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The Future of Digital Cinema
prostoalex writes "This article on ABCNews talks about two different technologies, aimed at bringing the cinemas up to the standards of this digital age. It points out some interesting information regarding the status quo such as "of the more than 35,000 movie screens operating in the United States today, only 60 are digitally equipped, largely because of the technology's $150,000 price tag"."
I mean, it's a nice idea and simple and it's been known that more frames = better quality for years. It's not like he had to sit around and actually think a lot about how to make the quality better, just the way of doing it. 50% of his work was already done for him!
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So what's wrong with movies the way they are now? The resolution is fine and the motion is fine. The only people complaining about it are the Hollywood types who have something to sell. Besides the real money in Hollywood is in renting videos. The new formats that are being proposed will have zero impact on the television even if you are using hdtv.
DRM can give the movie companies almost total control over how and when movies are shown in all theaters. Which is something theater owners would prefer to control themselves - as you can respond better to your local audience.
So, if "MIB-II" is tanking in Notown, USA, start showing "Minority Report" on an extra screen to bring more people in instead.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
"A conventional movie works by flashing a series of 24 pictures on the screen every second, creating the illusion of motion. All Maxivision48 does is squeeze in 48 frames per second and doubles the speed of the projector.
The effect is twofold: The faster speed provides a stronger illusion and the shorter film exposure creates a sharper picture.
It's a simple change that filmmakers and industry analysts say makes a dramatic difference. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that watching a movie in Maxivision48 is like looking through a window at the world."
As far as I know, that's bullshit. Increasing the number of exposures to 48 per second instead of 24, would only reduce the trademark flickering of conventional film projectors.
The reason for this is that a technique called motion blur has been used for as long as I remember, to negate the low frame rate of normal movie projectors. Notice if you pause a movie during a high-motion scene, the image is blurred. This is done in order to create the illusion of motion even in a still frame.
A high-motion scene projected with a normal 24fps film projector definitely looks much more fluid than playing a high-paced game of quake with 24fps for this reason.
Basically, film makers have created the illusion of fluid motion within the constraints of only having 24 frames per second by using motion blur, and video games have created the illusion of fluid motion within the constraints of not having motion blur by increasing the frame rate to levels way beyond 24fps.
In view of this, I can see why "not a single theater or movie studio has invested in Goodhill's Maxivision48 technology". Technology? Overclocking conventional movie projectors to show 48fps instead of 24fps is not exactly "technology". I know if I owned a movie theater, I wouldn't pay for "technology" like this.
I can understand why the studios aren't going for this Maxivision48 system. After all, if the studios were really interested in improving film quality, surely they'd have standardised on 70mm by now? The difference in clarity between, say, the 70mm print of 2001 and a 35mm print is very noticable.
No, it seems to me that the principal (possibly the only?) advantage of digital is the ease of distribution, and that's why the large studios are pushing for it. Maxivision48 means you've got twice as much film stock to distribute, so I don't see it succeeding.
For a consumer, the big digital payoff might be down the road when a movie has been through a projector so many times that the quality becomes objectionable on an analog print. But since the majority of a movie's gross is in the first few weeks of the run and the studios get the lion's share of the take during those weeks, the economics may work against digital. The studios reap the long term benefit of digital and the theater owner has to pay for it. If I owned a theater, I think I'd hold back as well.
Let's do the math, shall we?
Or approximately $3 million. Hardly chump change if you're spending it left and right. Even the article points out, "[A]t current prices, a digital projector would cost more than some of the smaller nearby theaters."
-Richard
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
used to be owned by Hoyts and was only two theaters. Being small , Hoyts only allowed second rate movies to be shown so people would go to the bigger theaters in the surronding towns. Eventually they closed it down and it sat empty for a year till a local guy took out a loan, bought the place, renamed it Welch Theaters, upgraded to Digital and charges $7.50 for a movie. That's what I paid to see AOTC's midnight premire.
It's not Digital Technology that is raising ticket prices, it is poor management. Welch Theaters is one example of why we need the little guys around.
Oh, and one more thing.
FUCK HOYTS!
>
3 steps to DivX heaven:
Ph33r m3!!!
Watch the scrolling text at the beginning of any Star Wars Movie. Watch that same movie on digital, like DVD or Episode II in a digital theater. In analog, the text moves around visibly. In digital, the text is rock-solid. The entire film is doing this!
