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HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac - Page 2

post #31 of 43
1/13/08 at 9:09am
Thread Starter 

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn.F
Sat down and watched the film in its entirety last night. One thing I kept thinking throughout was that Paramount should have held off the film's theatrical release until the end of 2007. Granted, that would have given the movie the stigma of having sat on the shelf for a year, but I just have a feeling that the movie is going to be ignored at the Oscars this year and it really deserves at some award recognition.

The picture has been showing up on a lot of critic's top ten lists. There's been Oscar buzz about the screenplay and Fincher as a very outside nom.
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post #32 of 43
1/13/08 at 1:40pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

I really enjoyed this last night . Like Fincher's other work , this will be getting a lot of replay .Its a real feast for your eyes and ears .

~M~
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post #33 of 43
1/13/08 at 9:15pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

i'll sound like a noob but i wanted to confirm anyways: Zodiac was shot with a hidef 1080p camera; does that mean that the picture shown on the big 50 foot movie screen has the same optical resolution as my 56" tv screen?
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post #34 of 43
1/15/08 at 12:39am

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by EricW
i'll sound like a noob but i wanted to confirm anyways: Zodiac was shot with a hidef 1080p camera; does that mean that the picture shown on the big 50 foot movie screen has the same optical resolution as my 56" tv screen?

Yes. As was Star Wars episodes 2 and 3, Sin City, Superman Returns, and many other films shot with digital cameras. The big difference particularly with films shot with the Thomson VIPER and the Panavision Genesis cameras is that it uses a 4:4:4 10-bit color space unlike your HDTV which uses a 4:2:0 and 8-bit compressed color space. Making it able to represent far more colors. Also in the theater little to no compression is used with the image unlike what you see coming from digital broadcasts which use VERY heavy compression, or HD DVD and Blu-ray which fairly heavy compression.

Most films you see in the theater that were shot on 35mm film actually don't have much more resolution than your HDTV after the release prints are made anyway. At that point they are 5 sometimes 6 generations away from the camera negative and don't have much better than 2k resolution.

Doug
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post #35 of 43
1/15/08 at 7:40am
Thread Starter 

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

I remeber reading somewhere that SW Episode two was 8 gigs for the digital version. I also read somewhere that when home video hits 4k resolution many are considering that as good as film resolution.
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post #36 of 43
1/15/08 at 9:00am

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by PatWahlquist
I remeber reading somewhere that SW Episode two was 8 gigs for the digital version. I also read somewhere that when home video hits 4k resolution many are considering that as good as film resolution.

4k would be roughly, and I say roughly because there are variables such is iso speed and other factors that effect the resolving power of film, but roughly the resolution of 35mm film from the answer print. Of course determining the resolving power of film is fairly unscientific and slightly subjective.

Even the resolving power of HD video can be effected by quality of the CCD or CMOS chip, and also the settings of the camera such as the gain. Even the F stop can effect the apparent sharpness. Most lenses are sharper around f5 than they are at say f2. And prime lenses are almost always sharper than zoom lenses because there is less glass between the object the camera is focusing on and the chip or frame of film.

Doug
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post #37 of 43
1/17/08 at 10:45pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by Douglas Monce
...

Most films you see in the theater that were shot on 35mm film actually don't have much more resolution than your HDTV after the release prints are made anyway. At that point they are 5 sometimes 6 generations away from the camera negative and don't have much better than 2k resolution.

Doug

"5 sometimes 6 generations away from the camera negative"? Really?

I thought the chain was, 35mm Negative-to- 35mm InterPositive-to- 35mm InterNegative-to- 35mm Release Print. So the release print for the vast majority of theaters would be fourth generation, with a select few prints (so-called "show prints") shown in big city, major cinemas printed direct from the negative.

If you're talking the odd optical shot, those particular shots would in fact be 6th generation when you get to release print, true, but nowadays with most movies having Digital Intermediates this isn't really an issue, and even if the movie was "traditionally" post-produced without a DI you'd only be talking about opticals being 6th gen, not the whole film. So unless I'm wrong, where does the "5 or 6 generations" for the normal 35mm release print come from?

Vincent
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post #38 of 43
1/18/08 at 4:21am

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vincent_P
"5 sometimes 6 generations away from the camera negative"? Really?

I thought the chain was, 35mm Negative-to- 35mm InterPositive-to- 35mm InterNegative-to- 35mm Release Print. So the release print for the vast majority of theaters would be fourth generation, with a select few prints (so-called "show prints") shown in big city, major cinemas printed direct from the negative.

If you're talking the odd optical shot, those particular shots would in fact be 6th generation when you get to release print, true, but nowadays with most movies having Digital Intermediates this isn't really an issue, and even if the movie was "traditionally" post-produced without a DI you'd only be talking about opticals being 6th gen, not the whole film. So unless I'm wrong, where does the "5 or 6 generations" for the normal 35mm release print come from?

Vincent

Show prints are not taken directly from the camera negative. The only thing that comes that close is the Answer Print. My understanding is that show prints are just the best prints that come from the the run of release prints. The quality of a run of 4000 prints can very wildly.

You are right of course that only effects shots are going to be 5 or 6 generations away from the O neg. Sometimes much more depending on how many elements go into an optical composite. However even a 4th generation print isn't going to display anything like 4k resolution even under the best of conditions.

And of course a film that uses a DI is only going to display the resolution of that DI when projected on film. In most cases the DI is 2k with 4k coming only recently.

Doug
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post #39 of 43
1/25/08 at 10:43pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Is it 60 fps on HD video and not the usual 24 fps?? I ask because the picture was pretty jittery with 24p on with my hdxa2 and looked much better with 60......thats a first for me!
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post #40 of 43
1/26/08 at 7:04am

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Interesting. I didn't experience that issue when I watched this at 24fps with my HD-XA2.
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post #41 of 43
1/26/08 at 12:28pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by David_Giles
Is it 60 fps on HD video and not the usual 24 fps?? I ask because the picture was pretty jittery with 24p on with my hdxa2 and looked much better with 60......thats a first for me!


Digital projection in theaters is 24 frames per second, with a "shutter speed" of 1/48th of a second.

24p does have a fair amount of jitter just by virtue of the fact that it is a pretty slow frame rate. In fact the difference between 24p and 24p at 60hz with a 2:3 pull down is really not that obvious.

Doug
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post #42 of 43
1/26/08 at 1:41pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

I just thought that maybe HD video might be shot at 60 fps, unlike film that is 24 fps?!
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post #43 of 43
1/26/08 at 3:04pm

Re: HTF HD-DVD Review: Zodiac

Quote:
Originally Posted by David_Giles
I just thought that maybe HD video might be shot at 60 fps, unlike film that is 24 fps?!

Well HD can be shot at 60fps interlaced, 30 fps progressive and 24fps progressive. There are other frame rates but they are typically for effects like high speed photography.

The standard frame rate for home HD is 60i or 30p. Digital cinema is 24fps. The big push in the mid 90s was to get HD cameras that would shoot at 24p to match motion picture photograph. Lucas is the one that really pushed Sony to develop the cinealta 24p camera for his Star Wars prequels. One of the major reasons that film looks the way it does is because of the 24fps frame rate. If you have ever seen showscan projected (showscan is 70mm film run at 60fps) it looks astonishingly like video.

Doug
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