4K and UltraHD Stuff, Cinemas, Camcorders, TVs

danyyyel

You know it takes 5 minutes to do a search

http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/July2012/Prometheus/page1.php

fix

Watched "life of pi" the other day, in a 3d cinema. I was sitting fairly close to the screen. (front half). I consider my self having (trained eyes) beeing in the business. Some of the shots looked a tad soft, looked like missed focus pull more than anything else. Beside that it was crystal clear, CRYSTAL. No 4k, shot with arri Alexa. Could it be better in 4k...?. I highly doubt that anyone at the screening would care or notice. Maybe it's a bit unfair, because the movie was/is really great and distract people from boring pixel pip. Best 3d movie I've ever seen btw, go and watch it.

Most of the guys choosing Alexa do it for the high dynamic range and film look. I belive they honestly don't care that much about 4k<. I have watched 4k tv's.. It's not a wow factor. It's only more pixels and a new way to get people's money, you have to sit really close to a big screen to get the benefit (everything your parents told you not to when you where a kid ironically). If you play with a iPad3 and than switch to iPad2... It only takes a couple of moments until you don't notice or even care about the resolution..content is king today on those things IMHO. I for one strongly belive we have reach resolution that people need.. Before 4k (maybe around 2-3k). Now we make people want 4k<.. Which is political correct for the economic evolution, not evolution of the eye in my knowledge.

I know guys/companies doing heavy effects for movies.. They don't want 4k! Production time for textures, matte painting and such becomes a budget killer. People spending hours and hours on detail. Render time will be better in time, but is still a problem today. Thats why most movies still only use 2k effects even though it's shot on a Epic.

Ofcourse you can see a difference between 2k and 4k, if you are close enough. The thing is.. Is it worth it? IMO it will cost you twice but not earn you any more, and most of the audience will not care until we tell them it's much better.. Strictly talking about resolution that is :)

danyyyel

@fix , exactly the same experience. As the example of someone here saying the 4k image of prometheus was fantastic. In fact it was only 2k uprez. This 4k thing is only for marketing reason. Sony will show you dozen of studies etc. that will tell you that you need 4k because now they are promoting and selling 4k system from cameras, cinema projectors and Tv. With the 3d fail they had to find another way to sell there goods.

I don't say that 4k is not better, but we are really feeling diminishing returns above 2k. Many mostly geeks, cannot comprehend that we human beings have limit so they always feel that they need more for it to be better. Even, to the bigger industry like Hollywood they are downsizing 4k to 2k for vfx budget. But in the indie world (like most of us here), it is absolutely unnecessary. What is necessary on the cinematography side, is better DR and lighting knowledge.

I see people on forums taking all there money to have barely usable redone mx for $ 8k+. While it would have been 10 times better to buy a BMC or gh2/gh3 and a set of HMI, kinos or Tungsten light.

fix

@danyyyel We are on the same page on this one.

Ironically in all this 4k talk. Right now I have more clients asking for DVD, than blu-rays.. At the time 4k is a standard and Internet is the domain for movies, I believe they will not ask for a specific res at all.. Only that it looks great on their tv. Than will see if "2k is a scam", as Jim Jannard puts it ;)

azza_act

Watched Skyfall last night in 4K last night. I was right in the middle row, wasn't very impressed at all with the image and the movie... I remember watching casino royal on bluray (my first bluray) and it had this wow factor. Since then I only watch blurays. So I was expecting the same "wow" factor with 4K. Nope. I was hopping for LED bluray image: sharp with amazing colours. The bond film was flat and wasn't crisp like a BD, very underwhelming.. It's better then the old 35mm projectors I guess, but I thought I would be blown off my feet with excellent IQ. Are 4K TVs where the action is or do we have to wait for 8K projectors see to a real difference?

danyyyel

It was done on Alexa so 2.8k camera.

broughtonfilm

@azza_act "Are 4K TVs where the action is or do we have to wait for 8K projectors see to a real difference?"

