Resolution and the big screen

R

robotsound

Well-known member
There is a lot of talk out there about how a film will look when projected on a giant screen. Usually, it goes something like this:

"Well, sure that might look OK on your HDTV or computer monitor, but just wait until it's projected on the big screen and then you'll really see the difference".

My eyesight is excellent. I can stand as close to my HDTV as necessary. My computer monitor is right in front of me, on my desk. It's an LCD Cinema Display. It's sharp. I can see every pixel.

I don't own a projector or I would just do some tests myself.

What am I missing here?
 
It's all subjective. HD may look great to you on a large HDTV, but for that to happen everything you see needs to be of the same quality level.

For example, if you were to take your DSLR video and project it digitally at your local theater with a 2k digital system your footage would look noticeably different than the trailer material, and something shot on film or on a RED. Also, small issues that might not be spotted on a smaller screen like a marginally soft focus will become much more visible on a large projected screen. I speak from experience here.

I recently saw my short film which was shot on RED 4K and mastered to a 2K DCP projected at a 2K digital cinema. Most of the footage looked spectacular, but a few shots that were interior with low natural light looked softer when projected than they did when we mastered it on a color corrected 60" plasma. The smaller it is, the sharper it is. And we had some helicopter shots that were shot on an HVX that looked almost horrid quality-wise when cut with the RED footage. If you were to watch just the helicopter footage by itself you'd never think otherwise.
 
robotsound said:
"Well, sure that might look OK on your HDTV or computer monitor, but just wait until it's projected on the big screen and then you'll really see the difference".
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Pixel peepers really should take "normal viewing distance" into account before making statements like that. There IS a normal viewing distance for projections and it's almost always a much greater distance than the distance we normally view TV's and monitors from. I shot a short with an HVX200A last year with and without a lens adapter that was projected in a commercial theater from a standard def DVD and it looked as good as it looked on my monitor. If I had stood 10 feet from the screen in the theater, I might have seen "softness" but the film looked as good as any other film I'd ever seen in a commercial theater from the mid point of the seating.
 
Chris, your comments are incredibly and absolutely wrong. Your claim is that your DV quality film looked as good as any commercially produced 35mm film you've ever seen? You simply haven't seen much if that's the case. Hopefully you realize that its physically impossible for your film to look as good as what you're claiming when presented that way, regardless of what you shot it on.
 
I have experienced a quad HD (3840x2160) 60" display with quad HD footage at a trade show. At normal viewing distances, approximately 3 to 4 times screen height, it was clearly and obviously superior to 1080p HD and my eyes aren't that good. There is such an organic transparency and depth to such an image that 3d becomes moot. It just isn't needed. Until you experience this for yourself on even a small screen, much less a theater sized screen, it is hard to comprehend just how much visual impact it can have. And no it looks nothing like 35mm film at all. Film looks so 19th century by comparison. The closest visual impact experience I can remember with film was my first theatrical viewing of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm.
The world is changing and true high resolution digital film making is going to bring entirely new aesthetic qualities that have never been possible before. The revolution is upon us.
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Chris, your comments are incredibly and absolutely wrong. Your claim is that your DV quality film looked as good as any commercially produced 35mm film you've ever seen? You simply haven't seen much if that's the case. Hopefully you realize that its physically impossible for your film to look as good as what you're claiming when presented that way, regardless of what you shot it on.
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Who said anything about DV? And how can I be "wrong" about my own qualitative judgment? And yeah, as I sat in the theater watching the film from the middle of the seating, "impossible" or not, it never occurred to me that the projection looked inferior to "real" films I'd seen in that very same theater.

And just for the record, I've seen features from Varicam on film, DV, Hi-8, D-Cinema, and EX3 on film, all projected in commercial theaters.
 
I just saw the film "Tiny Furniture", which was shot on a 7D, projected digitally at a local theater. While I have multiple issues with the film, the resolution of the image was not one of them. We are now at the point where prosumer HD cameras are of a high enough quality to produce films that can be shown any where in the world at a high enough quality to be accepted by the vast majority of the worlds cinema audience, purely on their image quality. Of course the important elements, story and acting are a whole different story....
 
I'm with Chris. I actually took the time and expense of running a test back in the days of the DVX100. I bumped my test footage over to 35mm film and it was simply spectacular. No, not as good as 35mm film, but, from half way back in the theatre (the large theatre at Raleigh Studios that I rented specifically to make the test as big as I could - not some little multiplex image, but something 30 feet tall and 60 feet wide). It convinced me that the technology has set us all free. No more excuses. Yet there are those of us that still keep waiting for the "next camera."
I also screened the demo reel from DVFilm in Texas that Barry Green helped me set up (showcasing various dv formats at the time bumped over to film). Again, pretty amazing. And that was BEFORE 1080p. Research my postings and you'll see that it was back in 2003, I believe, and I invited all DVXUsers who were in L.A. at the time to stop by and see it with me. Interestingly, only a half a dozen showed up.

Edit: Wait! Couldn't be 2003 - I've only been a member since 2004.
 
Our local 48 Hrs Film competition shows the city finalists (all shot in PAL SD widescreen) projected onto a 70mm movie theatre screen each year. The well-shot ones look fabulous. Would they look better in HD or 35mm film or whatever? Sure, a little. But not enough for most people to care, or even notice.
 
Sometimes this forum makes me snicker.

