Resolution war and reality

I

isle

Carbonite Member
Some of the companies are selling their cameras with a claim that your footage will be future proof because of the high resolution they produce and no one should shoot 2K anymore. I think that is false advertising and I believe there is no such a thing as "future proof" footage.

Let me explain. 2K is standard now and if you shoot 2K (I don't mean DSLR's that are closer to 720p in real resolution), everything will be in the highest quality as long as 2K is the standard. If you shoot 4K now, everything will be ok for now and for the 4K era that will come next. But what happens when the next era in technology after 4K becames the standard? Yes, your 4K footage suddenly isn't future proof anymore. 4K is only future proof for the next step in technology, and the next step only.

RED says 2K doesn't upscale to 4K, so it isn't future proof in their eyes. But how can 4K then upscale to 8K (or 16K, or 24K..), when 8K is the standard? The size difference is same. (we don't know if 8K is the standard after 4K, but it will atleast double from 4K).

Some are saying that RED means 4K is future proof because it's close to the resolution of film. But the thing is that technology will not stop to that point. Technology isn't going to stop to 4K for sentimental reasons because film can't keep up with it.

I'm not saying shooting 4K is stupid. 4K downscaled to 2K looks awesome and if you have all the money to spend for HDD's and your PC, by no means shoot 4K. Otherwise camera that shoots great and real 2K is the best option for this point in time when 2K is the standard. I think that people shouldn't look too much in the future but instead make their work for the time they are living in. After all, your next film is going to be seen now in 2K, it is made for this point in time, it's not made to be seen in 5 years or 10 years from now. Your film is going to have its impact to the audience and to your career NOW.

No matter what you shoot, film or digital, there is no such a thing as future proof footage because technology will always get better and the resolutions will always go higher.

In my opinion there are many other things that makes RED/Alexa/etc so good (great DR, RAW, high frame rates etc), but the 4K/5K resolution is not first in the list.

I didn't really know where to post this so hope it's in right place. I tried to talk about this on reduser but the thread got locked. You can read the thread here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=55101
 
There is no point to go beyond 4k ever.
Why? Cause you would have to sit 10 ft. away from the theater screen, to see the difference

The resolution capability human eye is the limiting factor.

So why go beyond 4 k, when Avatar was shot in HD, projected on football field size screens and nobody said something about that low resolution?
Cause the resolution even at 1920 x 1080 was way higher, as the viewers eyes could resolve anyway.

Frank
 
Are you saying that people can't see difference between 1080p footage on 1080p TV and 4K footage on 4K TV?

When DVD's came no one said anything about low SD resolution. Why? Because that was the highest resolution there was back then. Now SD looks like crap according to most people.
 
There are many films that were made farther back than 5 or 10 years ago that I am glad to be able to watch on Blu-Ray. Future proofing is a nice thing to do, if your budget allows it. A movie shot in 16mm will look a lot better today than one shot in standard def NTSC today.

I think there is a point of diminishing returns with resolution. 2K projection looks pretty great on a gigantic screen, and 4K projection is better still. I know there is a theoretical limit past which most people will not be able to tell any difference.

The standard resolution for printing photos has been approximately 300 DPI for quite a while now, even though printers can go higher than that. There just isn't much benefit most of the time, even for high quality photos. The iPhone 4 "retina display" is a little over 300 DPI. It's called the retina display because they figured out that its resolution is higher than most people can discern at that viewing distance with their naked eye. Hence, the resolution no longer matters, and any further increases won't really be noticed at all.
 
isle said:
Are you saying that people can't see difference between 1080p footage on 1080p TV and 4K footage on 4K TV?

.
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No, I´m saying you are not seeing the difference between 2k and 4k in a theater unless you sit 10 ft away from the screen, just because human eyes aren't good enough. That´s a physical fact - look it up if you don´t believe me.

Frank
 
Sony must be updating their cinema projectors to 4K for no reason then. Everyone that has seen 4K even in these new 50" prototype TV says the difference to 1080p is huge.
 
Depending on your viewing distance.

And yeah, a lot of folks say that 4:3 SD - uprezed to 16:9 HD on their new fancy $600 BestBuy flatscreen TV looks soooo much sharper and they can see every single hair now...

... yeah, right
icon_rolleyes.gif


Frank
 
using the calculator on this page: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter

a 912" diagonal screen (an average 30x70 foot theater screen) - sitting 57 ft. or further away, the human eye won't notice the difference in resolution higher than 4k, anything past 119 ft, 1080p is just fine.

to recap, to notice the benefit of anything bigger than 4k, you need A. a BIG ASS SCREEN, far larger than anything you could fit in your home, and B. sit closer than 57 ft.