What you really have to wait for is some amazing gene manipulation process that will create super humans with eyes capable of distinguishing more detail. As of now, there is a limit of what we can really see, sorry to ruin it for you.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

jleo

Why 4K ...report from Sony PDF

Does 4K really make a difference? 4K digital projection in the theater environment

Sony Electronics Inc. Broadcast and Production Systems Division

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/static/files/mkt/digitalcinema/Why_4K_WP_Final.pdf

www.sony.com/digitalcinema

goanna

@jileo *That PDF is what started this topic :-)

goanna

With the render farms studios use, any extra render time for 4K is zero and the cost is trivial.... just 20 or so rack- mounted PCs and some storage.

You won't be doing a 4K feature on your MacBook alone, but using $10K render farm you can have a good crack at it.

And outsource rendering your files by the hour is getting faster and cheaper too. Why build? Moore's Law hasn't gone away.

goanna

You can do better post with a 4K image. Ask Studios like Animal Logic.

Dear friend and photographer Robert Walker used to say about digital photography, "There's a line around everything."

One common error is contrasted image with an aberration that's only a pixel wide. That pixel used to be enormous with SD; aliasing made correction of chromatic aberration a kind of black art. The thinner that 1-pixel line is, the less visible the artefact anyway and the easier to fix if you want to..

There just ain't no problem with lil' ol' 4K. Which in at most 10 years will easily become a professional (ie wedding video) format. What should be happening now is the digitalisation of ageing film prints to 8K archives, a resolution which seems to generously reproduce all of the detail that the older film stocks used to resolve [over 6K] - and still leaves a little head room for current and future stocks. With that in mind, it's the Digital Intermediate which we'll be archiving - and that has gotta be 6K at the very minimum.

broughtonfilm

@goanna "With the render farms studios use, any extra render time for 4K is zero and the cost is trivial.... just 20 or so rack- mounted PCs and some storage."

Seems to contradict what Dariusz Wolski (DP of Prometheus) said in his interview for The American Cinematographer:

"Although he shot Prometheus in 5K at 5:1 compression (occasionally switching to 3:1 compression for scenes with very fine detail, like water or foliage), he notes that the original photography had to be converted to 2K in post to match the resolution of the visual-effects work. “On a movie with this many visual effects, going to 4K would have quadrupled the visual-effects budget,” notes Wolski. “ "

jleo

*That PDF is what started this topic :-)

oops! thought it was a different one. My eyes are only 240p (VHS) today :)

goanna

Creative COW's Debra Kaufman talks about what it takes to work with full-res files larger than 4K in real time -- on multiple workstations no less!

(An unashamed plug for the proprietary Light Iron system)

This is among the largest 4K movies ever delivered, if not the largest. At 2 hours and 38 minutes, it consists of almost a quarter of a million frames at 45 megabytes each.

CIONI: A common question I hear is, are we a 2K or 4K industry? Most people say we're 2K but we're going towards 4K. That is to say, the technology is in transition. To do a 4K movie now we temporarily need both projectors. The 4K technology hasn't matured enough to use it exclusively.

It's also becoming very popular for audiences to see 4K projectors even though they're not seeing 4K content. Sony has sold 17,000 4K projectors, and several theatre chains have stated their intent to switch to these projectors. 2K content looks better on the 4K projector because the distance between pixels is reduced, so the perception of higher resolution goes up because there's less negative space. Dragon Tattoo was shot one-third with the RED Epic and the rest with the RED MX; these are essentially extremely low signal-to-noise-ratio cameras, very quiet, so they scale really well. So, although Dragon Tattoo will be released in 4K, it's worth noting that 4K sourced projects that master in 2K scale up well to 4K.

