Digital prjection vs. blow up projection....

[Alex]

Both are good to go.

Digital projection quality will keep improving.

I look at in a very simplistic way.

I think nothing beats film when you put a lens in front of the film, and take an image of the great outdoors and "condense" it onto a film frame.

However, once having captured an image on film, I don't believe going film to film is essential for maximum quality.

Any registration errors that already exist will be increased because the new film copy will add additional registration errors.

I think a digital copy of the film original is the ideal scenario.

Unfortunately, the ongoing digital vs film battle is taking no prisoners, and most digi-heads don't just want digital projection, they want everyone to shoot on digital to begin with.

-Alex





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[Matt Pacini]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by trevorbr:
[B]"Would a digital projector of equal resolution to a 35mm ..."

There is no digital projector with equal resolution as 35mm film.
Current digital projectors have a horizontal res. of something like 1.5K pixels.
They (digital projection industry and it's many hypers) say that you can't tell the difference, and that it's high enough resolution, it looks as good or better than 35mm projection, blah blah blah, but that's B.S., or they wouldn't still be developing even higher res. projectors, right?

Also, film scanning for big budget movies is scanned at 4K horizontal, lower budget movies, (but still high enough budget for CG work) at 2K, still almost twice the resolution of current digitial projectors, and it's absolutely common knowledge in the industry that you can tell the difference between 2K and 4K scanned images when projected on film.

Having said that, 4K or even 2K is probably beyond what's necessary to capture everything that's there in a little S8 frame.

BUT, anytime there is another generation added, quality suffers.
SO... Super 8 transferred directly to 35mm is going to be higher quality than any other process IF you are planning on projecting in a theater, which it sounds like you're saying.

It would be monumentally stupid to do so, however.
If you digitize, you can edit, enhance, etc. as long as you digitize at a high enough resolution.
Then if you want to render out to 35mm film, you can (not cheaply though) but you had better be sure that your images are high res, like I said, or there will have been a loss in quality introduced somewhere...

ULNESS YOU DO WHAT I'M GOING TO DO!!!!

I've just sent off payment to Roger Evans (AKA Moviestuff on this board) to build me a slightly customized Workprinter.
I'm going to use this to digitize my film, then I have software that can actually increase the resolution of any image file, while actually GAINING in resolution!
It's amazing, and it's going to make my S8 footage looke close to 35mm.
If you don't believe me, email me, & send me a chunky, little bitmap file of any type whatsoever, and I'll send it back to you up-ressed.
You'll will not believe what this software will do.
I may just have to charge all you guys to up-res your movies!

Matt Pacini


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[Matt Pacini]

P.S. I mean send me a single frame or two, or three.
Not any AVI or Quicktime files, or whatever.
You can ask Roger how impressive the results were.
I can blow up an image 200%, 300% 400% and it will look so much better than the original, with higher detail, etc.
I should add, if the image is really, really grainy, it won't do as well.
It works really well on chunky, pixelated images, like even tiny little pictures you see on the internet, but when you blow them up in Photoshop, they're so chunky you almost can't tell what they are.
Amazing!
Matt

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[MovieStuff]

The whole debate over "resolution" is messy because resolution is a relative term. For instance, Super 8 looks MUCH sharper when it is running at speed than it does when it is on freeze frame. This is due to "accumulative resolution" that allows detail to be spread across the total volume of grain that can be interpreted by the human eye as a single image due to persistence of vision.

Therefore, there is a difference between "mathmatical resolution" and "accumulative resolution" (my terms). Like super 8, 35mm film looks much sharper and more detailed when running at speed than it does on a freeze frame. Digital or video looks the same whether it's a freeze frame or at running speed.

The problem is that engineers like math and they figured if they could make "real time digital" (not talking about scans) mathmatically match a single frame of 35mm film in terms of resolution, then the battle would be won. The problem is two fold: First, they haven't yet matched the total mathmatical resolution of a single frame of 35mm film and second, even if the did, they would not have the benefit of "accumulative resolution" to allow the detail to be compounded by persistence of vision. Every frame would have the pixels in exactly the same place, unlike film, where a grain fragment is in one place on this frame and in a different place on the next. Because the human eye sees the two grain fragments as one due to persistence of vision, there is a perception of more detail.

This is why film scanned for effects work has to be done at such super high resolution. They must capture the grain pattern or they'll lose the "accumulative resolution" that makes film look like film!

When digital can duplicate the random detail characteristics of film's grain, then I think the engineers will be on to something. Until then, digital projection may be commercially viable for a variety of economic reasons, but it will still have a lot of room for improvement as far as emmulating the true look of film aquisition and projection.

My two cents, anyway.

Roger

[This message has been edited by MovieStuff (edited September 08, 2001).]

[Nigel]

Film looks better it will look better nothing more really needs to be said. Look at TV HDTV will max out at 1080 lines of resolution which can't even come close to 35mm film. Plus there are factors like latitude--Digital projection does and always will clip your image film won't. There are too many factors that make film better and will keep it in venues for many many many yaers to come. Good Luck

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[MovieStuff]

Hi, Nigel!

