Technical 4k-8k video question (Vidiot?)

An order of magnitude is not "slight." If you are trying to claim the scientific high ground, it would be helpful to keep that in mind.

 

While I could say that it was a gross error it is just how you look at it.

Inches can be a part of an inch because anything can be converted.

Regardless the meat of my point was not the magnitude error. When compared to nano level it is insignificant.

 

And some of us need to understand the topic being discussed to make informed opinions. Pretty much everything you say on this matter is incorrect or uninformed.

Have a look at the references Vidiot posted earlier and read them carefully:

 

The discussion after the first one was very much worth reading as well.

 

Here's the thing - I opened the calculator app on my phone and did the math.

 

Between two houses, there's 4 sets, 3 are 32" LCD or LED, one 42" Plasma. The cool SD content looks better on the smaller screen 720p sets. Remember for a year or two after the introduction of NTSC color in 1954, screen size was anything you wanted, so long as it was 15". Said TV set cost nearly as much as a basic new Ford, Chevrolet, or Plymouth car in 1954. And color programming was a few hours a day, and generally NBC.

 

If you're watching sports on cable, or satellite, you're getting downrezzed 780p. Real world unfortunately. On the above, you're not even getting 1080p which isn't downrezzed. What's new!

 

I honestly think the truth is that the smaller screen is just covering up the problems in the SD material. You can turn on all the noise-reduction features and turn off image enhancement and so on, which will dull the picture somewhat and roll off high-frequency detail, and maybe this will give you a subjectively better SD picture on a large HD or 4K display. But it's kinda like rolling off all the treble so that your audio cassettes don't sound like bacon frying.

I've gotten so used to 55" for viewing, it's very hard to go back. In truth, the really serious ($50K+) mastering displays are only 31", but they're extremely clinical and unforgiving in terms of 4K picture quality. It's basically a laboratory instrument designed to tell you the absolute truth about how good or bad an image really looks.

Nobody can master in 8K yet, because the bandwidth just isn't there. But as Steve Yedlin said in the article posted earlier I think once you hit 4K, there's no real advantage to go to 5K/6K/8K. You can make an argument that it's good to shoot in these ultra-high-res formats so you can blow up the image and reframe it for 4K, which is what David Fincher does on most of his projects: he shoots a really big frame, then crops on all 4 sides and changes the composition as he sees fit in post.

 

I'm hoping 8K catches on just so everyone will sell their 4K cameras and I can buy them used and cheap. Then I'll be able to shoot wide and then crop and pan down on my concert videos.

 

Eh, some of the higher end DSLRs are not terrible. The Blackmagic 4K Pocket Cameras are pretty good, but their sensitivity is not that great.

 

I've avoided DLSRs because of audio limitations and short record times. My average concert shoot is two hours, so I can get 2 hours and 56 minutes with a 32 gig SD card in a normal camcorder. With 4K I'd probably have to swap media during a single concert.

 

My advice for that would be to put two cameras side-by-side, so when one's about to run out, fire up the second one so you have a cutaway. Most of the concerts I've done have had at least 4 cameras (up to 22 on that Rolling Stones thing, and I think 7 on the John Fogerty show), and we always had cutaways to cover roll changes.

Don't forget in the film days, we could only go about 11 minutes before needing to change rolls. So this is nothing new. They shot Woodstock that way, and somehow they managed to get 90% of the performances covered. There's a lot of "cheating" that goes on: cutaways to the audiences, close-ups of the artists rehearsing, backstage stuff, etc. -- but if it tells the story, it's OK by me.

 

Big issue here. Size of the house, size of the rooms. In one house, the larger screen is in the den. It works well in that room. 32" is plenty in the other rooms, anything much bigger dominates the room. 720p in those cases also helps keep the vintage retro channel tape content from looking like a trainwreck. When it is just me as sets die off there will be 1 set per house. I watch way less TV and videos than I listen to music.

 

I always admired the look of the vintage NFL Films. I wonder how many cameras NFL Films had rolling around back in the film era. I wonder if they captured the entire game or just start filming during plays

 

A similar situation to Woodstock occurred with Murray Lerners' 1970 IOW festival footage.
One of the first [virtually] full set releases was The Who's performance in 1996 on VHS at about 75% complete.
But several of the songs had jarring edits due to no available footage.
Subsequent DVD/BD releases were better by inserting crowd shots [with audio left complete] but for some reason they chose to envelope down the music audio at certain inserted crowd shots/points and have the audience members laughing over it!

 

I'll have to wait until I can buy used Canon GX10 4K cameras when everyone dumps them for 8K.

 

I have a Blu-ray of "Close Encounters" that would make you feel quite differently if you watched it. The grain is a total distraction from the film and I haven't watched it since I got it.

