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The Future of Digital Cinema
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times recently had an interesting article on the future of digital cinema. The article talks mainly about the Digital Cinema Initiatives consortium (formed last year by a group of seven major studios) and its work towards establishing a set of standards for theatrical digital projection. DigitalCinemaMag also had an article back in February about the consortium's efforts which included a few more technical details."
I'm totally stoked about the possibilities of Digital Cinema, but my one big gripe is that there is no discussion of going to a higher framerate. Watching film movies the framerate really is annoying, especially in panning shots, everything is just a blurry mess. Now, at the cusp of change, when they are defining a new standard, is one of the few chances to change that. But I don't see diddly about it in the article, and haven't heard anything anywhere about anyone even considering it. What's up with that? Give us quality!!
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Here at Techtree.com is an interesting viewpoint about how, if the open source community doesn't take any action, "Microsoft will become the âcontrollerâ(TM) of all digital entertainment you see around you."
He says that the movie industry is already happily using Microsoft's Windows Media 9 for digital theater, and they're lobbying hard to get into many other standards commities.
The columnist also goes on to say "It is inevitable. DRM and Copy Protection will get implemented whether consumers want it or not. The choice of whether we want it to be based on an open technology, or a proprietary technology from one of the âworstâ(TM) purveyors of monopolistic regimes, lies with us, the consumers and the open source community.".
Don't get me wrong, it will certainly be cool for everything to be digital end to end (well, at least to the screen...until they come up with a digital uplink to pipe the movies right into our brains), but will digital cinema help, hinder, or have no effect on the plot of the movies? Meaning, will it make it easier to produce a movie, so more time and energy can be focused on developing the characters and improving the dialog and re-working scenes until the actors get it right?
I hope so...
Am I the only one who doesn't *want* cinemas to move to digital projection? I mean, sure, go ahead and *improve* the quality of the picture and sound, but there's a big difference in quality between a virgin 70mm print (or IMAX) and the blocky (relatively) low-resolution version used by Lucas on AoTC.
Are we going to get stuck watching poor pixelated versions of movies for years?
There are also big economic advantages for the studios. They stand to save $1 billion each year if they no longer have to produce and ship film prints...
But digital projectors are much more expensive than conventional ones
I understand that the studios will save money by digital filming, and that each theater will have to spend a lot of money to upgrade to digital... so here's my question. If there are around 5000 theaters in the country, with a total of 20,000 screens (actual numbers would help), and each screen costs $20,000 (seems like much, but OK), why don't the studios purchase the equipment for the theaters? Given $20,000 for 20,000 screens, that's only $400,000,000. If it'll save them $1,000,000,000, why not? Even if each screen costs $50,000, and there are 50,000 screens in the country, that's STILL "only" $2,500,000,000. Given that they're certainly not short on money, it seems like a sensible investment to me.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
"... the much less than 2K digital masters for "Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones"
This explains why AOTC was noticeably pixilated at the particular digital theatre where I saw it - colour was exceptional though.
Here's a bit of info on Finding Nemo, which on the other hand was a digital gem. No noticeable pixilation, and vivid colour.
From others' comments about AOTC YMMV but I don't know why. Does anyone know why different people seeing this saw such a disparity in picture quality?
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Digital cameras will die when high quality optics become free/very cheap. Until then, the novelty cameras in devices like phones will have plastic lenses and terrible optics in order to cut costs on a feature no one really cares about.
People pay for quality in a dedicated digital camera.
It's mostly been considered just a novelty, but maybe digital cinema could usher in an era where more movies in shot and shown in glorious 3D; some theatres could have LCD shutter glasses wired to every seat.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Even if each screen costs $50,000, and there are 50,000 screens in the country, that's STILL "only" $2,500,000,000.
"Only $2.5 billion? But where would they find this cash? If films like Forrest Gump and Spider-Man can't make a profit then where's the money coming from?
What's that you say? Those fims did make money but the accounting figures were just manipulated so as to screw the original writers so that they couldn't get anything from the net profits that they were promised? You mean the people who run the movie business would rather screw people over than pay them the royalties that they're due?
Yet, somehow, you hope that the Hollywood moguls that are so tight with other people's money would spend some of their own cash to benefit others?
Wow, you are naive aren't you?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
1. how many megapixels does a digital camera need to shoot at to be superior to highest quality analog camera?
2. can question number one apply to digital video cameras?
3. are movies nowadays shot with digital cameras?
