OT: Blu-Ray too clear?

aussiemick schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 00:28 Uhr

Fully agree, it seems unreal at first. I guess you adjust, but when you revert to SD I fear the worst, it will look very bad. But I think we have reached the end of the line as far as quality goes, there is no room left for improvement.
Mick

DGates schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 00:40 Uhr

This was a problem with local news stations around the country in regards to their news sets. All the fake marble formica looked fine in SD. But in HD, it looked like fake marble formica. So they had to remodel.

Patryk Rebisz schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 00:49 Uhr

goshep, u might have watched the 60p version of the 24p movie -- some of the TVs just double the fields or what not. And you got the TV news feeling rather then "taken on an adventure" vibe.

goshep schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 00:54 Uhr

Patryck,

So there will be frame rate choices available? Much like the old wide screen vs. full screen days? It really did look like they shot the whole movie over in HDV.

farss schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 00:57 Uhr

It was always the intent to achieve the best of everything when recording images, no one setout to do a bad job of it. Of course there were technological limitations but the scientists kept slaving away to find new ways to make better optics and better emulsions. Just go back and look at the movies from decades ago and you'll notice a significan difference in the image quality. Some were so obsessed with recording and showing a better image they went to 70mm and the costs be damned.
All the while the creative ones amongst us did what true artists always do, learn to work withing the constraints of the medium. Be it charcol on a cave wall, oil on canvas or IMAX. Some saw the camera as a device that always lied. Some of the photographers formed the f64 club using large format cameras to record as much detail as they could. History is full of this. No doubt millions of words written about it to. But technology marches on.
What bugs me is when poeple take what was a technologic limitation and say it's part of the ceative process, if that were true then the great master painters were hacks because they didn't spray ochre on cave walls. Oil paint on canvas was once a new technology, being able to buy premixed oils in a tube another marvel of 'modern' technology. And yet the works of the artists at that time are still masterpieces and fetch a pretty decent price even today.

Of course all new technology brings new challenges, it also broadens the creative horizons. Some will adapt and prosper, some will not and fade away. Just look at the impact of the 'talkies'.

As you've noticed higher definition makes us believe we're 'really there'. That would seem to me to open up a huge creative potential. Not being one of the creative ones I'll not presume how in the world one would use that but I'm pretty certain those that are will soon figure it out.

And we haven't even talked about 3D yet :)

Bob.

Patryk Rebisz schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 02:20 Uhr

I experienced the same thing as u did and realised that the TV must have converted the 24p source footage to 60p in real time thus you had the exprience of watching the News or "home movie" with spectacular lighting and production value.

Farss, i think u r missing the point. The guy felt "uneasy" watching it and was taken away from the story. One of the reasons why the movies r shot at 24fps is the econimics and the other because back in the day they did some research and found out that 12fps is not enough not to annoy the viewer (thus he's not paying attention to the story) and 60fps (besides being over 2x as expensive) looks too real for the viewer to drift into this wondrous state of "half sleep" that lets us be more immersed in the story.

Do u want to be the vanguard and try to change the human psychology by shooting your narrative 60fps? If so go ahead.

Laurence schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 02:43 Uhr

Well if you're doing a movie and building sets, I can see all of this being a problem, but for those of us doing documentaries, HD is just incredible.

fldave schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 03:06 Uhr

"Speaking to someone through a box will never be something people will do" (the telephone)

"Color in movies will never last"

It is just another paradigm shift in entertainment/utility.

They had to tone down the new, unreleased Ultra-HD in Japan because it was too real and a majority of the people got sick watching it.

I'm loving every minute of it, just got my PS3 and will be experimenting with 3 years of FX1 footage over the next year./..

farss schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 03:07 Uhr

"Do u want to be the vanguard and try to change the human psychology by shooting your narrative 60fps? If so go ahead. "

In a word YES!

Perhaps there's some truly creative potential to not having the audience half asleep. Old school thrillers will work very well in this format. No need for bucketloads of blood and guts to shock them, just a believable story that they feel they've really lived through.

I'm also wondering how surround sound fits into your view, I guess that's out too, perhaps theatres should go back to mono. I'm more interested in hearing 10.2.

And as for your assumption that it's linked to basic human pyschology, well that's a very difficult thing to test. Familiarity is what we all crave. Given a choice we'll choose what's familiar. The audio guys went through this back in the 60s, most people hated the sound of HiFi too, test audiences preferred the sound of a car radio.

Bob.

blink3times schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 03:17 Uhr

I love the HD images!!

We just got a 60" plasma panel and the hi definition just knock the socks right off your feet!! Add to that the 5.1 surround from the analogue outputs on the Hi def player and it's just amazing. It does how ever highlight the flaws that much more so your edits and renders have to be perfect. The 60" is replacing a 42" plasma and the low light HV20 footage looked pretty on a 42" screen. But on the 60 you can see the noise from the low light shooting that you could not see before.

