Native HD resolution is is 1920x1080 and 2k resolution is not far off by 2048x1556.
Understanding aspect ratio for theater format could help in the long debate of what to shoot on what medium.
Theaters have a standerd format called Academy. Academy ratio is 1.37:1. No matter what the final projected aspect ratio is, most theaters project the standard Academy format. 1.85:1 aspect ratio is the american standard aspect ratio. How this works is the image is squeezed on to the 1.37:1 and later projected as 1.85:1. the 1.37:1 aspect ratio is slightly wider then the 1.33:1. The same 4x3 square aspect ratio we see on a television set.
Academy format
[...]
In 1932, in refining this ratio, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded upon this 1930 standard. The camera aperture became 22 mm by 16 mm (0.866 in by 0.630 in), and the projected image would use an aperture plate size of 0.825 by 0.600 in (21 by 15 mm), yielding an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. This became known as the "Academy" ratio, named so after them.[34] Since the 1950s the aspect ratio of some theatrically released motion picture films has been 1.85:1 (1.66:1 in Europe) or 2.35:1 (2.40:1 after 1970). The image area for "TV transmission" is slightly smaller than the full "Academy" ratio at 21 mm by 16 mm (0.816 in by 0.612 in), an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Hence when the "Academy" ratio is referred to as having an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, it is done so mistakenly.[34]
Super 16mm film is natively an HD format. projected at 1.66:1 european standard aspect ratio or 1.78:1, commonly referred to as 16x9 widescreen.
In retrospect, the aspect ratios of 1.66:1, 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 are so close to oneanother that a person shooting on 35 mm vs a person shooting native HD will have very little or virtually no loss from cropping or by matting.
Theaters do project True HD content in 2K, for Flat (1.85:1) presentation 1998x1080 pixels of the imager is used. as you can see it is entirely possible to shoot, edit and distribute in HD.
The idea here is that if you choose to shot HD and project it in theaters, it is not only possible, but it is extremely close with limited loss in visual quality compared to a true 2k, 2048x1556, image projected in a theater.
Because super 16mm film and and HD are identical in aspect ratio and resolution, there should be no qualms over choosing one over the other in terms of movie distribution. Only difernce is film has a completely different look, feel and a higher latitude then that of digital.
Theaters could never truly display the huge range of latitude that film offers so shooting on digital is just an alternative if you don't have the money or the resources to shoot film.
If you shot a feature in native HD you can always take it to a film lab and have it dubed on 35mm film for theater distribution the results are nice and a good way to make your digital image look a little more like film. I know india has some great prices for film dubing and telecine. You can also go to Fotokem.
All film labs do is project the image on to color reversal film with an EI rating of 100. Its a thick grain stock, but it still gives a nice texture to that hd project. Film has to be scanned digitally then projected. Shooting HD skips the scanning step minimizing loss in quality.
Today, theaters are getting there content streamed to them digitally. So what ever you send them they can project with with no loss in quality. Most theaters project in 2k and most films are distributed in 2k. No matter how you look at it, shooting on HD or film you can get away with upresing the HD image or 16mm film to 2 k. But you don't have too.
Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a joint venture of the six major studios, published a system specification for digital cinema.[1] Briefly, the specification calls for picture encoding using the ISO/IEC 15444-1 "JPEG2000" (.jp2) standard and use of the CIE XYZ color space at 12 bits per component encoded with a 2.6 gamma applied at projection, and audio using the "Broadcast Wave" (.wav) format at 24 bits and 48 kHz or 96 kHz sampling, controlled by an XML-format Composition Playlist, into an MXF-compliant file at a maximum data rate of 250 Mbit/s. Details about encryption, key management, and logging are all discussed in the specification as are the minimum specifications for the projectors employed including the color gamut, the contrast ratio and the brightness of the image. While much of the specification codifies work that had already been ongoing in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the specification is important in establishing a content owner framework for the distribution and security of first-release motion picture content.
