maximum resolution

[john_1958]

wonder if hollywood when they use Cineon software at 3656 by 2664 pixels, or only use 1920x1080 when transfering movies to blu-ray

[takezo]

Movie Cameras of totay are usualy very high def, and even 1080p masters are down converted form the actual film it's self. However there is a lot of old movies that were either filmed at lower resolutions simply because the technology was not there, or they could have been fillmed at a high resolution (for theater) yet mastered at DVD resolution for home video. Some film studios either destroy the film original or lockit up some where and forget about it. Digital remasters of old movies come from the original film source which is why they look so much better. However some movies just don't have that, so upsampling is the only thing availible.

[Sony1]

This is interesting because the future technology such as holograophic discs should be able to hold a full movie in this form correct? I did see that Westiinghouse was working on a high def telivision with 2420 by 1200P, I can only imagine what that would look like.

[Blue]

I think most films will be scanned at much higher resolutions. They don't use the Telecine method of film projector onto a screen and filmed by a video camera. It's closer to your flatbe scanner where each fram is individually scanned and digitally touched up.
I know the James Bond films have been

"The project team also worked to a higher resolution than DVDs support, offering a route forward to release the digitised classics on other formats in future. The film was scanned at a resolution of 4,000 x 3,000 pixels, in contrast with the 720 x
576 pixel resolution of DVDs. This meant that each frame of each movie weighed in at 45MB." http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=14919

There are other claims of it being made into 4K by John Lowry 4096 x 2160 both are most probably the same as DTS now owns Lowry Images The descrpancy 4,000 x 3,000 doesn't make sense unless the bottom 800 pixels contains other information such as frame information etc
I think most films will be done in simalar way. 8K would have been better as these will be the new historical record

[AV_Integrated]

Digital masters, as I understand it, and just confirming above, are typically scanned at at least 4K resolution. This is THE way to do things. Scan the film once, make the best possible digital master that you can, and store it to hard drives as digital masters. Then, no matter what resolutions come down the line, you have the digital master for it. The digital master really should represent about every single detail that film has to offer. We definitely have the technology already in place to scan film beyond the resolution that film offers us.

So, the 1080p HD discs we get are simply downconverted copies of the digital masters. Same with some DVDs that are coming from digital masters.

Eventually it'll all go digital and film will simply go away. I would expect in most of our lifetimes.