"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[PaulGo]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

If the reporting is accurate, there’s nothing like an actor breaking the NDA.
Can’t anyone keep secrets these days?

Things like this happen but it also contributes to the buzz about the movie and makes more people excited about seeing the movie. Just think of it as free publicity.

[sharkshark]

I like your use of font colour to designate the camera company. Cute.

Meanwhile, this is a super nerdy vid (lying about being in HD online) from NASA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbtul...layer_embedded

I love the dudes going down in recreational scuba stuff to deal with the big beasties - hell, one of them even has the new fin model I just got for my last trip (http://www.scubapro.com/americas/eng...s/seawing-nova) (P, should you be going under water soon, I'd recommend giving these a shot)

[Blu-Ray Watcher]

Originally Posted by PaulGo

Some more information on the new Spider-man movie.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_837917.html

Read about this a couple of days ago... I'm so excited for the movie. I've been following it's production since it was announced.

A Spider-Man vs Lizard fight on the Manhattan Bridge sounds so awesome. Man, I wish I could make it to SDCC this year, but the tickets were sold out as soon as they came online.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I can’t emphasize enough the fact that, as great as the 4K camera (8K sensor [20.4 Megapixels] etc.) is, the camera is only one piece (albeit, the last piece and an important one) in the 4K puzzle, as no great camera was ever developed before an established storage system, workflow and a standardized post production toolset (to support the camera) was already in place…or at least shortly after filmmaker availability, in regards to practical editing systems (the majority of NLE manufacturers have already expressed their intention to natively support the camera files as soon as commercially on the market).

This new Sony camera is good news in terms of pushing 4K to be used more often. The only things I wonder about regarding the camera is its data capacity and how its single chip sensor system resolves color.

The 1TB card should be able to hold at least a few minutes of raw, uncompressed 4K video. But I'm guessing some sort of data compression system will be used. Uncompressed 4K requires MASSIVE bandwidth -at least about 5 billion bits per second and a lot more as color depth is increased beyond standard 8-bit levels. I just hope whatever in-camera video compression system that might be used isn't too severe in compression level.

All camera sensors see in gray scale. Consumer camera sensors create a color image by using filters and a serious amount of guess work. Higher quality video cameras simply have three different red, green & blue imaging chips. But that kind of setup doesn't work if you want a camera system that can use interchangeable lenses originally designed for film use. Some of the imaging chips in other digital motion picture cameras have discrete RGB filtering functions on a single chip. I wonder if this new Sony 8K sensor supports that. The wider 16-bit (16:8:8) color bandwidth should provide footage that's more malliable by filtering systems that imitate the color gamma of film.

Overall, the new Sony camera is a big plus for 4K. It will put more pressure on Red, Arri and Panavision to further improve their video cameras. But 4K still needs more help to become the actual movie making standard, after all, most Hollywood movies are still shot on film and those negatives can be used for 4K post production work.

Computer based visual effects and visual effects compositing remain as another major hurdle for 4K.

While computing hardware and software continues to become ever more powerful it still takes a long time to render visual effects scenes. 4K has quadruple the pixel count of 2K. That also means it will take four times the amount of time or even longer to render a scene in 4K as opposed to 2K. Additionally, effects people must build up all their "assets" for 4K. The 3D models, texture maps, shaders, etc. have to do a lot more heavy lifting in 4K than they do in mere 2K.

The continued push for 3D works as another hurdle for 4K. AFAIK, there are no digital projection systems that support 3D in 4K resolution. Sony's 4K projector goes 2K for RealD work. IMAX Digital is only 2K regardless if you see the movie in 2D or 3D. 15/70mm film-based IMAX 3D is really the only thing that can deliver 3D to a movie screen in 4K resolution. Unfortunately, quite a few IMAX movie theaters have been removing their 15/70mm film projection systems and replacing them with "Lie-MAX." Cinemark is currently in the process of converting their film-based IMAX theaters to digital.

Ultimately 4K is a movie theater experience based thing -and the movie theater business is arguably on some shaky ground. I don't see 4K video coming to the home anytime soon. The TV sets aren't there in any sort of mainstream fashion to support it. I'm not sure if we'll ever see a physical based medium replace Blu-ray, much less something capable of storing 4K video. It seems like AT&T and other ISPs are getting more bold on the idea of bandwidth caps. That could really hurt the current business of movie streaming without getting into an extremely more bandwidth intensive concept like downloading movies in 4K.

While I would love to see the 2K standard quickly replaced by 4K, I can't get my hopes up too high. I think we'll just slowly see more and more movies use the process. As long as we have movie theaters that is.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

...I love the dudes going down in recreational scuba stuff to deal with the big beasties - hell, one of them even has the new fin model I just got for my last trip (http://www.scubapro.com/americas/eng...s/seawing-nova) (P, should you be going under water soon, I'd recommend giving these a shot)

Thanks for the heads-up. I’ve always been a fan of Scubapro gear….ever since they came out with their first decompression meters. Also, the footage of them coming back to port brings back memories from my time in the Cocoa Beach/Merritt Island area where I had the opportunity to watch more than one ‘lift-off’ from the Cape …space shuttles that is, rather than the giant mosquitoes which they have thereabouts which I think are capable of carrying away pets and small children.

