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The Future of Digital Cinema 244

Posted by michael from the sticky-floors dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times recently had an interesting article on the future of digital cinema. The article talks mainly about the Digital Cinema Initiatives consortium (formed last year by a group of seven major studios) and its work towards establishing a set of standards for theatrical digital projection. DigitalCinemaMag also had an article back in February about the consortium's efforts which included a few more technical details."
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The Future of Digital Cinema More

The Future of Digital Cinema

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  • if you dont want to sign up use (Score:3, Informative)

    by rkz ( 667993 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @09:59AM (#6253840) Homepage Journal
    user: nopass
    pass: nopass

  • Forget JPEG... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:00AM (#6253849)
    Choosier moms choose GIF.

  • The future is... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Finally, an excuse for George Lucas to make another seven versions of Star Wars! Man is he going to be happy with this!

  • Say what?? (Score:4, Informative)

    by (54)T-Dub ( 642521 ) * <tpaine@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:00AM (#6253851) Journal
    I thought the 'Star Wars' digital showing looked very bad.

    I saw it at Mann's Chinese theater with a digital projector and I thought it looked awesome
    • Maybe he was referring to the entire film not the visual aspects of digital.

      I saw it both digitally and regular film. The digital version was sharper especially in some of CGI crowd scenes.

      • Re:Say what?? (Score:3, Informative)

        by (54)T-Dub ( 642521 ) *
        I don't think so, here is the entire quote.

        "Today's digital cinema systems are not ready to be rolled out," said Michael Karagosian, technical consultant to the National Association of Theater Owners, an industry trade group. "They don't yet produce an image equal to that of film. I thought the 'Star Wars' digital showing looked very bad."

    • Re:Say what?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by snarkh ( 118018 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:23AM (#6254155)
      The Attack of the Clones was produced with a digital camera and then tranferred to film. There is no reason why the 35mm version would look any better. If it looks worse on film it is probably because of the technology used for the tranfer.

      To make the comparison fair you would have to view it side by side with a fresh 35mm print of a film shot with standard equipment. My bet is that it would look inferior.

    • Re:Say what?? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:30AM (#6254225) Journal
      I saw the digital version in Santa Clara and couldn't tell the difference between film. There may be some difference to a trained eye but to most of us it's like the difference between 2.8 GHZ and 3 GHZ Pentiums.

      Theft is a bigger issue which may be why the studios are trying to get to a level where you have to have the hardware to get an image that blows away whatever a pirate would use to show the movie. Several years ago, Silicon Light [siliconlight.com] developed a display technique that appeared quite promising. It was a high speed optical switch that appeared to be easily scaleable from the 1080 lines they originally demonstrated. Even at 1080 lines, the contrast ratio was 3000:1. Unfortunately, Silicon Light sold the display technology to Sony who has done zip with it in the intervening 3 years.

      • Re:Say what?? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by meatplow ( 184288 )
        Theft isn't the main issue.

        The main issue is striking thousands of prints and shipping them all around the US/World. That costs a LOT OF $$$$$. They will save a TON of cash when we just send a fibre feed of the feature. Plus we all know that a digital version doesn't get scratched by an $8 idiot in the projector room.

        Meatplow
    • I saw SW2 projected digitally in Seattle. One thing I noticed was that I could see the Matte boundaries in the conference room near the beginning... they sorta jumped around a bit. I didn't notice this in the film version, probably because the high-frequency of the sharp edge was filtered out.

  • I had some comments (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:00AM (#6253857)
    But the DMCA won't allow me to make them.

  • What about framerate? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kryzx ( 178628 ) * on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:03AM (#6253891) Homepage Journal
    I'm totally stoked about the possibilities of Digital Cinema, but my one big gripe is that there is no discussion of going to a higher framerate. Watching film movies the framerate really is annoying, especially in panning shots, everything is just a blurry mess. Now, at the cusp of change, when they are defining a new standard, is one of the few chances to change that. But I don't see diddly about it in the article, and haven't heard anything anywhere about anyone even considering it. What's up with that? Give us quality!!

    • Re:What about framerate? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:09AM (#6253977)
      I've been working with some of the digital cinema technology for the past couple of years. I even worked with the University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center which is mentioned in the article. The device we were using operated at 60fps normally. It can run at other rates as well depending on the task. I'm not going to make an quality comments since I was using the system for "non-cinema" work, but the tech is there for increasing the frame rate.

    • And what about plot? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by donutz ( 195717 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:12AM (#6254008) Homepage Journal
      Don't get me wrong, it will certainly be cool for everything to be digital end to end (well, at least to the screen...until they come up with a digital uplink to pipe the movies right into our brains), but will digital cinema help, hinder, or have no effect on the plot of the movies? Meaning, will it make it easier to produce a movie, so more time and energy can be focused on developing the characters and improving the dialog and re-working scenes until the actors get it right?

      I hope so...

      • Yes - with independents (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Heisenbug ( 122836 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:38AM (#6254312)
        Absolutely yes without question.

        Which is to say, it probly won't have any effect on the major studios, since the vast majority of their expenses aren't related to film. George Lucas might have saved a million bucks when he shot Attack of the Clones digitally, but at that point who cares?

