months or so. What is now $2000 will likely be half that by this time next year, possibly sooner. Granted, having an HD set is not going to change your life. But it is nice, and for those who need to replace their existing set (which has probably been in service for 10-15 years or more) it offers something that can be very enjoyable. Besides, what industry other than consumer electronics has a pricing structure in which the price of everything actually decreases over time? What are you paying for housing/car/gas/food lately?

 

In the stock footage world I can tell you that even now 90% of producers reject shots acquired on HD tape.  They want shots with a 35mm neg back-up.  The reason is that they think they'll be screwed down the road going with a tape shot when that tape format becomes obsolete.  And EVERY tape format become obsolete eventually.

 

If you're talking about the feature world, that's possible. In television, it's simply not the case. Stock shots are created and supplied in HD format all the time. Even for film shows.

[Max Jacoby]

Grain is an artifact of the recording medium, superimposed on the image. It's noise - "A disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal."

 

This may be true for video, but on a negative it is the grains (silver halides) that capture the picture. Without it there simply would be no picture.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

That's a completely circular argument - "grain is part of the picture, so the picture has grain." Irrespective of how or why it's there or the effects it has, it's an artifact of the process and it's noise.

 

Phil

[Alain LeTourneau]

[....] widescreen was in fact a gimmick to keep people from abandoning movies for TV back in the '50s.  So why are we going 16:9?  If anything, HDTV is going to hurt the theatres even more, which you people are supposed to be the biggest patrons of.  ~Karl Borowski

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Exactly. But the cinema is dead my friend. Many would prefer to stay home.

 

Cars killed the walking city.

 

TVs will kill the cinema. ; )

 

 

Alain

[Justin Hayward]

"The Incredibles" hit $200 million in under three weeks, so I wouldn't say the cinema is dead. However, it's getting harder to get people out to the movies when their set up in the living room is better than some theaters.

[Guest dpforum1968]

I'm sorry mmost but your statement here is not accurate:

 

"If you're talking about the feature world, that's possible. In television, it's simply not the case. Stock shots are created and supplied in HD format all the time. Even for film shows."

 

I run a stock footage company and own one of the largest private collections in the world. I also supply several of the bigger houses in LA. Every single day requests come to me from the LA stock houses, and 90% of those requests are for TV use shots with a 35mm neg. We shoot all of our own original footage and are one of the few companies that actually go on location just for the purpose of shooting stock footage.

 

Even in the TV world and commercials an HD acquired stock shot is generally only used when a 35mm sourced shot can not be found. I don't know where you get your information from but 35mm stock shots are still the King, HD is the proletariat.

 

I get lists via e-mail that specifically state, "35mm prefered but will look at HD." What this means is that an HD shot is settled on as a second best option.

 

DC

[Guest dpforum1968]

Here's a list that was e-mailed to me on Friday from the head of one of the biggest stock footage houses in the world located in Los Angeles. This is sent to me in the hopes that I can provide them with these shots which they will then re-sell to their clients. This stock house, like most of them out there, does not actually shoot any thing. They represent and broker shots to a third party. All of these shots are for TV use, but you'll notice what is being requested by the client in terms of the delivery medium. And it ain't HD tape!! This is a pretty good cross section of what's going on out there. I get two or three of these lists per day and it's always the same. DC.

 

35mm w/neg ? DX - winter east coast ? small church ext. estb.

 

35mm w/neg ? DX ? winter east coast ? small police station

 

35mm w/neg ? DX ? DA?s office or small govt. bldg, east coast winter ext. estb.

 

35mm w/neg ? DX ? ext. estb. Yale University

 

35mm w/neg ? ext. estb. winter, tattoo parlor, east coast

 

35mm w/neg DX ? ext. estb. gun show in convention center int. and ext.

 

35-16mm w/neg ? DX ? ext. trendy coffee shop

 

35-16mm w/neg ? Ext., DX ? estb. suburban strip mall in Midwest

 

35-16mm w/neg ? DX ? ext. truck stop country look (Kansas)

[Brad Grimmett]

35mm w/neg ? DX - winter east coast ? small church ext. estb.

