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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."
Choosier moms choose GIF.
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."
"Some say a film print is equivalent to 5,000 lines of resolution, but by the time it's been shown a lot, its effective resolution may be no more than 800 lines," Mr. Darrow said.
With today's projectors around 1,300 lines, it seems there's a long ways to go before picture quality or cost make this a viable option for most theaters. As a moviegoer, I really don't care whether the projection is digital or film - picture and sound quality are what's important.
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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.
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as of 20 June 2003, all Digital Cinema will be done using the animated GIF format...
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?
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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!
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.
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Absolutely yes without question.
Which is to say, it probly won't have any effect on the major studios, since the vast majority of their expenses aren't related to film. George Lucas might have saved a million bucks when he shot Attack of the Clones digitally, but at that point who cares?
However, digital processes open up a vast new potential for low-budget films. It will soon be possible to shoot a million dollar film for $100,000, a $100,000 film for $10,000, and a $10,000 for $1,000, with no loss in picture quality whatsoever. It is difficult to overstate the impact this will have. I might go so far as to say it will impact film in the same way that the printing press impacted the novel.
1. I was one of those "grain sniffers". I was at a demo of an upcoming 11,000 lumen high res projector standing a few feet away from the screen, and I couldn't see any pixellation. The brightness and sharpness was astounding. Plus this project runs Linux, decrypting the image on the fly.
2. Image quality depends a lot on the projectionists. I sat in the projection booth of a megaplex for a week a while ago and saw three different projectionists opening up in the morning, and while all of them cleaned the lens, film gates and transport mechanism on the projector, not one of them cleaned the glass at the front of the booth. You could see dirt and finger marks on the glass even before they struck the lamphouse. I asked one of the projectionists about it, and he was pretty contemptuous of the type of audience they got at that plex and the type of low brow action-heavy movies they showed there. I got the impression he wanted to be at some arts house, and maybe if he'd had more respect for the audience he would have worried more about their experience. On the other hand, I work with another projectionist who is meticulous about every aspect of the showing.
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"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.
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