IMAX Develops Movie Transfer Technology 513
kazama writes: "Toronto-based IMAX said that it had developed a new process called DMR (for "digital remastering") to digitally convert conventional 35mm films to the IMAX format without significant loss of detail. 'Our customers have been saying to us for years, "We want to see Star Wars on IMAX, we want to see The Matrix on IMAX." and DMR is the technology which is the enabler,' Co-CEO Bradley Wechsler told Reuters. 'That's going to be an increasingly important part of the company's performance.'" So what movies would you want to see on IMAX?
Re:How do they do it now? (Score:5, Informative)
70mm vs 35mm (Score:4, Informative)
imax dmr (Score:4, Informative)
IMAX and the Hollywood studios don't want some hack to display regular film onto an IMAX sized screen. Its going to look bad, period. Even if you go to a multiplex that has a "very large screen" (General Cinema's Green Monster Screen in Boston, MA comes to mind) movies look like crap on it. Jittery and grainy.
However, IMAX and the Hollywood studios are waking up to the fact of revenue potential from full feature length films being shown on IMAX sized screens. Of course this must be done according to IMAX's brand level of quality. IMAX DMR represents the initiative to do get this done. The first feature length hollywood film to be shown with this technology will be Apollo 13. So if you think you have seen a movie with this technology and it wasn't Apollo 13 pre-screen and you were a member of the public when you saw it, then you are deluding yourself.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast represented an earlier "beta" generation of this technology. So if you saw that you get some idea.
Text of a press release follows
Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and IMAX Corporation bring Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience to IMAX screens worldwide.
Apollo 13 tells the dramatic true story of the heroic actions needed to bring a three-astronaut crew safely back to Earth after the Apollo 13 space mission suffered catastrophic mechanical problems en route to the Moon. Made with NASA's collaboratioin, the highly-suspenseful film is scientifically and historically accurate. Apollo 13 features strong performances from the ensemble cast, led by Oscar®-winning actor Tom Hanks, and brilliant direction by Ron Howard, another Oscar winner. Apollo 13 will be digitally re-mastered into IMAX's 15/70 format using the revolutionary IMAX DMRTM technology.
IMAX = 70mm run sideways (Score:2, Informative)
-Fzz
Re:Picture might be clear but... (Score:3, Informative)
Has anyone actually seen the IMAX camera? It's a very large and heavy camera [naia.com.fj] where each roll occupies about 2.5 minutes of film.
I always wondered if there is a digital form of the IMAX camera in development. It certainly would be more manageable than the film version. Reload would be a matter of switching a hard drive, rather than feeding film. The amount of record time would most likely be similar to the film version, but at least the camera would have less downtime to change the hard drive.
And don't get me started on a digital IMAX projector...
Then again, I don't claim to know what the other problems there may be with a digital version. I just hope that the idea is at least being worked on.
How it (probably) works (Score:1, Informative)
This technique was presented in several computer vision and graphics conferences (including SIGGRAPH) last year, and is probably what they built on for this newer process.
It seems bizarre that such amounts of detail that were never in the 35mm print can be added as a post-production step, but it actually works pretty well (at least from what the results I saw in their papers.)
Here's a link of results of their process:
http://www.sarnoff.com/search/tech_papers/hybrid/
A few thoughts... (Score:5, Informative)
I, for one, would love to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen. I think it would be a great experience.
That's why you go to a theater you know. For the experience. Otherwise, DVD and VHS would've killed them a long time ago. Why bother paying high ticket prices and overcharged on underbuttered popcorn and $7 drinks? Because there's something magical about being in a huge auditorium, in a room filled with strangers, going on imaginary adventures with people who never existed.
I would kill to see a marathon of Star Wars (Ep. 1,2,4,5, & 6) on IMAX (and of course do it again once Ep. 3 is finished). It would be a wonderful experience. The sights, the sounds, I think there would be absolutely nothing like it.
But there's a lot to think about here.
