'Hobbit' Creates Big Data Challenge

CowboyRobot writes "In the past five years there has been an 8x increase in the amount of content being generated per every two-hour cinematic piece. Although 3D is not new, modern 3D technologies add from 100% to 200% more data per frame. In 2009, Avatar was one of the first movies to generate about a petabyte of information. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was shot in a new digital format called High Frame Rate 3-D, which displays the movie at 48 frames per second, twice the standard 24-fps rate that's been in place for more than 80 years." But with digital storage transcending some other limitations of conventional projection techniques, it's not just framerate that directors are now able to play with more easily; it's the length of movies themselves, which stats suggest just keep getting longer.

Comments

How big was the hobbit?

[iONiUM]

I read TFA, and nowhere does it say how big The Hobbit was.. only that Avatar was about a Petabyte. Why isn't this stated anywhere? It's very frustrating, and also makes the article less useful, since its entire premise is that "The Hobbit creates big data challenge" with no specificity.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the torrent sites; 2.32 GB though they do use the lossy video camera conversion...

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering this myself, and (even though it was for Avatar) was that petabyte figure for just the film, or did it include footage that wasn't utilised, extras, cast interviews, etc? Also wonder what resolution they are capturing original footage at - could be future proofing for 2160p and 4320p.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Shoe Puppet]

That petabyte must be without any compression. The Hobbit (HFR, 3D) as used by a digital cinema projector still fits on a 500GiB hard drive.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW:
RED Epic Cameras: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema_Camera_Company#Epic-M_and_Epic-X
5120 x 2700 @ 48FPS

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

That petabyte must be without any compression. The Hobbit (HFR, 3D) as used by a digital cinema projector still fits on a 500GiB hard drive.

Presumably (although there are few hard stats on paper) the Petabyte for Avatar was for all the media that was generated during production. Certainly the final copy, with whatever compression is appropriate, would be much smaller just as in the "olden days" many miles of film were used to produce one final reel for screening.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA also seems to neglect that The Hobbit was also shot in 5K resolution, which only adds to the raw amount of data they'd have used.

An interesting thing to note as well would be the significant increase in man hours spent on post production. Stereoscopy already doubles the work load of roto/cleanup artists, animators, etc. Doubling the frame rate would double that again.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[MickyTheIdiot]

For some reason I find this observation hilariously funny...

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

thats a cam version, the question is how big is the Hobbit when sent to the theater itself, and not how big is the camed version.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[CohibaVancouver]

thats a cam version

I don't bother downloading pirated movies so I gotta ask - Do people *really* download and watch movies that have been filmed in the theater with a camcorder? How the smeg is that even watchable? Sounds absolutely horrid.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[G00F]

It;'s a good way to see if the movie is even worth the drive to a theater, sadly most IMO, are not.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[sunking2]

The data space isn't about how large the end result film is. It's the data storage requirements for the entire production. This would include raw footage, cgi generation, presumably all archiving, and probably many other things. As in, I have a new movie I'm creating and need a petabyte of disk space to accomplish this. Not, I'm creating a 1 petabyte movie file.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[bughunter]

Well, I can't find an official number, but we can estimate using data from here and here:

From the first link, which says the max data rate is 250Mbps, and doubling that to account for HFR, we have a 500Mbps data rate. Multiply that by the 169 minute running time and you get

500e6 bit/sec x 1/8,589,934,592 GB/bit x 169 min x 3600 sec/min = 35,400 GB

(assuming the limit on precision is the running time at three significant digits).

Divide that by 1024 GB/TB and you have about 34.6 TB. Not impossible to set up, and probably far less expensive than the projector... but that's for the non-IMAX version, which probably explains why I could only find three theaters with the HFR IMAX version near my house in Pasadena CA.

I also expect that some theaters will not operate at the maximum data rate but use some other, more lossy compression. It's probably safe to assume a lot of theaters are showing distributed versions that are about 10 or 20 TB large.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Cinder6]

I did it once, and actually watched all the way through. Before the second Evangelion movie came out in the US, it was only available as a cam version with fansubs. Once it came out in the US, I bought the DVD and deleted the crappy cam.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[mill3d]

Actually, it's all the data required as input to make the *final* frames. We're talking many layers of video at 32 bit per channel (128bit images), VFX cache data which can be GBs per second of footage, thousands of textures that are also GBs in size, point clouds... All of that is meant to retain a maximum amount of flexibility before finalizing the footage. Read up on the REYES pipeline for detailed info.

Disclaimer: Film and animation professional and professor.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently there are DVD versions already out.

Leaked review copies with watermarks, etc.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I don't even bother to download anymore. If it's new it usually sucks anyway (I am going to see The Hobbit - but I haven't yet and it's the extreme exception). The stuff I like I've bought on DVD. I have a nice big 120" screen at home with a 1080p projector. I don't give a crap about 3D, and am quite content with what I have. It beats the snot out of going to the theater and I always like what's playing.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Joce640k]

Do people *really* download and watch movies that have been filmed in the theater with a camcorder?

Yep, I know people that do.

I know it because they tell me how proud they were that they did it: "I downloaded The Hobbit the other day! Do you want a copy?"

Also people with kids who can't afford the time/money to take their kids to see every goddam movie but their kids can say they've seen it. etc.

Not everybody is a video/audiophile. They just want the latest stuff.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[SuricouRaven]

For some people, speed is everything. They want the film, they want it right now. Sometimes the movie isn't available by other means, either because of a regional release schedule or the cost or inconvenience of a cinema visit.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[timeOday]

It would be kind of strange if HFR doubles the data requirement, since the frame-to-frame correlation is even stronger than at the lower FPS (less change between frames). (Then again maybe the editing codecs don't do interframe compression so it's easier to jump anywhere with single-frame accuracy?)

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[timeOday]

Oh boy, a real live knowledgeable person.

Would you happen to know why they filmed the Hobbit at 5K when most theaters are 2K (are they still?), and (more to the point) the better theaters project 4K? It seems like 5K dowscaled to 4K would be worse quality than just shooting 4K in the first place.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[JazzLad]

So you bought a 1080p projector when your content is 480p? Can I sell you some cables?

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

AT 4K, twice the frame rate, and twice the number of frames for 3D, we are talking 4 x 2 x 2 = 16x over a normal 1080P Bluray film. Makes sense, when you think a Bluray disc is what? 25GB+

However, 4K should really be using a new codec, so it is better than a linear scaling of the H264 AVC codec used for Bluray. 4K with a next-gen codec might only require 2.5x more data over current 1080P, rather than 4x.

When 4K comes to the home (in a few years time), it will be encoded with the new codec, to reduce bandwidth costs on cable/satellite. Using the new codec with the same efficiency currently used by Internet rippers would allow a 4K movie to still fit on the same Bluray discs used today.

As for compression used by the peeps who make the movies, well they have various lossless or near lossless options, that reduce storage needs somewhat. They cannot use high compression codecs while they are still in post-production, for obvious quality reasons. Also, one assumes 'The Hobbit' has its eye on future home releases, should HFR, 3D and 4K ever become popular in domestic equipment.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[PCM2]

Not everybody is a video/audiophile. They just want the latest stuff.

Considering how often I see TVs configured at the wrong aspect ratio, I'd say a good majority of the world feels this way.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they are talking about all the raw material and intermediate stuff, including every second of "film" every camera has run during the project, all the audio that was ever recorded (multiple mics on set, additional dialog, music etc. recorded afterwards), all the 3d models, rendered, composited, color corrected, specific versions for 48fps, 24fps, 3d and 2d.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[log0n]

Having the additional resolution helps preserve quality during the making process. For example, most music is recorded at least at 24bit 48-96khz per track (dozens to hundreds depending on the music), even tho the destination will usually be 16bit 44-48khz. The extra fidelity makes all the eventual filtering, dithering, resampling, correction, compression, etc ultimately that much higher in quality.

Disclaimer: worked in TV and music production.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[elistan]

It's been a long, long time since I've knowingly clicked an informationweek article in a slashdot submission...

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[mister2au]

I also wondered the same ... particularly given the choice between 5K/48fps and 4K/60fps ... t would seem the latter is a more natural choice given 4K and 60 fps favored as future standards.

The only possible reason i came up with was the aspect ratio ... it is 5K widescreen at a 2.35:1 ratio (ie 5120 x 2134) and 2134 is more or less the 4K vertical height of 2160 ... so trimming the widescreen in the future brings it back to basically 4K format

So in this case, I guess 5K Widescreen is really a widescreen version of 4K !! Starts to make more sense that way.

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[forkazoo]

Would you happen to know why they filmed the Hobbit at 5K when most theaters are 2K (are they still?), and (more to the point) the better theaters project 4K? It seems like 5K dowscaled to 4K would be worse quality than just shooting 4K in the first place.

Several reasons. First off, the camera they used, a Red Epic, has a 5k sensor. You can shoot at lower resolutions if you want, but then you are only using part of the sensor. You would shoot at a lower resolution on this type of camera if you needed to shoot at a very high frame rate (The sensor can basically spit out X pixels per second maximum. That can be 48 high res frames per second or 120 lower res frames per second, etc.) Shooting with just a center cut of the sensor instead of the whole sensor has an impact on the depth of field, and the amount of total light the sensor is usefully gathering. It also effectively "zooms in" the image. Obviously, they could have shot with a different type of camera that shoots at a lower resolution natively, but chose not to. (Alexa is a very popular high and camera in a similar price bracket, with a similar sized sensor, and it generally shoots normal 1080p, for example.)