The ASC had a great example of HD content distributed to theater in there article talking about Star wars and its digital film exhibition:
To create the digital Phantom that was used for these presentations, an interpositive was struck from its master negative and transferred to D-5 HD tape at Modern VideoFilm in Burbank, California, under the supervision of THXs principal video engineer, Dave Schnuelle. Two transfers were done, each optimized for the respective projector systems. Colorist Skip Kimball corrected the transfer for the TI projector, and Greg Garvin colored the Hughes-JVC transfer. Both were done on a Spirit DataCine in 8-bit 4:2:2 at 1920 x 1035 resolution. That data was then compressed by the Panasonic D-5 recorder at 4:1 to 1280 x 1024. The D-5 tapes were brought to International Video Conversions in Glendale, California, where a screening room with a 24' screen was set up with three projectors: a standard 35mm rig, TIs DLP, and the Hughes-JVC ILA-12K. The movie was then compared and corrected to get [both telecine transfers and the film print] looking as close as possible to each other, submits Robert Lemer, who represents CineComm Digital Cinema, a company positioning itself to be a satellite delivery service from distributors to exhibitors with digital projectors.
The final HD data was transferred to Pluto RAID disk arrays (consisting of 20 18-gig drives) for presentation at the four theaters.
CineComm represents a key component in the proposed digital distribution paradigm. Were in a position to replace the labs and [the shipping company] in the delivery of films to exhibitors, maintains Russell Wintner, CineComms co-founder and chief technical officer. The film will be given to us by the studio, after which well compress and encrypt it, uplink it to the satellite and address it down to theaters. There, the information will be stored on our Theater Management System, a RAID array totaling about 350-400 gigs that will handle 10 to 12 screens.
The compression algorithm—at 50:1—is a proprietary development by QualComm. It uses an adaptive block size, whereas current MPEG and JPEG algorithms have a fixed block size. That allows our compression to be much more efficient because it compresses an entire frame without regard to the frame before or the one after, as opposed to MPEG, which compresses information based on the differences between the frames. The inherent difficulties of current compression technologies—such as motion artifacts—are eliminated.
when shooting 16mm film your EI resolution is dubbled when projected in theaters if stretched to 2k resolution. If you shoot a 16mm film with an EI rating of 500 it will be the equivalent of a 1000 speed stock. As a cinematographer or filmmaker you can use this methed to your advantage in order to achieve a certain look or feel.
If you push a stock you are essentially dubbling the film grain each time. So if you think about it if your 16mm stock is already rated at 500 and you push it 1 stop it dubles the EI rating to 1000 and if you where to project it it would be like 2000 EI equivalent. Its crazy numbers, so know what you are shooting and how you plan to distribute it. If its just for TV and the web then you are fine.
Remember standard 16mm is natively 1.33:1 aspect ratio also refereed to as a 4X3 aspect ratio or a square picture.
DV or SD is typically a 1.33:1 aspect ratio and when converted to 16X9 it is actually squeezed and made larger during projection and capture. Rarely are any DV cameras true 16X9 aspect ratios. At least in the consumer and prosumer cameras.
If you haven't heard the hype already, the Red Digital Cinema Camera hit the streets in 1999 and the birth of a new age of cinema was born. Why this camera is so revolutionary is because the founder Jim Jannard who also founded Oakley basically wanted to make a some what affordable digital SLR camera in to a motion picture camera. And that he did with great success. In fact these cameras fully decked out cost 45 k with all the accessories including fixed PL lenses and tripod. a set up like this shooting actual film or some other digital capture camera with all the fixings could easily cost up to 1 mill. Just for a profesional sony HD camera with the body cost an easy 100 k.
The Red Digital Cinema Camera Company manufactures digital cinematography cameras and accessories for professional and cinematic use. The company was created and financed by Oakley founder Jim Jannard with the publicly expressed intent to reinvent the camera industry. The company's main product is the Red One, which can record at resolutions up to 4,096 horizontal by 2,304 vertical pixels, directly to flash or hard disk storage. It features a single Super 35-sized CMOSsensor and a cinematography industry standard PL mount.