48 fps should be an improvement, but the debates against digital are anti-technology, and frankly anti-copying. You have to ask why this technology, as old as it is, wasn't adopted awhile ago? My guess is cost. Note the lack of technical detail in the article. My guess is that non-standard projectors will not be adopted regardless of cost.
Things really went downhill at the movie theaters when they sprung that "talkie" crap on us. What was wrong with reading captions, and having an organist to provide sound? Who needs to hear what the actors are saying?
What? The only difference I could discern between film and digital is that the digital projection didn't have any dust or cigarette burns. It was just....clean. I mean, blue skies were just....blue. No little black spots or anything. So sue me, I'm a perfectionist, but to me digital projection seems the way to go.
I belong to the ______ generation.
I thought the digital version of Star Wars II looked terrible. The individual pixels were clearly visible. For example, the Star Wars logo had poorly anti-aliased "jaggies."
I suspect that the screen was too large and/or I was sitting too close. I'm sure the DVD will look spectacular, but I don't think digital has enough resolution to compete with film, yet.
I think people like Roger Ebert don't understand the costs of Maxivision.
First, movie projectors would require much higher engineering tolerences to operate at 48 fps for long periods of time like you get in a movie theatre. That raises the cost of the projector substantially. I just can't imagine today's movie theater employees doing even minor maintainance on such a projector.
Second, Maxivision projection will require a lot more film than today's 24 fps projectors because of its 48 fps speed. A 35 mm 24 fps print of 20 minutes of film weighs 35 pounds and you need six reels of film for a two hour movie; I can imagine a Maxivision 48 fps print weighing 60-70% more. The shipping cost for a single print alone would definitely be frightening, to say the least.
Third, it would require more expensive movie cameras because of the need to shoot at 48 fps. Can you imagine how much more expensive a Panavision or Arriflex movie camera will cost to support 48 fps operation for long periods of time? These aren't special effects cameras where high film speeds are run for only a relatively short period of time.
Finally, you still haven't solved the problem of print degradation over a long period of time. At 48 fps, there's likely a higher chance for a film print to get scratched or break.
Why do the movie guys want digital? Is it for quality? That is likely a secondary reason. More likely they want to bring down their costs and bring in customers. How much to stamp 100,000 12inch discs?
Probably less than a couple of reels of film. The whole world could be covered by one pressing. (languages and all). Digital sub titles etc.
We the customer are just a means to an end. Make them richer.
Ok, the real advantage is not quality, it's flexibility. As digital distribution dramatically cuts distribution costs, theatres could play more, and more varied movies. When getting a new movie into the theatre consists of a fed-ex delivery of 10 DVDs it's a hell of a lot easier to get a new movie on the screen. Lower cost of distribution also levels the playing field, making it easier for independents to compete.
Another huge advantage is the ability to play live content. Weeknights are typically pretty slow nights at the theatre, so why not show some baseball, football or, basketball games depending on the season.
-josh
The money saved by the studios will be absolutely enormous with digital distribution: no more thousands of prints, no more shipping them to tens of thousands of theaters.
As an incentive to theaters, they could offer a discount for theaters that is equal to the amount they save on distribution by going digital. Do this for the first several years to help the theaters offset the cost of the equipment.
This way, the studios get the digital projectors out there and some years down the line they'll reap the cost savings when the carrot discounts disappear.
So what's wrong with movies the way they are now? The resolution is fine and the motion is fine.
Film is expensive. A motion picture print can cost a thousand or two bucks, and you may want to open on 6,000 screens for a blockbuster, or 1,000 screens for a small release. Do the arithmetic.
In addition, a film print is only good for maybe 50-60 showings (you can get more with decent, well-maintained projectors and a competent projectionist, but that's not often the case nowadays).
Big hard drives are expensive, too, but they can be wiped and reused over, and over, and over again.
The argument is always that baseball brings in more business. But really, who comes to see the Brewers? They suck. Now, we also have a brand-spanking new Midwest Express Convention Center. I don't know the details behind that behemoth, but there sure wasn't as much controversy about it. I KNOW it brings people into the city (for CONVENTIONS, duh), and those conventions help pay for the new building. Bigger building, more convention/office space. No issues.
What does that have to do with movie theatres? For some reason both Pro-Sports, and the MPAA think that the end-user should pay UP FRONT for whatever new-fangled thing they want. They need to learn to stop mooching, and pay their own way.
