Does anyone remember the two stories that got spammed to death here on/.? One of the posters on k5, fluffy grue, owned up to those, saying he was bitter at how/. had turned out...
Whoa, I didn't know that. I can't believe he didn't get banned from K5 just for admitting having done something like that. On the other hand, he hadn't done anything bad to K5, just/.
It's not temporarily down, it's been permanently shut down by the admins. Go to the site now and all you'll see is a message from "rusty", the creator of the site. It explains things.
I loved K5. The discussions were lively and the signal-to-noise ratio was very good. I also liked the design of the story and comment moderation systems. Overall, it was one of the best Slashdot-inspired weblogs around.
I really hope this is not the end of K5. Maybe rusty and the gang will get some offers of help from volunteers, which will allow them to put the site back into operation.
In any case, it just burns me that script kiddies can win like this. As another poster noted, being attacked seems to be the price of popularity.
No, it's been intentionally taken down. In place of the normal homepage there is now a brief (and understandably, somewhat bitter) message from the site's creator and principal admin, "rusty". He explains that it became too much work to deal with all the crap.
I imagine that/. gets hit by shit like what K5 experienced (and probably worse) all the time, but CmdrTaco and the gang just grit their teeth and deal with it. Of course, they can do that, since running/. is their full-time job. But for smaller, run-in-your-spare-time sites like K5, it's just too much.
I wouldn't know, but I'll be dealing with crap from script-kiddies is probably a hell of a lot of work.
We can only perceive 44Khz worth of audio, and no more than 45 frames per second of video...
Where the hell did you get these numbers from? I agree that there are limits to human perceptions, but the values you give are crap!
If what you say is true, why is the rule-of-thumb threshold for "flicker-free" monitors 72Hz and not 45Hz? And do you really think there is no perceptible difference between 44kHz sampled audio and, say 100kHz sampled audio? (Don't quote Nyquists' Theorem at me, that just gives the minimum sampling rate to record a certain frequency. To get an accurate recording requires more. And there's also the issue of the leading edge of a suddenly occuring sound being rounded off to the nearest sample, which is an error that will be present no matter what the frequency of the recorded sound.)
...can supposedly tell the difference between... cd's and mp3's
Um, excuse me, but if you can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3, you're deaf!
Well, if there is a Century Theaters location near where you live, you won't have to put up with that much advertising. I've never seen more than 4 or 5 previews, and they never have any just plain commercials, only previews. 10 minutes of that and the movie starts -- always.
As an added bonus, Century has just about the best quality control in the business. Every time I go, the projection and sound are absolutely fantasic, practically flawless.
In contrast, AMC is very bad about advertising, as is Sony's Lowes chain. Don't bother giving them your money. Shop around and find a place like Century or some other chain that still cares about the customer and support them instead.
Much of the time, games that are originally written in Direct3D for Windows are ported to the Mac using QuickDraw3D. UnrealTournament is one such game. It's true that there is an experimental OpenGL version of the UT engine for the Mac that is included with the game, but it's slow and buggy. The only "real" version of UT for the Mac uses QD3D (or Glide if you have a 3dfx card).
Unfortunately, Apple has ceased all development on QuickDraw3D. It is still available on the current versions of MacOS, but will not be available on MacOS X.
That is, no official version of QD3D will be available on MacOS X. There is always the Quesa project, which is a cross-platform library that runs on top of OpenGL and provides the same functionality as QuickDraw3D (with API-level compatibility). As to whether any game companies will actually use Quesa remains to be seen. (The project is open-source, licensed under the LGPL.)
In any case, I think it was a big mistake for Apple to stop development of QuickDraw 3D. It's a great API, not just for porting, but for doing original work as well. Look at Bugdom and Nanosaur, two fairly sophisticated 3D games that were written by a very small development team. That just goes to show how easy it is to develop using QD3D. Hopefully the Quesa project will keep it alive and maybe even increase its popularity.
As much as I would like to have better screens, I don't think merely higher resolution will solve the problem of viewing a hi-res image all at once without loosing resolution. In fact, you eye cannot see full detail on all of a 17" screen at once anyway, you have to change gaze (lots of times) to see all details.
Actually, the problem you are describing is due to the size of the image, not the resolution. If the pixels were drawn on the screen at a higher density than usual, then you would be able to see the whole image at once, without having to move your eyes around. And that extra resolution would not be wasted, since your eyes are plenty capable of resolving details at greater than the standard 72dpi or 100 dpi of a monitor (at a distance of about 18" to 20").
Okay, everyone can probably agree that this is complete and utter bullshit and must be stopped immediately.
But which bill number do we reference when writing to our representative? I know the bill is labelled HR 2987 but as the story mentions, it's now been grafted on to the "Bankrupcy Reform Act", which is known as HR 833. So, if it's been "grafted", does that mean that the original bill number has gone away, and the bill has become a part of the one on to which it was grafted? If so, shouldn't we be using the bill number of the one which it was grafted on to?
Which is the proper bill number? H.R. 2987 or H.R. 833? Can anyone help?