In 1932, in refining this ratio, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded upon this 1930 standard. The camera aperture became 22 mm by 16 mm (0.866 in by 0.630 in), and the projected image would use an aperture plate size of 0.825 by 0.600 in (21 by 15 mm), yielding an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. This became known as the "Academy" ratio, named so after them.[34] Since the 1950s the aspect ratio of some theatrically released motion picture films has been 1.85:1 (1.66:1 in Europe) or 2.35:1 (2.40:1 after 1970). The image area for "TV transmission" is slightly smaller than the full "Academy" ratio at 21 mm by 16 mm (0.816 in by 0.612 in), an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Hence when the "Academy" ratio is referred to as having an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, it is done so mistakenly.[34]
Super 16mm film is natively an HD format. projected at 1.66:1 european standard aspect ratio or 1.78:1, commonly referred to as 16x9 widescreen.
In retrospect, the aspect ratios of 1.66:1, 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 are so close to oneanother that a person shooting on 35 mm vs a person shooting native HD will have very little or virtually no loss from cropping or by matting.
Theaters do project True HD content in 2K, for Flat (1.85:1) presentation 1998x1080 pixels of the imager is used. as you can see it is entirely possible to shoot, edit and distribute in HD.
The idea here is that if you choose to shot HD and project it in theaters, it is not only possible, but it is extremely close with limited loss in visual quality compared to a true 2k, 2048x1556, image projected in a theater.
Because super 16mm film and and HD are identical in aspect ratio and resolution, there should be no qualms over choosing one over the other in terms of movie distribution. Only difernce is film has a completely different look, feel and a higher latitude then that of digital.
Theaters could never truly display the huge range of latitude that film offers so shooting on digital is just an alternative if you don't have the money or the resources to shoot film.
If you shot a feature in native HD you can always take it to a film lab and have it dubed on 35mm film for theater distribution the results are nice and a good way to make your digital image look a little more like film. I know india has some great prices for film dubing and telecine. You can also go to Fotokem.
All film labs do is project the image on to color reversal film with an EI rating of 100. Its a thick grain stock, but it still gives a nice texture to that hd project. Film has to be scanned digitally then projected. Shooting HD skips the scanning step minimizing loss in quality.
Today, theaters are getting there content streamed to them digitally. So what ever you send them they can project with with no loss in quality. Most theaters project in 2k and most films are distributed in 2k. No matter how you look at it, shooting on HD or film you can get away with upresing the HD image or 16mm film to 2 k. But you don't have too.
Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a joint venture of the six major studios, published a system specification for digital cinema.[1] Briefly, the specification calls for picture encoding using the ISO/IEC 15444-1 "JPEG2000" (.jp2) standard and use of the CIE XYZ color space at 12 bits per component encoded with a 2.6 gamma applied at projection, and audio using the "Broadcast Wave" (.wav) format at 24 bits and 48 kHz or 96 kHz sampling, controlled by an XML-format Composition Playlist, into an MXF-compliant file at a maximum data rate of 250 Mbit/s. Details about encryption, key management, and logging are all discussed in the specification as are the minimum specifications for the projectors employed including the color gamut, the contrast ratio and the brightness of the image. While much of the specification codifies work that had already been ongoing in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the specification is important in establishing a content owner framework for the distribution and security of first-release motion picture content.