I saw Episode II in DLP at Odeon, Leicester Square and at first glance it looked good - there was none of the dirt, scratches or jumping associated with a badly looked after and badly presented 35mm print. But I soon realised that it looked somehow dull - it had none of filmic qualities that bring a life to a print which come from 35mm. It was impressive for an emerging standard, but the quality wasn't quite as good as a well presented 35mm print and there's no way that even touches 70mm prints.
Another point is the digital cinema takes away the skill that comes with projecting a film - go read the forums over at Film Tech and see the care and pride those guys take over the film presentations at the cinemas they work. Those guys know how to present a film properly.
For me it'll be sad day when showing a film becomes a case of clicking "go".
Theft is a bigger issue which may be why the studios are trying to get to a level where you have to have the hardware to get an image that blows away whatever a pirate would use to show the movie. Several years ago, Silicon Light developed a display technique that appeared quite promising. It was a high speed optical switch that appeared to be easily scaleable from the 1080 lines they originally demonstrated. Even at 1080 lines, the contrast ratio was 3000:1. Unfortunately, Silicon Light sold the display technology to Sony who has done zip with it in the intervening 3 years.
What matters is not image quality in a test laboratory, but image quality in the local gigaplex. I believe biggest factor determining image quality in current theatres using traditional film is not the technology, but whether or not management gives a damn about picture quality.
For example, take dirty film. There is no reason why film should get scratched or dirty if it is being handled competently. In at least perfectly ordinary local theatre (Showcase Cinemas in Randolph--no, I have NO connection with them except as a satisfied customer) prints run for weeks and weeks and still look absolutely pristine. In other venues, I've literally never seen a showing where the film was clean and unscratched.
So far, I have managed to go to two DLP screenings in the Boston area. In one case ("Ocean's Eleven" at the Randolph Showcase) it looked pretty much the same as 35 mm. Some ways better, some ways worse. Beautifully steady and flicker-free (better) but I had to sit a little further back to avoid seeing visible pixel structure (worse), and it seemed to me the blacks were greyish. Really, about a wash.
The other time... ("Fantasia 2000" at the General Cinema in Burlington)... well, what can I say? The gear was out of commission and they were showing 35mm film in the house that had been designated as showing digital.
Given that the equipment in both venues was probably almost brand-new and hardly used, 50% success in just having the equipment function is not a very good track record.
When operated IN REAL LIFE under the same management as current theatres, using projectionists trained the same amount... how is digital cinema going to hold up? No, the picture will never look scratched, bits being bits, but the media can still get scratched... will there be dropouts? skips? Poorly maintained analog produces a poor picture, but poorly maintained digital can't give you a show at all.
Currently, digital films are loaded off of multiple DVD's onto big, fast disk arrays. How will those fare? Are the disks hot-swappable and will all the theatres have a good supply of spares to swap in if they fail?
Not only does digital projection equipment cost five or ten times what conventional projectors cost, but conventional projectors have service lives that are extremely long--many, many decades. Somehow I doubt this will be true of digital projectors.
Do you really think theatres are going to be anxious to put in projection equipment that is an order of magnitude more expensive, just in order to get a picture that is ROUGHLY the same quality as they get from 35mm? And far, far lower than the quality available from 70mm, common just a few years ago but almost extinct now (the current generation may never have a chance to really _see_ "Lawrence of Arabia" or "2001, A Space Odyssey").
The move to digital cinema is obviously beneficial to studios and distributors, but I'm darned if I see what it does for theatres or theatregoers.
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35mm REGULAR has about 4000 "analog" pixels of horizontal resolution.
A 16 megapixel camera has two discrete greens for ever red and blue CCD cell yielding a sad-ass 16/4=4 megapixel image (or 2000*2000 in theory) though there are no 16 megapixel cameras really, and the best tri-layer camera for 5,000 bucks is almost 2000 across but takes 9.4 SECONDS to save a single image.
The solution : a 100,000 dollar Thomson Viper.
The Thomson Viper can take a 1920*1080 pixel 10 bit (log color compressed) frame every 6oth of a second and stream it out on TWO DIGITAL cables.
Wow! thats a lot of data.
It cannot even store its own data in-camera on that 100,000 dollar system.
How does it work? Mirrors. Little scanning mirrors.
CCD technology will not be able to replace film (35mm) for at least another 5 years, if ever.
And there are alternative single sprocket 35mm standards, and of course 72mm and iMax.
digital photography for film is a sad ass joke!
You mean the Sony Ericcson P800, which does everything you describe, and according to most people, does it well (sans megapixel sensor)?
Definitely not the Nokia 3650 which I have, which has all the features but just can't do MP3 justice yet...