As the article notes, the FTC has no jurisdiction to decide if a patent is valid or not.
What these compaines should be doing is challenging the patent on DDR RAM in court, on the basis that it is overly obvious.
After all, your memory clock has two edges. So if you're already transmitting data on one of the edges, why not transmit it on the other one as well. I just don't see how anything like that could ever be considered anything but "obvious".
Yes, the patent office is so poorly mismanaged these days that it will grant stupid patents like this all the time, but that's why it needs to be challenged in court! Get it in front of a judge and show him how simple it is, and then it will be thrown out! They shouldn't even be bothering with the anti-trust stuff until after they try that tack first!
Lucas decided to go with digital only because the idea of using film offends his sensibilities. He considers film an "old" technology, and has referred to it in interviews as "a 19th century idea", as though that were enough of a reason to get rid of it. Remember that the wheel is a pre-historic idea, and people still use those. I'll bet you could sell Lucas a bottle of snake oil as long as it had the word "digital" somewhere on the label.
While film [may] have a higher resolution if you shoot a single frame of a Kodak resolution chart...
Film has a higher resolution no matter what it's pointed at, be it a resolution chart or the set of an actual movie, nor does it depend on the number of frames shot, 1 or 1 million. It's still the same medium.
...by the time that resolution passes through multiple internegative, interpositive, printing negative and final print stages
The degradation is actually quite negligible. Even after all those steps, there is still more detail on film than in a 1920x1080 image. I've been to several movies lately where I could see the individual pixels in the digitally processed special effects shots, and that's on the theatrical release print. For example, look for it in "Gone in 60 Seconds" whenever the camera cranes down on a new scene, and there's a subtitle at the bottom of the screen (which was added digitally). You'll notice a shimmering aliasing effect in some of the straight edges in the images (like the edges of buildings or telephone wires in the background). This is due to the limited number of pixels in the digitized version of the film image. The rest of the movie, which was not digitally processed, does not look exhibit that problems.
Besides, these days there are more options for release film printing that produce even better results than the traditional methods. Just look at Technicolor's dye-transfer process, which produces a near-exact copy of what's on the film negative, with brighter and richer colors (and in a form that will never decay). I've noticed that some of these prints have started to show up in theaters, and they look absolutely incredible. Having looked at that, and at TI's digital projection, I'd say that digital has a ways to go before it catches up.
Also note that Sony's DVCAM format is heavily compressed in-camera before being recorded to tape. So, you're not getting a full 1920x1080 pixels of pure picture information, you're just getting some DSP chip's approximation of that. With film, you get the real deal -- no compression artifacts anywhere.
Furthermore, CCDs do not capture light the same way that film does. Film samples light in a logarithmic curve, which is very similar to the way the human eye sees it. CCDs, on the other hand, sample light in a linear fashion, which is what gives video its characteristic "look". Because of this, even with the same lighting techniques and the same lenses, film and CCDs will not produce the same results. That "video look" will be evident in the final film. Ask yourself: Do you really want movies to start looking like the evening news?
Lastly, even though the resolution being filmed is 1920x1080, so far TI has only produced projectors capable of 1280x1024, so unless they increase that resolution, you won't even be seeing the full resolution the movie was made at, and even if you did, it would still be less than film.
So, in summary, SW Episode 2 is going to suffer in terms of picture quality due to Lucas's decision to shoot digitally. I guess it won't be much worse than Episode 1 though, which looked pretty bad already, due to the fact that almost that entire movie was digitally processed at 2K resolution, when it should have been done at 4K.
The standards for the supposed "future of cinema" really should be aimed higher.
I heartily agree. CCDs suck compared to film, not just because of their linear light-capturing properties, but also because of the resolution. It doesn't look as natural as film. Sony's new DVCAM format (which they are using for his movie) is a step in the wrong direction. And the resolution they are using (namely, 1920x1080) is just horrible compared to film.
I've been to many movies lately where I can see the individual pixels in digital effects shots, and that's when looking at a film print. What we need is 4K resolution, not 2K. People just don't get it. Film is an amazing technology. It is still the most efficient, compact, and asthetically pleasing way of storing and reproducing images.
Lucas is using digital because film offends his sensibilities. He considers film an "old" technology, and has referred to it as "a 19th century idea", as though that were justification enough for getting rid of it. Hey George, you know what? The wheel is a pre-historic idea, and people still use it!
I think that some of these people who are drooling over digital "cinema" are so blinded by technolust that they would willingly buy a bottle of snake oil as long as it had the word "digital" somewhere on the label. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who still thinks CCDs and other digital methods are up to the job yet.
Web movies are elligbile for Oscars, as long as they are shown in a theater for a few days first.
Made-for-TV and straight-to-video movies are not elligible for Oscars either, unless they are shown in a theater first. All the decision from the AMPAS did was reiterate the role of the Oscars as having to do with theatrical releases. You still can shoot, project, and ship the movie to the theaters in any medium you want. The only requirement is that it be an actual theater, and not some form of in-home exhibition.