Ed

 

I have all versions of the bluray including the 4K one and I don't find the grain a distraction at all. It is part of the film print. While it is often desired by some to have fine detail taken out digitally, I put this in the same category as the people that complained about black bars being a distraction to the proper aspect ratio. I am glad that Sony didn't fall for that garbage. The reviewers that are worth their salt have been saying the same thing.

It is true that humans will often prefer straight lines to blurry ones and make the mistake of thinking that this translates to more detail, but like I have stated many times, that doesn't make it so.

Even in the so called scientific study put in the previous link, it ignores the fact that the analog films in every version (despite the totally inconsistent unscientific approach) quite clearly had more detail. It is like the sports commentators that refuse to acknowledge their favorite fighter getting their heads bashed in before it is too late. Then they are in shock and awe when they fall to the ground, yet if you actually watched the fight instead of talking on worshiping the favorite, they would have seen the signs much earlier.

Grain like it or not, is a part of the picture. Again, would you take the canvas away from the artist? Perhaps you would, but I for one believe that what the artist chose should be preserved, so called "warts and all".

 

I'll be honest the technical discussions above are over my head. However I have a question as a person who goes to the cinema a lot.

The best picture quality I have ever experienced was during the Imax sequences in The Dark Knight. Beyond that, I have most been impressed by movies that were shot on film, projected on film. Why is that? Shouldn't the resolution of digital be enough? Or are analogue projectors somehow superior to digital in real world conditions?

I think digital projection has greatly improved the experience for the vast majority of viewers. But film on film still seems special to me. Am I just being nostalgic?

 

No you are not. The proof is in the chemistry.

Digital is measured in the thousands, molecules are measured in the millions (billions?).

Analog is king.

 

Not the same thing, IMHO. All I want is a clear image. I don’t want grain to distract me from what the director wanted me to see. There is no way anyone can convince me the director wanted me to see a grainy image. He wanted us to see the image he framed in his head and spent money to bring to life. If grain removal is used to make sure that image is presented in the best possible light, so be it.

Ed

 

Personally? Yes. Digital has the advantage of not scratching or breaking. I'll see a movie on film if there is no other choice, but most of my worst film-going experiences have been with film. I saw a revival of The Princess Bride at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. This is an art house that works very hard to obtain the best prints and employs professional projectionists. I was happily watching Inigo Montoya deliver his coup de grace to the evil Count Rugan, and the end of the scene was missing due to a repaired splice! It was like being kicked in the groin.

Also, you really need to take Vidiot's advice and see a film in Dolby Cinema. It has greater color range and contrast range than is possible with any film. At the risk of sounding like a laundry detergent commercial, Brighter Colors! Whiter Whites!

 

The grain in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind was there because of technical limitations of the film available at the time, and the fact that special effects always involved additional generations of film.

 

Even if analog films have more detail, it's not like each of us have access to high-quality prints and pro-grade projectors and a theater to show them in, so it's all a rather theoretical discussion. I can at least go online, order a 4K Blu-ray and project it in my home theater with little effort.

And I agree with you on the grain issue, I don't want it removed.

 

There are lots of artist who don't want you to have a clear image. Brian De Palma purposely shot on high grain film to give a dream like statement in Sisters. This is but one of a million examples.

You may like clear images, but the artist in so many cases does not agree with you. What I find sad is that lab technicians are destroying artists work by claiming that they know better, and actively making their own decisions based on their "gut" instead of looking at what was actually done.

Grain removal is the devil in my view. Obviously I am in the minority, at least here.

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As for the rest, the "whiter whites', and "brighter colors" are part of this obsession to change what the artist intended as well. There is all kinds of errors in bluray work, and some of the transfers are simply horrific. All in the name of reaching that one shade of color without a care in the world of understanding what is actually right.

The director's made decisions about film stock and the finished result is all we know of what they wanted. To assume otherwise is a huge disservice to film preservation.

To me the "degraining" is no better then George Lucas deciding that the limitations of film were not good enough, and let us all put a digital brushstroke to erase history.

I am not interested in seeing Close Encounters in any way other than how I experienced it. Again, thankfully Sony understands that the film should be preserved with how it was originally seen, not how it will "pop".

by the way a little math.

Imax film print
69.6 mm x 48.5 mm=3375.6 mm
Silver Halide particle approximately at the most 0.00015 mm. This equates to 22.5 million molecules per film cell AT THE LEAST.

4K is less than 8.8 million SQUARE PIXELS. The difference is that pixel is one color, and one distinction with no 3D capability. A molecule has no such limitation. There is simply no comparison. By the way, I didn't mention the organic dyes which also add more detail to the analog film print as well as also being 3D.

We are in agreement here. I see nothing wrong with striving for the best digital presentation...which I don't think we are there yet. It would be completely wrong to say that I do not support bluray and digital archiving.