--Dan
The summary is that the new technology will enable Hollywood to crush all competition, small and large. Through closed "standards" they will control who can use the projection equipment and what it plays and when. Because no local copy exists, it will all be under the control of the current big movie makers. By using a an industry body like the DVD consortium, they can make sure that no one but them has access to the secret format the projectors use and keep projection equipment so high, no one can afford to have anything but them. So, it will be there way or the highway. No mix and match and no competition except from complete independetnts who will be hobbled by a lack of equivalent quality equipment.
It's the same old story since media was invented, patent, legislate, collude and screw everyone you can. Nasty My prediction is that the DMCA will be used to prevent people from making free projectors the same way it's being used to keep people from modding their xbox or refilling toner cartidges.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"But because the movie-viewing experience can be a distinctly subjective one, the Digital Cinema Laboratory is also using "expert viewers," motion picture industry professionals, to evaluate picture quality and is considering forming a viewing panel of college students, too. Picture quality is not a simple question of numbers," Mr. Swartz said. "We need to understand better how our brains fill in parts of a picture to improve its perceived quality, even if that data is not literally on the screen."
I had heard that Lucas's digital format was significantly less detailed than regular film and had discounted its popularity for the near future. Maybe once it came up to film quality, I would think it a viable option. But this quote seems to suggest that most of film's quality is lost to viewers because either we don't need it, or decreased quality wouldn't be noticable as our minds would fill it in. I would be very interested in finding out more on this subject.
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
This is just a proposal for how it might work but something to note is that most movie theaters use teenagers as the bulk of their employees. Many hackers start as teenagers. I see some interesting developments occuring in the future for digital cinema.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Video compression is done largely by storing only what is different for each frame compared to the previous one. And obviously, the more frames per second you have, the more identical to each other they will look.
So I suspect even a frame rate doubling will not have more than a 5-10% effect on file size. Just a laymans opinion, but still.
And with the same disclaimer, I'm pretty sure you can get much better than 5:1 compression.
Somehow, I have my doubts that Hollywood, as big and stupid as it may be, is capable of crushing independent cinema completely.
Theater owners probably understand that digital projectors are a major cost to them, and thus they will make sure that the adoption of Hollywood's digital cinema platform goes as slowly as possible. The theater chains are major corporations, too, and if enough of them see no inherent advantage to switching to digital, why wouldn't they raise enough of a stink to delay the transition for years?
Plus, even if the major theater chains do play along with digital cinema, there will still be art house theaters in most cities that cling to traditional film projectors and independent and foreign films. CDs may have made vinyl less ubiquitous, but it never really died. Film will be the same. Let's not forget, also, that many people out there would just as soon rent a video or DVD than go to the theater. Straight-to-video may still carry a stigma, of course, but it's still as good a way to get a film on the market as any, especially if it your town lacks a decent art house cinema. Before the decade is out, straight-to-Internet may be an option for indie filmmakers as well.
Filmmaking is a creative enterprise. I'm sure that people with vision will find creative ways to get those visions out on the market. Pi got made. Memento got made. They won't be the last.
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I work with cutting-edge digital video entertainment systems and have seen a bunch of compression and display technologies. I was not impressed by the Star Wars ep 2 digital theater projection I watched at a theater in Arlington, VA last year.
I watched the show at a distance of about two screen heights, and I could make out pixels and annoying aliasing problems throughout.
The colors were good, the picture was steady, no compression artifacts to speak of, but the resolution was clearly inferior to the 35mm projection I had seen the day before on a comparable screen. The end credits in particular were hard to read and had visible scaling artifacts.
This is clearly unsatisfactory. Will the 'standard' for digital theater projection have significantly higher resolution than what we saw last year? Will the early adopters get burned?
According to the Star Wars website, ep II was shot on a Sony digital movie camera with a resolution of 2.2 megapixels, which is just slightly more than regular HD. I don't even think the theater projection used had full HD resolution. The projection system seemed to have an odd pixel resolution which didn't match that of the movie, which may account for the apparent blur and pixel artifacts.
I'm generally not a fan of the idea of all-digital theaters. Too much control from Hollywood and potential for dirty tricks - in the future, when you see a movie in the theater one day may, your friend who sees it the next day may have a wholly different experience as the picture could be continously 'tweaked' and digitally re-edited to 'reflect' the whims of mass audience and address their concerns. Ick. Revisionism abounds.
If Star Wars ep 4 was released today, Lucas might have launched the picture with Han shooting first, the next day wimping out and deciding Greedo should be shown shooting first. Ya know?
Not to mention the asshats who wants to build 'macrovision' into the theater projection systems foiling would-be camcorder bootleggers; this technology supposedly alters the framerate erratically so that a camcorder will fail to sync up with it. But what will THAT do to the playing experience?