I think all that griping on/. last week was over nothing. The decision about the web was actually consistent with past decisions, and does not actually exclude movies made in an electronic format. It just reiterates the requirement of a movie being shown theatrically.
I thought the "film" look was because of the slow motion tracking 30 frames per second, whereas video looks real due to the high frame rate, making things look more like they do in real life...
Film is at 24fps, and U.S. standard video is at 30fps (NTSC, the broadcast standard for North America, divides each frame into two interlaced fields, giving 60 fields per second, but still only 30 distinct frames per second). When film is transfered to video, the frames are lined up with a "pulldown" so that the frames from film are spread evenly across the slightly larger number of video frames over the same time period. Note that there are some systems in the works, such as MaxiVision that double the frame rate of film to 48fps.
That said, it is more than just the frame rate that gives film and video different looks. Film samples light in a way that more closely matches the human eye. Imagine two side-by-side cameras shooting the same scene with the same lighting, one film and the other video. Now imagine that the film's frame rate had been adjusted to match video. Would the resulting images then look the same? No, because of the fact that the two mediums do not respond to light the same way. It probably will be possible sometime in the future to make a CCD or other electronic light-gathering device that works in a way more similar to film (and thus more similar to the human eye), but for right now, it's still a problem.
Actually, you say first that people think video looks more real, but then go on to say that film is more similar to the way we see things--that doesn't really make sense...
Okay, I should have been clearer about that. While I personally believe that film looks the most natural and real and that video looks less natural, when HD video was first being bandied about and shown to various people, some voiced complaints about the look of the image, saying that it looked "too real". I think by saying that, those people unwittingly gave advocates of HD video some ammunition to use in promoting it. What I was trying to do in my previous comment was interpret what those people were trying to say when they complained about video looking "too real". I think what they meant was that HD video still looks too much like the evening news (which is one of the few things on TV that is shot video, most other things are shot with film and then transfered to video). Since we're all used to associating the video look with the news and other reality based TV, anything that has that same video look evokes a reaction and triggers that association. I would imagine that whomever actually said that (I have no idea who or when this supposedly happened) was trying to explain that the video look was too much like TV news and not enough like theatrical film, but they kind of stumble on their words and out came the unfortunate comment of "too real". I was merely trying to explain where I thought the comment came from. I was not agreeing with it.
I do not think that video looks more real than film. I actually think it looks less real. And the thing is, I'm not just making a subjective judgement here, there is an objective element to my criticism. Film caputres light in a way that is much more like the human eye than video. (See this article for some comments from a Kodak employee.) I think it's telling that advocates of video rely on subjective arguments (such as the oft-repeated comment about video looking "too real"), while advocates of film rely on objective arguments about the technical capabilities of film. It begs the question: if advocates of video really are pushing something that is "better", why can't they come up with any objective arguments to support their case? Why do they have to rely on subjective opinions? (Hint: maybe because it really isn't better!)
The "shutter-gate error" can be a problem, but with the latest advances in film movements, most brand-new cameras and projectors provide absolutely rock-steady transport. The mechanics of that sort of thing have really improved in recent years.
I don't know for sure, but I would assume one of the reasons that X-ray film (which is very large compared to 35mm optical film) could still only have about 2K resolution is that the grain size is so much larger than with regular optical film. Making a special film that responds to such high frequencies of light probably results in a very large grain size. But then again, I'm just speculating here. I am really surprised to hear that X-ray film can be replaced by 2K digital. I would have thought that more resolution would have been needed.
In any case, the grain size for film that responds to visible light is extremely small, and keeps getting smaller every year with the introduction of new film socks. I've seen 70mm prints of movies from the 60's and 70's, such as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "West Side Story" that looked truly amazing, and yet today's 35mm film is getting to where it looks almost as sharp. That's because the grain size has decreased dramatically over the years, and will continue to do so in the future. That's a big advantage of sticking with film. You can always benefit from advances in film quality without having to buy a new projector. But once you switch to digital, you are stuck with the same pixel count forever.
If you're looking for a reference about 4K resolution being equivalent to film, here is an article that talks about a panel discussion between film and digital proponents. The folks from Kodak talk about how 4K scans show the level of detail on 35mm film to be between 8 and 12 million pixels, which is much greater than the paltry 2 million pixels offered by 2K digital.
And if you really want to see just how good film can look, try checking out Technicolor's newly revived dye-transfer printing process. Articles talking about it can be found here and here. It's pretty amazing. I've seen it in first hand, and it blows digital projection away. The picture looks so sharp and clear it's as though you could reach right into the screen and touch it, and the color is absolutely incredible! If you live in the Bay Area, you can see a dye-transfer print for yourself if you go to the Century 25 in Union City. "Mission: Impossible 2" and "Shanghai Noon" are showing there with dye-tranfer prints. It's the best film quality I've ever seen. If you can, go check it out!
The funny thing is, 4K can be done. Arri's latest film recorder does so.