Past the details of the particular camera, downscaled 5k generally looks better than "native" 4k. When red advertises "5k" pixels, they are playing a bit fast and loose with the definition of a pixel. There are 5000+ "sensels" or sensor element sites in a line of the picture, but each sensel is any one of red, green, or blue, but not all three. OTOH, a 4k display generally means that you have 4000+ pixels, each with red, green, *and* blue together making the pixel. So, you have to do some resampling on the image, and footage is always a bit soft at the "advertsing" resolution on something like a 5k Epic. The smallest details that you can confidently resolve are actually a few pixels across, rather than pixel-perfect.

What's more, shooting at the highest resolution available gives you a bit of room for fucking up. You can shoot at 5k, realise the damn sound guy is visible at the edge of frame, holding a microphone, and zoom in the image a bit to crop him out without things getting too terribly soft. IOW, the director has "Artistic reframing options in post production."

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[crispytwo]

I think your math is wrong FTFY:
500e6 bit/sec x 1/8,589,934,592 GB/bit [google.com] x 169 min x 60 sec/min = 590.2 GB
still huge

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read the first 105 comments and most have missed the point of the article. What's being described is the amount of data generated to CREATE the movie. In addition to what was shot, there are all the render passes, compositing layers, etc. While interesting it seems a natural consequence of the shooting choices made. What kills me are the render times required for something like this. I just finished a 70 second animation at 1280 x720 with a small render farm and it took 3 weeks to render.

Now the answer to the question. From fxguide http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-hobbit-weta/

[That decision to shoot An Unexpected Journey in stereo and at 48fps presented two new challenges to Weta Digital at the same time. By fxguide’s own calculations, Weta Digital had to handle source footage with 25 times more pixels than on a usual production. “It was a lot more information for us,” explains Eric Saindon, “so rather than the normal 2K it was 4K images – so four times the information. Then you go to stereo which was two times that and 48fps so double it again. The amount of information we had on this film was staggering. On a film like Avatar we had about a petabyte of information – for Hobbit we’re about five or six times that information.”]

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[bughunter]

You are correct... I used the sec/hr conversion factor in error. Thanks for the correction.

And 600 GB isn't that huge. I have several 2TB hard drives that cost under $150 each...

Re:How big was the hobbit?

[mill3d]

I can't be sure but I'd wager that it has something to do with the camera technology. See here:

http://www.red.com/products/scarlet#tech-specs

The more pixels you have in the live footage, the easier it is to get clean results when adding the VFX. Think of it this way: it's easy to scale down a large digital frame, but it'll look like crap if you do the opposite since we're dealing with a pixel grid rather than analog film stock.

Comment on Movie length

[Dartz-IRL]

Am I the only one who longs for the return of an intermission? If only for a little relief rather than ducking out for 3-4 minutes and missing that one important little line of dialogue on which the whole thing pins?

Re:Comment on Movie length

[AaronLS]

Apparently not the only one:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3355921&cid=42463785

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Anonymous Coward]

*Sings* Let's all go to the looobby, let's all go to the looobby. Let's all go to the lobby and get oursevles a snack!

Re:Comment on Movie length

[interkin3tic]

Until they do bring it back, there is an app for that

Re:Comment on Movie length

[cervesaebraciator]

This would be helpful. Statistics may show that movies are getting longer, but my experience shows also that minute-for-minute they feel longer. At least they do when they're something like Michael Bay movies with their interminably long CGI-gasms (I mention Michael Bay, but most directors seem to be doing action sequences in his style; as much as I like the Hobbit, the best comment I saw about it was [paraphrased] 'I kept waiting for Peter Jackson to put down his X-Box controller and get on with the movie). An intermission would give me just enough time to think seriously about the horrible decision I've made and how hours of my life would be better spent by going home for a beer and a book.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[jdkc4d]

I have intermissions at my house all the time...when Amazon's streaming service dies mid-movie and I have to wait for it to come back up.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[ducomputergeek]

When I lived in Germany the movies had about a 10 - 15 intermission. They'd come around with snack trays like venders at a ball game here in the states. Even for 90 minute comedies there were intermissions. It was wonderful during longer movies. And probably made the theaters more money as people would use the restroom and usually by another beer, soda, snacks (the concept of free refills doesn't really exist in Europe).

Re:Comment on Movie length

[mangu]

Oh, it's an app for the phone?

At first I thought about something like a hose and a plastic bag.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Cajun Hell]

I don't long for it. It's called the space bar. mplayer pauses exactly as long as I need, whenever I need it.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[krinderlin]

Yes please.

One of the reasons I don't buy concessions is because if I do, I'll want a drink. If I drink something, I'll have to use the restroom during the movie.

I there were an intermission, I would buy those overpriced snacks.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[crypticedge]

We have a few dine in theaters here in Florida that do that too. They're rare (and more expensive per person) but it's a nice change from the standard theater style

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, there are many people who have watched movies or gone to the Theater (thats the one with a stage and live actors and a pit with orchestra) and love the idea of movies especially the 2.5+ hour movies having an intermission where we can get up stretch, pee, smoke, grab some more overpriced movie "snacks" or do whatever needs to be done to enjoy the last half of the movie.

short answer, No, we want them back.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Sir_Eptishous]

I kept waiting for Peter Jackson to put down his X-Box controller and get on with the movie

Thats brilliant! A more concise assessment of the film could not be had. We can only hope the next two films have less of a premature ejaculation vibe to them.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[vurian]

I had a free refill, once, in Europe. In Linkoping airport, where I was allowed to fill my coffee cup again from the can. I was so surprised... Never happened anywhere else. And given the quality of the coffee, I didn't bother in Linkoping airport either.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[davester666]

There's a reason why the floor is always sticky and wet...

Re:Comment on Movie length

[NatasRevol]

It's not girls who spit?

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason why the floor is always sticky and wet...

That theater's on the other side of town.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[arth1]

Coffee in Scandinavia is often with free refills and sometimes free altogether, especially with meals. And much, much stronger[*] than what Americans are used to, so I'm not surprised you didn't want a refill.

Soda, on the other hand, is typically served in much smaller glasses, often without ice unless you ask for ice, and no refills. Scandinavians just drink a lot more coffee than soda, unlike over here.

Kastrup airport outside Copenhagen was, incidentally, the first place I went where I got charged for a glass of water.

[*]: Typical Scandinavian coffee strengths:
Drip filter: 7 scoops (approximately a heaped tablespoon) per liter of water is recommended by the European Coffee Brewing Centre.
Kettle: 1 scoop per cup, plus one for the kettle. With a coffee "cup" being 125 ml, or half of a cup for other liquids.
This is about twice as strong as Americans brew coffee, but with Americans using a lot more of the bitter central American coffee than the smoother African coffee, I fully understand why they don't want it as strong.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[RDW]

An intermission would give me just enough time to think seriously about the horrible decision I've made and how hours of my life would be better spent by going home for a beer and a book.

May I suggest The Hobbit? At 1.4Mb (including the illustrations) the .epub would fit on a floppy and, I suspect, still end up saying more than Jackson's multi-petabyte trilogygasm.

"Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread." - Bilbo Baggins.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Immerman]

Yeah, but you wouldn't believe the compression algorithms necessary to let a phone replace the plastic bag..

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Anonymous Coward]

Intermissions are nice, but I'd rather directors just keep their movies to roughly 2 hours or less, especially for comedies. I think the time constraint generally makes for better movies. The same principle seems to apply for many style of music.

Have you ever walked out of a movie wishing it was longer?

Re:Comment on Movie length

[afidel]

People who use phones in the theater should be beaten with rubber hoses and then forced to watch Barney.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[magisterx]

I would rather see movies become shorter. I liked The Hobbit, but I think it would have benefitted by leaving another 20 minutes or so on the cutting room floor, including that entire first segment between Frodo and Bilbo.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[_Shad0w_]

My copy of "Doctor Zhivago" on DVD is on two discs, because it didn't fit on one. When it gets to the end of the first disc it plays the original theatrical intermission card on a loop. I just wish the DVD allowed for it, like buffering the scene so it could keep playing it while you changed disc.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[interkin3tic]

According to the description, you start the app's timer when the movie starts, and it VIBRATES when there is an opportunity to go to the bathroom.

So it can be silent, and you don't need to turn on the screen and distract anyone. So it's possible it could be used responsibly.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Anonymous Coward]

When I watched Avatar here in Germany, they had the worst possible solution I guess:

They DID have an intermission. But the snack bar was already closed. That was, incidentally, the last time I have been to the cinema. I don't really like the idea to sit in a chair half the size of the one a home, pay 5 times the price for snacks and drinks, and then not even being able to buy any of them.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[the_other_chewey]

I have never encountered a "vibration alarm" in a phone that's silent.
In most cases, the buzzing sound is actually quite annoying, and often
suprisingly loud.

I have seen people kicked out of theatre performances because they
let their phone "ring" on vibrate and completely ignored it. The whole
audience would've gladly assisted the usher.

For much less distracting alarms, a friend of mine uses a custom ringtone
of two low power clicks that goes off once.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Anonymous Coward]

YES, VERY YES.

You'd think they would do this themselves and make a deal with the cinemas to give them like 5-30% of the profits from things sold during the intermission or whatever as well.
They could have intermissionless showings and intermission showings.
More exposure to banners in the cinema. Hell, more importantly, INTERMISSION ADS.