        However, digital processes open up a vast new potential for low-budget films. It will soon be possible to shoot a million dollar film for $100,000, a $100,000 film for $10,000, and a $10,000 for $1,000, with no loss in picture quality whatsoever. It is difficult to overstate the impact this will have. I might go so far as to say it will impact film in the same way that the printing press impacted the novel.
      • I think the aim is to increase the visual quality of the film so that the viewer can no longer tell that he is watching a movie.

        Think about it, the object of a movie is to present you with an alternate reality for it's duration. Now, if the user is distracted by visual errors/color noise/etc, then he/she cannot totally immerse themselves into the movie; the errors are constant reminders that what the user is watching is not real.

        I think the goal of improving the visual quality of movies is so that peopl
      • I'd imagine it may allow for some greater discretion on the part of filmmakers, but I'd imagine most of it will be seen as profitability.

        Another poster said it would help indie films, which might be more accurate, but I think what you might end up with is just better looking indie films.

    • Re:What about framerate? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:13AM (#6254029)
      I'm totally stoked about the possibilities of Digital Cinema, but my one big gripe is that there is no discussion of going to a higher framerate.

      Keep in mind that a higher framerate equates into larger files and more processing required which then equates into higher costs. You have to transfer a larger file, have more space to hold it, and have more processing oomph at the theatres to decode it. Hopefully whatever standard they come up with allows them to have variable framerates (as you would expect them to have variable resolutions and compression ratios, ala DVD). So Mr. Lucas can release his stuff at 60fps at 8192x2048 using lossless compression while some indie can do theirs at 24fps at 720x480.
      • Compression Rates are completely different that FRAME SIZE. DVD has a frame size of 720x480. Although The dvd spec allows for a couple others 1/2 D1, Mpeg 1 (Compression Type change), All major studio DVD are at the SAME FRAME SIZE 720x480. You may be referring to the variable bit rate encoding MPEG II.

        Meatplow.

      • Re:What about framerate? (Score:4, Informative)

        by ebh ( 116526 ) * <ed&horch,org> on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:46AM (#6254394) Journal
        OK, you've piqued my curiosity. Just how much storage?

        Let's start with a two-hour film shot at 60fps with 2048 lines of vertical resolution, 48bpp color, and a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

        If we round off the screen resolution to 4800x2048, that's 9.375Mpixels, 56.25MB/frame, 3.3GB/second, or about 23TB for a two-hour film, uncompressed. I don't know much about video compression, but it sounds intuitive to me that you could get 5:1 compression and still get an OK picture, which works out to about 4.6TB. Let's round that up to 5TB for a good back-of-the-envelope guess.

        By the time movies start coming out in a format like this (someone still has to build the cameras and the post-production infrastructure), a single hard drive should be able to hold that much, but that still sticks you with mailing physical media to the theaters. I'll leave it to someone else to do the math as to whether multicast distribution over a private network would be feasible.

        I think in the meantime, we should follow Roger Ebert's recommendation for improving the viewer experience. Switch to 35mm film at 48fps. The projector mods are much less expensive than digital projectors,and they're backwards-compatible with conventional film. In its current incarnation, digital is a boon to the studios at the expense of the theaters.

        (Side note: Showscan, 70mm film at 60fps IIRC, was the coolest thing I've ever seen projected anywhere.)

        • Compression (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Gorimek ( 61128 )
          Video compression is done largely by storing only what is different for each frame compared to the previous one. And obviously, the more frames per second you have, the more identical to each other they will look.

          So I suspect even a frame rate doubling will not have more than a 5-10% effect on file size. Just a laymans opinion, but still.

          And with the same disclaimer, I'm pretty sure you can get much better than 5:1 compression.
        • I think that the popular video codecs would be more efficient at compressing video with a higher frame rate, because they store mostly the difference between two consecutive frames, and not the frames themselves. In a higher-fps video stream, there ought to be less difference between consecutive frames -- that's the whole point, so it seems to make sense that doubling the frame rate would increase file size by a factor slightly less than 2. One could probably test this idea really easily by encoding a regul
        • The uncompressed data stream off a Sony Cinealta (HDW-F900) digital HD camera (the same that Lucas used in AOC), is 1.5Gb/sec. I believe it's essentially a Fibre Channel connection. Uncompressed, you can store 3.5 hours of 1080i 24P footage on a 720GB array. You want bigger and faster? Now it really starts getting expensive.

          There are some serious technical hurdles with bumping up the frame rate and resolution on a digital camera (can you imagine handling a 12Gb/sec data stream?), but surprisingly, I th
        • There's one more factor I'm sure studios will be paying attention to: Isn't it more difficult to videotape a movie being played back at a nonstandard frame rate?
        • Right. Movie distribors should be subsidizing the switch to digital (since it has the potential to save them so much on distribution costs).

          Maybe Fedex or whatever courier service they use, is lobbying them against doing so. :)
      • Keep in mind that a higher framerate equates into larger files and more processing required which then equates into higher costs. You have to transfer a larger file, have more space to hold it, and have more processing oomph at the theatres to decode it.

        Wether you have to file transfer size to the movie theatersincreases from 1 to 1.5 GB (or whatever) is the smallest of issues when going to higher frame rate.