 

35mm w/neg ? DX ? winter east coast ? small police station

 

35mm w/neg ? DX ? DA?s office or small govt. bldg,  east coast winter ext. estb.

 

35mm w/neg ? DX ? ext. estb. Yale University

 

35mm w/neg ? ext. estb. winter, tattoo parlor, east coast

 

35mm w/neg  DX ? ext. estb. gun show in convention center int. and ext.

 

35-16mm w/neg  ? DX ? ext. trendy coffee shop

 

35-16mm w/neg  ? Ext., DX ? estb. suburban strip mall in Midwest

 

35-16mm w/neg ? DX ? ext. truck stop country look (Kansas)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What's the "DX" stand for? Just curious. Thanks.

[Guest dpforum1968]

Just stock footage/film lingo for:

 

DX = Day Exterior

 

NX = Night Exterior

 

There is a long list of "codes" we use for describing shots.

 

NX and DX are the most common since a lot of the stock footage business is providing establishing shots for projects filmed in one place but set in another.

 

DC

[Michael Most]

Even in the TV world and commercials an HD acquired stock shot is generally only used when a 35mm sourced shot can not be found.  I don't know where you get your information from but 35mm stock shots are still the King, HD is the proletariat.

 

I get lists via e-mail that specifically state, "35mm prefered but will look at HD."  What this means is that an HD shot is settled on as a second best option.

 

I get my information from working in both post production and visual effects on network television programs in Los Angeles for 25+ years. I think you are misunderstanding how these requests are made, and the language that is used. Film negative for stock shots is requested primarily because programs wish to do their own telecine transfer, for multiple reasons - color correction, sizing changes, integration into visual effects shots, and other reasons. In many cases, the telecine transfers provided by the stock houses are simply not at the same quality level as those done for the rest of the show by the larger post houses. It is a safer bet to do a new transfer, even at your cost, than it is to simply accept the transfer done by the stock house, even though you will likely have some dirt cleanup to do. Shots that are done on HD video have far fewer of these issues, in part because there has likely been no post color correction applied to the original image. If the shot works, it works, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. I have been involved in buying and using HD video based stock for various productions, both for establishing shots and visual effects elements. Don't be fooled by the notion that 35mm negative is requested for any kind of archival reasons - that has nothing to do with it. Television programs are electronic entities, posted electronically and, except for a very few, archived in that electronic form. 35mm negative is requested primarily because it is still assumed that shots are largely 35mm sourced, and in this case, productions would prefer doing a new transfer for quality reasons. When a shot is HD sourced, this is no longer a consideration.

 

There is, of course, also the fact that the vast majority of television dramas are still shot on film, and producers logically feel that 35mm sourced stock will cut better with the rest of the program. This is changing - in part because with 24p HD material it is not nearly as serious an issue (and once a producer sees this it is no longer an issue), and in part because more shows - especially sitcoms - are themselves being shot on 24p HD video.

[K Borowski]

Hi,

 

> Grain is not noise, grain is picture information.

 

What? Don't make me quote the dictionary at you. Grain is an artifact of the recording medium, superimposed on the image. It's noise - "A disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal." The pixel boundaries of a digital image are also noise, to a degree and spatial coherency dependent on the subsampling characteristic of the sensor which acquired the image. Since each grain particle (or dye cloud) in a 2K image is typically discernible as a shape occupying several pixels, each being 12 microns square, I consider grain to be the more objectionable artifact. It's certainly true that the film is capable of recording finer detail, since several particles may overlay one another and vary in colour within a particle, but the noise artifact is large and visible.

 

Phil

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Grain IS picture information. Pictures are composed of grains of silver, which are then bleached out and replaced by clouds of dyes which fill in the gap in the gelatin left by the silver grain. Take away all of the grains of silver in a piece of black and white film (which is what happens when smart people take B&W to a 1 hour photo with a smart technician who puts them in C-41 soup) and what do you get? You get a blank image. I don't know how you could consider the basic element of a film image to be noise any more than a pixel can be considered noise. Grain doesn't meld with the grids of pixels on your $9,000 HDTV set? Tough poop. Watch it on SDTV or see it in theatres.