I work for a fitness company. We distribute Weight Lifting Belts to a LOT of retail outlets. I can't imagine going into a Dick's or a Champs, and saying, "Oh yeah, we have this new product, but you'll need to remodel your store to carry it."
As if THAT would ever happen.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
As usual, a slashdot story that links to an article *** totally *** devoid of any technical details that would make it news for nerds, or merely stuff that matters.
640K ought to be enough for anyone.
There are many more uses for digital cinema technology that can even be thought of right now. I see this as another technology that precedes it's demand; uses will be developed for it once it's uptake gathers speed. I won't repeat the quality and distribution benefits already mentioned in this thread.
Theaters could play 'censored' [i.e. no nudity, bad language etc.] versions to get extra revenue from the younger and religious audiences. The in-flight version of Outbreak was quite acceptable, though I can't imagine there'd be much left of the South Park movie ;-) How about audience participation? It's a long shot but it could be a laugh for some stuff. I know some people here would like buttons labelled [bra], [panties], [gravy] and [grits] for the next Natalie Portman flick.
I havent had my caffiene fix and it's way too hot in here so I can't think of many more right now, but I'm sure other people can add to this list. As for the slow uptake of digital projection so far, I'd say it's either because AFAIK there's no finalised standard for digital film distribution, or because some people wouldn't know a good investment when it was staring them in the face. ;-)
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
I made the effort to see Episode 2 at a digital theater and was very happy with it. I know a lot of people have complained about jagged edges, but I really didn't see any. To me the difference between watching film and watching digital was the difference between watching VHS and watching DVD. The screen didn't jitter up and down. There were no scratches and no dust. The colors were vivid and very clear... I thought it was great and worth the extra drive to get to the theater. Even the "Don't Talk, Throw Away Your Trash" opening sequence was much better.
--
RumorsDaily
Why do people think digital is so good? I do photography and still use film. Why? Because film has a much higher quality than a top of the line digital camera. Good low grain 35mm film (which is actually 24x36mm) can hold an image equivalent to a 130meg uncompressed digital image file.
Now look at an 8x10 camera, that's a very large sheet of film that is commonly used. To scan in that image and get all of the information in the image, it's going to be about 14G of data.
Now when you view these images, no top of the line home digital equipment can even approach the viewing quality of a good slide projector with film.
So what's so good about digital? Well, you can repeatedly reuse and copy it without the image degrading. It's also cheaper to make copies of. Analog video and film still has the highest quality and will continue so for a long time. Digital is just a cheap consumer product. Comparing digital to film is like comparing McDonalds fast food to a gourmet restaurant.
Let me just add, I'm not bashing digital. I would like to get a digital camera for snapshots and lots of other quick stuff. But when I want quality, I still choose film.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
"Goodhill says the Maxivision48 is a logical investment for theater owners since the projectors are "backwards compatible" in that they can be slowed down to the current 24 frames per second movie standard. That means theater owners who invest in the technology now will still be able to show any of the current movies while waiting for studios to convert over to the new faster 48-frame-per-second format."
Do domain names matter?
As to the economics, that $150K(US) is an estimate (low in my opinion) per screen. So, for each of your 20 screen theatres you're talking 3mil.
Why do you pay $6(US) for 50 cents worth of popcorn? Because that $6 pays for real estate, salaries, food, benefits, etc. Basically, the concession income pays for virtually all of the construction and operating costs of a theatre. Theatres make virtually no money on ticket sales since the vast majority is paid to the distributor. The only reason they even show the film is to get you to come in and buy concessions. The $6 price also helps defray the losses (yes losses) from people who sneak their own food and beverages into the theatre. If everyone would buy one bucket of popcorn and one soda, theatres wouldn't have to charge $6 for popcorn.
I know, I managed a movie theatre for a number of years.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Maxivision 48 is just going to compound the problem. The staff in cinemas can't even cope with the current film standard. I see a lot of film previews - the prints are bad even then, with splices and dirt. Even when the print is clean it's often out of focus.
The current cost of digital is high, and the resolution os lower than HDTV, but all this will change. The cost will drop dramatically, and the resolution will first improve to full HD, and then beyond as HD also improves.
The cost of making a movie on HD is dramatically less than film. If they're doing SFX with CGI, then HD makes this cheaper. Even when CGI is added to a film movie, the resolution used is no greater than HD.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
But, digital has the advantage of incredible convenience. I can shoot a picture, crop it, and post it online in 30 minutes. When making portraits, I can capture a dozen pictures and keep the best ones. And I can see the final image immediately and decide whether to try other poses. This introduces more spontaneity and experimentation into photography.
