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Are Digital Movies Really Better than Analog?

Posted by Cliff on from the reviving-the-age-old-debate dept.

Beatlebum asks: "I have watched two digital presentations of AOTC, the first at AMC1000 San Francisco and the second at the Metreon S.F. I did notice a few digital artifacts; however, what bothered me most was the lack of clarity of the colors. Many scenes seemed to be very slightly foggy. I expected the colors to be clear, crisp and rich. The Matrix Reloaded trailer looked significantly better in this regard. Am I crazy or did anyone else notice the same thing? I'm especially interested in hearing from those of you that have seen both analog and digital versions."

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Also worth noting... by Domini · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The trailers were displayed digitally, perhaps. The real question: was the entire production digitally? I think not.

    George Lucas wanted the original master to be done digitally to improve the lifespan of the film. Thus the film will never need to be digitally remastered, and will never fade.

    Perhaps other films have more brilliant full colours because they are expected to fade? But this is only un uneducated guess.

  2. Re:Yeah. That's the problem with digital by OneFix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was under the impression that IMAX was just 70mm run sideways.

    No, as this link shows, it is actually 3 times bigger than 70mm film ... however, the film runs at such a high speed that signifigant part of the film is "wasted" on the camera spin-up and to keep the cameras small enough to lug around, they only get 15 minutes of film per reel.

    This as well as a few other reasons is why most IMAX films are under an hour long and feature little or no scripted characters (documentary films). Why documentary...because you can't really get a dolphin to perform better for a different take...

    For insight into IMAX film making, try one of the many IMAX DVDs with commentary...one of the best to decribe the unique IMAX film making process is Super Speedway: Mach II Edition ...

    The IMAX film format is actually the best quality you can find for dvd transfers.

    Like it or not, anything that lucas used on EP2 will not compare to the film quality of IMAX!!!

  3. Is digital better? by mosch · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Digital projection in it's current incarnation, DLP, is terrible. Theoretically the color depth should be fine, the spec is for 45 bits of color, though AoTC demonstrated well that apparently they don't use all those bits, because at least at the theatre I was at, the blacks weren't very black.

    The real problem is the incredibly shitty resolution, 1280x1024. 35mm film is roughly equivalent to 20 million pixels, a wee bit more than digital. Watch a slow pan of a detailed scene carefully (the waterfall scene would work), and you'll actually see everything moving pixel by pixel.

    Oddly enough, the digital projector should be able to get an equivalent or better contrast ratio than film. 35mm film is generally specced to get about 1000:1, but the Barco DLP Projectors can get up to 1250:1.

    The storal of the ,mory is that contrary to popular opinion, adding the word 'digital' to a technology does not make it better.