Good god man, why have they not brought this back yet?!

Re:Comment on Movie length

[interkin3tic]

Well, that has not been my experience with vibrating phones. I don't go to theater performances where the audience can't possibly handle quiet buzzing without it totally ruining the show. I will point out that this is for movies in theaters, which are generally uncomfortably loud, not live theater.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[Bonobo_Unknown]

my experience shows also that minute-for-minute they feel longer.

That feeling... it's called boredom. Movies are getting longer, and editing looks like a lost art.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[kramulous]

At a small country town (~10,000 people, a lot of older folk) in Australia where I saw the LOTR trilogy each boxing day, the cinema had intermissions. Was fantastic. About 10-15 minutes. Made the film really enjoyable since you can stretch and all sorts. Cinema probably even makes more money since a lot of people re-snacked.

I wasn't expecting it for Fellowship and had made the toilet sprint prior.

Re:Comment on Movie length

[boshvark]

Lots of movies have intermissions these days. There's usually a year-long intermission between Part 1, Part 2, ... , Part N.

Bring back the intermission.

[Naatach]

It was so classy. I'm sure it would help with the theater owners concession sales as well.

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[vurian]

Er... You mean movie theatres in the US don't have intermissions? That would mean that people get up all the time to go for a pee. Should be pretty disturbing.

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[argStyopa]

The Cooper had not one, but TWO concession stands IN the theater at the sides, totally unobtrusive, it was glorious. 800+ seats, Cinerama (146-degree arc) screen.
I saw one of the last movies shown there - re-mastered Lawrence of Arabia.
I sat at the absolute focal point of the screens, having skipped my morning classes to catch that. I was one of 5 people in the theater.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/930

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can usually go 2 hours without needing to pee. Or do you urinate 12 times a day?

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[seinman]

Most people pee before the film starts, and do not need to again until it is over. Two to three hours is not long to wait. The few idiots who don't think of that or drink so much pop that they can't hold it anymore are the only ones who would need an intermission.

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep myself well hydrated and pee about once an hour. I can usually make it through a three hour movie by peeing beforehand and once during the movie. Three hours is simply not possible for me unless I am dehydrated. For most people three hours should be just about the limit.

But intermission should be brought back because sitting still for three hours is not healthy for anyone.

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[axl917]

Yes it was. I love the intermission during 2001, there's just something about a pause in the story accompanied by Ligeti that's just surreal.

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[Joce640k]

sitting still for three hours is not healthy for anyone.

Neither is drinking so much liquid that you have to pee every hour.

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[c0lo]

Intermission? Why? Bring back Megaupload instead!

Re:Bring back the intermission.

[viperidaenz]

A healthy pair of kidneys only needs to produce around 30ml of urine per hour for an average sized adult. Maybe you should see a doctor.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[hpacheco]

:poor guys that pirated avatar.. they had to download over a petabyte:

Who green lit this story

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is barely good marketing fluff. There is no informational value here beyond, more frame rate = more data. Post processing is hard.

Sometimes I wonder why journalism is dying, then I read crap like this. I want my 5 minutes back.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[MightyYar]

Huh? Most of the stuff you find on the various pirate channels is compressed down - at the most, you'll get a raw Blu-Ray rip. You can still get an xvid (avi usually under 2GB) version of just about anything that is available in any other format.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[jedidiah]

That's only relevant for the first copy.

Beyond that, content will be heavily re-compressed. It doesn't matter if it's Apple pushing the bits or The Pirate Bay.

200% More Data...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so your 3rd eye can maintain perspective.

What does this sentence mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

But with digital storage transcending some other limitations of conventional projection techniques, it's not just framerate that directors are now able to play with more easily; it's the length of movies themselves, which stats suggest just keep getting longer.

Digital storage transcends limitations? And the limitations were due to projection techniques? So, storage is better at doing something than projection is? Yeah, projection techniques were bad at storing my files. Storage transcends that limitation and can store my files.

Here's a better version:

Movies are also getting longer.

Re:What does this sentence mean?

[MightyYar]

I guess they mean it is easy to get carried away during the recording phase because "film" is very cheap now. This presents a storage challenge. I imagine keeping 1 PB in redundant, geographically diverse storage would get spendy fast.

I suspect it would be more cost-effective to convert the raw bits to some kind of common standard and then just save the raw footage and the finished copy. Saving all the editing stuff won't help in the long run anyway - chances are the editing programs 20 years on won't know what to do with your old working files.

Re:What does this sentence mean?

[Nos.]

Its more than that. Digital movies are much easier and cheaper to distribute (I'm talking from the studio to the theatres here). My wife used to run a small theatre and it was no fun lugging three massive spools of film up a narrow stairway to get to the project room, then splice them together, along with the theatres ads, trailers, etc.

Re:What does this sentence mean?

[CastrTroy]

1 Petabyte, while it sounds like a lot, is not an obscene amount of data. There's storage servers our there that will fit about 24 2.5 inch drives in 3u of space. In a 42U rack, that's 336 drives. So in about 3 racks full of hard drives (assuming 1GB drives), you could fit a petabyte. Now, that's no small installation, but it's not that much. Making it geographically diverse would probably present the biggest problem. I'm guessing that not all film house would do this. I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest if a flood/earthquake/fire destroyed all the footage of a movie. I don't imagine that the film was stored in geographically diverse locations 10 years ago, so I don't see why they would have changed anything going to digital.

Re:What does this sentence mean?

[MightyYar]

I figure the dirt-cheapest they could do is about 100k or so per petabyte. Of course, they then need to keep this going indefinitely... Even if they don't do any off-site backup, they certainly need at least redundant local copies. So figure 200k just for the hardware - then you need to pay someone to keep it going forever.... that cost will come down as storage gets cheaper, but of course they'll keep gobbling up more space as the cost comes down as well.

It doesn't need to all stay online, so that probably changes the equation somewhat as well. You'd still need someone to fire it up once in a while to let the data get scrubbed and to check the hardware.

Re:What does this sentence mean?

[afidel]

HP D6000, 210TB (70x 3TB) in 5U, You can get 1PB and a good chunk of render equipment (256 cores and 12TB of ram) into one rack. As far as the geographically dispersed, I know PJ sends dailies from Weta Digital to the studios and to London but that's a small percentage of the overall volume (though still a significant amount of data for the cross Pacific links).

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with the costumer side of equation, the file size reported is for the production of the picture, all shots in RAW format and the stereoscopic and 48fps factors that doubles the content each.
For your average movie rip, extra frame compression (not used in production) should take care of most of the extra bits, so don't worry... the biggest problem actually should be how to present 48fps content in the home screen... BD and TV compatibility, audio... damn, even at theaters there's some many problems with the footage showed before the actual movie, stereo incorrectly set in the trailers, audio going crazy...

Catheters

[Anonymous Coward]

Time is money. I think you're more likely to get in seat catheters before you intermissions.

Re:Catheters

[mabhatter654]

They could check for recording devices too. Shh... Don't tell the TSA.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[jandrese]

The Petabyte figure is almost certainly for all of the working copies of the movies while it was being produced. Nobody is sending a Petabyte to every theater in the country, and much less to every home. Once the movie is finished a final copy is compressed and sent to theaters and the disc authoring house. The disc authors have to further compress the image to make it fit on the Blu-Ray or DVD. Your average pirate is going to compress the movie even further because full Blu-Ray rips are still rather unwieldy for most broadband connections and personal storage solutions.

it's the length of movies themselves

[Spy Handler]

which stats suggest just keep getting longer"

And in the Hobbit's case, longer, and longer, and...... just waay too long. LOTR movies had 1000 pages of book to fill them with interesting content. Hobbit, not so much. In many of the scenes you can almost feel the director guy just out of camera view making that "stretch" motion with his hands.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Sir_Eptishous]

This.

How many times do we need to see Goblins getting knocked off wooden plank bridges by dwarves with a pole?
Not enough it seems.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Stormy Dragon]

No one edits a dwarf!

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[h4rr4r]

If it was shorter you would be bitching about all the things he skipped.

I loved the movie and I wish LOTR would have been done in a similar style. This is how you convert a book into a movie.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[rochrist]

This longer and longer business is kind of odd, because back in the golden age of Hollywood, it wasn't unusual for a film to surpass four hours. Of course, it also wasn't unusual for it to ring in at 65 minutes.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[JackDW]

"The Hobbit" needs a fan edit to bring it below the two hour mark. This should be easy for part 1, though the real editing challenge would be to do it for the entire trilogy. Tricky, but possible, because it's not a long book.

I much preferred the LotR approach of releasing shorter versions to theaters and then releasing long versions on DVD for dedicated fans.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[bughunter]

just waay too long

Disagree. I enjoyed it. My 8-year-old son enjoyed every minute of it. In fact he leaned over to me during the escape from the goblins scene and said "Dad, I'm loving this!"

Going into it, I was afraid some of the embellishments would ruin the movie, but in fact I really admired the way that Jackson embellished the novel in a way that really makes it much more of a prequel to LOTR.

(I'd elaborate but I'd be getting into spoiler territory, and my boss is liable to walk in at any moment...)

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[h4rr4r]

A fan edit to shorten it?
Sounds like the opposite of fan to me, if you want to shorten it.

If your attention span is so short how did you ever make it through the book?

