Cinema Screen Size

PaPa

PaPa

Major Contributor
what would be the full resolution of a 2.35:1 motion picture on a big screen in the theatres?

I've seen Standard Def commercial shots on the big screen before the previews begin and it fills about half of the frame,. maybe a bit less. What would the resolution have to be to fill the entire cinema screen frame?
 
I'm not sure this has to do with camera resolution itself but rather the filmout and the projector settings? Maybe it was intentional?
 
PaPa said:
what would be the full resolution of a 2.35:1 motion picture on a big screen in the theatres?

I've seen Standard Def commercial shots on the big screen before the previews begin and it fills about half of the frame,. maybe a bit less. What would the resolution have to be to fill the entire cinema screen frame?
Click to expand...

There is no specific "...resolution..." which would "...fill the entire cinema screen..." as resolution alone has nothing to do with projected size. The only thing which effects size is the magnification factor and the frame aspect ratio. One could easily take an SD image and project it to fill the entire screen in one direction or another; this isn't to state that there wouldn't be noticeable qualitative issues, but projected size has nothing to do with resolution.

In your stated example, you are comparing a pre feature image size to the image size of the main feature. In many cases, the video material would be from a completely different projection device (a video projector) than the main feature (a film projector). The choice of size of the image is likely to have more to do with the light output of the video projector than any other single issue.
 
i guess what im trying to say is, at what resolution, 2.35:1 would one havea decent image on a large cinema screen?

And maybe im not too clear, as i know what your telling me, but sometimes before previews start, at my cinema, there are little advertisements that are floating in the middle of the screen, noticeably 4x3 SD ditigal footage. Forgetting about the projector thats projecting it at that size, what resolution would it take to stretch SD footage ( uprezzing ) to fit a full cineframe 2.35:1 ?
 
PaPa said:
i guess what im trying to say is, at what resolution, 2.35:1 would one havea decent image on a large cinema screen?

And maybe im not too clear, as i know what your telling me, but sometimes before previews start, at my cinema, there are little advertisements that are floating in the middle of the screen, noticeably 4x3 SD ditigal footage. Forgetting about the projector thats projecting it at that size, what resolution would it take to stretch SD footage ( uprezzing ) to fit a full cineframe 2.35:1 ?
Click to expand...

If you transfered a camera phone video to 35mm film it would fill the screen. You wouldnt uprezz the video at all it would just get transfered and fit the full 35mm strip.
 
The term "uprezzing" is really not very accurate as it implies that you can add resolution, you can't. What you can do is increase the image size by interpolation to create intermediate data points so that a smaller image can be made to fit within a larger footprint.

If you are asking about an SD project masked to a 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and assuming a non-square pixel aspect ratio of .9, then you would have a 720 x 272 image. In order to get the "best" performance from this you would need to know the characteristics of the projector and use that as your target. If the projector is a native 1080 or 720 device, then you would scale your material to hit its pixel width (keeping in mind the PAR of the projector). The level of acceptability will be very dependent upon the seating distance.

I have seen a lot of SD projects and even the very best, are better viewed from no closer than the middle of a typical 200 - 400 seat theater.
 
2.35:1 is an anamorphic ratio for 35mm film. So whatever you can throw on a 35mm anamorphic film print - through DI, another film strip, drawing directly on the emulsion, etc - it can be projected. If a film were to be projected on a digital projector, it can be many different resolutions, but hopefully it is at least 2k resolution. Again, same rule applies here, whatever you can throw into the digital file - it can be projected.

Now, I think you are asking at what point will an image turn to crap, right? Well, that's really subjective. There are way too many variables to give a solid opinion, including - but not limited to - the quality of the original image, the quality of the lens, the quality of the capturing device, the resolution/quality of the projector, the size of the screen, how close one sits to the screen, the resolution of the original image/capture device, etc.

But you can probably make some assumptions - i.e. if you shoot some video on a $50 cell phone in a dark room and project it on a 40ft screen, it's gonna look like crap.

Garrett
 
That's what Kodak says -- a 4k scan = 12 million pixels, and they claim that each frame of film is like a 12MP sensor...

Anyway, Panavision did some testing to determine how much actual resolution ends up on the screen from a 35mm film print after it's gone through all the normal stages to end up to a release print. On average, it ends up being around 750 lines per picture height. And that, by the way, was judged very close to the screen (which means the number is probably a bit generous).
 
Yes, real 35 mm movie projected resolution is only about 1600*750 pixels no matter what the screen size.

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"an interesting bit of a conversation with Brian Bonnick, VP of Technology for IMAX ...

"The smallest resolve power of neg film is about 6 microns. As a result, the limiting resolution on a 35mm negative frame is around 3700x2700 pixels. This means a maximum of 2000 lines of vertical resolution for an image with a 1.85 aspect ratio and even less for a 2.35:1 aspect ratio (1570 lines).

The resolution on a 35mm release print is much lower due to MTF generation loss in the film process. A recent paper from SMPTE journal reported that the real resolution that audience can discern in a high-quality 35mm cinema is about 1600 horizontal pixels, which translates to about 850 lines for 1:85 and less than 700 lines for 2.35. Most 35mm cinemas fair even worse than those numbers."

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Yes filmquality isnt all resolution, but the same goes for video. As a wrote in another thread. the f900 films i have seen on screen have been

1440*810 with chroma of 480*810 and some of them were so filmic i had to check after that it wasnt 35mm.
 
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