El Cid - a classic title in HD digital (in theater) 01/28/08 (1 Viewer)

[OliverK]

Jim,

this being a 2k digital presentation you can expect it to look about as good as a very good Blu-Ray so as Dave has pointed out you should preferably watch it from the same distance you would choose for that.

I have also watched a few movies in 70mm and as you say by no means can a digital presentation come close to what is possible with good 70mm prints at or below 1 screen width seating distance in large theaters.

So much for 2k digital being good enough for theaters, I always thought it was a stupid idea to start out with less than 4k....

Dave,

I am VERY impressed that the turnout was so good and the screen so big - wish I could have been there.

And to both of you: I am keeping my fingers crossed that you will be able to watch a few 70mm prints in this theater in the future and that for Fall of the Roman Empire they will be able to get even focus for the digital presentation.

Regarding 70mm prints you might try to get them to play Star! It will be available this year with a brand new 70mm print, maybe with something like the Agony and the Ecstasy or Cleopatra thrown in for good measure. Warner is also working on Khartoum which might however be difficult to present in its original Ultra Panavision 70 aspect ratio.

Oliver

 

[Robert Harris]

There is no problem with 2k in a theatrical setting, even on a large screen, as long as it replicates the intent of the filmmakers. As most productions today that have gone through a DI are created 2k, they can look terrific.

My question re: the El Cid screening is about format.

Was the film projected in 2k from either 2k or DC files derived from a 2k source, or was it projected in HD?

RAH

 

[john a hunter]

Does Warners have the rights now?.It was a United Artists release, I think, and the video rights have been with MGM.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I believe that Weinstein owns El Cid and all of the other Bronston epics.

Doug

 

[TonyD]

well thats bad news for waiting on a home hd version.

 

[OliverK]

My mistake, actually assumed it was Warner and I don't even know why Obviously the Khartoum DVD was still released through MGM. With Fox being in charge of distributing MGM and with their great track record bringing the Fox large format titles back into theaters I assume it is also for that reason that there is work done on Khartoum.

 

[OliverK]

Unfortunately no single studio owns the 4 Bronston epics that Weinstein has the US rights for. This is one of the reasons that nobody goes back to the original negatives, not even for El Cid - too expensive.

 

[OliverK]

Of course movies coming from a 2k DI will not suffer from lack of detail in a 2k presentation but at close viewing distances there is just too much pixel structure with 2k digitals, for my taste that is. In a movie theater people have to sit much closer in the first rows than we do in our home theaters and therefore I would have wished for 4k projectors with LCOS-like pixel structure instead of 2k DLP that is the most common today, at least where I live.

Regarding the medium used for the screening of El Cid, on the AFI site the presentation is described as "HD digital" which does not really tell us much, I would also be interested in the medium AND the projector that was used.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

I have seen 4K digital that surpassed 35mm and looked like 70mm. 2K is too coarse to do that, though.

 

[OliverK]

The discussion you quote from was about 2k digital and I see that exactly in that sentence I left it out I agree on 4k being an entirely different cup of tea, probably close enough to 70mm to make a lot of people happy under most circumstances. IMO for theatrical presentation 2k is too course especially on the hardware side and it is a pity it is so widespread now.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RAH,

technical details were lacking, but the projection guy made it sound like they had a professional 2K digital tape using the full 2K resolution with the 2.35:1 image (ie, not a letterboxed 2.35:1 1080 "HD" version) but I can't confirm what they actally used.

I'm still darned ticked that neither HDM format allowed for "constant height" video encoding so we could get the same full-vertical resolution with 2.35:1 movies in our home-cinemas. :frowning:

 

[OliverK]

Now wouldn't that have been nice. Too bad that the industry can do things like anamorphic and non-anamorphic discs for a bread and butter format like DVD but not for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD :frowning:

 

[Douglas Monce]

So Weinstein only has the distribution rights, they don't actually own the films?


Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

4K has roughly the equivalent of a first generation 35mm print, or perhaps slightly less. However the release prints that we see in theaters are probably closer to 2k resolution being as they are 3 or 4 generations away from the original.

65mm would be closer to 10 to 12k with modern film stock. Remember that 65mm as formulated by Todd A/O and still used by Panavision uses much more of the actually real estate of the film negative than 35mm academy aperture. Particularly if you get into a Super 35 film which probably would have under the best of conditions 2k of resolution. 65mm films from the 60s might be a little under 8k, depending on how well they were cared for and how far a restoration takes them from the original negative

One of the reasons that 4k and even 2k digital projection seem to be so sharp in a theater is because of the lack of gate weave. Gate weave can seriously reduce the apparent sharpness of a moving image.

Doug

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Great post.

BTW, unfortunately in the case of El Cid, gate-weave was still a problem as the restoration had not corrected for the gate-weave from the source print that was scanned. :frowning:

This doesn't take away from your point however, as a properly "restored" digital scan would, IMO, would have eliminated them.

good point about how this simple difference can make such a subjective difference in image-clarity when projected. Gate Weave was probably contributing to the image softness in the case of El Cid the other night (since it had not been corrected for).

 

[Douglas Monce]

Good point David that if a film, particularly an older film, is converted to digital with out having the gate weave corrected either digitally or mecanically, gate weave will be an issue.

Almost every movie shot on film will have SOME gate weave (although typically it is very slight) unless a pin registered camera is used. Pin registered cameras are almost exclusively used for effects photography where a rock steady image is needed. Most live action wouldn't use this kind of camera.

And of course the projector itself, film projector that is, contributes to gate weave.

Doug

 

[OliverK]

Unfortunately, no.
The company who handles the distribution rights is based in the UK and they told me that the Bronston films still have multiple owners, both companies and private parties who want to stay anonymous.

This goes back to the time when Du Pont and Paramount lost millions in the last two big Bronston productions. Du Pont and Paramont probably still do get a cent or two when one of the movies is sold on DVD.

 

[OliverK]

I think it is important not to confuse pixel count and resolution across the width of the negative when doing comparisons to digital projectors. The 70mm negative is a little above 2" across, while the Super 35mm negative is just a tad below 1", for the sake of this example let's say the 70mm negative is exactly 2.1 times as wide. So I take your example of Super 35mm having 2k (2000 x 833 for simplicity) resolution on screen which I would consider to be almost miraculous given the standards to which film is produced these days. That actually would mean about 1.7 million pixels. With the same resolving capability per inch 70 mm would translate to roughly 8 million pixels or 4.2k resolution (4200 x 1900). So we are not that far away from a 4k digital projector that actually has a 4096 x 2160 pixel raster, resulting in 9 Million pixels.

While indeed modern fine granularity film stock still has much more resolution capability than that left in it I simply do not believe that with current release practices we have a chance to see that kind of quality in movie theaters. To get film back closer to its real capabilites it would be nice to have 4k DI for Super 35 and 8k DI for 70mm productions. Striking a release prints from a digital source with that kind of resolution should result in very nice looking prints but then the hardware to do this is currently not fast enough to allow mass production of release prints.

And a very good point about the gate weave. In the analog world this is what a good projectionist strives for - to minimize gate weave and therefore maximize the perceived resolution of his projection.

 

[Cees Alons]

Douglas,

Good point bringng up the gate weave!


Which is only one aspect: spatial resolution. Another, colour resolution and/or grayscale resolution, is equally important to the end-result, but I doubt if current digital colour schemes (and the sensitivity of the sensors) can match the gamut on film.


Cees

 

[OliverK]

There is certainly more to the look of film than spatial resolution, my aim was to clarify the difference between multiplying pixel resolution in the vertical and horizontal direction and horizontal pixels across a panel or the equivalent across a strip of 35mm or 70mm film.

Regarding limitations of digital vs. film: All movies that have gone through a DI are limited in fidelity by the digital system they were produced in, that affects virtually every big movie out there.