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[LongearedBat]

The Hobbit: An Unexpectedly Long Journey

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that we should be fine with movies that take as long to watch as it takes to read the novel?
Cause that's insane, bro.
Completely different media, difference experiences, different standards. Duh.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[h4rr4r]

If you want it to cover every detail you might have too.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[ganjadude]

I watched it yesterday. and all in all i thought it was a pretty good movie an decent story. I am also biased because I spent 3 years working for howard shore, the man who writes the score.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[ultranova]

If you want it to cover every detail you might have too.

Works converted from one media to another are called adaptations because they're supposed to adapt, not carbon-copy, the work, because different medias have different strengths. This means that some parts get expanded, others cut, and the viewpoint is often different. A director who wants to cover every detail is not doing his job.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Sir_Eptishous]

What book did you read? "The Hawbit"?

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[afgam28]

Granted, the special effects were well done, but "a decent story"? All I remember was this:

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!!!

Some dwarves, a hobbit and a wizard go on an "adventure". They get into trouble, and then the wizard saves them. Then they get into trouble again, and the wizard saves them again. Then they get into trouble again, and the wizard summons some really big birds to save them again.

I still don't understand why they didn't just take the birds from the start, and all the way to the end. It would've saved a lot of trouble, not to mention hard disk space.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[JackDW]

Well, I thought I was a Peter Jackson fan, but I guess I'm not, since real fans don't criticise.

I don't recall getting bored during the book at all. But I was bored during the film. It really dragged on. It's not so much the plot development and the story - those are fine. It's the action sequences. They are repetitive and interminable. Some of them could be cut out completely, while others could be significantly shortened, and the film would be better for it. There is a tradition of "fan edits" that make bad films better, c.f. "The Phantom Menace", and "The Hobbit" is in dire need of that treatment.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Joce640k]

Disagree. I enjoyed it.

Me too. I saw it yesterday and it wasn't long or boring at all. I also liked the 48fps (and I don't see why anybody wouldn't like it...)

Is everybody a bunch of short-attention-span whiners these days?

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Joce640k]

Maybe you just need to relax more and enjoy life.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was shorter, the book would be ONE GODDAMN MOVIE instead of having to stretch the shit out of it and invent all kinds of new crap not in the book to fill the time.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[viperidaenz]

I saw it about a week ago. I was surprised when it ended. Didn't feel like 2 1/2 hours at all and the 48fps made the 3d bearable

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Bonobo_Unknown]

I call that the "Peter Jackson" effect. It was the same story for LOTR, Tintin, and well anything he's done since well for ever. He cuts out important narrative and adds pointless action sequences that only serve to reduce the impact and tension of the important action sequences.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Bonobo_Unknown]

To be fair, the much longer and more sophisticated "Lord of the Rings" has exactly this fault also.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[PCM2]

If it was shorter you would be bitching about all the things he skipped.

Historically, every adaptation of The Hobbit I've ever seen/heard/read has skipped something. None of them has added as much pointless claptrap as Jackson's. I'd say only about 1/3 of the material in the movie had anything to do with what Tolkien actually wrote.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

No fair. An incredible amount of stuff happened in The Hobbit!

There were rude dwarves and peckish trolls and a goblin hating werebear (who had better have made it into the damn film if they're gonna make over 9 hours of Hobbit movie, yeah Tom Bombadil was kinda fruity but Beorn is the baddest ass in Middle Earth) and hobbit hating goblins and magic rings and riddling gollums and spooky forests harboring hungry spiders and incarceration happy wood elves and barrel rides and flammable lake towns and mountains full of gold and dragon and studly archers and then, just when things seemed to be wrapping up, there was a big damn war! With five armies!

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Gandalf is kind of a dick. He lets them get into all kinds of danger, so that he can show up at the end and be like "Don't worry guys; I got this".

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[ZombieThoughts]

The Hobbit has roughly 100,000 words in it.

A picture is worth a 1,000 words.

So at 48fps, the movie should have been roughly two seconds long, right?

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Gandalf doesn't summon the eagles. He pleads for help. The eagles are intelligent beings with mysterious wills different from those of humans or dwarves or hobbits. They can't merely be "taken"; they aren't slaves. Can a final destination even be communicated to them in any tongue of Middle Earth? No such thing is suggested anywhere. Those who are helped by them are lucky or blessed to receive any help at all. It would be like getting into a shipwreck midway in your voyage and a dolphin rescuing and bringing you to a nearby island, and then you become all miffed that it didn't bring you to your very destination.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's because Gandalf, while powerful, has a few limited super moves that totally drain him, that he only breaks out when shit gets dire.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[Grumbleduke]

I still don't understand why they didn't just take the birds from the start, and all the way to the end. It would've saved a lot of trouble, not to mention hard disk space.

And this is what happens when you have a fan-made film and they decide to throw in so many references to other things they miss the subtleties. From what I remember (I'm re-reading it right now, but haven't got to that bit) the Eagles are incredibly arrogant (which is sort of understandable, living on top of the world, being servants of the gods, there to protect the fauna of Middle-earth from nasty things). They pretty much refuse to associate with anyone and certainly wouldn't go all the way across Eriador just to help a bunch of dwarves get some gold and land back. That they talk with Gandalf (and help him in FotR) show just how must respect they have for him.

From what I remember, they come down to the woods (where Thorin & Co. are being attacked by the wargs) because the wargs were having a big meeting (that just happened to be taking place there anyway) and the eagles wanted to know what was going on. They help the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf partly out of respect for Gandalf and partly because they really hate the wargs (and orcs). But even then, they simply carry them up to their eyrie, talk for a bit, then take them back down to plains (but a bit further away). There's no moth, and no "pale orc." Iirc there is a white warg, though, who is the leader of the various warg clans.

As for it all about them getting into trouble and Gandalf rescuing them... it's only 3 times in the book (4 if you include the eagles) that he does that, but then that's what he is there for. Plus it, perhaps, makes it more interesting later on when they have to save themselves without Gandalf's help, and Bilbo starts to really shine.

Re:it's the length of movies themselves

[ganjadude]

You know that is the one thing that really got me as well. If they had birds capable of flying them to their location why didnt they do that? and now the birds still only brought them 1/2 way to their goal

Wikipedia to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkien writes that Hobbits are between two and four feet (0.61–1.22 m) tall, the average height being three feet six inches (1.07 m).

Re:Wikipedia to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkien writes that Hobbits are between two and four feet (0.61–1.22 m) tall, the average height being three feet six inches (1.07 m).

Crap. You beat me to ir. I'll go with my other response: Serves 3-4.

Technology is fine...

[catmistake]

I'm ok with advances in technology and the new challenges it creates. What I'm not OK with is a director deciding to make the source material "better" by changing the narrative. Jackson completely gutted Tolkien's Hobbit, rearranged the important events, and has replaced a light-hearted adventure story with the dark themes from LotR. Mr. Peter Jackson, why do you hate the work of JRR Tolkien?

Re:Technology is fine...

[GreyWanderingRogue]

... and has replaced a light-hearted adventure story with the dark themes from LotR.

You mean like the changes Tolkien himself made and wanted to make? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit#Revisions

Re:Technology is fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. I believe the GP is referring to needless changes in dialogue, such as having the Trolls themselves declare, painfully obviously, that sunlight will turn them to stone, or the existence of mountain giants (which were perhaps part of a hobbit's imagination, not actual residents of Middle-Earth as Jackson tells it), or having the White Council convene at the time Jackson places it in the movie, and not when Tolkien wrote it as having happened. I can see how it might be annoying to someone that loves the literature that the movie director FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER changes a few things around. My biggest complaint? Balin was one of the younger dwarves... and Jackson decided to make him one of the oldest. Why? We may never know.

Re:Technology is fine...

[mabhatter654]

The more I see this debte, the more I realize much of LOTR was Tolkien's personal "fan fiction". It was stuff he wrote down for fun.. Mostly to practice applying "archeology" skills for languages and myths. Languages and history is what he taught at university, tracing back origins of languages and myths to the events and people that it happened to. LOTR was some fun working "backwards" with the same principals to build his personal LARP.

I begging to agree with George R R Martin in that he's going to wrap up his "Song of Fire and Ice" (and cash in on whatever he's still got) then torch the rest of the notes so only the published books remain... No more going back and rewriting things long after he's dead.

Re:Technology is fine...

[bughunter]

completely gutted

What, changing a few lines of dialogue to make the transition from book to screen easier? That's gutting?

Adding some scenes that tell the backstory of the Oakenshields? That's gutting?

Bringing in some canon characters to make the story a better prequel to LOTR, entirely consistent with the canon of the milieu? That's gutting?

The only element that was out of place was having Azog gallavant all over the place chasing Thorin, but still, the basic conflict is entirely consistent with canon.

None of it is "gutting."

And if you've read all the various versions of Tolkien's tales like Turin and Beren&Luthien published in books like Lost Tales I and II, then you know that Tolkien himself "gutted" his stories far more than Jackson & Co. did.

If you really know works, then you will recognize how much respect the writers paid the source material, and would stop bitching that it's not a stenographic word-for-word translation from novel to screenplay.

Re:Technology is fine...

[jank1887]

I didn't mind him trying to make the Hobbit part of the LOTR cycle. it wasn't originally written that way, but as the other reply stated, Tolkien wanted to do that too. in fact, some of the dialogue changes he made when the book was re-released DID change certain things to make the Hobbit fit better with the later books. And I guess he pulled in some of the pieces of The Quest of Erebor and the Similarrion (sp?) to try to tie things together. But really, the main difference is that The Hobbit was written as a children's story for children. The Lord of the Rings was written for young adults. since these movies are produced in reverse, they want the LOTR audience to enjoy the Hobbit, and adjusted accordingly.