Patryk Rebisz schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 03:32 Uhr

farss, i don't agree with your point of view but go ahead and experimnet. u have my blessing.

farss schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 04:30 Uhr

Patryk,
I shot 24fps 16mm 40 years ago, I'm in no great hurry to go back to it. It was fun at the time, well we didn't have much choice. Our first effort was with a clock work Bolex. Had a good time doing stop frame over an afternoon, damn shadows gave the game away but the audience bought it. 18 months later we moved upto the new Eclair, that was a beautiful camera.
One of the projects I'm going to try out on the EX1 is to make a hand crank for it. If the external shutter trigger can run to anything over 18fps it'll work. Sort of a back to the future project.

Bob.

MH_Stevens schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 13:21 Uhr

Bob: The adjustable shutter angle will give you some options here too. To respond to the original question consider that bigger screens and more distant viewing is norm and for reality/documentary work this high res is wonderful. I'm wondering if a new generation will have the same feel for 24fps and when wet film is finally gone will camera makers even make a 24fps setting? Come ten years I can see us shooting 9650x6400x120p.

craftech schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 13:47 Uhr

You were looking at a demo so there is no fear that what you saw will be what you will see consistently at home.

The BR and HD DVD players upconvert SD DVDs and many of the titles look as good if not better than some Hi-Def discs that are of marginal quality and they are many. Some Hi-Def discs are just plain awful - a testimonial to the carelessness and indifference in the industry. Soft images, grainy images, poor quality or muted sound, poor color, are all things that you will notice when playing different Hi-Def discs. Batman Begins was chosen by the store because it is one of the best looking discs in both BD and HD DVD.

Then there are the broadcast channels which will never utilize the full potential of Hi-Def because they don't have the bandwidth and won't have it in the future. Some shows will look "good" and some will look like they do now.

In other words, you can discuss the technology all you want, but if corporations won't fully implement it (which they won't), your fears will not be realized because of their cheapness and laziness.
So I wouldn't worry about it. There is plenty more "unrealistic video" for the future to put your mind at ease.

John

EDIT: The reasons I stated above are also the exact reasons I can't stand these stupid arguments about Blu-Ray vs HD DVD. The technology potential doesn't translate into what is being manufactured - ie: good Blu-Ray discs vs poor HD DVD discs and vice-versa.

Ehemaliger User schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 14:09 Uhr

I think we will find a lot of technical faults in movies that we thought the effects/cg looked great in. Even on some standard Def DVDs, movies like "Titanic" tend to show the effect mattes and such,

HD and Blue Ray will make that even more obvious, unfortunately detracting from the content as well.

Kind of like watching the old KIng Kong movie and being aware of the stop action which at that time seemed extremely real. Effects that seem real now will lose their shine with the new tech.

Dave T2

craftech schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 14:37 Uhr

I think we will find a lot of technical faults in movies that we thought the effects/cg looked great in. Even on some standard Def DVDs, movies like "Titanic" tend to show the effect mattes and such,

HD and Blue Ray will make that even more obvious, unfortunately detracting from the content as well.

Kind of like watching the old KIng Kong movie and being aware of the stop action which at that time seemed extremely real. Effects that seem real now will lose their shine with the new tech.

Dave T2
===============
Dave,

I built a home theater with a projector and a 120 inch screen and what I stated is the consensus of my fifteen regular guests. I have around 35 Hi-Def titles and 300 SD titles that were evaluated. Movies that look good in SD look good in their Hi-Def versions. Movies that look bad in SD don't look any better with their HD counterparts (or not enough to be worth the price). Miami Vice is grainy in both SD and HD particularly during the night scenes. Fan Boys claim that it was the director's "artistic vision". Right!
The Island (SD)upconverted looks GREAT. Currently there is no HD version, but that would look great in HD as well. Phantom of the Opera looks very good in SD upconverted and GREAT in HD, Transformers looks great in both, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has a soft image in both SD and HD,...........etc. It's the discs not the technology and not that because it is Hi-Def we are noticing it more. On a 120 inch screen it is easy to confirm what I am saying. We don't count the animations like Happy Feet, etc. Those all look good either way because they don't have to deal with light.

And by the way, one of the best looking HD DVD discs I own is The Searchers - a John Wayne movie from 1956.

John

Ehemaliger User schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 14:48 Uhr

It's the discs not the technology

-----------------

John, I am not sure I understand what you are saying. It is not even the technology, it is the source material and the technology used at the time. Miami Vice was shot to be shown on broadcast TV. Grain and soft focus is not a big issue when shooting for a 19" screen. But you take that same film and apply the higher definition of new tech, and the grain becomes more obvious.

My point was, effects such as the Titanic used looked good on the movie screen because the enlarged image softened matte edges, but when I see it on a DVD, the edges become hard and more obvious.

The Phantom (if you are referring to the recent musical) was probably shot with new tech in mind, and even edited on computers rather than film edit, so I am not surprised that the SD and HD both look good. The original shooting and the subsequent film transfers were optimized for the particular medium used.

