This link from the current issue of Newsweek:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/549585.asp

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quote:

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Then there’s the matter of our eyes, which are just not used to gazing at pixellated data on a large screen. “Your brain has to work a little harder to construct the image,” asserts cinematographer Allen Daviau, whose credits include “Empire of the Sun” and “E.T.”

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That problem can be solved, since if the projector has high enough resolution, the images won't look pixelated. Of course the question is, will we get to actually see that kind of resolution in theaters, or will we have to put up with "good enough"? At the moment it sounds like the answer is, sadly, the latter.

That was a strange article. You're right, Scott, there was absolutely no distinction made between shooting and projecting, even though the two are completely independent of each other. The article also talked about digital images looking "flat" and "two-dimensional" -- which is just a complete non-sequitor. Both film images and digital images are going to look that way ... because they're both 2D media! Duh. I don't know what the author was thinking when he wrote that.

On the other hand, I was extremely pleased to see this statement in print:

quote:

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The technology has also not yet overcome large gaps in resolution—the amount of picture information carried by digital pixels is still a fraction of what is contained on a frame of 35mm film.

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It's about time somebody got around to putting that into a news article. I'm sick of all the hype about how if something's "digital", it's just got to be better. If it doesn't have enough pixels, it's not better! I'm very glad this article was willing to point that out. (And for anyone who might be reading who thinks the extra resolution of film is somehow negated by the limitations of projectors and lenses, I would direct your attention to another thread in which John Pytlak explained how, in Kodak's screening rooms, they are able to measure a resolution of 80 line-pairs per milimeter even when the film is being run through a projector as normal. For a standard 35mm frame area, that works out to nearly 4K resolution. Put that in your digital projector and smoke it.)

And let's not forget the fact that Lucas shot Episode II in 1920x1080 HDTV, while the DLP-based projectors Technicolor is talking about installing in 1000 theaters for free (as part of their roll-out plan) have a resolution of just 1280x1024. So those 1000 theaters will not even be able show the full resolution of Lucas's movie, but those theaters showing 35mm prints will be able to, due to the fact that film can hold every last pixel of an HDTV image (and more). After the digital data has been output to film with a laser recorder, it will actually look better that way, rather than trying to show it with an electronic projector that doesn't have enough resolution. Unless theaters start installing digital projectors that are capable of showing full HDTV resolution, the best way to watch Episode II will be on film, not electronically.
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Aaron Haney
Professional Complainer
Apple Computer, Inc.

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Since the grain is randomly distributed on film, and the grain is different in every frame, the brain is good at integrating (averaging) out the grain over several frames, which can allow details captured poorly by the film to still be easily discernable. If something in the image is not moving, the difference in the way the object gets "rendered" on film can actually allow more detail to be seen than one single frame may capture. Interestingly, studies have been done that have determined that the human eye and brain can more easily extract detail from images that have a slight bit of noise present! Film grain may actually aid the human visual system in seeing detail more easily in an image!

With a digital system, the pixels are in the same locations for every image, so that these types of still objects in the image with details approach the sampling limitations of the device get rendered the same way, with the same artifacts (lack of detail or aliasing artifacts) in every frame, with no variance in rendering so there is nothing for the brain to average to get more detail out of the picture or reduce the artifacts. This is compounded by the digital device having a much lower resolution than film.

The brain is quite good at extracting detail from low-resolution images, but it takes work and having to do that sort of work for the length of a movie may cause headaches in many people.

Distractions during a feature cause the brain to have to do more work to watch a movie, and being distracted by some attribute of the presentation, such as noticing rows and/or columns of pixels, or alaising artifacts or beat patterns produced by the use of uniform spatial quantization, will make the brain have to work harder.

Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

You have been very informative about this.

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The Disney theme parks run 35mm and 70mm KODAK ESTAR prints tens of thousands of passes. I have a sample of a 70mm print that was shown at EPCOT 60,310 times!

Yes, if you "do film wrong" you can scratch a print on the first pass. But you can also trash a DVD by handling it improperly, scratch or stretch a D5 tape on poorly maintained equipment, or suffer a head crash on a hard drive. Whether it's film or digital, it still takes skilled and caring people and well-maintained equipment to avoid problems.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

If the data is preserved and copied to new media as old media start to go bad, then digital seems to be the way to go for archival. What many people don't realize is how fast standards of encoding and decoding digital information change. What is really scary about the copy protection and encryption craze is that many years from now. people may be able to read the string of numbers from some digital media, but not be able to make sense of what the numbers represent because the data was encrypted and the key was lost, the algorithm has been lost, or some piece of proprietary hardware necessary for the decryption is no longer made and none are available or in working condition.

People generally can not physically observe digital media and tell what's on it. With a vinyl record, it doesn't take too much mechanical ability to figure out that the vibrations of the groove are a fairly direct encoding of the sound recorded. With a piece of movie film, it doesn't take too much insight to just look through the film to see the recorded image and figure out what's going on, or shine light through it to make a bigger version. Suppose someone finds a CD or DVD many years from now but no players are available. They might have a chance at figuring out the CD if they rig up a divice to extract the bitstring, but the encrypted information on the DVD would probably be hopeless to figure out. If all of our analog media go away and everything becomes digital, I believe a lot of our history and knowledge (including movies and songs) will be lost if we're not careful.

Evans

May I ask that you extrapolate your analysis a little further please?

How does the brain perceive TV by comparison with film and digital projection at theatres? Your analysis concludes that digital projection is harder to watch than film at 24 fps but how does TV compare?

Here in Australia we have PAL colour which I understand is 625 x 625 pixels. Your NTSC systems is similar but has a lower number of pixels. Is TV harder to watch than film or vice versa? Are you more likely to get headaches watching TV?