Re:Technology is fine...

[_Shad0w_]

The trolls talking about turning to stone in daylight I just wrote off as Jackson assuming not everyone knew that bit of lore - it's not a terrible assumption. Without there would be some people going "what just happened?"

Re:Technology is fine...

[_Shad0w_]

Well *obviously* authors are allowed to gut their own stuff, because it's *theirs*. Unless it's George Lucas.

I don't really find any of Jackson's changes all that galling. Some of the additions are a bit "why?" but most are "fair enough".

Re:Technology is fine...

[Mysticalfruit]

When I went to see it, the row behind me was filled with people who (based on their chattering) through the whole movie had never read The Hobbit, had no idea it was even a book, nor realized it was being made into three movies. So, I can understand why Peter Jackson would want to throw those people a bone.

I liked that this movie was made with a fuller understanding of the middle earth universe (such as the back story of Thorin).

Re:Technology is fine...

[Mysticalfruit]

At the pace he's writing the silly things, he'd better hedge his bets and keep his notes, he's no spring chicken and he's still got a few more books to write...

Odds are good he'll get them done before winter take him but there's no guarantee of that.

Winter is coming...

Re:Technology is fine...

[Wdomburg]

Like the changes Tolkein started and abandoned. As per the link you yourself provided:

He abandoned the new revision at chapter three after he received criticism that it "just wasn't The Hobbit", implying it had lost much of its light-hearted tone and quick pace.

Re:Technology is fine...

[Joce640k]

.... having the Trolls themselves declare, painfully obviously, that sunlight will turn them to stone

So you assume everybody who goes to see it is fully acquainted with troll-lore and has read the book six times so they can compare the on-screen dialog with the original text?

You need to get out of the house more. See what happens if you expose yourself to sunlight.

Re:Technology is fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I can understand why Peter Jackson would want to throw those people a bone.

The complaint is that Tolkien already figured out how to do that... how to tell an audience a story they've never heard without them getting confused. Tolkien was very successful, especially with The Hobbit, at describing a scene that the audience has never even remotely experienced before. Before reading The Hobbit, NO ONE knew that trolls turn to stone at first sunlight... and yet Tolkien somehow figured out how to tell his audience that without the troll saying "hey, I don't want to turn to stone when the sun comes up soon." What was that? I'll tell you want it was... SHITTY SCREENWRITING. The movie isn't terrible... it's well done... well acted... well framed... perfect lighting... great soundtrack... awesome effects... it's incredible... except for the screenwriting which is astoundingly bad for such a hugely anticipated feature film. There's simply no excuse because the movie was made before (animated) and that screenplay isn't bad. I think Peter Jackson is turning into George Lucas... and short on ideas, accepting shitting shallow suggestions from the entourage that follows him around when he's making movies (idk if they're like the LotR versions of Trekies, or just like the assgrabbers Lucas surrounds himself with, but regardless the result is the same, bad decisions resulting in a painfully imperfect work).

Re:Technology is fine...

[Bonobo_Unknown]

. I think Peter Jackson is turning into George Lucas... .

Turning into? They've been twins since the beginning.

Re:Technology is fine...

[PCM2]

What, changing a few lines of dialogue to make the transition from book to screen easier? That's gutting?

Maybe not, but adding endless scenes of pointless expository dialogue makes for a much lousier movie than fans of the book should expect to see.

Adding some scenes that tell the backstory of the Oakenshields? That's gutting?

Maybe "gutting" is the wrong word (and I am not the OP), but if the backstory was never part of The Hobbit and the version Peter Jackson tells in the movie is inconsistent with what Tolkien wrote, then why does it need to be there at all? All of Jackson's pointless additions -- such as all of the silliness with Radagast -- made the movie seem more like Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Series than like a serious adaptation of The Hobbit.

The only element that was out of place was having Azog gallavant all over the place chasing Thorin, but still, the basic conflict is entirely consistent [wikia.com] with canon.

Maybe except for the part that in "canon" (hate that word, seems so fanboyish) Azog is already long dead when the events of The Hobbit begin -- as it says in your own link -- so all of the "characterization" Jackson tried to do with Azog was (again, for fans of Tolkien's work) complete B.S. and utterly unnecessary to the telling of the story.

And if you've read all the various versions of Tolkien's tales like Turin and Beren&Luthien published in books like Lost Tales I and II, then you know that Tolkien himself "gutted" his stories far more than Jackson & Co. did.

That's fine; he's entitled. I like and respect Tolkien as a writer. I can't say the same of Peter Jackson, so why I had to be subjected to a version of The Hobbit as written by Peter Jackson instead of as written by Tolkien is beyond me.

what challenge?

[bauerbob]

From 100% to 200% more data - so what? That's not a big step compared to the steps we had in the past like going from 1.44MB 3,5" floppies to 650MB/700MB CDs. Or from those CDs to 4.4GB DVDs.

Re:what challenge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually more interested in transmission myself; raw 8k is meant to be around 48 Gbps. I wonder if they just transferred the drives at the end of a shoot, especially with NZ internet :/

Re:what challenge?

[viperidaenz]

Maybe they only shot it in 5k because you know, that's the limitation of the cameras they used.

DVD Shrink

[DogDude]

Sounds like a job for handy, dandy DVD Shrink!

Longer is not better

[rainmayun]

Directors have never understood this, which is why most of the time they aren't responsible for the final edits. Length is one of the primary filtering factors for me to decide what movie to see. Anything substantially over 2 hours had better be a damned good movie.

Re:Longer is not better

[Anonymous Coward]

30 minutes of previews and car commercials, 45 minutes of plot, 45 minutes of product placement, 15 minutes of credits. That is why I don't waste my time with most movies.

I consider The Hobbit (part 1) to be worth seeing, but I am a general Tolkein fan, I'd probably pay to watch each 3-hour part of a 12 movie chain based on the Silmarillion.

Length is just another of many issues that will influence who watches it in a theater, who rents a DVD, who buys a 3D BD, who downloads a 320x256 torrent, and who ignores it entirely.

Re:Longer is not better

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to go to the theater without checking the reviews or runtime so that the movie would not be spoiled by others opinions. After the merciless beating that was Cloud Atlas I will never go to the theater again without at least some research first.... seriously there are some things I wish I could unsee!

Re:Longer is not better

[Sir_Eptishous]

Scorsese understands it.

Goodfellas, The Departed, The Aviator, etc are all over two hours, but they don't drag or slog like most newer films that are > 2 hours.

Re:Longer is not better

[avandesande]

Making a family movie that would have been enjoyed across age groups would have been a challenge, what Peter Jackson did was not. He just applied the 'Jackson Formula' to the Hobbit. He's not a film maker any more he's an accountant.

Re:Longer is not better

[Anonymous Coward]

It really depends on the film and how it is structured. Ever hear of Once Upon A Time in America (1984)? The original director's cut ran 229 minutes, just short of 4 hours, and received a standing ovation at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. When released in the U.S., the studio re-edited it down to 139 minutes, and the story no longer made any sense. The $30 million epic flopped in the States, though it was very popular in Europe, where the original version was released. It was restored to its original length (including the intermission) and was re-released a few years later in the U.S. to great success. Seeing the complete film is the only way to experience it.

In the recent PBS American Masters documentary about David Geffen, he describes losing his first argument with a director when he became an executive at Warner Brothers. He felt that the workprint of The Outlaw Josie Wales was too long so he asked director Clint Eastwood to cut it down by 20 minutes or so. Eastwood gave him full permission to re-edit the film himself, but if he ever wanted to speak with him again, he'd have to call Paramount Pictures to make an appointment. Geffen let Eastwood have his own cut of the film and it became one of the biggest hits Warner Brothers released that year. Orson Welles even called it "the greatest western ever made."

Re:Longer is not better

[jedidiah]

It's a story that's not meant to be split into parts like that. It's not a trilogy. LOTR was a trilogy. I won't bother with this thing until the whole thing is available. Then I will just rent it and watch it on the projector upstairs.

It's like tacking 3D onto movies at the end.

Re:Longer is not better

[4wdloop]

>> 45 minutes of product placement
In middle earth?

Re:Longer is not better

[91degrees]

Nitpick: LOTR was 6 books, and not a trilogy. It's just that publishers often published it as three volumes.

Re:Longer is not better

[_Shad0w_]

LOTR was originally written as a single book; Tolkien split it in to three at the publisher's request/suggestion/insistence.

I love long films if...

[Sir_Eptishous]

there is a reason for them to be long(>2 hours).

I'm a HUGE Tolkien fan, and went to the LOTR Extended Version Trilogy Marathon recently before seeing The Hobbit.
I was surprised at how well the longer versions of the films held up, after not watching them for around five years.

However, The Hobbit film was a let down on several levels, most of which I won't go into here. My main complaint? You do not need three films to tell the story. PJ has thrown in everything but the kitchen sink into The Hobbit, and it drags. Even the uber-videogame-esque "escape from the Goblins" scene drags... Too much of a good thing can ruin a film.

I would also say the same thing about the last Batman film. Too long and drawn out. Scenes that should be edited or removed alltogether. Thats why they call it the Directors Cut!