Image and audio capability overview
- 2D Image:
- 2048x1080 (2K) at 24 frame/s or 48 frame/s, or 4096x2160 (4K) at 24 frame/s
- In 2K, for Scope (2.39:1) presentation 2048x858 pixels of the imager is used
- In 2K, for Flat (1.85:1) presentation 1998x1080 pixels of the imager is used
- In 4K, for Scope (2.39:1) presentation 4096x1716 pixels of the imager is used
- In 4K, for Flat (1.85:1) presentation 3996x2160 pixels of the imager is used
- 12 bits per color component (36 bits per pixel) via dual HD-SDI (encrypted)
- CIE XYZ color space
- TIFF 6.0 container format (one file per frame)
- JPEG 2000 compression
- 250 Mbit/s maximum image bit rate
- 2048x1080 (2K) at 24 frame/s or 48 frame/s, or 4096x2160 (4K) at 24 frame/s
- Stereoscopic 3D Image:
- Audio:
The ASC had a great example of HD content distributed to theater in there article talking about Star wars and its digital film exhibition:
To create the digital Phantom that was used for these presentations, an interpositive was struck from its master negative and transferred to D-5 HD tape at Modern VideoFilm in Burbank, California, under the supervision of THXs principal video engineer, Dave Schnuelle. Two transfers were done, each optimized for the respective projector systems. Colorist Skip Kimball corrected the transfer for the TI projector, and Greg Garvin colored the Hughes-JVC transfer. Both were done on a Spirit DataCine in 8-bit 4:2:2 at 1920 x 1035 resolution. That data was then compressed by the Panasonic D-5 recorder at 4:1 to 1280 x 1024. The D-5 tapes were brought to International Video Conversions in Glendale, California, where a screening room with a 24' screen was set up with three projectors: a standard 35mm rig, TIs DLP, and the Hughes-JVC ILA-12K. The movie was then compared and corrected to get [both telecine transfers and the film print] looking as close as possible to each other, submits Robert Lemer, who represents CineComm Digital Cinema, a company positioning itself to be a satellite delivery service from distributors to exhibitors with digital projectors.
The final HD data was transferred to Pluto RAID disk arrays (consisting of 20 18-gig drives) for presentation at the four theaters.
CineComm represents a key component in the proposed digital distribution paradigm. Were in a position to replace the labs and [the shipping company] in the delivery of films to exhibitors, maintains Russell Wintner, CineComms co-founder and chief technical officer. The film will be given to us by the studio, after which well compress and encrypt it, uplink it to the satellite and address it down to theaters. There, the information will be stored on our Theater Management System, a RAID array totaling about 350-400 gigs that will handle 10 to 12 screens.
The compression algorithm—at 50:1—is a proprietary development by QualComm. It uses an adaptive block size, whereas current MPEG and JPEG algorithms have a fixed block size. That allows our compression to be much more efficient because it compresses an entire frame without regard to the frame before or the one after, as opposed to MPEG, which compresses information based on the differences between the frames. The inherent difficulties of current compression technologies—such as motion artifacts—are eliminated.
when shooting 16mm film your EI resolution is dubbled when projected in theaters if stretched to 2k resolution. If you shoot a 16mm film with an EI rating of 500 it will be the equivalent of a 1000 speed stock. As a cinematographer or filmmaker you can use this methed to your advantage in order to achieve a certain look or feel.
If you push a stock you are essentially dubbling the film grain each time. So if you think about it if your 16mm stock is already rated at 500 and you push it 1 stop it dubles the EI rating to 1000 and if you where to project it it would be like 2000 EI equivalent. Its crazy numbers, so know what you are shooting and how you plan to distribute it. If its just for TV and the web then you are fine.
Remember standard 16mm is natively 1.33:1 aspect ratio also refereed to as a 4X3 aspect ratio or a square picture.
DV or SD is typically a 1.33:1 aspect ratio and when converted to 16X9 it is actually squeezed and made larger during projection and capture. Rarely are any DV cameras true 16X9 aspect ratios. At least in the consumer and prosumer cameras.
If you haven't heard the hype already, the Red Digital Cinema Camera hit the streets in 1999 and the birth of a new age of cinema was born. Why this camera is so revolutionary is because the founder Jim Jannard who also founded Oakley basically wanted to make a some what affordable digital SLR camera in to a motion picture camera. And that he did with great success. In fact these cameras fully decked out cost 45 k with all the accessories including fixed PL lenses and tripod. a set up like this shooting actual film or some other digital capture camera with all the fixings could easily cost up to 1 mill. Just for a profesional sony HD camera with the body cost an easy 100 k.
The reason why I bring this camera up is its ability to shoot 2k res and up to 6 k res.
