Originally Posted by Penton-Man

In regards to sharpening and the potential for possible resultant “annoying” edge enhancement visualized on larger consumer screens in the home theater environment….
Well, the problem is that it is sometimes a cumulative effect of more than one step in the process.

You see, during the production of the 2K digital intermediate (hell, this even applies also to telecine output [i.e. the Spirit Datacine], sharpening is not uncommonly applied at the bequest of the filmmaker – because of focusing/lens deficiencies during the primary photography. You often have some shots with focus problems that undergo subsequent D.I. sharpening……. and at the other end of the scale you may have a whole film that the Director feels needs some grain reduction during the D.I. process. This *de-graining* often necessitates some compensatory sharpening. I guess like most all things in life, moderation is the key here.

One nice thing about good 4K capture* or 35mm capture with subsequent 4K DI work (which is few and far between) is that you’ve got so much production headroom (i.e. so much resolution) that you don’t have to edge sharpen….at least, except infrequently for some problem shots regarding focusing.

Anyway.......further on down the chain, sharpening can also potentially be added during HD digital master production and even the subsequent Blu-ray encoding process…… and some displays even have it built-in as a default mechanism. So,
you should now understand how the cumulative process can potentially yield a suboptimal end product by the addition of sharpening at more than one step along the production chain.

The good thing is, paidgeek is particularly cognizant of this fact and the potential for a suboptimal outcome due to the later steps in the process, of which he has some control over.

* b.t.w. not all 4K camera systems (camera/lens) are created equal and I think it is naive thinking to solely define cameras in terms of megapixels. There is a much better metric that manufacturers could use to help out cinematographers.

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

^ ^ ^
P.S.
The potentially worst case scenario is with a film that a Director/D.P. has intentionally utilized optical diffusion for creative intent (such as Munich or more recently, Atonement [black stocking used])
and the person in charge of the of HD digital master production or Blu-ray encoding is clueless to that fact, so intercedes by boosting the sharpening thinking that he is increasing the PQ for the home enthusiast – i.e. a “better” product.

Even if this behavior doesn’t translate into visible annoying artifacts, it has broken the creative intent of the Director if prior approval was not obtained.

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce

This situation is exacerbated by all the complaints about some titles being soft or not full resolution. A good example is The Last Starfighter, which is an excellent transfer of the film, but you couldn't tell that to a lot of people who thought it was soft or a sub standard transfer.
Doug