Yes, you're right. It can be done, but far too many special effects and post-production houses just don't do it. They think 2K is "good enough" and just don't bother with 4K. I really hope that 4K becomes the standard for movie resolution, but it seems that many people just don't care. They hear the word "digital" and shut their brains off, thinking that as long as they have that buzzword going for them, they're getting high quality.
I noticed that Industrial Light and Magic is not one of the listed installations for the new Arri scanner, even though lots of other major special effects houses are using it, including Digital Domain (co-founded by James Cameron and used for movies like "Titanic"). Apparently George Lucas is among those people who think that 2K resolution is "enough". Can't he tell the difference? Is he blind? I, for one, thought that "Star Wars Episode I" looked blurry, and that's because pretty much the entire movie was scanned, processed, and printed at 2K resolution, which is just not good enough to match film resolution. Give most people a side-by-side comparison, and they'll agree that 2K digital just isn't as good as film.
First off, the EE Times article is talking about the standards for interactive content, not the image specs. The image specs have already been set, as you pointed out. The current wrangling is over the set of APIs used to provide interactive "programming" for people's DTV sets and set-top boxes. It has nothing to do with the image specs. Read the article.
That said, there are a couple of incorrect statements in your post (actually, in the quote you have from the "CyberCollege" site). The first is this one:
If there is any "fault" with digital video it's that seems "too sharp and clear" compared to film. Of course, I guess we can all get used to better quality if we really have to!
First off, no matter what anyone tells you, the resolution of HDTV is not the same as film. Film is capable of resolving up to 4,000 lines, not 2,000. People see this all the time when scanning film in for the purpose of creating special effects. The current standard for scanning film in post-production is 2,000 lines ("2K" resolution). However, there is still scannable information left on the film that is not picked up at that resolution. 4,000 lines ("4K" resolution) would be the proper resolution for scanning film. 4K is what is needed to really replace 35mm film without any loss, not 2K resolution.
If you look closely next time you're at a movie theater, you can see that special effects shots look blurry compared to the rest of the movie. That's because of the loss in resolution due to scanning at 2K. Hopefully 4K will become the standard for doing special effects, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Most people think that 2K is "enough", even though it really isn't.
As for HDTV looking "too sharp and clear", this is nonsense. No one ever says that. The common complaint is that HDTV looks "too real" compared to film. And what people mean when they say this is that it looks too much like the evening news. Film is used for everything you see on TV these days except for the news and other "reality" programming, and so when people mean to say that something has too much of the video "look", they end up saying that it looks "too real".
The reason film and video have different looks is that they respond to light differently. Film samples light in a logarithmic curve, which is very similar to the way the human eye sees light. That is why film looks so natural. Video cameras, on the other hand, sample light in a linear fashion, which is what gives it that particular look. The fact is, if you want an image that looks the most natural, film is still the way to go.
The second incorrect statement is this one:
The studio production standards we've cited are not to be confused with the broadcast standards listed below.
Actually, the 1920x1080 24 fps progressive format is exactly the same format that is being used for Star Wars Episode II. That's right, it's being shot in the exact same resultion that is supposedly going to become the broadcast standard for TV. Why would studios being doing that? If they use the same resolution for movies as is going to be used for TV, why would people go to theaters anymore? It doesn't make sense.
Unless of course, they have no intention of ever giving us the HD resolution at home. And since all the major TV networks are now owned by movie studios, they can do that.
So, here what's going to happen. HDTV resolution will be used for theaters, which will be a step down in picture quality, and then regular resolution digital TV will be used for the home, and the extra bandwidth from the digital broadcasting licenses that were given away by the U.S. Congress will be used for a bunch of stupid "interactive" content. Isn't that nice?
This article reminds me of this little cartoon about this very same subject. It's quite hilarious, poignant, and certainly takes less time to watch than reading that whole book the reviewer was talking about.
The company you're thinking of is called MaxiVision, and it was founded by Dean Goodhill, who among other things was film editor on the "The Fugitive" (he was nominated for an Oscar for that, but didn't win).
Digital may look good compared to some film projection, but when you compare the very best digital projection available today to the very best film projection available today, film will win. Here is my own personal comparison test:
I went to see "Mission: Impossible 2" recently, and I was lucky enough to see a Technicolor dye-transfer print of it. It was amazing! The color and sharpness were just unbelievable! And, a few months ago I got to see "Toy Story 2" projected digitally, and while the color was close to what a dye-transfer film print looks like, the resolution was awful. I moved around the theater several times, and found that if I sat closer than the halfway from the front to the back, I could see the individual pixels on the screen. You don't have that problem with high-quality film prints. The image from a good film print looks smooth no matter how close you get.
Note that I am not saying that film will always be superior. If the companies that are pushing this would increase the resolution from its current level of 1920x1080 to something more comparable to film, say 4096x1720 for a 2.39:1 widescreen "scope" image, then I think it will be a suitable replacement for film. Until then, though, people should realize that digital actually has less resolution than film.
Since when do we care about saving the movie studios money? Do you really think they are going to pass those savings on to the consumers?