        The real issue is probably the cost of more advanced cameras and projectors.

        I liked your p

    • Re:What about framerate? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DuBois ( 105200 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:18AM (#6254096) Homepage
      Better framerates are on the way. Check this [hd3dmovies.com] out for more info on higher quality HD video and movies.
    • Frame rate is an esthetic choice, not just a number to be increased. It gives the film its distinctive look. You would have to think very carefully before making any changes to it.

      For example video (NTSC) has a frame rate of 30 vs 24 for film. Is video perceived to be better?

    • How about variable framerate? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tuffy ( 10202 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:42AM (#6254343) Homepage Journal
      One possibility that's really only feasible with digital projection is the possibility of having a film change its framerate on-the-fly to accomodate what's going on on the screen. For example, a movie might run at only 24 fps for a slow dramatic scene. Then, when the action starts, it could ramp up to 60fps for extra-smooth explosions and ramp back down to 24 fps afterward.

      Once digital projection is a reality, all sorts of new possibilities in filmmaking open up...

    • I've talked to a few cinematographers and they all believe 24 fps is an important component of the "film look", along with grain and other artifacts of film technology. There are effects houses that say they can make digital video look like film.
      • Has it occurred to any of your cinematographer friends that maybe this new media will allow them to do things differently, and maybe better (for some things, at least)? Sure, you might want to use 24 fps for effect, but surely there's times where there's things that can't be shot well now, but could look great at a faster frame rate...
        • Any decent editor knows when and how to use frame rate to their advantage. The common opinion is that less motion blur gives a better "reality" look while traditional 24fps motion blur gives a feeling of "ethereality". Yes, these are actually the terms I've common heard.

          The films SFW and 15 Minutes both made excellent use of both effects.
    • I agree that there was no discussion about this but the general tone of the article seemed to imply that they are actualy looking at getting something way *better* than film overall. For once they are not going down the smaller is 'better' route (More Channels on cable instead of higher quality ones, Smaller file sizes instead of better Audio, etc).

      I guess they actually realise that the movie experience is meant to blow you away with something that is larger than life....

      Normally I am an analog guy (Still
    • "I'm totally stoked about the possibilities of Digital Cinema, but my one big gripe is that there is no discussion of going to a higher framerate."

      I doubt the movie makes are that interested in 60fps video. Lots of TV shows today (mainly dramas) are recorded at 24 fps because it looks more dramatic. It's an artistic choice. 60fps looks like a sitcom.

      It's kind of strange really. I saw a thing about That 70's Show that went through some of the events throughout the series. They showed a clip of when E
      • Odd things can have psychological associations. I've noticed something similar with typefaces. Your brain builds associations between typefaces and emotions based on the way typefaces are commonly used.

    • You don't just get up and change something like that. The reason film is 24 fps is because that was the best flash rate people could stomach financially back in the day. 48 fps provides enough light on the screen, but since not very much more than 24 is needed for fluid motion to our eyes they film it at 24 and flash each frame twice in the projector. Do you notice that more and more TV shows (24, angel) are being filmed at 24 frames per second instead of normal American TV's 29.97? It is much more plea

    • A lot of film-makers like the 24fps... they call it the 'veil of disbelief' or something. The human mind is tricked into believeing special effects at 24fps more easily, I think. I've noticed this for myself... look at a comparable explosion sequence on TV (60 Hz interlaced) vs. film or DVD (approx 24 fps progressive). The film/DVD just looks ... more... like a movie. It's hard to describe.

  • Check back in a few years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:05AM (#6253924) Homepage Journal
    "Some say a film print is equivalent to 5,000 lines of resolution, but by the time it's been shown a lot, its effective resolution may be no more than 800 lines," Mr. Darrow said.
    With today's projectors around 1,300 lines, it seems there's a long ways to go before picture quality or cost make this a viable option for most theaters. As a moviegoer, I really don't care whether the projection is digital or film - picture and sound quality are what's important.
    • At a recent trade show, the company demonstrated a new chip capable of displaying a film with a resolution of 2,000 lines.

      "The picture was stunning - the audience stood and applauded," said Nick Dager, publisher of the Digital Cinema Report, an Internet trade publication. "Still there was no 'wow' factor there; it was as good as 35-millimeter film, but no better."

      Lets see, 2,000 lines being AS good as, and then the savings...
      They stand to save $1 billion each year if they no longer have to produce and
      • Hold on, bub - you have to get a better grip on those figures!

        Nothing says that they would save $1 billion in the first year. It says they could save that much if they no longer had to "produce and ship film prints to each of the world's 150,000 screens". So all theaters and all movies would have to go digital to achieve that figure. Fat chance!

        Also, that savings goes to the film distributors, not the theaters. So there's no reason for the theaters themselves to shell out the $$$ for a digital project
        • Okay, points of clarification:
          1 billion in the first year of 95%+ conversion.

          And yes, that billion is for the distributors.

  • He missed something out.....how about Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PhrozenF ( 205108 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:07AM (#6253945)
    Here at Techtree.com [techtree.com] is an interesting viewpoint about how, if the open source community doesn't take any action, "Microsoft will become the âcontrollerâ(TM) of all digital entertainment you see around you."

