IMAX Develops Movie Transfer Technology

kazama writes: "Toronto-based IMAX said that it had developed a new process called DMR (for "digital remastering") to digitally convert conventional 35mm films to the IMAX format without significant loss of detail. 'Our customers have been saying to us for years, "We want to see Star Wars on IMAX, we want to see The Matrix on IMAX." and DMR is the technology which is the enabler,' Co-CEO Bradley Wechsler told Reuters. 'That's going to be an increasingly important part of the company's performance.'" So what movies would you want to see on IMAX?

Comments

Re:How do they do it now?

[anotherone]

You might have seen a 70mm print (as opposed to a 35mm print) of Spiderman on the imax screen. It wouldn't be full Imax size, but it's a lot bigger.

70mm vs 35mm

[pagercam2]

I beleive that the average theater uses 35mm film but in the high end theaters they often also can use 70mm. In a multiplex that I used to go to in VA they had two screens of 70mm for new/big releases and featured that they were 70mm while the other 10 screens were 35mm. IIRC IMAX is a 70mm format, but I assume different from the run of the mill 70mm film projector, so they could use the higher quality 70mm film in an IMAX, but it wouldn't be up to full IMAX standards, what they are suggesting here is that they can digitally enhance the film from 35mm to make it acceptable on IMAX screens.

imax dmr

[intuition]

If a feature length film was shown on an IMAX screen, the studios and IMAX were probably looking the other way.

IMAX and the Hollywood studios don't want some hack to display regular film onto an IMAX sized screen. Its going to look bad, period. Even if you go to a multiplex that has a "very large screen" (General Cinema's Green Monster Screen in Boston, MA comes to mind) movies look like crap on it. Jittery and grainy.

However, IMAX and the Hollywood studios are waking up to the fact of revenue potential from full feature length films being shown on IMAX sized screens. Of course this must be done according to IMAX's brand level of quality. IMAX DMR represents the initiative to do get this done. The first feature length hollywood film to be shown with this technology will be Apollo 13. So if you think you have seen a movie with this technology and it wasn't Apollo 13 pre-screen and you were a member of the public when you saw it, then you are deluding yourself.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast represented an earlier "beta" generation of this technology. So if you saw that you get some idea.

Text of a press release follows :

Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and IMAX Corporation bring Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience to IMAX screens worldwide.

Apollo 13 tells the dramatic true story of the heroic actions needed to bring a three-astronaut crew safely back to Earth after the Apollo 13 space mission suffered catastrophic mechanical problems en route to the Moon. Made with NASA's collaboratioin, the highly-suspenseful film is scientifically and historically accurate. Apollo 13 features strong performances from the ensemble cast, led by Oscar®-winning actor Tom Hanks, and brilliant direction by Ron Howard, another Oscar winner. Apollo 13 will be digitally re-mastered into IMAX's 15/70 format using the revolutionary IMAX DMRTM technology.

A few thoughts...

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Would it make economic sense to convert The Matrix? How many people would pay $10 to see it again on a really big screen? Maybe first run movies would be a better bet.

I, for one, would love to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen. I think it would be a great experience.

That's why you go to a theater you know. For the experience. Otherwise, DVD and VHS would've killed them a long time ago. Why bother paying high ticket prices and overcharged on underbuttered popcorn and $7 drinks? Because there's something magical about being in a huge auditorium, in a room filled with strangers, going on imaginary adventures with people who never existed.

I would kill to see a marathon of Star Wars (Ep. 1,2,4,5, & 6) on IMAX (and of course do it again once Ep. 3 is finished). It would be a wonderful experience. The sights, the sounds, I think there would be absolutely nothing like it.

But there's a lot to think about here.

Firstly you have the screen itself. Last year, when Beauty and the Beast made more bundles of cash by making a "Special IMAX Edition" there had to be a change. And I'm not talking resolution, I'm talking frame-wise.

IMAX screens are 1.33:1 (television) aspect ratios. Most films are 1.85:1, and most of the classics are 2.35:1

So when they blow up films to fit this huge screen, not only are they losing resolution, they're losing part of the image all over again. It's called Pan & Scan, or Hack 'N Slash, depending on your viewpoint.