Besides, what most people do not realize is that film is actually better than any of the digital systems that have been demoed to date. Here are the problems:
Resolution A frame of 35mm film contains millions of pixels. A spokesman for Kodak recently stated at a panel discussion that film has between 8 and 12 million pixels per frame. The digital systems being proposed as a replacement have about 2 million pixels (1920x1080). Does that sound like comparable resolution to you? Doesn't to me.
Color range Film has a much greater color range than the RGB color representation used for digital projection. And the color range for film continues to increase. Technicolor recently revived the dye-transfer printing process that produces even greater color saturation than normal film. You can see this in action if you live in the Bay Area. Go to the Century Cinema 25 at Union City and see "Mission Impossible 2" or "Shanghai Noon" to see one of these prints. (Note: Do not go to see "Dinosaur" expecting to see a dye-transfer print. This is showing with a normal film print.) If you really want to see just how good film can look, this is your chance.
Yes, yes, I know that film is prone to scratches and digital is not. However, if you go to a good, quality theater with good projection, you will not see any scratches except around the reel changes, which will be going away soon since printing houses are moving towards using extended length reels (ELRs) for exhibition prints, which can contain the entire film on a single reel.
Film has higher quality than any currently available digital system (and I say "currently available" because I know that it is possible for a digital system to fix the problems that I mentioned, but I am talking about what is available today, right now -- that is what the studios are pushing for). Replacing film with the digital systems of the level of quality that we are seeing today is like replacing a good analog audio system with 8-bit 22kHz digital audio. It may be "digital", but that doesn't mean it's "better".
When it comes down to it, the only reason to get excited about this is because it will save the movie studios money. Given all the crap going on with the MPAA/DeCSS case and so forth, I find it very hard to understand why Slashdotters are excited about the @#$!ing movie studios saving money!! Can someone explain this to me please?
It's a surprise that the same company that appears to be for open access for cable lines would take this approach...
Actually, AT&T is not always in favor of open access to their cable lines. In San Francisco, they are pushing very hard for a closed/no access system. Here is a Bay Guardian op-ed piece about the issue.
Like the article says, it's not to late to stop them. If you live in San Francisco, go to those meetings and make your opinion heard!
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Whoa, I didn't know that. I can't believe he didn't get banned from K5 just for admitting having done something like that. On the other hand, he hadn't done anything bad to K5, just /.
It's not temporarily down, it's been permanently shut down by the admins. Go to the site now and all you'll see is a message from "rusty", the creator of the site. It explains things.
I really hope this is not the end of K5. Maybe rusty and the gang will get some offers of help from volunteers, which will allow them to put the site back into operation.
In any case, it just burns me that script kiddies can win like this. As another poster noted, being attacked seems to be the price of popularity.
I imagine that /. gets hit by shit like what K5 experienced (and probably worse) all the time, but CmdrTaco and the gang just grit their teeth and deal with it. Of course, they can do that, since running /. is their full-time job. But for smaller, run-in-your-spare-time sites like K5, it's just too much.
I wouldn't know, but I'll be dealing with crap from script-kiddies is probably a hell of a lot of work.
Where the hell did you get these numbers from? I agree that there are limits to human perceptions, but the values you give are crap!
If what you say is true, why is the rule-of-thumb threshold for "flicker-free" monitors 72Hz and not 45Hz? And do you really think there is no perceptible difference between 44kHz sampled audio and, say 100kHz sampled audio? (Don't quote Nyquists' Theorem at me, that just gives the minimum sampling rate to record a certain frequency. To get an accurate recording requires more. And there's also the issue of the leading edge of a suddenly occuring sound being rounded off to the nearest sample, which is an error that will be present no matter what the frequency of the recorded sound.)
Um, excuse me, but if you can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3, you're deaf!
As an added bonus, Century has just about the best quality control in the business. Every time I go, the projection and sound are absolutely fantasic, practically flawless.
In contrast, AMC is very bad about advertising, as is Sony's Lowes chain. Don't bother giving them your money. Shop around and find a place like Century or some other chain that still cares about the customer and support them instead.
Unfortunately, Apple has ceased all development on QuickDraw3D. It is still available on the current versions of MacOS, but will not be available on MacOS X.
That is, no official version of QD3D will be available on MacOS X. There is always the Quesa project, which is a cross-platform library that runs on top of OpenGL and provides the same functionality as QuickDraw3D (with API-level compatibility). As to whether any game companies will actually use Quesa remains to be seen. (The project is open-source, licensed under the LGPL.)
In any case, I think it was a big mistake for Apple to stop development of QuickDraw 3D. It's a great API, not just for porting, but for doing original work as well. Look at Bugdom and Nanosaur, two fairly sophisticated 3D games that were written by a very small development team. That just goes to show how easy it is to develop using QD3D. Hopefully the Quesa project will keep it alive and maybe even increase its popularity.
No, it's because Bill likes having pr0n so close to him!
Actually, the problem you are describing is due to the size of the image, not the resolution. If the pixels were drawn on the screen at a higher density than usual, then you would be able to see the whole image at once, without having to move your eyes around. And that extra resolution would not be wasted, since your eyes are plenty capable of resolving details at greater than the standard 72dpi or 100 dpi of a monitor (at a distance of about 18" to 20").