But even a high quality film can look bad in SD or HD if the transfer from film to Tape/digital media was bad. Transfer equipment and operators vary as well as budgets and these can all determine the final quality. The discs themselves do not determine quality, the original media and the process to get it to disks are a big contributing factor.

And the High Definition allows some of the original media flaws to become more obvious.

Dave T2

craftech schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 14:51 Uhr

Dave,

See my note at the end of my post regarding The Searchers HD DVD from 1956. I added it while you were posting.

"The discs themselves do not determine quality, the original media and the process to get it to disks are a big contributing factor."

Yes, the way they are produced is often terrible. That is what I am saying.

John

Ehemaliger User schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 14:55 Uhr

John,

Here again, some of my best videos are older films as well. "Planet of the Apes" (original) looks very good on DVD (I only have SD so I can't talk about HD) because of the original media and the transfer process, but special effects that looked great, either because they were new at the time or because the big screen hid them, become more obvious as resolution of film transfer systems improve. I would think that HD would make these even more obvious.

Dave T2

craftech schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 15:18 Uhr

I would think that HD would make these even more obvious.
============
Here is a common question from some of my fifteen viewers as they watch many HD titles:

Are you sure that is an HD movie?

John

Ehemaliger User schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 15:21 Uhr

Were they asking because it looked bad or because there was no difference between the DVD and the HD version quality wise?

Dave T2

JJKizak schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 16:10 Uhr

The question "Are you sure this is an HD movie?" That is truly inspirational.
JJK

craftech schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 17:01 Uhr

Were they asking because it looked bad or because there was no difference between the DVD and the HD version quality wise?

Dave T2
======================
They were asking because it didn't look any better than a lot of SD DVDs and in some cases looked really bad. The quality really varies and it is not the fault of the technology or the blank media they use or the players or the format !!! . It is the fault of a realtively indifferent industry.

Here is another example. Remember I mentioned the HD DVD version of Phantom of the Opera being a really really good looking HD disc? Well the audio stinks. The audio has a True HD option as well. Now the fan boys for this stuff will cite stats like these and then recite them to the peanut gallery:

"Dolby® TrueHD is Dolby’s next-generation lossless technology developed for high-definition disc-based media. Dolby TrueHD delivers tantalizing sound that is bit-for-bit identical to the studio master, unlocking the true high-definition entertainment experience on next-generation discs. When coupled with high-definition video, Dolby TrueHD offers an unprecedented home theater experience that lets you enjoy sound as stunning as the high-definition picture."

"100 percent lossless coding technology.
Up to 18 Mbps bit rate.
Supports up to eight full-range channels of 24-bit/96 kHz audio.*
Supported by High-Definition Media Interface (HDMI™), the new single-cable digital connection for audio and video.
Supports extensive metadata including dialogue normalization and dynamic range control. "

The problem with The Phantom of the Opera HD disc is that the audio was recorded a full 15 dB (at least) below what it should be. So what happens when you choose the Dolby True HD track on the disc? You are forced to jack up the volume to the point where on many receivers (even high quality ones) HUM is introduced. It's a joke. And to make things worse, Warner Brothers did this with a musical!

John

farss schrieb am 04.01.2008 um 19:55 Uhr

The reasons why this is haapening I sure can't say for certain however at least in part I feel pretty confident in saying it's got a lot to do with the very movie making process itself. SMPTE a couple of years back ran some extremely careful double blind tests to determine just what resolution 35mm delivers to the cinema. The answer is pretty shocking, 700 lines. You don't have to spend a fortune on a HDV camera today that can do better than that.
A 35mm neg from the best stock and the best optics can deliver 4K res corner to corner. Even getting that res off the neg can be tricky, most DIs are only 2K although 4K is slowly happening but it is much more expensive.
Even if you get all that res into the DI you eventually blow most of it in the printing process. Very, very few release prints prints are actually film, they're made by a dye transfer process that apart from loosing resolution costs quite a bit of dynamic range as well. It's also much cheaper.
So from where in the photochemical process the master is taken for producing our HD disk can have a major impact on the result. Taken from a release print, indeed the HD version isn't going to have much to offer over the SD DVD. If they spend the money and scan the camera neg, rebuild the entire movie, digitally redo any composites etc then you'll get a true HD master. Blade Runner is currently being completely rebuilt from the ground up. It's an expensive process but one that's doable in more than one way.
Most of the camera neg could is still with us as the 65mm effects plates. But probably even more importantly so is Ridley Scott. So he can supervise the process to maintain the artistic intent. For many of the older movies we don't have those luxuries.
And as for the sound, well if all that survives is the optical track on a release print then you're not going to get anything too flash off that. There's been a lot of concern over preserving the vision side of movies, not enough attention has been paid to the audio assets or masters. Much of those were kept on the same base material as film and have literally fallen apart, trying to stitch it back together is impossible.

To get back to where this started, I'd suggest the same 'being taken out the story' effect will also occur if you see a movie projected from a DI rather than a dodgy print. Certainly the first time I saw a digitally projected 2K DI it was quite a revelation, I spent a lot of time looking for anything wrong with it and failed.

Bob.