It makes me wonder if there aren't people involved in the film such as producers or editors who tell guys like PJ or Nolan, "hey bro, you might want to trim things down, just a smidge... You know, just to kind of keep the flow of the film going"

Re:I love long films if...

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to watch batman and I didnt know movie length before it. I tought it would be a 2h movie and exactly between the movie I checked the time from ticket as movie felt it just didnt have a story as it would end suddenly, only to find out that 3h is just too much. 2h 15min is OK and 2 is good for great movie but more likely I take 1h 30min. 3h is just way too much.

Re:I love long films if...

[phantomfive]

Even the uber-videogame-esque "escape from the Goblins" scene drags

Ironic, isn't it? By adding more action, the movie became less riveting. You don't need a threat of violence to keep a movie entertaining (not that there was a threat, since one guy got smashed full-force in the face with a mace and remained conscious).

For me, one of the most attention-holding scenes was at the beginning, when the dwarves ate, sang, and cleaned dishes. That was a party I'd love to hang out with. The farther they got from Tolkien in telling the story, the weaker the story became. The revenge story of the white orc was completely weird.

Also, I understand why they want three movies, to make money. It's not the best goal, but I understand it. They could have easily reached that goal, staying faithful to the story, and making a more entertaining movie, if they had made each movie 120 minutes like a normal movie. No need to make up false tension.

Re:I love long films if...

[bjdevil66]

Ironic, isn't it? By adding more action, the movie became less riveting.

Good point (The Matrix: Reloaded immediately comes to mind as the posterchild movie in this regard).

Also, it is a little odd to see some people complain about too long of a runtime when most of the complaints about the original LOTR movies was that too much was cut out of the story (Tom Bombadil, Scouring of the Shire, etc.).

Re:I love long films if...

[phantomfive]

Also, it is a little odd to see some people complain about too long of a runtime when most of the complaints about the original LOTR movies was that too much was cut out of the story (Tom Bombadil, Scouring of the Shire, etc.).

Yeah, I don't think the problem with the Hobbit is the long runtime, the problem is the runtime was extended by adding things that were made up out of nowhere.

If they'd stayed true to the story (or even true to the Tolkien universe) no one would mind a long runtime.

Re:I love long films if...

[tycoex]

I think most people would be fine with the length of the Hobbit if it only included stuff that actually needed to be in the movie.

It all depends on how much material they actually have to work with. I don't want to watch a 2 hour movie stretched in to 3, and I don't want to watch a 3 hour movie cut down to 2. The Hobbit was the former.

Re:I love long films if...

[ADRA]

I appreciated Batman Rises much more after the second watching from home.

As for scene cuts, a movie this large where scenes cost millions of dollars to shoot / produce, you can damn well bet that the movie was story boarded to death before a single roll of film was shot. Its not like the old days were you can just randomly have great actors run on a scene longer, or just make up an extra dialogue inter-cut and then drop it depending on how well it fit in with the rest of the movie. Hell it happens, but ultimately the movies are much more efficient at telling the story they set out to make vs. the old days.

Re:I love long films if...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a reason for them to be long(>2 hours).

I'm a HUGE Tolkien fan, and went to the LOTR Extended Version Trilogy Marathon recently before seeing The Hobbit.

I was surprised at how well the longer versions of the films held up, after not watching them for around five years.

However, The Hobbit film was a let down on several levels, most of which I won't go into here. My main complaint? You do not need three films to tell the story. PJ has thrown in everything but the kitchen sink into The Hobbit, and it drags. Even the uber-videogame-esque "escape from the Goblins" scene drags... Too much of a good thing can ruin a film.

I would also say the same thing about the last Batman film. Too long and drawn out. Scenes that should be edited or removed alltogether. Thats why they call it the Directors Cut!

It makes me wonder if there aren't people involved in the film such as producers or editors who tell guys like PJ or Nolan, "hey bro, you might want to trim things down, just a smidge... You know, just to kind of keep the flow of the film going"

Thats because he is a whore basically. He is trying to milk this for all that he possibly can and no other reason. Hell the old animated hobbit movie told the story just fine, you dont need 3 movies and hundreds of millions of dollars of special effects to tell it.

But the thing is jackson is a no body. Until he did lord of the rings no one knew who he was. Bad taste, dead alive and meet the feebles were his big claims to fame. So now he has LOTR which made him famous and much like george lucas, its all he has and cant do anything else so he has to try and drain it for everything he possibly can.

Re:I love long films if...

[Sir_Eptishous]

Yea, I hate to beat a dead horse, but the PJ version of King Kong was pretty bad. But it looked hella kewl...

Re:I love long films if...

[Sir_Eptishous]

Well, then the storyboarding is too long...

Yea, it's too bad, because Nolan is a brilliant director. I mean, "Inception" is the best sci-fi I've seen in years. It's hard for me to square it really, because I love most of his films.

But "The Dark Knight Rises", with Bane and his annoying and non-understandable heavily accented blabber via too much audio effects to the police being sent notes via the sewer locked underground, the whole thing was a mess, a much too long mess.

Re:I love long films if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we please for the love of all that is Tolkien himself tell the story completely, and not fill up the movie with mindless repetitive scenes remnicent of bad porn???

LOTR suffered from the same type of problem in the battle scenes in my opinion. We get it. There was a battle. It was EPIC. Move on.

Re:I love long films if...

[afidel]

Skyfall was 2:23 and at most there might have been 5 minutes I might have cut.

Re:I love long films if...

[Bonobo_Unknown]

The problem with PJ and action is that he uses so much that the original carefully placed action sequences in the source material (thinking Tolkien and Herge here) are swamped by meaningless action, which means that there is no build up and release of tension. You become disconnected from the story and your mind starts to wander. Then you realise you're in a cinema and it starts to get boring.

Re:I love long films if...

[PCM2]

Skyfall was 2:23 and at most there might have been 5 minutes I might have cut.

Well, that's you. I'm afraid I disagree on that one. I felt a lot of it dragged.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[LordLimecat]

Why wouldnt someone simply re-encode the film?

Not everything is a conspiracy; increasing filesize in a format where excess data can easily be stripped out is a pretty terrible way to fight piracy.

Go back to using Film?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main benefit for going digital was to cut production costs down, you don't have to drag dailies around or courier anything beyond a few hard drives when you go digital (heck you can torrent between locations), but now you have to store data electronically which shifts the cost to running servers or some other backup.

The effective resolution of film is infinite, with good optics on your digital scanner you could go down to any resolution you want for easy of digital editing. Store the film in a vault and forget about it for 90 years.

Raw Data

[the eric conspiracy]

The Hobbit was also shot (and maybe shown?) at 4K resolution.

That's another bump in the data size.

Re:Raw Data

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hobbit was actually shot at 5K resolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_%28film_series%29#Technology

Re:Raw Data

[Anonymous Coward]

it was 5k resolution.

heads of to set up a trillion 56K accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

nope caps proved in canada that it wont dampen piracy it always finds a way

Render time still a limitation

[TechBCEternity]

At the London preview screening Peter Jackson said that because 48fps + 3d is 4x the frames it's taken longer to render and the last scene with the coins was only finished a couple days before the premiere. He did mention the complexity in moving coins though

Congratulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've probably made one of the top 10 most idiotic comments on Slashdot. And that's saying a lot--it's like winning the Special Olympics. Among retards, you stand out!

I have all the intermissions I want...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have all the intermissions I want because these days I watch movies / TV shows / videos exclusively on my computer (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, (borrowed) DVDs, etc.) I do this partially as a "Fuck You" to the MPAA, but mainly because the "home experience" is by far more preferable to me than the "theater experience".

Petabyte is not that much

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think enterprise storage subsystem can have usable capacity of 1024GB (1PB). So if you go beyond, just buy 2 of those (DS8700 comes to mind, but there are others by EMC and Hitachi)

Re:Petabyte is not that much

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think enterprise storage subsystem can have usable capacity of 1024GB (1PB). So if you go beyond, just buy 2 of those (DS8700 comes to mind, but there are others by EMC and Hitachi)

<sigh>

1024GB = 1TB. 1024TB = 1PB.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people who are still downloading it, you insensitive clod!

Frame rate shouldn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting to note that for typical footage, as frame rate goes to infinity, so should the compression ratio.

Re:Frame rate shouldn't matter

[rdebath]

Check out Fractal compression; for mpeg compression the increase in frame rate and resolution will increase the size of the compressed video. But for the 'fractal' compression the final stream is resolution and frame rate independent.

Unfortunately, the algorithms were put under patent in the US and the holder of the patent made the licensing terms too onerous. So very few compressors and decompressors were written in software and (unlike mpeg) hardware assisted encoding and decoding never happened.

As this work was done in the late eighties and early nineties the patents are expiring; so hardware encoding may now become cost effective.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[petermgreen]

BS the size of the versions released to consumers will remain limited by the capacity of the media it is on and in any case the pirates can always recompress.

Afaict what this sort of thing is really about is flexibility. Want if they want to zoom in on something? or run something in slow motion? even remove something from a scene? it's much much cheaper if they can reprocess the existing data than if they have to re-shoot the scene. Compression artifacts that are invisible to the human eye during normal playback of a peice of video can cause big issues once someone starts messing with the footage. Also interframe compression turns even basic temporal editing into a lossy process.

So the solution is ideally to avoid compression at all during production and if they can't avoid it to stick to intraframe compression only.