But which bill number do we reference when writing to our representative? I know the bill is labelled HR 2987 but as the story mentions, it's now been grafted on to the "Bankrupcy Reform Act", which is known as HR 833. So, if it's been "grafted", does that mean that the original bill number has gone away, and the bill has become a part of the one on to which it was grafted? If so, shouldn't we be using the bill number of the one which it was grafted on to?
Which is the proper bill number? H.R. 2987 or H.R. 833? Can anyone help?
What these compaines should be doing is challenging the patent on DDR RAM in court, on the basis that it is overly obvious.
After all, your memory clock has two edges. So if you're already transmitting data on one of the edges, why not transmit it on the other one as well. I just don't see how anything like that could ever be considered anything but "obvious".
Yes, the patent office is so poorly mismanaged these days that it will grant stupid patents like this all the time, but that's why it needs to be challenged in court! Get it in front of a judge and show him how simple it is, and then it will be thrown out! They shouldn't even be bothering with the anti-trust stuff until after they try that tack first!
While film [may] have a higher resolution if you shoot a single frame of a Kodak resolution chart...
Film has a higher resolution no matter what it's pointed at, be it a resolution chart or the set of an actual movie, nor does it depend on the number of frames shot, 1 or 1 million. It's still the same medium.
The degradation is actually quite negligible. Even after all those steps, there is still more detail on film than in a 1920x1080 image. I've been to several movies lately where I could see the individual pixels in the digitally processed special effects shots, and that's on the theatrical release print. For example, look for it in "Gone in 60 Seconds" whenever the camera cranes down on a new scene, and there's a subtitle at the bottom of the screen (which was added digitally). You'll notice a shimmering aliasing effect in some of the straight edges in the images (like the edges of buildings or telephone wires in the background). This is due to the limited number of pixels in the digitized version of the film image. The rest of the movie, which was not digitally processed, does not look exhibit that problems.
Besides, these days there are more options for release film printing that produce even better results than the traditional methods. Just look at Technicolor's dye-transfer process, which produces a near-exact copy of what's on the film negative, with brighter and richer colors (and in a form that will never decay). I've noticed that some of these prints have started to show up in theaters, and they look absolutely incredible. Having looked at that, and at TI's digital projection, I'd say that digital has a ways to go before it catches up.
Also note that Sony's DVCAM format is heavily compressed in-camera before being recorded to tape. So, you're not getting a full 1920x1080 pixels of pure picture information, you're just getting some DSP chip's approximation of that. With film, you get the real deal -- no compression artifacts anywhere.
Furthermore, CCDs do not capture light the same way that film does. Film samples light in a logarithmic curve, which is very similar to the way the human eye sees it. CCDs, on the other hand, sample light in a linear fashion, which is what gives video its characteristic "look". Because of this, even with the same lighting techniques and the same lenses, film and CCDs will not produce the same results. That "video look" will be evident in the final film. Ask yourself: Do you really want movies to start looking like the evening news?
Lastly, even though the resolution being filmed is 1920x1080, so far TI has only produced projectors capable of 1280x1024, so unless they increase that resolution, you won't even be seeing the full resolution the movie was made at, and even if you did, it would still be less than film.
So, in summary, SW Episode 2 is going to suffer in terms of picture quality due to Lucas's decision to shoot digitally. I guess it won't be much worse than Episode 1 though, which looked pretty bad already, due to the fact that almost that entire movie was digitally processed at 2K resolution, when it should have been done at 4K.
The standards for the supposed "future of cinema" really should be aimed higher.
I've been to many movies lately where I can see the individual pixels in digital effects shots, and that's when looking at a film print. What we need is 4K resolution, not 2K. People just don't get it. Film is an amazing technology. It is still the most efficient, compact, and asthetically pleasing way of storing and reproducing images.
Lucas is using digital because film offends his sensibilities. He considers film an "old" technology, and has referred to it as "a 19th century idea", as though that were justification enough for getting rid of it. Hey George, you know what? The wheel is a pre-historic idea, and people still use it!
I think that some of these people who are drooling over digital "cinema" are so blinded by technolust that they would willingly buy a bottle of snake oil as long as it had the word "digital" somewhere on the label. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who still thinks CCDs and other digital methods are up to the job yet.
Made-for-TV and straight-to-video movies are not elligible for Oscars either, unless they are shown in a theater first. All the decision from the AMPAS did was reiterate the role of the Oscars as having to do with theatrical releases. You still can shoot, project, and ship the movie to the theaters in any medium you want. The only requirement is that it be an actual theater, and not some form of in-home exhibition.
I think all that griping on /. last week was over nothing. The decision about the web was actually consistent with past decisions, and does not actually exclude movies made in an electronic format. It just reiterates the requirement of a movie being shown theatrically.