 

~Karl Borowski

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

You're missing the point. I'm looking at this from a purely objective standpoint, which acknowledges that both the visible edges of grain and pixel boundaries are non-optimal artifacts - faults - of the system which captured the image.

 

> I don't know how you could consider the basic element of a film image to be

> noise any more than a pixel can be considered noise

 

I think I've made it fairly obvious that I'm not saying that at all. The square artifact which marks a pixel boundary is an unwanted artifact of the imaging system; call it what you like, but it's still a disturbance to the proper rendition of the image. So is film grain, or at least the fact that it has a visible edge.

 

The point of higher level formats such as 65mm film and 4K digital imaging is, in part, to reduce the size of these artifacts to a point where they're not objectionable, or at least less objectionable. Calling the most prominent artifact of film "grain" seems to have become a way of legitimising it; you can call video noise, quite accurately, "thermal disturbance", "stellar particle flux" or in fact "sqwingzeegle" if you want to, but it's all just noise in the end. The only reason this gets me so hot under the collar is that you can look at what's a very nice 2K film scan and there's these huge rippling artifacts all over it - which are somehow acceptable because "it's grain."

 

Anyway, I'm off to apply some temporal anti-sqwingzeegle software to some footage. Skwingzeegle can be attractive, but on this occasion...

 

Phil

[Max Jacoby]

Phil

 

Even if technically speaking grain is a mistake/artifact, it still adds to the look.

 

Personally I like the feel of grain. There are even occasions where I don't find video noise objectionable, like for the wide night exterior shots on 'Collateral'. The one thing I can't stand is DNR, which reduces many a DI to a smeary mess. If you take away grain you take away picture information, it's a simple as that.

[Mike Brennan]

This stock house, like most of them out there, does not actually shoot any thing.  They represent and broker shots to a third party.  All of these shots are for TV use, but you'll notice what is being requested by the client in terms of the delivery medium.  And it ain't HD tape!! 

35-16mm w/neg ? DX ? ext. truck stop country look (Kansas)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The very first HD stock shot I sold was to a prime time US eposodic that had never even used video before.

Their response on seeing the shot was that it was "the prettiest stock shot they had ever bought".

No one even commented that it was HD or HDCAM ect ect they just liked the shot in the edit because it looked good!

 

They have since come back for more, one last week in fact.....

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Brennan

[Alain LeTourneau]

"The Incredibles" hit $200 million in under three weeks, so I wouldn't say the cinema is dead.  However, it's getting harder to get people out to the movies when their set up in the living room is better than some theaters.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Justin,

 

One film making $200 million, or 10 films a year making that much should not be any indication of the health of the cinema, rather it has more to do with the ill-state of the cinema.

 

1000s of films get made in this country every year (and that might be a conservative number). If we care to look at the rest of the world the numbers skyrocket.

 

So, why when I look in the newspaper to see what is playing (I live in Portland, Oregon) is it always the case that the same 10 films are playing on all the screens across the city. And then there's a few off the wall (or hole in the wall) places that somehow manage to survive in this climate of bottomline monocultural cinematic experiences. The so-called arthouse movies ain't doing much better and even those films hardly stay on the screen. Here in Portland Regal Entertainment owns 90% of the screens and they dictate the market.

 

You right in stating that people want to stay home. And the home theater experience has come down enough in price to meet the budget of the middle class consumers. The trouble is that the cinema represents a public space, in a way it adds to civic culture. It's not a park, that is its not free but when it comes down to it we all pay taxes on public space so parks are not exactly free either. The cinema is a low-cost (comparatively) form of public entertainment and education. The home viewing experience is a retreat away from the world. This is why I feel that the cinema is, in fact, dead. Private and personal experiences are held in higher regard than public ones. You know, people make noise in the cinema, or make stupid laughter, and that's annoying now isn't it. ; )

 

 

Alain

[Guest dpforum1968]

Ok HD people stick with your crappy tape formats.

 

DC