    He says that the movie industry is already happily using Microsoft's Windows Media 9 for digital theater, and they're lobbying hard to get into many other standards commities.

    The columnist also goes on to say "It is inevitable. DRM and Copy Protection will get implemented whether consumers want it or not. The choice of whether we want it to be based on an open technology, or a proprietary technology from one of the âworstâ(TM) purveyors of monopolistic regimes, lies with us, the consumers and the open source community.".
    • The columnist [techtree] also goes on to say "It is inevitable. DRM and Copy Protection will get implemented whether consumers want it or not. The choice of whether we want it to be based on an open technology, or a proprietary technology from one of the âworstâ(TM) purveyors of monopolistic regimes, lies with us, the consumers and the open source community.".

      Nonsense. Free software does not restrict user rights. Period.

      The new projection equipment is not for you, so don't bother imporving the

  • Pining for 70mm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:12AM (#6254022)
    Am I the only one who doesn't *want* cinemas to move to digital projection? I mean, sure, go ahead and *improve* the quality of the picture and sound, but there's a big difference in quality between a virgin 70mm print (or IMAX) and the blocky (relatively) low-resolution version used by Lucas on AoTC.

    Are we going to get stuck watching poor pixelated versions of movies for years?

    • Re:Pining for 70mm (Score:3, Interesting)

      by meatplow ( 184288 )
      What you may not realize is that these feature are having their Negatives that strike the prints made DIGITALLY. They are scanned out. Ghosts of the Abyss was done this way, as are some of the new features. It's call a Digital Intermediary.

      Greg.

  • Expensive but will save money? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Matrix272 ( 581458 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:13AM (#6254032)
    There are also big economic advantages for the studios. They stand to save $1 billion each year if they no longer have to produce and ship film prints...

    But digital projectors are much more expensive than conventional ones

    I understand that the studios will save money by digital filming, and that each theater will have to spend a lot of money to upgrade to digital... so here's my question. If there are around 5000 theaters in the country, with a total of 20,000 screens (actual numbers would help), and each screen costs $20,000 (seems like much, but OK), why don't the studios purchase the equipment for the theaters? Given $20,000 for 20,000 screens, that's only $400,000,000. If it'll save them $1,000,000,000, why not? Even if each screen costs $50,000, and there are 50,000 screens in the country, that's STILL "only" $2,500,000,000. Given that they're certainly not short on money, it seems like a sensible investment to me.

    • Hollywood doesn't like spending money... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:25AM (#6254171) Journal
      Even if each screen costs $50,000, and there are 50,000 screens in the country, that's STILL "only" $2,500,000,000.

      "Only $2.5 billion? But where would they find this cash? If films like Forrest Gump and Spider-Man can't make a profit then where's the money coming from?

      What's that you say? Those fims did make money but the accounting figures were just manipulated so as to screw the original writers so that they couldn't get anything from the net profits that they were promised? You mean the people who run the movie business would rather screw people over than pay them the royalties that they're due?

      Yet, somehow, you hope that the Hollywood moguls that are so tight with other people's money would spend some of their own cash to benefit others?

      Wow, you are naive aren't you?
      • But but, I thought that by pirating stuff we're only screwing over the artists??? *Whimper*
      • It wouldn't benefit others. It would benefit themselves. I can certainly understand them being tight-wads and not wanting to spend an extra cent on anything, but given that Pluto Nash [imdb.com] cost somewhere around $100,000,000 to make, and only brought back $5,000,000 (and THAT's being generous), it doesn't look like they're being TOO stingy.

        Besides, if they spend $2.5 billion to make $3.0 billion in the next 3 years, they're making $500,000,000... enough to make 4 sequels to Pluto Nash (unless there's a God in h
      • I believe Eddie Murphy referred to percentages of net profit as "monkey points". Major players get a percentage of the gross.
    • The 7000 lumen JVC DLP projector that gets used for this stuff costs about $225K before you put a lens on it.
      • $225,000 for ONE projector? Holy shit.

        OK, then my argument still stands... for 20,000 screens at $300,000 apiece (rounding up), it's $6 billion... So, when it's all said and done, it'd take 6 years to make it back. Why not start with 1,000 screens for a mere $300 million and work up from there? Theoretically, the price for the digital projectors will go down as both the technology advanced, and as more are made (equally out the supply vs. demand), so after the first 10,000, the price should drop fairly dr
      • I wonder how rapidly this price will come down. I'm not sure what a standard projector costs, but are there any reasons why a digital projector should cost more once they go mainstream and economy of scale takes over? I'd figure that there must be less moving parts in a digital projector and tons of room for integration and refinement of the electronics.
      • Something just occurred to me... what's so special about that projector? Is it incredibly high resolution, or extremely high framerate?

        I ask only because I can get a laptop with a projector for less than $6,000 that will play DVD's on a big screen... just add an Audigy 2 sound card, and you've got full 6.1 surround sound to go with it... so why spend $225,000 when you can just spend $6,000?

  • How will the consumer benefit from digital cinema? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Lower ticket prices ?

    better cinemas ?

    cheaper consessions ?

    better films ?

    or just higher profits for cinema companies as they reap the maintence savings from not using analog film projectors

  • So another idea under consideration is to decrypt the film in the server, then re-encrypt it with a simpler coding before it is sent to the projector.