Film is at 24fps, and U.S. standard video is at 30fps (NTSC, the broadcast standard for North America, divides each frame into two interlaced fields, giving 60 fields per second, but still only 30 distinct frames per second). When film is transfered to video, the frames are lined up with a "pulldown" so that the frames from film are spread evenly across the slightly larger number of video frames over the same time period. Note that there are some systems in the works, such as MaxiVision that double the frame rate of film to 48fps.
That said, it is more than just the frame rate that gives film and video different looks. Film samples light in a way that more closely matches the human eye. Imagine two side-by-side cameras shooting the same scene with the same lighting, one film and the other video. Now imagine that the film's frame rate had been adjusted to match video. Would the resulting images then look the same? No, because of the fact that the two mediums do not respond to light the same way. It probably will be possible sometime in the future to make a CCD or other electronic light-gathering device that works in a way more similar to film (and thus more similar to the human eye), but for right now, it's still a problem.
Actually, you say first that people think video looks more real, but then go on to say that film is more similar to the way we see things--that doesn't really make sense...
Okay, I should have been clearer about that. While I personally believe that film looks the most natural and real and that video looks less natural, when HD video was first being bandied about and shown to various people, some voiced complaints about the look of the image, saying that it looked "too real". I think by saying that, those people unwittingly gave advocates of HD video some ammunition to use in promoting it. What I was trying to do in my previous comment was interpret what those people were trying to say when they complained about video looking "too real". I think what they meant was that HD video still looks too much like the evening news (which is one of the few things on TV that is shot video, most other things are shot with film and then transfered to video). Since we're all used to associating the video look with the news and other reality based TV, anything that has that same video look evokes a reaction and triggers that association. I would imagine that whomever actually said that (I have no idea who or when this supposedly happened) was trying to explain that the video look was too much like TV news and not enough like theatrical film, but they kind of stumble on their words and out came the unfortunate comment of "too real". I was merely trying to explain where I thought the comment came from. I was not agreeing with it.
I do not think that video looks more real than film. I actually think it looks less real. And the thing is, I'm not just making a subjective judgement here, there is an objective element to my criticism. Film caputres light in a way that is much more like the human eye than video. (See this article for some comments from a Kodak employee.) I think it's telling that advocates of video rely on subjective arguments (such as the oft-repeated comment about video looking "too real"), while advocates of film rely on objective arguments about the technical capabilities of film. It begs the question: if advocates of video really are pushing something that is "better", why can't they come up with any objective arguments to support their case? Why do they have to rely on subjective opinions? (Hint: maybe because it really isn't better!)
The "shutter-gate error" can be a problem, but with the latest advances in film movements, most brand-new cameras and projectors provide absolutely rock-steady transport. The mechanics of that sort of thing have really improved in recent years.
Still, I bet that even though the machine is capable of 4K scans, most people don't bother to do them. Everyone seems stuck on 2K at the moment.
In any case, the grain size for film that responds to visible light is extremely small, and keeps getting smaller every year with the introduction of new film socks. I've seen 70mm prints of movies from the 60's and 70's, such as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "West Side Story" that looked truly amazing, and yet today's 35mm film is getting to where it looks almost as sharp. That's because the grain size has decreased dramatically over the years, and will continue to do so in the future. That's a big advantage of sticking with film. You can always benefit from advances in film quality without having to buy a new projector. But once you switch to digital, you are stuck with the same pixel count forever.
If you're looking for a reference about 4K resolution being equivalent to film, here is an article that talks about a panel discussion between film and digital proponents. The folks from Kodak talk about how 4K scans show the level of detail on 35mm film to be between 8 and 12 million pixels, which is much greater than the paltry 2 million pixels offered by 2K digital.
And if you really want to see just how good film can look, try checking out Technicolor's newly revived dye-transfer printing process. Articles talking about it can be found here and here. It's pretty amazing. I've seen it in first hand, and it blows digital projection away. The picture looks so sharp and clear it's as though you could reach right into the screen and touch it, and the color is absolutely incredible! If you live in the Bay Area, you can see a dye-transfer print for yourself if you go to the Century 25 in Union City. "Mission: Impossible 2" and "Shanghai Noon" are showing there with dye-tranfer prints. It's the best film quality I've ever seen. If you can, go check it out!
I noticed that Industrial Light and Magic is not one of the listed installations for the new Arri scanner, even though lots of other major special effects houses are using it, including Digital Domain (co-founded by James Cameron and used for movies like "Titanic"). Apparently George Lucas is among those people who think that 2K resolution is "enough". Can't he tell the difference? Is he blind? I, for one, thought that "Star Wars Episode I" looked blurry, and that's because pretty much the entire movie was scanned, processed, and printed at 2K resolution, which is just not good enough to match film resolution. Give most people a side-by-side comparison, and they'll agree that 2K digital just isn't as good as film.
That said, there are a couple of incorrect statements in your post (actually, in the quote you have from the "CyberCollege" site). The first is this one:
First off, no matter what anyone tells you, the resolution of HDTV is not the same as film. Film is capable of resolving up to 4,000 lines, not 2,000. People see this all the time when scanning film in for the purpose of creating special effects. The current standard for scanning film in post-production is 2,000 lines ("2K" resolution). However, there is still scannable information left on the film that is not picked up at that resolution. 4,000 lines ("4K" resolution) would be the proper resolution for scanning film. 4K is what is needed to really replace 35mm film without any loss, not 2K resolution.