Firstly you have the screen itself. Last year, when Beauty and the Beast made more bundles of cash by making a "Special IMAX Edition" there had to be a change. And I'm not talking resolution, I'm talking frame-wise.
IMAX screens are 1.33:1 (television) aspect ratios. Most films are 1.85:1, and most of the classics are 2.35:1
So when they blow up films to fit this huge screen, not only are they losing resolution, they're losing part of the image all over again. It's called Pan & Scan, or Hack 'N Slash, depending on your viewpoint.
I could go on the huge tirade about how P&S is awful, how its destroying cinema as we know it, how it scares away Joe Blow from the infamous "black bars" and "why can't I see the rest of the picture" bullshit that myself and others have dealt with for years (ie, those in defense of widescreen).
The point is that The Matrix was not filmed in "Open Matte." Open Matte is where the black bars are put there intentionally, so the film can be shown in theaters properly. So when the home video comes around, you don't even have to worry about loss of picture, because the 1.33:1 frame actually shows more than what you originally saw in the theater (the great Run Lola Run was done this way). In those cases IMAX reproduction would rely solely on the resolution, with nothing else to worry about.
However, most of the films that are "classics" are in 2.35:1 "Superscope" meaning that when you pan and scan, you lose up to 33% of the film. For example, you have Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc (all of the Indiana Jones films for that matter), Lawrence of Arabia, Pulp Fiction, etc etc. The list can go on.
So when you think about IMAX reproduction of films, the frame is more important than the resolution. If you pan and scan a classic, you don't get the classic, you get what an editor "chose" to see at a particular point. And this to me is paramount.
Disney struck a few 70mm prints of Tron in 1999... (Score:4, Informative)
OT:
Before the screening there was a little round-table discussion and Q/A session with Steven Lisburger (writer/director), Bruce Boxleitner (who played Alan/Tron), Cindy Morgan (who played Lora/Yori), and one of the Abel systems people who made all those computer animated sequences possible - I think it was Tim McGovern. The director mentioned that he always thought of TRON as "the Bill Gates story" - i.e. the plucky young programmer breaking the shackles of centralized control (IBM). He said a lot of other stuff I didn't care about - I always hated the actual plot and acting of the film - but at least the Abel Systems guy got to talk a bit about doing CGI in 1982.
-Isaac
So how does making the neg bigger improve the img? (Score:5, Informative)
How is 'remastering' an image that is shot on 35mm film improve when you blow it up to 70mm? I mean, realistically, what this is saying is that you don't need to ever shoot 4x5 cameras- just shoot 35mm and all that precious details will magically come out when you digitize it. Poor Ansel Adams- if he had been alive now he could just use his $35 disposable camera and get those huge blowups with startling detail
OK I think you've caught the drift. Film has a limited resolution. Original IMAX uses 70mm film to get 4x the negative area (hence they can resolve quite a bit more detail than standard film). The only advantage I see to this is the marketing ploy- Genuine IMAX Film SIZE!. You don't gain detail, you don't gain ANYTHING that isn't already on the film. And since you are starting off on a small format to begin with, its not going to get better.
Now don't get me wrong, you can improve some work with digital sharpening and whatnot- going to a larger format helps there. But it in't going to give you the same quality of an IMAX experience compared with a film that is 70mm. It just can't be done. See my earlier jibes about 4x5 cameras if you need further humour
Movies to see in IMAX (Score:2, Informative)
a) Pink Floyd's "The Wall?" That was messed up enough on the "big" screen; I can only IMAGINE what it would be like to be wasted and seeing that on an IMAX screen.
b) I always liked "Battlestar Galactica" but I don't think it was ever a full screen movie, was it?
c) Indiana Jones was probably already mentioned.
d) Titanic, while predictable, would probably be pretty cool blown up 3-4 times.
e) "The Fast and the Furious" would be REALLY cool big AND loud.
My $0.02 worth.
image resolution (Score:2, Informative)
It's mostly grain removal (Score:3, Informative)
Digital grain removal is going to be useful. I look forward to when it's a filter in most video edit programs. There's lots of old 16mm historical footage that could use cleanup for grain and transport jitter.