Also, digital lends itself better to certain creations, like animated snapshows (example, example, tutorial).
So, digital cameras are inferior if you'll use them exactly like a film camera. But if you take advantage of the instant feedback and negligible cost-per-shot, digital can promote great creativity.
AlpineR
As I understand it, most projectors already show each frame twice -- the film is at 24 fps, but the projector actually shows a frame every 1/48th of a second. Otherwise the flicker would be unbearable.
Reading the article, it's unclear how Maxivision48 differs from this.
"of the more than 35,000 movie screens operating in the United States today, only 60 are digitally equipped, largely because of the technology's $150,000 price tag".
Heck, at $4.00 for a cup of soda and $7.50 for a candy bar, the local theatre ought to be going digital before lunchtime tomorrow, eh?
The article gives a "price" for the digital equipment.
Something important to consider is that businesses LEASE their equipment. Also, consider that the standard "old fashioned" equipment will run between $30,000 to $50,000 per screen (for a platter system, scope lenses, etc.) and THAT stuff is usually leased also. Sure, any theatre that is currently in busniess has sunk costs on that stuff, but the digital isn't *astronomically* more expensive.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Except, last weekend I went and saw a midnight screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was great, except most of the colors were fairly washed out, and every time it got to a reel change (you know, when the little dots appear in the upper right corner), there was invariably a huge increase in the number of scratches on the print, a degradation in sound quality, and there were also a number of frames missing from each end of both reels (the movie would appear to skip a second or two or time).
Now, if we'd had an original digital print of the movie, it would have looked exactly the same as it had when it came out, twenty years ago (which is to say, a lot better than it did last week). That's half the idea.
As it stands, digital projection (DLP specifically) is a mixed bag. I've come to notice that people like me (geeks) who know what pixels are, know what jaggies are, know what anti-aliasing is, and so on, think the quality of digital is lower than people who aren't familiar with those concepts and don't look for them. On Saturday I went to see (for the fourth time) Attack of the Clones, and I saw it at a digital projection with my parents and two of my cousins (specifically, this was at the Pacific Theaters at The Grove, in Los Angeles). We were sitting on the entry aisle (it's stadium seating), maybe ten rows up.
I'd also seen it digitally at Grauman's Chinese (sitting maybe 17-20 rows back) and at the Loews Century City (15-17 rows back). It looked fantastic at both those theaters. I thought that it looked worse at the Grove (on a smaller screen than either other theater), but I realized it was because I was close enough to see the vertical pixel columns distinctly in a lot of shots (especially high-contrast shots with small details). My dad, however, thought it looked better than at the Chinese (the frickin' Chinese!) and he was sitting in the same row I was. We both wear glasses and have corrected 20/20 vision (in fact, my bare vision is much worse than his).
Anyway, I'm rambling, but my point is that there ARE reasons to go digital. Theoretically in a few years, resolution of digital will increase to the point where you need to be standing right in front of the screen to identify the pixels, in which case it will be visually indistinguishable from film for 99% of the viewing audience -- we'll be in the same situation we are now with "audiophiles" who claim that they can hear minuscule variations in sound quality based on what kind of wires their speakers use. Yeah, maybe they can, but almost nobody else can, or cares.
Plus, long-term (if Hollywood ever could think that way), the studios save huge amounts of money on film prints and distribution. If the studios were to pool together and equip every theater in the country with a digital projector over 5 years, they would have made back their money on film printing costs in another 5 years.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Digital is poor second cousin to Film. Lower resolution and boxed look to the images.
Digital is great for the low resolution and small picture of a TV. BUT not for 6 story Film Screens.
the site contains a white paper describing the technology in full (goes into much more detail than the thing article), as well as Ebert's testimony to the visual impact of Maxivision.
www.maxivision48.com
...at least some think so.
...[cut cut]... "I doubt that I will ever 'seriously' use 35 mm colour film again! When I want to produce a quality result, I will choose digital -- or a larger format than 35 mm."