Few movies are distributed with higher res then 2 k and film can not be scanned higher then 8k res. 8 k resolution films are distributed in via Imax. On a more epic film the highest resolution distributed for standard theater projection is 4 k. So it is safe to say that this camera can be a life long investment. Especially with the integration of inter changeable parts the camera is basically an erector set. even the CCD can be replaced with a bigger and better one. this will bring down the cost and worry of being out of date and constantly buying new cameras to keep up with demand.
So why fret? We have come to the new wave of filmmaking which is digital. Altho I love film with a passion I can not deny the expensive cost to make a movie in film. Its just too high. Even if you got the film for free you are still looking at cost for telecine, dubing, duplication, storage etc... Its all to crazy and I can do most of my work on a big hard drive that cost maybe 500 $ at the most and maybe buy the aja kona for realtime uncompressed video.
Its all there and ready for the consumer. I think if you wanted to start up a feature film company you can do so with all the decked out Redone + parts and editing equipment for around 100k. and quite possibly you will never need to make any major upgrades in the futre.
No matter how you look at it making a film is still and always will cost money. Even on a low budget film shooting 16mm will cost around 30k and up. This is with all the basic in a 16mm film production. Just to make it clear, Digital will never truly take over film because film has a texture and feel that you can never achieve with digital. Film is strictly a mechanical process. No matter how you look at it, film will most always be finalized on a digital medium. Producing films digitally ensures there is no degradation when distributed.
I am not trying to sell any one on the Redone, just making the point that we are at a point now where the frustrations of trying to produce cheap films under a budget and with quality is a reality. Why frustrate your self trying to get into hollywood without the chance of ever achieving your true goal which is making movies when you can do it with out breaking your bank and still deliver the same vision and quality that those major film studios do. I think the Indi film is going to change the face of hollywood with out a doubt and it has. The former stigma of the indi filmmaker being less then the corporate movie mongols will be no more and the rise to the backpack filmmaker will take over the film world. :)
By
Robert Sawin
Few movies are distributed with higher res then 2 k and film can not be scanned higher then 8k res. 8 k resolution films are distributed in via Imax. On a more epic film the highest resolution distributed for standard theater projection is 4 k. So it is safe to say that this camera can be a life long investment. Especially with the integration of inter changeable parts the camera is basically an erector set. even the CCD can be replaced with a bigger and better one. this will bring down the cost and worry of being out of date and constantly buying new cameras to keep up with demand.
So why fret? We have come to the new wave of filmmaking which is digital. Altho I love film with a passion I can not deny the expensive cost to make a movie in film. Its just too high. Even if you got the film for free you are still looking at cost for telecine, dubing, duplication, storage etc... Its all to crazy and I can do most of my work on a big hard drive that cost maybe 500 $ at the most and maybe buy the aja kona for realtime uncompressed video.
Its all there and ready for the consumer. I think if you wanted to start up a feature film company you can do so with all the decked out Redone + parts and editing equipment for around 100k. and quite possibly you will never need to make any major upgrades in the futre.
No matter how you look at it making a film is still and always will cost money. Even on a low budget film shooting 16mm will cost around 30k and up. This is with all the basic in a 16mm film production. Just to make it clear, Digital will never truly take over film because film has a texture and feel that you can never achieve with digital. Film is strictly a mechanical process. No matter how you look at it, film will most always be finalized on a digital medium. Producing films digitally ensures there is no degradation when distributed.
I am not trying to sell any one on the Redone, just making the point that we are at a point now where the frustrations of trying to produce cheap films under a budget and with quality is a reality. Why frustrate your self trying to get into hollywood without the chance of ever achieving your true goal which is making movies when you can do it with out breaking your bank and still deliver the same vision and quality that those major film studios do. I think the Indi film is going to change the face of hollywood with out a doubt and it has. The former stigma of the indi filmmaker being less then the corporate movie mongols will be no more and the rise to the backpack filmmaker will take over the film world. :)
By
Robert Sawin
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