I could go on the huge tirade about how P&S is awful, how its destroying cinema as we know it, how it scares away Joe Blow from the infamous "black bars" and "why can't I see the rest of the picture" bullshit that myself and others have dealt with for years (ie, those in defense of widescreen).

The point is that The Matrix was not filmed in "Open Matte." Open Matte is where the black bars are put there intentionally, so the film can be shown in theaters properly. So when the home video comes around, you don't even have to worry about loss of picture, because the 1.33:1 frame actually shows more than what you originally saw in the theater (the great Run Lola Run was done this way). In those cases IMAX reproduction would rely solely on the resolution, with nothing else to worry about.

However, most of the films that are "classics" are in 2.35:1 "Superscope" meaning that when you pan and scan, you lose up to 33% of the film. For example, you have Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc (all of the Indiana Jones films for that matter), Lawrence of Arabia, Pulp Fiction, etc etc. The list can go on.

So when you think about IMAX reproduction of films, the frame is more important than the resolution. If you pan and scan a classic, you don't get the classic, you get what an editor "chose" to see at a particular point. And this to me is paramount.

Disney struck a few 70mm prints of Tron in 1999...

[isaac]

Disney actually has a few 70mm prints of TRON (complete w/ remastered multi-channel digital soundtrack). They were struck in 1999, for some reason, and shown at the El Capitan (a one-screen Hollywood movie palace owned by Disney). They looked gorgeous, although they did reveal the limits of the source material. (Fun factoids: the scenes with live actors inside the computer were filmed in 70mm black and white, then blown up to cel size for rotoscoping/effects work, and re-shot on an animation stand. The computer animation was rendered on an IBM System 360 mainframe with custom software by Abel Systems.)

OT:
Before the screening there was a little round-table discussion and Q/A session with Steven Lisburger (writer/director), Bruce Boxleitner (who played Alan/Tron), Cindy Morgan (who played Lora/Yori), and one of the Abel systems people who made all those computer animated sequences possible - I think it was Tim McGovern. The director mentioned that he always thought of TRON as "the Bill Gates story" - i.e. the plucky young programmer breaking the shackles of centralized control (IBM). He said a lot of other stuff I didn't care about - I always hated the actual plot and acting of the film - but at least the Abel Systems guy got to talk a bit about doing CGI in 1982.

-Isaac

So how does making the neg bigger improve the img?

[purduephotog]

First off- I do know what I'm talking about
How is 'remastering' an image that is shot on 35mm film improve when you blow it up to 70mm? I mean, realistically, what this is saying is that you don't need to ever shoot 4x5 cameras- just shoot 35mm and all that precious details will magically come out when you digitize it. Poor Ansel Adams- if he had been alive now he could just use his $35 disposable camera and get those huge blowups with startling detail

OK I think you've caught the drift. Film has a limited resolution. Original IMAX uses 70mm film to get 4x the negative area (hence they can resolve quite a bit more detail than standard film). The only advantage I see to this is the marketing ploy- Genuine IMAX Film SIZE!. You don't gain detail, you don't gain ANYTHING that isn't already on the film. And since you are starting off on a small format to begin with, its not going to get better.
Now don't get me wrong, you can improve some work with digital sharpening and whatnot- going to a larger format helps there. But it in't going to give you the same quality of an IMAX experience compared with a film that is 70mm. It just can't be done. See my earlier jibes about 4x5 cameras if you need further humour ;)

Re:How do they do it now?

[shepd]

>Thus, they probably have another technique which cleans up the film grain by comparing it to subsequent and/or prior frames.

Yes, and you can try it yourself. Its VERY much worth the effort, even if it takes a lot longer to postprocess your video.

The more random the noise, the better. Its excellent for TV shows on VHS or from broadcast TV (or so I've found).

Oh, and if you like to make things disappear without noticing it (great for those HUGE ads in the corner of a TV show) try this, or this.

[Somebody with some experience please port these to Linux! You would be so well thanked! This would be really nice too! No, I can't do it myself, I'm really not that good.]