Ridiculous assertions in the linked article.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

100 to 200 percent more data for "modern" 3D technologies. Stereoscopy adds exactly 100 percent more data, as it has since the late 1800s. There is no new 3D. There wasn't for Avatar, there wasn't for Captain EO, and there wasn't for any of the other marketing-oriented attempts to act like the red and blue glasses were the "old" 3D while the polarized lenses are the "new". Didn't you kids have ViewMaster? Sheesh.

This is news?

[mabhatter654]

I wonder why this is news... I guess it's a good time to invest in ENTERPRISE level storage!!

The Hobbit was shot in 5k resolution, and in "true 3D" with two cameras on every mount. And shot at 48fps (5k x 48 fps x 2 cameras) is MASSIVE film stock. Add multiple shoots for setup, testing lights, and then the actual acting. Not to mention all the digital elements that have to be stocked at high resolution as well.

Yup that's a LOT of data. But then so was Star Wars. I suppose with those really long copyrights it means THEY have to keep all that digital treasure safe.. Because they only sell the stripped out Home copies. The Hobbit was really shot for theaters 10years from now when 4k becomes commonplace. I used Star Wars because while Licas was counting his Billions, the actual MOVIE and resources on film spent 20 years rotting in a damp basement. Because every scrap of these movies has to be copyrighted for 95+ years they don't want any bits leaking out... But saving EVERYTHING it's really hard... Even if they make a billion dollars from it.

I still don't see what the "news" is. I mean Banks are so big they fill LTO 5 tapes with transaction data several times a DAY (not accounts, just the individual records of card swipes and such in real time) . I guess banks don't have to keep that 95 years though...

Super Compression

[Anonymous Coward]

How much storage would they need if they dropped all of the "short people walking" bits except for one? Once again, lossy compression schemes come to the rescue!

It still sucked.

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter "big" the movies data is, no matter how many fps they film it at, no matter how many 3d effects they add in it still sucked and so do the majority of the movies that rely on special effects. Digital special effects make film makers lazy. In the past decade how many big budget special effects crazy movies have been made that were classics of film vs how many classic movies in the past decade didnt have computer effects? Quentin tarantino alone has made more quality movies in the past 10 years than big budget special effects films.

So bottom line is make it fancy as you want but that alone doesnt make it a good movie.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[arth1]

the biggest problem actually should be how to present 48fps content in the home screen...

Why should this be a problem? It's close to 20 years since I bought my first double-rate TV[*], and today, they tend to be quad-rate (200 or 240 Hz depending on where you live).
48 fps in stereo won't need more than 96 Hz progressive.

If you think of Blu-Ray discs, they're not locked to 30/60 (or 25/50) either, like older generations of video.

[*]: A Grundig, which could do 24-frame movies in 48 Hz non-interlaced or 96 Hz interlaced or video in 50p/100i PAL or 30p/60i NTSC. Of course, there wasn't a lot of video sources that delivered more than 25p/50i.

Not a Big Data Problem

[ranton]

How does this have anything to do with Big Data? Storing large amount of data isn't the important part, it is being able to analyze that data. You do not analyze a movie's data file. You just load and display the movie, which can easy be stored in one large continous file. A Big Data problem would be Netflix trying to determine what kinds of movies to recommend, not storing and then displaying a long movie to users.

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this have anything to do with Big Data?

Thank you

The answer of course, is not one damned thing. This is a big storage problem not a big data problem. And really it isn't that big of a storage problem.
Multi-petabyte scalable infrastructures are available from every one of the major storage vendors.

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that if Avatar is 1 petabyte with a run time of 178 mins... that's 93GBs per second that has be delivered per projector. I'd be curious to see how they manage to pull that off.
I had never thought about it before but your local movie theather must have a pretty impressive networking setup just to play digital movies.

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[4wdloop]

I suppose the movies are distributed with DCP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package ie as a set of hard drives.

From the above article, assuming that it's a full-rate format at max 1.3MB/frame for a 3 hour HFR3D (48*2)
3*60*60 secs * 48frames/s * 2 * 1.3B/frame= ~1.4E6 MB = 1400 GB = 1.4TB

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on your definition, like "The Cloud" (otherwise known as bureau computing on a mainframe), big data means different things to different people and their application of need. Big data is more than analysis, it's more than Hadoop. Most ordinary file systems can't do things like store a billion files and traverse that FS at a reasonable speed, oh, and replicate it please, oh and each file is 4TB... Data presents differing challenges depending on the type of data, what you do with it and how it is organized. Sometimes indexing is the issue, like when most FS's moved from list indexes to B-trees. Sometimes it's being able to scan and repair in a timescale less than 10,000 years. Big data is more than just analysis!

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[ImprovOmega]

The 1 petabyte is going to include rough cuts, edits, deleted scenes, CGI models, textures, concept art, storyboards, and basically a crapton of supporting files and datasets. Your realistic data-->project throughput is more likely on the order of 200-300MB/s for raw HD 3D display. Still a lot, but decidedly feasible.

And what goes to your local theater is more than likely compressed in some fashion, at least down to Blue-Ray (or maybe slightly higher). I would be surprised if the final cut delivered to the theater was much over 100GB.

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[viperidaenz]

Oh noes! you need nearly a whole rack of storage for a $237,000,000 film that raked in over 2 billion in box office sales.

That's a drop in the water compared to the rendering farm at Weta Digital that processes all that raw data, which was 34 racks in 2009.

The final render of Avatar was 2.8TB

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/12/22/the-data-crunching-powerhouse-behind-avatar/

Weta Digital has over 3PB of storage
http://techday.com/netguide/news/the-tech-behind-weta-digitals-success/22643/

Re:Not a Big Data Problem

[viperidaenz]

You're pretty spot on with your 200-300MB/s there.

Avatar was 17.28GB/minute, or 295MB/s.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think, additionally, that with the petabyte figure comes all the additional footage and audio as well as revision histories that never make it to the consumer.

Tolkien...

[dskoll]

Tolkien's work is love-it-or-hate-it and unfortunately I fall squarely on the "hate-it" side. I guess it's good to know that we can enjoy hours of tedium at a higher-than-normal frame rate, though.

Battlefield Earth

[DarthVain]

I mean they did the 1000 page Battlefield Earth in under 2 hours in film and that turned out great...

Look at even LOTR, special editions probably make it a 12 hour film for the same page count.

Re:Battlefield Earth

[7bit]

I mean they did the 1000 page Battlefield Earth in under 2 hours in film and that turned out great...

"Battlefield Earth" + "turned out great" in the same sentence?... Travolta, is that you?

Re:Battlefield Earth

[Pizza]

Except the Battlefield Earth movie covered less than half of the book.

Re:Battlefield Earth

[strikethree]

LOL. That movie was absolutely terrible, perhaps even the worst movie of all time. It is the only movie I have ever fell asleep watching while at a movie theater. Oh my god that movie was terrible. I was woken up by the fire alarm. I was in San Diego at the Mission Valley theaters sound asleep and was rudely woken up by the fire alarm. The movie was so terrible that someone pulled the fire alarm to end it. ROFL. God that movie was bad. Oy.

Oh. Did I forget to say that the movie was terrible? Which is a shame as I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I read it in one 24 hour sitting. The movie was completely terrible.

Are they getting longer?

[AK Marc]

I remember watching Ghandi in the theaters in 1982, and it had an intermission because it was too large for a single reel, so there was 10 minutes while they changed the reel. Spartacus, and Ben Hur were also over 3 hours. They are just listing the longest upcoming movies expected, with no actual analysis of percent movies over 2 hours and 3 hours per year. It's multiple anecdotes pieced together, ignoring all data contradicting the hypothesis.

Call me when the average time of a Disnet movie is 150 minutes or higher. Disney fires directors who refuse to keep them at 90 minutes (90 minutes is the time for one extra show a day, 2-3 shows more than the Hobbit). Makes for better results in the box office.

Re:Are they getting longer?

[viperidaenz]

Looks like a great future for Star Wars then.

Re:Are they getting longer?

[Bonobo_Unknown]

Yeah but if Peter Jackson's films had intermissions people wouldn't come back after the break.

Re:Are they getting longer?

[PCM2]

I remember watching Ghandi in the theaters in 1982, and it had an intermission because it was too large for a single reel, so there was 10 minutes while they changed the reel.

I think you're remembering incorrectly. I highly doubt you saw Gandhi projected from a single reel in 1982, because single-reel systems weren't common then. Most theaters projected movies by trading off reels between two different projectors, with each reel lasting around 20 minutes. The reason your theater paused for intermission in Gandhi is because there is an intermission in the film, as the director wished. It says "Intermission" right there on the screen. See? I believe Gandhi was in fact one of the last mainstream movies to include an intermission.

Re:Are they getting longer?

[AK Marc]

I think you're remembering incorrectly.

I think you are guessing wrong. The theater told us it was "to change reels". Whether they were lying is something to take up with them, though looking for it, it seems it was demolished http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/23588

When I worked as a projectionist (10 years later), the theater I worked at had single-reel systems only at AMC Glen Lakes 8 (opened in 1988, and when I worked there the equipment was all original, as far as I could tell, except for two screens that had upgrades, one for picture and one for sound. http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/21637, coincidentally, also closed and demolished now.

Re:Are they getting longer?

[PCM2]

Well, whether your theatre needed to change reels or not, it doesn't change the fact that Gandhi included an intermission, and every theatre was expected to respect it.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wrong.