    Well, that should make pirating much easier. But I'm sure the studios aren't worried about that.

  • here [nytimes.com]

  • I suspect that (Score:5, Funny)

    by k1llt1me ( 680945 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:18AM (#6254103)
    as of 20 June 2003, all Digital Cinema will be done using the animated GIF format...

  • Finding Nemo was at 2k (better than AOTC) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zptdooda ( 28851 ) <deanpjm&gmail,com> on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:19AM (#6254113) Journal
    "... the much less than 2K digital masters for "Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones"

    This explains why AOTC was noticeably pixilated at the particular digital theatre where I saw it - colour was exceptional though.

    Here's a bit of info on Finding Nemo [boxoff.com], which on the other hand was a digital gem. No noticeable pixilation, and vivid colour.

    From others' comments about AOTC YMMV but I don't know why. Does anyone know why different people seeing this saw such a disparity in picture quality?
    • I had the same experience. I saw AOTC DLP and was not impressed. I saw it again later at 2nd-run theater and the non-digital projection actually seemed better.

      I went to see Nemo the first weekend it came out. I happened to get a DLP showing (didn't hunt for it like I did with AOTC) and it was really good (far better than star wars). I saw Nemo again the next weekend with another group, this time regular projection. I have to say the digital projection was sharper and had better color.

      Now I want to go
      • Now I want to go see it a 3rd time, back to DLP to see if it really was that much better, or if I'm imagining it.

        I believe you accidently stumbled across the real reason for the switch: People will see movies numerous times to see if the quality is better in the digital version or the film version. If everybody who currently sees movies sees everything twice, well... I'm no math whiz, but that seems like a lot of money to me.

  • Google-fied link (Score:3, Informative)

    by H0NGK0NGPH00EY ( 210370 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:22AM (#6254145) Homepage
    Try this [nytimes.com].

  • I Want 3D movies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:23AM (#6254160) Homepage
    It's mostly been considered just a novelty, but maybe digital cinema could usher in an era where more movies in shot and shown in glorious 3D [curtin.edu.au]; some theatres could have LCD shutter glasses wired to every seat.
    • some theatres could have LCD shutter glasses wired to every seat.

      Famous Players [famousplayers.com] bought a chunk of IMAX years ago. They had a big expansion of Famous Players cinemas and a big selling point was IMAX theatres. While I had seen many IMAX movies, I had yet to see an IMAX 3d movie. I decided to see an IMAX 3d movie, to see what all the fuss was about.

      As impressive as the LCD glasses are, the main problem is that I had to try on 3 different pairs to find a pair that wasn't covered in greasy fingerprints.

  • just curious (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:28AM (#6254191)
    1. how many megapixels does a digital camera need to shoot at to be superior to highest quality analog camera?

    2. can question number one apply to digital video cameras?

    3. are movies nowadays shot with digital cameras?

    • Re:just curious (Score:4, Informative)

      by ptomblin ( 1378 ) <ptomblin@xcski.com> on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:54AM (#6254476) Homepage Journal
      The biggest technical hurdle with high resolution digital movie cameras is moving all that data from the CCD to the disks. According to one friend who is working on such a camera, they are using several independant PCI busses feeding large arrays of disks.

      When you think about it, it's remarkable how much bandwidth analog film has - you can store the equivalent of 10s of megapixels in full color in 1/250th of a second and be ready to shoot the next frame as quickly as you can move the film, compared to the 4 or 5 seconds my 4 megapixel camera takes to store an image.
    • 11.5 megapixel = 400ASA 35 mm film.

      35ASA slide film has appx 90 megapixel resolution.

      2 - No noone on the planet can make a CCD that large that is fast enough to capture at a 24 fps.

      3 - they are shot with lower quality digital cameras or multi CCD cameras that stitch the picture together. Note, their resolution is NO WHERE NEAR 11 megapixel.

      so yes, digital film Sucks compared to virgin film for anything but the tv screen.

      the only people that will disagree are those that have never seen 1 gen copy of a m
    • how many megapixels does a digital camera need to shoot at to be superior to highest quality analog camera?

      If you ask in the right forums (like photo hound forums) you'll get a flamewar that rivals vi vs emacs, or Linux vs Windows. Some people claim that the newest 11MP cameras surpass the effective resolution of a 35mm camera because the film grain obscures much of the detail. Others claim that's bullshit, and the 11MP cameras are still far away from replicating a good quality film camera.

      That said, a l

  • DLP isn't all it's cracked up to be... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Justatad ( 630151 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:29AM (#6254207) Homepage
    I saw Episode II in DLP at Odeon, Leicester Square and at first glance it looked good - there was none of the dirt, scratches or jumping associated with a badly looked after and badly presented 35mm print. But I soon realised that it looked somehow dull - it had none of filmic qualities that bring a life to a print which come from 35mm. It was impressive for an emerging standard, but the quality wasn't quite as good as a well presented 35mm print and there's no way that even touches 70mm prints.

    Another point is the digital cinema takes away the skill that comes with projecting a film - go read the forums over at Film Tech [film-tech.com] and see the care and pride those guys take over the film presentations at the cinemas they work. Those guys know how to present a film properly.

