4K Blu-ray Confirmed, Coming in

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by spectre08

all well and good, but still an upres, even if a less severe one than from 2K.
Having Deakins' signature doesn't imbue it with some mystical math defying properties.

Great cinematographer, but at the risk of invoking the wrath of one of his most ardent fans (mike), I get the sense that what is of paramount importance to Roger is to maintain his personal *look* or fingerprint on a motion picture. For example…

Moderator question “How important to you are high-dynamic-range technologies, which allow audiences to see blacker blacks and whiter whites?”

Deakins…”It's also about personality, isn't it? I mean, each one of you, I can watch your work and know it's you. It's about the eye behind the camera. It's not about the bloody technology (bolding mine); it's about the person behind it.”…. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...akins-5-751367

I think most cinephiles don’t care if they watch a film and automatically recognize from the get-go by looking at it that it was shot by Deakins, Beebe or Chivo (whose personal *style* in The Revenant Roger commented about here….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ahh...utu.be&t=3m28s

Maybe I’m getting entirely the wrong vibe, but I get the feeling that Roger is reluctant (unless prodded) to use capture resolution beyond ALEXA XT (or film acquisition DI-ed at 4K) or high dynamic range finishing because it doesn’t fit with his long established style. I think that a cinematographer can shoot at higher spatial rez and greater dynamic range and still get some/more value out it in terms of further immersing the audience into the story, beyond that of his traditional methods.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What one did you actually buy, I've got all these random messages in my PMs but I'm none the wiser.

55X8509C

Originally Posted by bailey1987

What was Zodiac shot in? I still think the Blu-ray looks amazing and I love the film. I will definitely re buy this if it sees a release on Ultra HD Blu-ray.

Viper, so 1080p but a better visual camera than most of the higher resolution ones

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

It tickles me when people act like they could actually tell 3.4K and 4K apart if they were given a blind (hehe) test.

Not you , but it tickles me that back in the day when The Hobbit was released many posters on outside internet forums claimed there was a 4K master in existence (which would then lead to some native 4K exhibitions) despite experienced discussion prior to its release and afterwards

Heck, occasionally I notice some posters persist in the 4K Hobbit myth.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Bingo. This obession with numbers over what the final product actually looks like is all rather amusing. Admittedly we haven't yet seen UHD Blu with its myriad of sources (2K, 2.8K, 4K etc) in action so I may yet eat my words and will be pining oh so sadly for those 'lost' pixels but until then my mirth will remain.

Geoff, don’t entirely discount the value of higher K’ed acquisition though.

One might not appreciate it unless one were to do butterfly splits of the final outcome of lower vs. higher K’ed cameras in the post house, but a more K’ed sensor camera allows for greater flexibility which helps “get the most appealing images through color science and resolution.”

Read the comments by the postproduction sup and Jeff Cronenweth here….
https://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/N...Girl/page1.php

[Geoff D]

Oh, I've never said it ain't great to have moar numberz *in general* as a starting point for any project (although the abilities of the digital camera itself outside of straight res always come in to play), but when it comes to them numbers on UHD Blu-ray *specifically* I think some peoples need to chill until we've sampled the goods, be it a straight 2K upscale, 2.8K acquisition for a 4K finish, film/RED 4K finish with 2K VFX, 4K rebuild with 2K VFX etc etc.

Peoples could well say "why don't you shut up and wait then?" about my tiresome HDR to SDR comments that I come up with every day and that's fair enough, but seeing as how sub-4K material has been part of most 4K finishes up until this juncture [edit: with seemingly little complaint from theatrical audiences] I think people are making mountains out of molehills, whereas HDR to SDR conversion is still a mostly undocumented process in the techbloggersphere and it's making me mighty nervous (especially seeing as we can't all go out and buy a new TV right now ).

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Oh, I've never said it ain't great to have moar numberz *in general* as a starting point for any project, but when it comes to them numbers on UHD Blu-ray *specifically* I think some peoples need to chill until we've sampled the goods, be it a straight 2K upscale, 2.8K acquisition for a 4K finish, 4K finish with 2K VFX, 4K rebuild with 2K VFX etc etc.