4k sounds pretty future proof to me.

Will it scale to 8k? no. will you be able to tell the difference? no. that is, unless you are projecting your image on the side of the moon.
 
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Forget distribution. Acquisition in 4K, 4.5K and 5K+ is almost a must for me until I get a budget large enough to insure that EVERY shot I get is THE shot I need for the edit.

Knowing that I'm going to master @ 2K or 1080P means I can rescale my 4.5K footage without worrying about the resolution.

It's saving my butt right now, and I don't think anything less than 4K would've been this forgiving.

2K is fine for distro for me, but acquisition? Until I have a 1M+ budget... 4.5K and beyond it is for me.
 
Agree.

Remember that many people couldn't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 when shopping for televisions.
 
Agreed Kholi, for acquisition I`m with you. Especially when you work with a Bayer chip 4k is in order.

Frank
 
Postmaster said:
There is no point to go beyond 4k ever.
Why? Cause you would have to sit 10 ft. away from the theater screen, to see the difference

The resolution capability human eye is the limiting factor.

So why go beyond 4 k, when Avatar was shot in HD, projected on football field size screens and nobody said something about that low resolution?
Cause the resolution even at 1920 x 1080 was way higher, as the viewers eyes could resolve anyway.

Frank
Click to expand...

Sorry, definitely have to disagree with this. I have seen Quad HD (3860 x 2160) footage on a true QHD 60" display at normal 3-4 times screen height viewing distances and it is obviously superior to 1080p. You maybe can't see the pixels, but the image as a whole has a more organic feeling of depth and clarity too it. It is not hard to see the difference at all even on a 60" display from 15 feet away. I imagine 4k footage on a 4k projector in a theater will be much the same.
 
Razz16mm said:
Sorry, definitely have to disagree with this. I have seen Quad HD (3860 x 2160) footage on a true QHD 60" display at normal 3-4 times screen height viewing distances and it is obviously superior to 1080p. You maybe can't see the pixels, but the image as a whole has a more organic feeling of depth and clarity too it. It is not hard to see the difference at all even on a 60" display from 15 feet away. I imagine 4k footage on a 4k projector in a theater will be much the same.
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i call complete BS. have the footage shot side by side with the exact same camera at 1080 and 4k, and do the same viewing at prescribed distances. like a few others have been saying about viewing distance, it's called perceived resolution. same effect as if you look at a screen door and as you move farther away you see more of a solid grey transparent panel vs the individual squares.

aside from that.... i have to be the one to once again point out that it doesn't matter if you shot on friggin imax, if the acting/lighting/script/plot/story/everything sucks, then then movie aint going nowhere. you've all watched hollywood movies which were shot on 1080, 720, and even SD. quit the resolution is king phenomenon already, it's old.
 
imdjay said:
...I have to be the one to once again point out that it doesn't matter if you shot on friggin imax, if the acting/lighting/script/plot/story/everything sucks, then then movie aint going nowhere. you've all watched hollywood movies which were shot on 1080, 720, and even SD. quit the resolution is king phenomenon already, it's old.
Click to expand...

+1 zillion.
 
isle said:
Are you saying that people can't see difference between 1080p footage on 1080p TV and 4K footage on 4K TV?

When DVD's came no one said anything about low SD resolution. Why? Because that was the highest resolution there was back then. Now SD looks like crap according to most people.
Click to expand...

Important distinction, DVD's dont look crappy on old CRT tV's. They look crappy when they are stretched, and uprezzed. on a good CRT, a DVD looks amazing.
 
I think 4k is good for a 2k down res master. 5K.... sure. lets down res to 4k, and make sure the movie screen is saturated with detail, just in case. Understandable.

Anything beyond is just a waste of hard drive space. I really dont see a camera getting much better than an epic. Maybe they will get cheaper. Maybe a higher native dynamic range, and higher clean ISO. I mean the F3 a 1080p camera is grainless up to 1600 ISO, is RAZOR sharp and outputs 444 uncomressed.... I mean the holy grail camera wise is fast approaching. You know where i want moore's law working hard in the industry? Lighting. I want brighter more color accurate lights, that are cheaper and use less power. Imagine a 1.5k fixture that plugs into house power, and puts out the lumens of a 18k hmi. LED can give us this future..... Now hurry up arri.
 
Most 35mm distro prints have an effective MTF (resolution) of 800-1000 lph, which is why you won't really see much, if any, improvement in a typical movie theater, between features shot in HD and features shot in 4K.

Oh, BTW, NHK in Japan has been experimenting with 32 megapixel ultra HD for a couple of years now. Projected on a 400 foot screen with 24 channels of sound.
 
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