Amusingly, there's a commercial process for film grain insertion [filmlook.com], which is supposed to make video "look like film".
Re:How do they do it now? (Score:3, Informative)
Imax, 65mm negative, oriented horizontally, 71mm x 53mm image size
65mm, 65mm negative oriented vertically, 50mm x 27mm image size
35mm, 35mm negative oriented vertically, 24mm x 18mm image size
Super 35 or masked, 35 mm negative orieted vertically, 21mm x 11mm image size.
Re:Uhhh... (Score:3, Informative)
How the hell does DMR stand for "Digital Re-Mastering"?
DMR stands for Digital Movie Remastering
Re:pr0n? no. (Score:3, Informative)
Needless to say, if the slightly-violent Haunted Castle can't make it on the big screen, What Reams May Come is going to stay at 35mm:
http://www.bigmoviezone.com/features/newsinbrief_
If you check the link, you'll also note they announced back in March 2001 that this new technology would be ready "within twelve months"... oops.
Bring back 5-perf 70mm instead (Score:3, Informative)
IMAX is the wrong aspect ratio for most movies.
The proportions are almost like TV (about 1.4:1), whereas most movies made in the last 50 years are much wider than that (some are more than twice as wide). Nearly all movies seen in theatres in the last 20-30 years are one of two aspect ratios -- 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. Fitting those wider frames into an IMAX frame presents exactly the same problem that showing them on TV does. You have to fit a rectangle into a square, rougly speaking. That means either letterbox or pan-and-scan.
However, Apollo 13 will probably transfer to IMAX fairly well, because it was shot in Super 35, which even though it usually is used to produce a 2.35:1 widescreen image, actually has a negative area that is much more squarish (again, about 1.4:1). So I would imagine that the IMAX transfer will make use of that extra image area. For more info on Super-35 see here [widescreen.org], about 3/4ths the way down the page.
Still, many of the movies people mentioned in this article were shot in widescreen processes other than Super-35, and would have to either be severely cropped, or letterboxed within the IMAX frame, in order to be shown from IMAX projectors.
The right thing to do would be to bring back 5-perforation 70mm, which has a nice wide aspect ratio of 2.20:1. During the years from about 1976-1996, most major studio releases had at least some 5-perf 70mm prints struck. Chances are, if you went to the movies in a major US city during that time, you saw a number of films in 70mm six-track, perhaps without even knowing it. (The process was killed off by digital sound in the mid-to-late 1990s.) Everyone saying "I want to see Star Wars!" should realize that it has already been released in 70mm -- back in 1977.
Of course, 5-perf 70mm existed long before the years I just listed, but it was mainly used for films that were actually shot in 65mm. The time period I'm referring to is merely when 35mm->70mm optical blow-ups were popular. This new IMAX process sounds like a bit of a throwback to those days, but at the expense of correct aspect ratios. And the blow-up is now done digitally rather than optically.
Not only is IMAX the wrong aspect ratio for a lot of movies, it's also incompatible standard feature films in many other ways. 35mm feature films these days are shot with lots of tight close-ups and quick cuts, and if you look at the IMAX Filmmaker's Manual [google.com], they very clearly suggest that you not do things like that, because they are very jarring on the IMAX screen!
Due to the above problems, I think people are likely to be disappointed with this in the long run. IMAX is probably pushing this idea because they are hoping this will boost their stock price [yahoo.com].
Re:How do they do it now? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, and you can [dynip.com] try it yourself [virtualdub.org]. Its VERY much worth the effort, even if it takes a lot longer to postprocess your video.
The more random the noise, the better. Its excellent for TV shows on VHS or from broadcast TV (or so I've found).
Oh, and if you like to make things disappear without noticing it (great for those HUGE ads in the corner of a TV show) try this [republika.pl], or this [mordor.net].
[Somebody with some experience please port these to Linux! You would be so well thanked! This [berkeley.edu] would be really nice too! No, I can't do it myself, I'm really not that good.]