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So anyway, I would prefer to spend less time worrying about the unstoppable and maybe even try and contribute to the progress.

P.S. Does anyone think it was a step backwards to go from analog to digital sound?

A few weeks ago, I happened to attend an event where the world's top cinematographers were honoring one another and I was surprised by how seriously they see "digital cinema" as an immediate threat to film's domination. I was surprised at how scared they seemed to be, despite the fact that they'd all still have jobs no matter what format is used to originate the image. They seem to agree that the paradigm shift is inevitable, but they're still not convinced that the image quality of high definition video (you call it "digital cinema" but let's call it what it is) is high enough to call this a step forward.

Vittorio Storaro said, "I believe that we should do everything possible to change the tendency of the industry to aim towards lower technical quality. The audio-visual industry is pushing film to a video quality level instead of raising video to film quality. I believe we should stand all together to change this -- 2K resolution should not be our final destination."

But, you know... if people pay money for it then it'll fly. Cinematographers will kick and scream because they work hard and they want the BEST technical innovations to make their work look the best it can.

High Definition Video in a big movie theatre might just make money for a few months... until people decide they'd rather watch high definition video at home... where the seats are more comfortable, the floor is cleaner, the popcorn is cheaper and parking is easier too. And, with the speed at which movies drop out of first-run theatres and into our DVD players, it's going to be worth the wait to a much greater number of viewers than are staying away from your theatres today.

If you feel D cinema is an improvement in the presentation in your cinema then take a cold hard look at the the standards in your theatre.

Remember film done right is still a quantum leap ahead of electronics and for in the history of video for every improvement it has gained film technology has improved as well.
I am sure Fuji and Kodak are both working on improved stocks.

When you take an analog signal and convert it to digital you must use a compression formula. This formula eliminates the lowest lows and the highest highs that the human ear cannot hear. The problem is that these compresions and eliminations can in fact eliminate some sounds that people with good hearing can hear. This muddies the sound and causes a shrill effect with lack of bass.

You do not have this problem with vinal records as long as you are using a good quality turn table and you take care not to scratch your records.

Now with digital film the same thing could happen when a compression is applied to the information. You could end up loosing something in the quality of the picture and gain unwanted artifacts that you will not see in a real fim presentation. If you take care of the film it will look wonderful everytime you look at it.

I do not think that digital picture presentations will ever look as good as film. Film just has a quality and richness about it that I do not think will ever be achived by a digital light process.

Hollywood needs to stop worrying about trying to kill peoples jobs and start worrying about making a movie that is worth a shit. Nobody is going to come to your theater by the droves if the movie is crap I don't care how it is projected.

quote:

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When you take an analog signal and convert it to digital you must use a compression formula. This formula eliminates the lowest lows and the highest highs that the human ear cannot hear. The problem is that these compresions and eliminations can in fact eliminate some sounds that people with good hearing can hear. This muddies the sound and causes a shrill effect with lack of bass.

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That's not necessarily true about the compression formula, but it is true for the Dolby Digital and DTS systems that are used in theatres and homes. PCM audio that is on CDs is NOT compressed. The limitations of PCM audio are not due to compression, but due to insufficient sampling rates and insufficient bits per sample. Other limitations are inherent in the D/A converter mechanisms used in the CD player or receiver used to convert the bitstream back into analog.

Even if no compression is used, digital audio (or video) can be vastly inferior to analog if the sampling rate is not high enough to capture the highest frequency components present in the original signal and/or each sample taken does not have a wide enough range of possible values to capture the level of the signal at that point with enough resolution.

Evans

Anybody else on the list planning on going?

Ogenki de,