If you look closely next time you're at a movie theater, you can see that special effects shots look blurry compared to the rest of the movie. That's because of the loss in resolution due to scanning at 2K. Hopefully 4K will become the standard for doing special effects, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Most people think that 2K is "enough", even though it really isn't.
As for HDTV looking "too sharp and clear", this is nonsense. No one ever says that. The common complaint is that HDTV looks "too real" compared to film. And what people mean when they say this is that it looks too much like the evening news. Film is used for everything you see on TV these days except for the news and other "reality" programming, and so when people mean to say that something has too much of the video "look", they end up saying that it looks "too real".
The reason film and video have different looks is that they respond to light differently. Film samples light in a logarithmic curve, which is very similar to the way the human eye sees light. That is why film looks so natural. Video cameras, on the other hand, sample light in a linear fashion, which is what gives it that particular look. The fact is, if you want an image that looks the most natural, film is still the way to go.
The second incorrect statement is this one:
Actually, the 1920x1080 24 fps progressive format is exactly the same format that is being used for Star Wars Episode II. That's right, it's being shot in the exact same resultion that is supposedly going to become the broadcast standard for TV. Why would studios being doing that? If they use the same resolution for movies as is going to be used for TV, why would people go to theaters anymore? It doesn't make sense.
Unless of course, they have no intention of ever giving us the HD resolution at home. And since all the major TV networks are now owned by movie studios, they can do that.
So, here what's going to happen. HDTV resolution will be used for theaters, which will be a step down in picture quality, and then regular resolution digital TV will be used for the home, and the extra bandwidth from the digital broadcasting licenses that were given away by the U.S. Congress will be used for a bunch of stupid "interactive" content. Isn't that nice?
This article reminds me of this little cartoon about this very same subject. It's quite hilarious, poignant, and certainly takes less time to watch than reading that whole book the reviewer was talking about.
The company you're thinking of is called MaxiVision, and it was founded by Dean Goodhill, who among other things was film editor on the "The Fugitive" (he was nominated for an Oscar for that, but didn't win).
I went to see "Mission: Impossible 2" recently, and I was lucky enough to see a Technicolor dye-transfer print of it. It was amazing! The color and sharpness were just unbelievable! And, a few months ago I got to see "Toy Story 2" projected digitally, and while the color was close to what a dye-transfer film print looks like, the resolution was awful. I moved around the theater several times, and found that if I sat closer than the halfway from the front to the back, I could see the individual pixels on the screen. You don't have that problem with high-quality film prints. The image from a good film print looks smooth no matter how close you get.
Note that I am not saying that film will always be superior. If the companies that are pushing this would increase the resolution from its current level of 1920x1080 to something more comparable to film, say 4096x1720 for a 2.39:1 widescreen "scope" image, then I think it will be a suitable replacement for film. Until then, though, people should realize that digital actually has less resolution than film.
Besides, what most people do not realize is that film is actually better than any of the digital systems that have been demoed to date. Here are the problems:
A frame of 35mm film contains millions of pixels. A spokesman for Kodak recently stated at a panel discussion that film has between 8 and 12 million pixels per frame. The digital systems being proposed as a replacement have about 2 million pixels (1920x1080). Does that sound like comparable resolution to you? Doesn't to me.
Film has a much greater color range than the RGB color representation used for digital projection. And the color range for film continues to increase. Technicolor recently revived the dye-transfer printing process that produces even greater color saturation than normal film. You can see this in action if you live in the Bay Area. Go to the Century Cinema 25 at Union City and see "Mission Impossible 2" or "Shanghai Noon" to see one of these prints. (Note: Do not go to see "Dinosaur" expecting to see a dye-transfer print. This is showing with a normal film print.) If you really want to see just how good film can look, this is your chance.
Yes, yes, I know that film is prone to scratches and digital is not. However, if you go to a good, quality theater with good projection, you will not see any scratches except around the reel changes, which will be going away soon since printing houses are moving towards using extended length reels (ELRs) for exhibition prints, which can contain the entire film on a single reel.
Film has higher quality than any currently available digital system (and I say "currently available" because I know that it is possible for a digital system to fix the problems that I mentioned, but I am talking about what is available today, right now -- that is what the studios are pushing for). Replacing film with the digital systems of the level of quality that we are seeing today is like replacing a good analog audio system with 8-bit 22kHz digital audio. It may be "digital", but that doesn't mean it's "better".
When it comes down to it, the only reason to get excited about this is because it will save the movie studios money. Given all the crap going on with the MPAA/DeCSS case and so forth, I find it very hard to understand why Slashdotters are excited about the @#$!ing movie studios saving money!! Can someone explain this to me please?
Like the article says, it's not to late to stop them. If you live in San Francisco, go to those meetings and make your opinion heard!