    For me it'll be sad day when showing a film becomes a case of clicking "go".
    • I saw Episode II in DLP at Odeon, Leicester Square... it looked somehow dull

      That was just the dialogue.

      More seriously, I also saw Episode II in the same location, and noticed exactly the same thing. The whole thing look 'flat' somehow.

      Cheers,
      Ian

    • Yup...it seems to me that the whole "movie experience" is going right out the window. I remember when you could hear the *pop* *hiss* when they started the audio and you knew the lights were about to go down. (I was a kid, so I was always anxious for the movie to start :) ). Also, looking back I find that the occasional pop and scratch in the movie were part of what made it different from watching the movie at home.

      Nowadays you have cell phones in the theater, laser pens, and TV commercials at a movie yo

  • What about projectionists and management? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:33AM (#6254245) Homepage
    What matters is not image quality in a test laboratory, but image quality in the local gigaplex. I believe biggest factor determining image quality in current theatres using traditional film is not the technology, but whether or not management gives a damn about picture quality.

    For example, take dirty film. There is no reason why film should get scratched or dirty if it is being handled competently. In at least perfectly ordinary local theatre (Showcase Cinemas in Randolph--no, I have NO connection with them except as a satisfied customer) prints run for weeks and weeks and still look absolutely pristine. In other venues, I've literally never seen a showing where the film was clean and unscratched.

    So far, I have managed to go to two DLP screenings in the Boston area. In one case ("Ocean's Eleven" at the Randolph Showcase) it looked pretty much the same as 35 mm. Some ways better, some ways worse. Beautifully steady and flicker-free (better) but I had to sit a little further back to avoid seeing visible pixel structure (worse), and it seemed to me the blacks were greyish. Really, about a wash.

    The other time... ("Fantasia 2000" at the General Cinema in Burlington)... well, what can I say? The gear was out of commission and they were showing 35mm film in the house that had been designated as showing digital.

    Given that the equipment in both venues was probably almost brand-new and hardly used, 50% success in just having the equipment function is not a very good track record.

    When operated IN REAL LIFE under the same management as current theatres, using projectionists trained the same amount... how is digital cinema going to hold up? No, the picture will never look scratched, bits being bits, but the media can still get scratched... will there be dropouts? skips? Poorly maintained analog produces a poor picture, but poorly maintained digital can't give you a show at all.

    Currently, digital films are loaded off of multiple DVD's onto big, fast disk arrays. How will those fare? Are the disks hot-swappable and will all the theatres have a good supply of spares to swap in if they fail?

    Not only does digital projection equipment cost five or ten times what conventional projectors cost, but conventional projectors have service lives that are extremely long--many, many decades. Somehow I doubt this will be true of digital projectors.

    Do you really think theatres are going to be anxious to put in projection equipment that is an order of magnitude more expensive, just in order to get a picture that is ROUGHLY the same quality as they get from 35mm? And far, far lower than the quality available from 70mm, common just a few years ago but almost extinct now (the current generation may never have a chance to really _see_ "Lawrence of Arabia" or "2001, A Space Odyssey").

    The move to digital cinema is obviously beneficial to studios and distributors, but I'm darned if I see what it does for theatres or theatregoers.

    • Your comments are dead-on correct. I worked at a cinema near you for many years (Showcase Woburn). When I started, there were full-time projectionists whose only duty was to keep the movies running smoothly. As the years passed, the full-time projectionists were phased out and replaced by managers who had received basic training at "booth school".

      These managers viewed running the projectors as simply one in a huge list of duties. In between dealing with irate customers and making sure the theaters were cl

  • IMPOSSIBLE!!!!! No cameras exist or ever planned (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:33AM (#6254252)
    35mm REGULAR has about 4000 "analog" pixels of horizontal resolution.

    A 16 megapixel camera has two discrete greens for ever red and blue CCD cell yielding a sad-ass 16/4=4 megapixel image (or 2000*2000 in theory) though there are no 16 megapixel cameras really, and the best tri-layer camera for 5,000 bucks is almost 2000 across but takes 9.4 SECONDS to save a single image.

    The solution : a 100,000 dollar Thomson Viper.

    The Thomson Viper can take a 1920*1080 pixel 10 bit (log color compressed) frame every 6oth of a second and stream it out on TWO DIGITAL cables.

    Wow! thats a lot of data.

    It cannot even store its own data in-camera on that 100,000 dollar system.

    How does it work? Mirrors. Little scanning mirrors.

    CCD technology will not be able to replace film (35mm) for at least another 5 years, if ever.

    And there are alternative single sprocket 35mm standards, and of course 72mm and iMax.

    digital photography for film is a sad ass joke!

    • The Russian Ark (Score:4, Informative)

      by poptones ( 653660 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:29AM (#6254832) Journal
      Apparently you didn't see this [russianark.spb.ru]. There are some awesome stills out there from the completed film; although I don't believe this [russianark.spb.ru] is one of them, it's still fairly representative of what I've seen.

      I firmly believe much of what people find lacking in "digital film" is the noise and grain - much like digital audio. Of course, the technology is very young - digital video is relatively where digital audio was around 1985. Still, taking a "clean" film and adding a bit of "grain" richens it considerably.