Peoples could well say the same about my tiresome HDR to SDR comments that I come up with every day and that's fair enough, but seeing as how sub-4K material has been part of most 4K finishes up until this juncture I think people are making mountains out of molehills, whereas HDR to SDR conversion is still a mostly undocumented process in the tech blogger sphere and it's making me mighty nervous seeing as we can't all go out and buy a new TV right now.

Nail on the head, the machine doing the work is an issue.
More so for the films (if they make some) that were shot in native HDR and not timed afterwards.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

.....Peoples could well say "why don't you shut up and wait then?" about my tiresome HDR to SDR comments that I come up with every day and that's fair enough, but seeing as how sub-4K material has been part of most 4K finishes up until this juncture [edit: with seemingly little complaint from theatrical audiences] I think people are making mountains out of molehills, whereas HDR to SDR conversion is still a mostly undocumented process in the techbloggersphere and it's making me mighty nervous (especially seeing as we can't all go out and buy a new TV right now ).

Thus, there is merit to praying.

P.S.
I agree with and enjoy your perspective….your posts are often worthy of supplementation, ergo, I just wanted to say something positive about higher rez. Excuse now while I kick back to watch.

[Geoff D]

[aaronwt2065]

Originally Posted by Derb

So I guess I will be watching BDs on my UHD BD player since there are not any 4K "Native" films to buy at launch.

Nobody had mentioned a single title.

The UHD BD will still be much, much better that the BD. Even if the UHD BD were to use a 2K DI, it will be upscaled prior to being on the disc. This upscaling will be much, much better than anything you have at home that does realtime upscaling. Then the UHD BD will have a much higher bitrate too. As well as HDR and WCG. SO for for anyone that wants the best, the UHD BD will still be much, much better than the BD, even if a 2K DI is used.

I'll take that UHD BD any day over the 1080P BD.

[Geoff D]

The upscaling will be "much, much better", eh? I can't wait to put that to the test, seeing as the upscaling is exceptional on my set. And "higher bitrate" would actually mean something if we were talking about the same compression codec as Blu-ray. But we're not, so such comparisons are meaningless.

WCG and HDR will be the real x factors when comparing a pro 2K -> UHD upscale to the regular Blu, and seeing as I can't use either of those things on my 4K TV I'll be in a better position than most to see if the upscaling in and of itself is "much, much better".

[Pieter V]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Not you , but it tickles me that back in the day when The Hobbit was released many posters on outside internet forums claimed there was a 4K master in existence (which would then lead to some native 4K exhibitions) despite experienced discussion prior to its release and afterwards

Heck, occasionally I notice some posters persist in the 4K Hobbit myth.

This is however interesting.

How did you manage the 48 fps aspect and what were the main challenges about it?
The only big challenge for 48 fps is the amount of data. We also changed from the standard 2k image resolution to 4k. The 4k is an obvious change because there is 4 times the information in a frame from the typical 2k image. The 48 fps challenge comes from the fact that there is half the motion blur from a 24fps image. What this meant to our team is that our pre-production assets had to be built textured and shaded to a much higher resolution. The unexpected advantage of 48 fps was that we had twice as many frames to add detail into the animation. This allowed us to add allot more subtle detail into things like Gollum’s facial performance.

http://www.artofvfx.com/the-hobbit-a...-weta-digital/

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The upscaling will be "much, much better", eh? I can't wait to put that to the test, seeing as the upscaling is exceptional on my set. And "higher bitrate" would actually mean something if we were talking about the same compression codec as Blu-ray. But we're not, so such comparisons are meaningless.

Ok, how about the upscaled The Simpsons on Blu-ray?


They looked a heck of a lot better than what my TV or Oppo can do with the DVDs.


There's merit in believing material upscaled directly from the source files, rather than a compressed final product.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Ok, how about the upscaled The Simpsons on Blu-ray?


They looked a heck of a lot better than what my TV or Oppo can do with the DVDs.


There's merit in believing material upscaled directly from the source files, rather than a compressed final product.

Sure, but we're not talking apples to apples here: tatty old SD masters wanged onto 480i DVD versus a cleaned up 1080p Blu-ray incarnation has NOTHING on what a properly-mastered-in-the-first-place 1080p HD Blu-ray will look like versus the upscaled UHD version [edit: which will come from uncompressed source files, yes...but which will then still have to be severely compressed for commercial UHD Blu playback].

