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Topic: Ice Age Film Soft

Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 04-05-2002 04:28 PM

The film recorders I've seen are just (just?) a high resolution white phosphor CRT with a servo operated film camera focused on it. Each colour is scanned separately through an appropriate filter mounted in a motorized wheel. After the 3 colours are scanned the camera advances one frame.
The spot size - and thus picture resolution - varies with brightness; too bright and it "blooms" larger. The spot is therefore rather dim and the spot scanning speed pretty slow - only a few lines scanned per second, so recording one frame takes a while... several minutes.
Watching the recorder CRT it is impossible to guess what the image is, you see only a dim spot of flickering light scanning the screen.

There is no "digital" resolution limitation inherent in a film recorder's monochrome analog CRT. Resolution is primarily limited by the spot size, and the higher resolution one wants the dimmer the spot gets, and then recording time per frame goes up because a dimmer spot has to scan more slowly to expose the film. Reciprocity failure comes into play if the spot is too dim.
The practical resolution limit was about 6K pixels per line on the recorders Imax used in 1990 - probably current models are better?

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John T. Hendrickson, Jr
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 889
From: Freehold, NJ, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 04-05-2002 05:06 PM

John Hazelton wrote:

"I don't think the director would be willing to reduce the quality of the film output just to boost E-Cinema's reputation, especially knowing that the vast majority of the theater audience will see the movie on film. He would want it to look as good as possible for everyone."

But would Mr. Digital George Lukas do it with EP II just to try and make a case that 35 MM film is inferior? What do you all think?

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Aaron Haney
Master Film Handler

Posts: 265
From: Cupertino, CA, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 04-05-2002 05:08 PM

Many current filmout devices are laser-based, not CRT-based. Kodak and Arri both make laser recorders, and I'm sure there are others.

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Richard Topping
Film Handler

Posts: 13
From: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
Registered: May 2001

posted 04-07-2002 08:31 AM

We have 2 copies of Ice Age and they are both soft at the best. We also have the Stuart Little trls and these run pin sharp!

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 04-08-2002 09:32 AM

Richard Topping said: "We also have the Stuart Little trls and these run pin sharp!"

Sounds like cinematographer Steven Poster's insistance on 4K scanning and recording for "Stuart Little 2" shows up clearly on the big screen!

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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John Hazelton
Film Handler

Posts: 42
From: Oakland, CA, USA
Registered: Jun 2001

posted 04-08-2002 02:26 PM

John Hendrickson asks:

quote:
But would Mr. Digital George Lukas do it with EP II just to try and make a case that 35 MM film is inferior? What do you all think?

While I don't agree with Lucas's general assessment of HD Video vs. film, I think he's trying to make the film version of "Clones" look as good as possible.

I've heard that they are shooting out multiple negatives, so that each print run will come from, essentially, a first generation negative--no multigeneration elements involved.

Most directors I've encountered want their movies to look as good as they can in whatever medium they're being shown, be it film, digital video, NTSC, or PAL. It'd be hard for me to imagine a director deliberately reducing the quality of his or her movie just to make an ideological point.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 04-08-2002 03:26 PM

The paper "Assessing the Quality of Motion Picture Systems from Scene-to-Digital Data", published in the February/March 2002 SMPTE Journal, has data and pictures of 35mm film scanned at 4K, compared to 24P HD origination. Guess which looks much sharper?

Direct comparison of images on a big screen usually favors film originated images:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/students/filmtech/35hd24p.jhtml

The HDCAM format is sampled at Y=1920 pixels per line, and subsampled at only Y=1440 pixels per line:
http://www.smpte.org/smpte_store/standards/pdf/s367m.pdf
http://www.dps.com/pdfs/dps_white_papers/High_Definition_Video_1-0.pdf

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