      Anyway, let's see you do a complete 90 minute feature in one very long take while hauling around a film camera...

    • Re:IMPOSSIBLE!!!!! No cameras exist or ever planne (Score:4, Informative)

      by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @01:31PM (#6256115)
      As a professional photographer and visual effects guy, I have to disagree with you. This is a religious war that comes up frequently, so I'll be practical and hopefully brief.

      When comparing pixels to film, the actual pixel resolution is only part of the equation. Yes, standard color CCD arrays use an offset-overlay technique to interpolate more resolution in the final image than any of the single color channels has. The exception to this is the Foevon [foveon.com] chip, which has full color in every pixel, and the very high end systems you mention above.

      The huge, HUGE advantage of digital imaging that you have not mentioned is grain. The spatial resolution (or how much detail is actually in the picture content) is actually very poor in 35mm, especially in less-exposed areas. If I accidentally underexpose my digital image by one or two stops, I can use a level adjustment to recover a near-perfect image with very little grain, and plenty of detail in even the darkest areas. If I try that with a 35mm film scan, it will be extremely grainy, even from a very low ISO film. The reason 35mm gets by is that at full frame from a reasonable viewing distance and at a correct exposure, the softness, gamma, grain and falloff present a nice pleasing picture.

      In every day practical use, I find that a 6 megapixel standard CCD (not foevon) producing a 3k file has better detail than the average 35mm image. Downsampled to 2k and it's an extremely sharp, excellent 2k image. Right now I even have a 3 megapixel (2k) image from an older camera on a billboard just outside of town, it's about 15 feet across, looks really nice! Average viewing distance is a big factor as well.

      Most digital visual effects for 35mm and features finished to anamorphic 35 are rendered at 2k resolution. A few years ago I did most of the animation on a 35mm film spot for American Express. It was rendered at 2k and transferred to 35 and it looked gorgeous. If you have very sharp spatial resolution in your 2k image (such as computer generated imagery where every pixel is sharp and perfect) you will not gain much of an advantage going to 3k or above. The only thing that kind of resolution is useful for right now is IMAX. I dispute the idea that 35mm has 4k of useful pixels. After about 3k you won't percieve any practical difference.

      CCD technology will not be able to replace film (35mm) for at least another 5 years, if ever.

      5 years for widespread distribution is practical. "ever" is ridiculous. :)

      Remember, when talking technology, think about practical application and end results. pixels don't exist in a vacuum. (but when they're on a CRT they exist in a vacuum tube! :)

      Personally, I'd like to see variable frame-rate 2k to 3k systems for regular movies, and 4k - 5k digital systems for IMAX sized projections, using a format that can be created and previewed on desktop PCs with very fast disk arrays and hires monitors. (check out IRIDAS [iridas.com] for an excellent digital cinema and desktop hires playback system, including 3D!)

  • OK analog lovers aside but think about this the current resolutions purposed are HDTV ish to the point it will be easy enough to downsample to HDTV. I have seen some of the delivery methods purposed and most use satalite for the heavy lifting. There is definatly the posibility of people hooking up dishes and working out the receiver end to then work on the encrypted digital stream itself. I'm allready picturing next day hdtv rez Divx of new releases comming out of the grand caimens (one of those places whe

  • Article is in line with dire predictions. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by twitter ( 104583 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:37AM (#6254302) Homepage Journal
    Slashdot covered an article by Alan Cox, the director not the hacker, who foretold everything the NYT has to say. Alan Cox directed "Sid and Nancy" and "Repo Man", to excellent films. He not only foretold the facts but he also knew the implications. I'd link to the previous story, but I can't seem to find it. Google pulls up a mail list post [canopener.ca] with links to the original articles, here [guardian.co.uk] and here [guardian.co.uk], both very much worth reading again. The NYT article is all shine on.

    The summary is that the new technology will enable Hollywood to crush all competition, small and large. Through closed "standards" they will control who can use the projection equipment and what it plays and when. Because no local copy exists, it will all be under the control of the current big movie makers. By using a an industry body like the DVD consortium, they can make sure that no one but them has access to the secret format the projectors use and keep projection equipment so high, no one can afford to have anything but them. So, it will be there way or the highway. No mix and match and no competition except from complete independetnts who will be hobbled by a lack of equivalent quality equipment.

    It's the same old story since media was invented, patent, legislate, collude and screw everyone you can. Nasty My prediction is that the DMCA will be used to prevent people from making free projectors the same way it's being used to keep people from modding their xbox or refilling toner cartidges.

  • A couple of comments (Score:5, Informative)

    by ptomblin ( 1378 ) <ptomblin@xcski.com> on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:44AM (#6254379) Homepage Journal
    1. I was one of those "grain sniffers". I was at a demo of an upcoming 11,000 lumen high res projector standing a few feet away from the screen, and I couldn't see any pixellation. The brightness and sharpness was astounding. Plus this project runs Linux, decrypting the image on the fly.