Hell, I've already said that I've seen more detail on a UHD upscale versus the Blu equivalent, but was it "much, much better"? That's a negatory.

[Geoff D]

^ And more to the point, is that slight increase in detail for upscaled stuff - given that there's no HDR/WCG at casa di Geoff - worth buying an entirely new player and software for (and getting a potentially botched SDR regrade into the bargain)? HECK no, which is why I'm hoping that 4K rebuilds are more common than not (and that the SDR conversion isn't fubar) because dat increased spatial resolution is all I've got to hang my hat on at this moment in time.

[aaronwt2065]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The upscaling will be "much, much better", eh? I can't wait to put that to the test, seeing as the upscaling is exceptional on my set. And "higher bitrate" would actually mean something if we were talking about the same compression codec as Blu-ray. But we're not, so such comparisons are meaningless.

WCG and HDR will be the real x factors when comparing a pro 2K -> UHD upscale to the regular Blu, and seeing as I can't use either of those things on my 4K TV I'll be in a better position than most to see if the upscaling in and of itself is "much, much better".

Your set has realtime upscaling. Real time upscaling can't compare to using high power equipment to upscale content with the ability to adjust frame by frame.
Not sure why you would want to use the same H.264 encoding as BD for UHD. The UHD BD will use HEVC encoding.

If you have seen some of the streaming HEVC content from Amazon and Netflix you can see how good it can look at such a low bitrates of around 16Mb/s. But the UHD BD will have bitrates many times higher. Which makes me excited for how good it can look.

And things are so inexpensive now. I remember paying $1k for a launch BD player in 2006 to use with my 2005 1080P Sammy DLP set that I payed close to $4K for(I swore I would never pay that much for a TV again). More than twice as much as the UHD TV I got last year. This is an exciting time.

[Geoff D]

I've seen a "high powered" upscale compared to the regular "real time" Blu-ray and there was an improvement to the former to be sure...but "much, much better"? Nein, no, non, nah, nuh-huh, nope.

Oh, HEVC is "high bitrate" compared to the compressed-to-hell video streams, why didn't you say so? But my point is that we don't yet know what the optimal performance of HEVC will be for these commercial discs so calling them "high bitrate" in and of themselves is meaningless.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Sure, but we're not talking apples to apples here: tatty old SD masters wanged onto 480i DVD versus a cleaned up 1080p Blu-ray incarnation has NOTHING on what a properly-mastered-in-the-first-place 1080p HD Blu-ray will look like versus the upscaled UHD version

Except the Simpsons upscales were from when they started digitally transferring and coloring them, so they were not "tatty old".

[aaronwt2065]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I've seen a "high powered" upscale compared to the regular "real time" Blu-ray and there was an improvement to the former to be sure...but "much, much better"? Nein, no, non, nah, nuh-huh, nope.

Oh, HEVC is "high bitrate" compared to the compressed-to-hell video streams, why didn't you say so? But my point is that we don't yet know what the optimal performance of HEVC will be for these commercial discs so calling them "high bitrate" in and of themselves is meaningless.

I guess instead of saying "much, much better" I should have said much better.

Hopefully we get to check out these UHD titles soon. I know I am looking forward to it.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I've seen a "high powered" upscale compared to the regular "real time" Blu-ray and there was an improvement to the former to be sure...but "much, much better"? Nein, no, non, nah, nuh-huh, nope.

Oh, HEVC is "high bitrate" compared to the compressed-to-hell video streams, why didn't you say so? But my point is that we don't yet know what the optimal performance of HEVC will be for these commercial discs so calling them "high bitrate" in and of themselves is meaningless.

I have made my own for a while, so will play when my TV arrives

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Except the Simpsons upscales were from when they started digitally transferring and coloring them, so they were not "tatty old".

They were poorly mastered onto DVD to begin with then, unlike the majority of movies onto Blu-ray today (not Lionsgate though ). SD needs to be embiggened by roughly 6 times to fit into HD with dimensions that aren't directly proportional to each other, whereas HD into UHD is a nice clean x2 along each axis for a mathematically exact x4 uprez. Next?