[sidragon.net]

The effective resolution of film is infinite, with good optics on your digital scanner you could go down to any resolution you want for easy of digital editing.

Nope.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Suck it up big data

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Everybody wants to go to digital distribution, but I refuse to accept compromise for the experience. I want uncompressed sound and stunning visual clarity in my movies, not some overly compressed barely HD content with stereo sound split to 5.1 false channels.

Everybody wants to move to the cloud but I live in a G8 country where my bandwidth is throttled and still stuck at 20th century download speeds and upload speeds that are barely better then dial-up.

So yes, the next big challenge for big data is to deliver on the promise of offering high quality, high bandwidth cloud solutions that don't actually suck.

Re:Suck it up big data

[Sir_Eptishous]

You'll have to learn Korean or Japanese to have that promise delivered. If the G8 country you're referring to is the US, don't hold your breath.

Do we really want part 2 so fast?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And what do we use this giant-screen, high frame rate, 3D movie to film? Megan Fox french kissing Amanda Seyfried?

No. A bunch of fat midgets and other tiny freaks, and two old guys, one with a layer of bird poop down his temple.

A BEEEG mohvie!!11

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's big kiddo? Think about all the shit the brain sucking spy devices like google and facebook gather all the time. 24/7 365 Think about what science experiments produce, like nuclear research looking at subatomic particles. Think about storing all network traffic data globally, internet and phone calls.

Now. that's big.

You aren't using it in the theater

[SuperKendall]

You activate the app before the movie starts, it vibrates in your pocket st the start of "pee friendly" zones.

Data Wranglers

[Anonymous Coward]

I noted with interest a few job titles in the credits that I hadn't noticed before. In particular, there were 4 "Data Wranglers" for The Hobbit.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[nabsltd]

If you think of Blu-Ray discs, they're not locked to 30/60 (or 25/50) either, like older generations of video.

Actually, they are, although 24fps is also an option. But, no other frame rate is legal, so no hardware player will support anything but the required rates, which means no one will produce content at any other frame rates for Blu-Ray.

avatar

[Anonymous Coward]

I remeber Avatar with Ang, Prince Zuko and Katara. Good movie. M. Night Shyamalan is awsome!

Re:Smart play by the studios

[nabsltd]

Nobody is sending a Petabyte to every theater in the country, and much less to every home. Once the movie is finished a final copy is compressed and sent to theaters and the disc authoring house.

Even for 48fps 3D, it would require less than 2TB/hour of uncompressed 4:2:2 video (at 1920x1080), so although nobody is shipping a petabyte around, it's possible that the uncompressed data is being shipped around.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a couple points, both of which have nothing to do with the TV:

* 1080p 3D over HDMI is limited to 24 and 30fps, due to bandwidth limits of HDMI 1.4.
* There's no current support for anything other than 24, 30, and 60fps at 1080p over HDMI 1.4.

So you could:

* Work on a new HDMI spec to handle 48/60fps 3D content, which means folks will go through yet another upgrade cycle in order to watch this stuff.
* Telecine 2D 48fps to 60fps and play back at 1080p60, and run the 3D version at 24fps.

The TV itself isn't the problem, but rather the lack of foresight/adaptability of HDMI to date, and that this means hardware upgrades most of the time when a new spec comes out to address the lack of foresight.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[SuricouRaven]

The standard pirate sizes ate 700MB for a recompressed DVD-rip and 4.4GB for a recompressed blu-ray rip. These sizes are used because they are just small enough to fit onto a CD-R and DVD-R respectively. It's not universal though. Especially long or difficult films might go up to 8GB in HD, and there has been a recent trend towards smaller files where quality wouldn't be compromised rather than just assuming media-size for everything.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[SuricouRaven]

Blu-ray players don't have the hardware to decode it though, and HDMI doesn't support it either. The screen does, but that's all. You *might* be able to get away with a firmware flash, but for most people it'll mean buying new hardware. Again.

I like...

[Endophage]

the longer movies that are coming out. I was getting really fed up of more and more films creeping under the 90 minute mark. For kids films I understand keeping them shorter as most kids won't stay interested for the duration of a 2 to 3 hour film. As an adult though, I appreciate the extra character development and depth that can be provided in a longer film (not that I would ever use Avatar as an example of a film where the extended time was well used).

Re:I like...

[Bonobo_Unknown]

As an adult I would appreciate the extra character development in a longer movie, but that is not what is happening. Longer movies just mean longer, pointless action sequences. And it all gets so tedious.

Re:I like...

[Endophage]

I agree many of the longer movies are tedious, but I wouldn't ask for Les Mis to be any shorter. I was mostly getting fed up with movies getting shorter while ticket prices skyrocketed... I don't want to be paying $15 a ticket for sub 90 minute film... Now I just hit up the first showings in the day on weekends to get $7 tickets, and less crowded theaters.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[ImprovOmega]

Even for 48fps 3D, it would require less than 2TB/hour of uncompressed 4:2:2 video (at 1920x1080), so although nobody is shipping a petabyte around, it's possible that the uncompressed data is being shipped around.

Except that they're probably storing it with some kind of RGBA (32-bit) uncompressed standard, which brings you to ~2.6TB/hour. And then if you decide to shoot it in 4K (4096x2160) that brings you to 11.2TB/hour or a bit over 30TB for the raw version of The Hobbit (48fps, 3-D). Now add in all of the rough cuts, editing revisions, unused footage, CGI, and everything else and you could see it *very* easily getting up over a petabyte. That's just for the studio though. What goes out the door, even in its rawest form, wouldn't get anywhere close to that.

As an aside, even ridiculously oversampled audio, running at 192k, 96-bit, 8 channels, and uncompressed is only going to run you ~62GB / hour.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[viperidaenz]

The Hobbit is projected at 192 images/second. Each frame is shown four times, left, right, left right.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

You ship around 4K, not 1080p. Theatre projectors play 4K directly, you work on the movie internally (SFX, editing) at least at 4K, and I'm not sure what the disc authoring guys use but they might use the 4K source directly too. 1080p is just what the customers get.

Coffee Strengths

[jsrjsr]

Lutheran churches in the US seem to operate as much on coffee as they do on faith. However, there are great differences depending on the nationality of those who started the congregation. Go to a German Lutheran church and the coffee is a little on the weak side. Go to a Norwegian Lutheran church and your eyes will pop open after the first sip.

Ironic..

[Beetjebrak]

The Hobbit, scarcely 300 paper pages of children's story in print, leads to a big data problem. Now there's excessive bloat if I ever saw any.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[war4peace]

Private trackers that I have access to offer full-frame blu-rays which are between 15 and 45 GB in size (or close to that). Using metropolitan P2P connections, I can download those monsters in 1-2 hours, depending on size. Movies which I download and manage to watch entirely deserve me buying a cinema ticket which I don't use. I buy the cinema ticket online, I don't go, everyone's happy. Rare are the movies I watch more than once, and those I usually buy as a hard-copy anyway.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they already gone blue from waiting?

Long Movies are better

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course movies are longer! Movies began with double features and a cartoon and newsreel. They did away with double features and cartoons (sniff) when exhibitors wanted to churn the theater every 90 minutes like they were flipping burgers. When we spend a quarter of a hundred dollars, (sounds bigger that way) and then pay the same amount on drinks and snacks, we really want more than 90 minutes minus the 8 minutes of credits.

  Longer films actually provide more product, better story-telling opportunities (not always used well), and a better value for our time and money. The Hobbit seemed too short for real Tolkien fans. Avatar's length was appropriate for the story. Maybe we all want better stories? If all one wants of a movie is to pass the time in an airliner, one really is not interested in the film. Perhaps one only wants a TV game show. IMHO.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[slinches]

I just decided to settle for the compressed version. Much smaller file size and I don't think it degraded the quality appreciably.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[tzot]

Sorry, the torrent I downloaded was a better version than yours. I'm not sure about compression differences, but my version has all of the extras included.

Long movies get tiresome

[Osgeld]

I start rolling my eyes when I start fidgeting in the cheap ass chair cause my ass is going to sleep and I am tired of holding a bag of popcorn. Sure its a three hour movie, but you get there a little early cause of lines and you dont want to be that douche that walks in during the opening scene bumping everyone cause they want the middle seats for them and their 4 buddies, then you sit there for 20 min worth of previews.

So that 3 hour movie usually turns into 3:45, and you all know that most of that extra hour is just because they feel the need to drag along on less important stuff as if it were the main focus.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

In the great white Yukon of Canada, downloading it would cost you $7,864,320.00 in bandwidth charges.

Yeah. I have to pay $7.50/gig.

Hobbit's biggest remaining challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

may be to convince the studio to keep the third installment, given that their best case audience is pretty much limited to those who saw and were happy with the first two installments. The dragon will presumably be slayed in the second; will there be enough to bring the non-died in the wool LOTR buffs back for the third?

Re:Smart play by the studios

[Anonymous Coward]

Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor...

Bluray is obsolete already

[Anonymous Coward]

The most interesting aspect about 48 FPS is that the Bluray spec doesn't cover 1080p48, so we'd need a new standard and new devices for home cinema use if 48 FPS will take off (as it should).

Re:Smart play by the studios

[MightyYar]

I don't think it was meant to be a joke. If it were just the first sentence, it could be. But the second sentence makes an accusation.

Re:Smart play by the studios

[jandrese]

That audio stream only represents a single track though, a movie like this is going to have multiple tracks (music, effects, actor A dialog, actor A redubs, actor B...).