So, you guys are saying the Hollywood studios must be stupid to release films on 35mm film and now 2K DCP. They could just distribute DVD's to the theaters since nobody seems to notice the quality different anyway? Theater owners must be idiots to retrofit their theaters with 2K digital projection when 720x480 seems to be where its at!

Chris, you did. You said you took your video on a DVD, (which is DV quality) and projected it at a commercial theater and you said it looked as good as any other commercial film you've seen in a theater. I didn't make it up. You said it. DVD isn't Blu-Ray. Did you mean Blu-Ray?
 
5k or 8k can be mushy, dim, soft, blown out, heck even full of compression artifacts, but still 5k.
So let´s not get confused.
We are talking "benefits of resolution" here gentlemen - not looking"good", not sharp, not color, not whatever, just resolution.

So it´s no wonder that a 5k from RED looks better than SD from a DVX. Just because the RED has a better picture.
The question is, how would a SD or 1080 from RED look?

A lot of folks are obsessed with resolution they can`t see because of human limitations, but they believe they can see it - even if it physical impossible if you are not a falcon. Reminds me at the 80s and 90s where audiophiles where buying insane expensive audio equipment, cause they believed they can hear frequencies, that only dogs and bats can hear.

Frank
 
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Postmaster said:
Reminds me at the 80s and 90s where audiophiles where buying insane expensive audio equipment, cause they believed they can hear frequencies, that only dogs and bats can hear.

Frank
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While I agree that having a system that allows for 40-50KHz 'bandwidth' is not a system that would be all that useful for a human where most human hearing cuts off significantly after 10-15K. But there is an issue with amplifiers and 'rise' time, which if the amp slews, the results may be lower frequency artifacts that a 'well tempered hearing person' may hear.

I must say I am not now, nor have I ever been an audiophile... but I still can 'hear' squealing of electronics in the 15KHz range... most of me 'friends' can't... I also wear tinfoil hats when I'm in a high electronics environment... but I digress...
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Chris, you did. You said you took your video on a DVD, (which is DV quality) and projected it at a commercial theater and you said it looked as good as any other commercial film you've seen in a theater. I didn't make it up. You said it. DVD isn't Blu-Ray. Did you mean Blu-Ray?
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"... from the mid point of the seating."

Yes. And yes, SD DVD. And no, not "DV" quality. Widescreen standard definition, yes. DV, no. In fact, I was considering giving the projectionist a Blu ray but when I saw the SD DVD projection, I didn't feel it was at all necessary.

More importantly - "it never occurred to me that the projection looked inferior to 'real' films I'd seen in that very same theater"

Which only means I wasn't sitting there wishing it looked better.


Postmaster said:
A lot of folks are obsessed with resolution they can`t see because of human limitations, but they believe they can see it - even if it physical impossible if you are not a falcon.
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Yep. I think there's a LOT of obsession over numbers. It's not always about the amount of pixels, it's also about the quality of the information in the pixels.
 
I completely agree.

I could have shot my short in HD and it would have still looked really good since it had really good production value. Some of the shots wouldn't have been as effective though. We had shots of the actress riding her horse in a torrential downpour about 1/4 mile from the camera. We shot it with a 500mm lens. Looks great and we can see the rain when we watch in in 2K and higher, but in HD we lose seeing the raindrops. And like I said, cutting between the 4K and the HD was incredibly noticeable.

The 4K to HD conversion looks good. Our 2K DCP looks phenomenal.
 
Don't get me wrong, i've happily paid full ticket prices to watch beautiful 70mm prints on the big screen. But for 98% of the movies i've ever seen (good or bad), resolution was utterly irrelevant - they soared or sank regardless.
 
DVX in the the theatre

DVX in the the theatre

Hi, I'm new to this and I've had so much help in the last year from these posts but Chris you are right. It's taken me a year to finish my first feature and on Saturday night it premiered at my local cinema on a gigantic screen and standard def projector, the place was packed, it got excellent reviews and everybody wants to talk to me at the end and the 2nd question they're all asking is, "How did you get such stunning shots, the clarity was unbelievable, which hi def camera did you use, one person asked me if it was 16mm! And the answer was "just the trusty old dvx100b" . Next month one of my short films will play at Cineworld where it is in competion in The Anthony Minghella festival and after Saturdays results I'll breath easy. The panel that chose it also thought it was hi def
 
The old specification for optimal viewing distance in a theater was 1.5x the screen height. So, 16' high screen meant you should be 24' back to the best seat in the house. Stadium seating at this distance should put the viewer's eyes between the lower 1/3 and 1/2 of the screen. So, apply that to your 55" monitor at home and you'll be like, three feet from the screen. Perfect!
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Chris, you did. You said you took your video on a DVD, (which is DV quality) and projected it at a commercial theater and you said it looked as good as any other commercial film you've seen in a theater. I didn't make it up. You said it. DVD isn't Blu-Ray. Did you mean Blu-Ray?
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Not to derail the thread but, all other things being equal, DVD quality is not on par with DV quality. The DV codec is higher quality than DVD-spec MPEG2.

Chris,
You've had much better luck than I have when viewing SD material blown up for the big screen. To me it's all looked sub-par compared to 35mm or HD sourced images. I don't mean it was necessarily unwatchable or distractingly bad but just not as good compared to HD or film. "28 Days Later" is probably the best SD on the big screen I remember seeing.


-Andrew
 
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