A quote from: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d60-first.htm
"I have yet to do extensive testing with the [Canon] D60 [a 6 Megapixel digital camera], but I can say that D60 8X10" prints, and indeed the one D60 11 X 16.5"print I have done so far, are better than any previous 8X10" or larger print I have made from 35 mm colour, no matter how printed. In fact, I would say that the 11X16.5" print is pretty close to similar-sized images printed conventionally (or digitally) from 645 format negatives. In simpler words, I believe the 6 MP D60 is superior to 35 mm colour film-not just the equal. A possible exception might be a really good print from a Kodachrome slide -- but I can't claim to have any that are in fact better"
And as a side note, MegaPixels aren't always a good measurement of the quality of Digital Cameras. For example the Canon D30, a 3 megapixel camera produces better images than Sony F707, 5 megapixel camera. Why? Here is a quote from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/dq.htm
"The reason is simple, it [Canon D30] has a much better SNR. Why you ask? The Sony pixels are much, much smaller. Smaller pixels have less area to gather light. Less light means less signal. For a given semiconductor process, the noise stays the same regardless of pixel size and the signal increases with pixel size."
"why short kodak" Because they are just one of 100s of companies working in the space, and they need to compete with everyone else there. They have no intrinsic advantage, as they do in chemical imaging. Without the revenue base of consumer photography, how can they possibly support their curent size? -db
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
I have seen Minority Report on one of these digital theaters in Westwood, CA. All I can say about it is negative:
- color resultion: really really suck. It appears they use 4-4-3 bits for RGB or something equally inferior. Openeing scene had very visible banding instead of smooth gradients. While this could be dithered, it was not, probably because of compression requirements. It truly sucked, or have I already said that.
- pixel resolution: is OK, but the black space between pixels is visible. That makes the pixels visible, and that sucks. They need a better LCD panel.
Changes they have to make before I consider digital is:
a) higher color fidelity
b) possibly higher resolution (1.5x - 2x horiz. and vert. too)
c) dead space elimination between pixels
d) less agressive compression (ie. bigger storage)
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
- Resolution needs to get up to 35mm film levels, which are somewhere around 3K by 6K on a good day. 70mm levels (4x that) would be even better. Current "digital cinema" is actually less than HDTV resolution, although the compression is much less so it looks better.
- Digital cameras need to be better. Right now, you have to use 3-imager CCD cameras to avoid those dumb artifacts that come from all three colors not coming from exactly the same place. The Foveon imager should fix this. (One effect of this is that black and white line patterns stay black and white, without color fringing. There are lots of "video no-nos" that film doesn't have.)
- Frame rates need to go up. 72FPS digital would be a big improvement, and it's not out of reach.
The Showscan experiments indicate that somewhere in the range of 60-100FPS, humans max out and can't detect higher frame rates. So that's the goal.
A generation raised on 75FPS video games sees 24FPS film as choppy.
- Better data storage is needed for distribution. Those 1TB optical disks discussed yesterday on Slashdot are a possibility. Right now, a digital movie is delivered as a truckload of hard drives. (Can't compress much. Compression artifacts look awful on the big screen.)
- Projectors still cost way too much. $150K is insane. Theater owners will listen when it gets down to $25K or so. Which it should. The big problem now is that the quantities sold to theaters are so tiny that they're uninteresting to companies like TI, who build those micromirror display devices.
- The whole production chain needs to be upgraded for these bigger images. That's expensive, but there's no technical obstacle.
The current sub-HDTV digital theater technology just isn't worth deploying. It's nice to get rid of film dirt and pulldown jitter, but not worth it.When this is all done, though, high-quality digital movies won't cost any more to make than current 35mm productions, and will probably become cheaper over time. But it's a few years away.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
There are two issues that mitigate against wide adoption of Maxivision48:
/. just recently), we could have a complete digital copy of a theatre-projection quality movie on a single 300 mm disc very soon. It's a lot cheaper to duplicate and ship a 300 mm optical disc than to make film prints of a movie, especially a Maxivision48 print.
1. It requires 50% MORE film to show a Maxivision48 movie. Currently, a 24 fps 35 mm print weighs about 35 pounds per 20-minute reel; a Maxivision48 format print would only last roughly 11-12 minutes for the one reel that holds 20 minutes of 35 mm 24 fps film. That would make a two-hour movie on a per print basis head somewhere way up into the stratosphere in terms of duplicating and shipping costs.
2. Maxivision48 projection still does not address the issues of outright physical wear on film (scratches, film breakage, etc.).
With the development of very high-density optical disc storage technology (like that mentioned on