In a data-centric world, clients have looked into our machine room, saw a couple of Mac towers and thought they could do it on their own. But the complexity of technology has increased. In actuality, their ability to do it themselves is as out of touch as when we printed film. Working in 4K is like 2K was several years ago, only four times bigger and six times more dynamic.

from http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/4k-di-on-the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo

goanna

Whatever Light Iron people will have you believe, you can,indeed, do 4K with, say Vegas/proxy files/ export to a render farm you build yourself!

I bet I know some kids who would be able to network their gaming PCs on somebody's kitchen table and come up with the goods overnight, then celebrate with pizza for breakfast.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

LG Display at CES 2013 will focus on the themes of high picture quality resolution and design minimalism. Among other innovative products, LG Display will showcase the lineup of Ultra High Definition (UHD) panels, a technology widely viewed as the future of TV, in 55-, 65- and 84-inch sizes.

At 3840x2160, UHD utilizes an incredible 8 million pixels or four times the resolution of existing Full HD. With 55- and 65-inch sizes added to 84-inch as part of its UHD lineup, LG Display is poised to dominate the emerging UHD premium display market. Also integrated across its range of UHD TV displays is the company's acclaimed FPR (Film Patterned Retarder) 3D technology for a truly peerless offering.

LG Display's advancements are not limited to TV, but extend across the IT (Information Technology) sector. In addition to UHD TV displays, the company will unveil a 30-inch 4K2K monitor, which at 4096x2160, is the highest resolution computer monitor to date. With unparalleled viewing clarity, the monitor is anticipated to be utilized by professionals in fields like medicine, design, and more.

fix

@goanna I think you miss the point. Most of the people in here probably agree with you that it's possible to render and make 4k videos on your ordinary home computer (no kids needed). Strictly talking about rendering power.

The real problem is all the effects work involving hard work in textures(art). Try to fill out an A4 paper with small 1inch circles, than do the same on a A1 paper... Obviously it takes you more time to fill out the A1 paper . That's the problem, Man power=time and money. You are not gonna change that easy with Moore's law.

goanna

@fix

Sorry, I don't understand. (Are you saying graphics take more man-hours in 4K?).

Apart from what can be generated by interpolation algorithms, simple gradients or even ray tracing, I can still imagine a case where CG artist might decide to to add more detail manually (like more actual people to a scene as in a naive folk tapestry or more actual pebbles on a beach).

This sounds like a good idea and I'd like to see this.

fix

@goanna Yup, if you go for 4k res fx than in most case you will use more time with fine details. If you are talking about 3d objects than I agree that it won't make any difference in 2k or 4k. But matte paintings and textures is another story. interpolation, grading or ray tracing won't make more detail. Only emulate and close the open gaps, which will turn It to mud. It's like saying that you can turn a 1080p image into (true)4k image by math after its shoot.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/sonys-4k-handycam-and-hxr-ifr5-4k-interface-unit-prototypes-eye/

Vitaliy_Kiselev

driftwood

Conceptual 4k h265 :-)

Vitaliy_Kiselev

See rest at http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3857820/sony-4k-handycam-consumer-concept

And http://www.photographybay.com/2013/01/10/sony-4k-camcorder-unveiled-at-ces-2013/

BurnetRhoades

@goanna 4K for visual effects has been an option since the 1990s. Certain directors or project specifics have required it, and this was done on workstations with less memory than most people's phones nowadays. VistaVision plates would often be scanned at this resolution and this would be about the minimum quality for scanning an anamorphic 35mm negative without just throwing away stupid amounts of picture information.

What people are going gaga over these days is the idea of doing it in realtime. Truthfully, for color and editorial, it's overkill. The upside to this silliness is it makes everything else faster and cheaper and if you're not spending $750/hour or more for a suite with hot-and-cold running lattes and hookers + blow on speed dial, folks have been doing visual effects finishing at 4K almost as long as it's been done at 2K, if it really needed to be done.

Creative COW's Debra Kaufman talks about what it takes to work with full-res files larger than 4K in real time -- on multiple workstations no less!

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