The factors that are important to you and me, such as resolution, detail, latitude etc, don't mean a thing to the world of economics. If it did, then television would not exist in any way shape or form, since 1950s television was about as bad as it gets. None the less, it didn't die, it grew and grew due to ecomonic factors.

I think that people need to realize that "quality" is as relative as "resolution". Remember, one of the top rated television shows of all time was "Three's Company". Shooting that in IMAX would not have made it any more tolerable for you or me nor would it have made it any more successful.

Therefore, in respect to digital projection, its time is coming NOT because of an increase in quality that makes it rival 35mm, but because of a decrease in expectations of the viewing audience that long ago tossed their super 8 home movie cameras for a VHS camcorder. It is that same audience that Lucas's digital projection system was tested on with glowing results. I doubt for a second if anyone in the audience had a resolution test chart in their pocket. They simply looked at it and said it looked "good enough".

In my opinion, optical blow up of S8 to 35mm and standard projection will be superior from a purely image standpoint. However, I'm not sure how much I would enjoy seeing tape splices, two stories high, everytime a cut came along. So there are other issues that come into play, such as post production and effects, etc. In that sense, a trade off on some resolution, by taking super 8 to digital projection, might be okay for the benefits it would provide for expanded post production capabilities beyond a Ciro splicer and in camera lap dissolves.

Roger Evans

[trevorbr]

Would a digital projector of equal resolution to a 35mm projection produce better results for super 8 than a super 8 blow to 35mm release print? The reason I ask is because of the results in films like Armagedon. The end credits whith the home movie look are suposedly super 8. I saw this in a large theatre and although it was indeed very grainy, it didn't completly fall apart.
Would a direct digital scan of a super 8 film being digitally projected offer an equal, lessor, or better image? I know there are a lot of variables, just looking for a general, theoretical conclusion with reasons why it would or would not be better. I have my own conclusions, but would like to hear from those with more knowledge than I (wich includes everyone I think

-trevor

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[Alex]

I was given a digital 8 videotape of surveillance of a warehouse.

The client needed video prints made.

To my utter surprise, when I grabbed a freeze frame, the picture seemed to "muddy-up", when I switched the frozen image from frame to field, thereby cutting the resolution in half, I swear I could almost see what looked like globs of mosaic bw patterns.

We discovered that when the Digital 8mm Video was played back, it looked significantly better in real time than when pulling a frozen still "frame"....a phenomenom I don't recall ever seeing before with other video formats.

It's almost as if the digital 8mm was mimicking the characteristic of film, it looked like it had more resolution in playback mode than when stilled ....however, a film frame would never dengenerate the way the 8mm digital video when put in the freeze frame mode.

I hear Final Cut Pro is going to release a High-Definition version for their Non-Linear Editing System.

-Alex



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[mattias]

digital projection *does not* clip your image (why on earth would it?). even if the contrast ratio would be much lower than that of a typical film print (it isn't), the image would just be compressed. search your favorite usenet archive for more info -- there was a discussion on rec.art.movies.production about a year ago that was pretty illuminating. the only real problem i've heard of (besides the cost obviously), is the low resolution, which makes the image a little soft when the screen is very large, and you can even see the pixels in some cases.

/matt

[MovieStuff]

Previously, Alex wrote:

"It's almost as if the digital 8mm was mimicking the characteristic of film, it looked like it had more resolution in playback mode than when stilled ....however, a film frame would never dengenerate the way the 8mm digital video when put in the freeze
frame mode."

I have seen the effect you are referring to and I assume you are talking about a still frame from the video tape on 'pause' and not from your NLE's hard drive. Once on the hard drive, all your footage is going to act the same way on freeze frame, regardless of where it came from and if it's falling apart, then there's something wrong with your system!

The fact is that true video freeze frames (not a tape on pause) look the same as they do when they are running at full speed. There is no mathmatical, perceptible or asthetic increase in definition or resolution when the frames are linked together in continuous motion.

On the other hand, motion picture film looks much better when it runs at full speed than it does on a freeze frame. Relatively speaking, the film frame DOES look better on freeze than video does on pause OR freeze simply because film has more sheer resolution to begin with!

And (depending on the machine) pausing a video tape interrupts the electronic process that would normally let the entire frame come to completion before being viewed.

So when you say:

"a film frame would never dengenerate the way the 8mm digital video when put in the freeze
frame mode"

isn't really a fair comparison. If a film frame weren't allowed to complete processing in the lab and was viewed prematurely, like a tape on pause, then I can guarantee you it would look just terrible all the way around!

So comparing a tape on pause with a film freeze is comparing apples and oranges. You have to let both the film and the video go through the soup completely before tasting a single frame of either one.

Roger



[This message has been edited by MovieStuff (edited September 08, 2001).]