    2. Image quality depends a lot on the projectionists. I sat in the projection booth of a megaplex for a week a while ago and saw three different projectionists opening up in the morning, and while all of them cleaned the lens, film gates and transport mechanism on the projector, not one of them cleaned the glass at the front of the booth. You could see dirt and finger marks on the glass even before they struck the lamphouse. I asked one of the projectionists about it, and he was pretty contemptuous of the type of audience they got at that plex and the type of low brow action-heavy movies they showed there. I got the impression he wanted to be at some arts house, and maybe if he'd had more respect for the audience he would have worried more about their experience. On the other hand, I work with another projectionist who is meticulous about every aspect of the showing.

  • Quote about how humans "perceive quality". (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PhinMak ( 630548 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:58AM (#6254513) Homepage Journal
    The quote is this:

    "But because the movie-viewing experience can be a distinctly subjective one, the Digital Cinema Laboratory is also using "expert viewers," motion picture industry professionals, to evaluate picture quality and is considering forming a viewing panel of college students, too. Picture quality is not a simple question of numbers," Mr. Swartz said. "We need to understand better how our brains fill in parts of a picture to improve its perceived quality, even if that data is not literally on the screen."

    I had heard that Lucas's digital format was significantly less detailed than regular film and had discounted its popularity for the near future. Maybe once it came up to film quality, I would think it a viable option. But this quote seems to suggest that most of film's quality is lost to viewers because either we don't need it, or decreased quality wouldn't be noticable as our minds would fill it in. I would be very interested in finding out more on this subject.

  • Implications of digital cinema to IT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:13AM (#6254659)
    The article seems to mention that digital cinema will be served up in the theater by some sort of server. Also the films will be locked until employees enter in some sort of keyword.

    This is just a proposal for how it might work but something to note is that most movie theaters use teenagers as the bulk of their employees. Many hackers start as teenagers. I see some interesting developments occuring in the future for digital cinema.

    • Where do you get the idea that the encryption would be based in a keyword?

      The digital projector project that I have knowledge of uses a hardware decryption board in the projector with a known public key. The movie is encrypted on its way to the server, and then the server unencrypts it and reencrypts it with that projector's public key. Only that projector can decrypt it because only that projector has the correct private key. With suitably strong authentication and encryption to make sure nobody sticks
      • I reread the article it and it appears that I may have been reading more into it than it actually states. The article says that 'keyword commands.' Now that could mean command line instructions.

        My point is that some of the employees that may work these projectors are likely to be the ones cracking into them.

  • This is offtopic.

    Home movie cameras, such as miniDV cameras, all use 4:3 aspect ratio. My next TV is going to be 16:9 and that is where the TV manufacturers are concentrating there efforts. Why don't they make 16:9 camcorders then, so we can make home movies in that format?

    • They do and almost everything you have now can do that format...

      It's called animorphic widescreen and simply needs a camera capable of it, or a lens adapter.

      works great and unless you are blowing it up to 110 inches, you cant really tell a difference. (My XL1 produces better animorphic widescreen video than most DVD's.. and running in a line doubler makes it fantastic.)

      dont waste your money buying a HD camcorder, theri lenses suck, they are 1st gen and overall suck. plus cost more than a good prosumer Ca
  • Denver is the HQ city of Regal Theaters, a holding company that has purchased about half of the movie theatres in the country when the chains overbuilt and went bankrupt a few years ago. They've mostly converted to digital here, so I am pretty much forced to watch that format for new releases.

    Digital is fine for CGI films like Nemo, and the numerous "comic book" films this summer. But I do notice pixelation artifats for some types of non-CG scenes.

  • Star Wars ep2 DP had very poor resolution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kobotronic ( 240246 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @06:03PM (#6258516)
    I work with cutting-edge digital video entertainment systems and have seen a bunch of compression and display technologies. I was not impressed by the Star Wars ep 2 digital theater projection I watched at a theater in Arlington, VA last year.

    I watched the show at a distance of about two screen heights, and I could make out pixels and annoying aliasing problems throughout.

    The colors were good, the picture was steady, no compression artifacts to speak of, but the resolution was clearly inferior to the 35mm projection I had seen the day before on a comparable screen. The end credits in particular were hard to read and had visible scaling artifacts.

    This is clearly unsatisfactory. Will the 'standard' for digital theater projection have significantly higher resolution than what we saw last year? Will the early adopters get burned?

    According to the Star Wars website, ep II was shot on a Sony digital movie camera with a resolution of 2.2 megapixels, which is just slightly more than regular HD. I don't even think the theater projection used had full HD resolution. The projection system seemed to have an odd pixel resolution which didn't match that of the movie, which may account for the apparent blur and pixel artifacts.

    I'm generally not a fan of the idea of all-digital theaters. Too much control from Hollywood and potential for dirty tricks - in the future, when you see a movie in the theater one day may, your friend who sees it the next day may have a wholly different experience as the picture could be continously 'tweaked' and digitally re-edited to 'reflect' the whims of mass audience and address their concerns. Ick. Revisionism abounds.

    If Star Wars ep 4 was released today, Lucas might have launched the picture with Han shooting first, the next day wimping out and deciding Greedo should be shown shooting first. Ya know?

    Not to mention the asshats who wants to build 'macrovision' into the theater projection systems foiling would-be camcorder bootleggers; this technology supposedly alters the framerate erratically so that a camcorder will fail to sync up with it. But what will THAT do to the playing experience?

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