Here’s a shout-out to those little folks/creatures in Brevard County….don’t walk outside in a straight line as you’re an easier target for the CH-47 Chinook mosquitoes.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

This new Sony camera is good news in terms of pushing 4K to be used more often. The only things I wonder about regarding the camera is its data capacity and how its single chip sensor system resolves color.

The 1TB card should be able to hold at least a few minutes of raw, uncompressed 4K video. But I'm guessing some sort of data compression system will be used. Uncompressed 4K requires MASSIVE bandwidth -at least about 5 billion bits per second and a lot more as color depth is increased beyond standard 8-bit levels. I just hope whatever in-camera video compression system that might be used isn't too severe in compression level...

Long post Bobby. I’ll comment on a part of the first couple paragraphs for now.

4k full RGB requires ~ 25 Gbps of raw data. That data rata is technologically not possible, at least at this time.

Would you accept ~ 4 to 1 compression ratio for the camera to work with the SR Memory Cards?

[dobyblue]

Just wanted to ask you to pass on thanks to everyone involved for getting Taxi Driver into the cinema this past week-end.

I and ten other people enjoyed a virtually empty cinema with a gorgeous presentation of this fantastic movie while others flocked to fluff. Okay, maybe there were some other good flicks playing, but of this calibre? I doubt it. Such a shame.

I hope we will continue to see treats like this. I drove an hour to my nearest AMC 24 in Oakville, ON to see this. Cashier greeted me "good evening" and I said "you talking to me?". She laughed, said she was disappointed in the ticket sales so far and she was looking forward to seeing it on the Tuesday screening.

[androvsky]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Barring unforeseen circumstances related to the earthquake….( http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Pr...14E/index.html), images captured by the camera should be available for demo (on a 4K display) at NAB in early April. If you mean demos vis-à-vis venues after NAB, that is indeterminate at this time.

I was thinking in terms of image data; I'm consulting for a small company working on a 4k projector prototype, and I'm always on the lookout for new footage to demonstrate on our projector. Sounds like that's not going to happen for quite a while, though.

4k full RGB requires ~ 25 Gbps of raw data. That data rata is technologically not possible, at least at this time.

Would you accept ~ 4 to 1 compression ratio for the camera to work with the SR Memory Cards?

That's... a really full RGB, like 24-bits per color if I'm remembering my data rates correctly (or at least one channel at 8k). I think if the camera is putting out a data rate like that, 4 to 1 compression isn't going hurt much.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm guessing that 25Gb/s rate would be 4K at a deep color depth - the 16:8:8 level mentioned. Nothing over a single wire can support that bandwidth. Even Apple's "Thunderbolt" interface, based on Intel's Light Peak maxes out at 20 Gb/s. Hard disc drives have an even worse bandwidth bottle neck.

Standard HD-SDI has a 1.485 Gb/s bandwidth at 4:2:2 depth. Dual link 3G HD-SDI allows for greater color depth 4:4:4. Even at this bit depth it takes multiple hard discs in a RAID setup to handle the bandwidth. Multiply either of those standards by 4 just to get to 4K at those basic color depths.

In editing video or still images it's always better to work in deeper color depths if at all possible. There's far more steps from light to dark in each color channel. Any changes made are far less likely to cause banding and other issues than if you applied the same changes at the basic color depth. Anyone with Photoshop can see how the histogram gets obliterated by changing brightness and contrast in 8-bit depth versus working in 16-bit depth.

For the sake of laypersons I'm mentioning these graphics-oriented tasks because most digital camera video is heavily manipulated in post production. The color scheme is changed according to the mood the director wants. The usual film look filtering must be applied to make the video not look so much like video (and this doesn't always work either). Visual effects have to be composited into the scene. It's very tricky to do all of that stuff without harming image quality. Higher color depths make the job easier in one respect, but create more extreme demands of computer hardware.

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Would you accept ~ 4 to 1 compression ratio for the camera to work with the SR Memory Cards?

Sounds good to me. That level of compression is a lot less severe than what plenty of other video cameras and DSLR cameras (like my Canon 5D MkII) are using.

[Penton-Man]

Bobby, 4K full RGB is the ultimate, or the holy grail, so to speak (it would require a data rate of ~ 25Gb/s). Theoretically it would capture 100% of the Red, Green and Blue (there would be no imbalance between R, G, and B). That would require 26.5 Million pixels. That’s a whole lota pixels! This is a great challenge because as the number of pixels in the area increases, there are noise as well as sensitivity problems which must be corrected in camera with signal processing.

For example, every sensor has a unique footprint, esp. CMOS sensors which are very noisy with random, vertical and horizontal noise patterns. Intuitively, one would think that you could just capture the raw data and fix it (denoise) in post. This won’t work successfully because the noise changes with temperature and the image must be cleaned right after the sensor (in-camera) and the signal processing must follow temp. changes in the camera head.

A practical solution of ~ 20.4-megapixels has been achieved.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Just wanted to ask you to pass on thanks to everyone involved for getting Taxi Driver into the cinema this past week-end...

That’s easy in regards to the person in the leadership role for that project, as he reads this thread and is a member of this forum.

[Penton-Man]

I notice that Once Upon a Time in the West has been formally announced for Blu-ray. Rob T. (https://forum.blu-ray.com/insider-di...ml#post4476675) must be going bananas.

[Penton-Man]

Heads up for this evening’s TV time.

See if your favorite film/characters made the cut –
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ry?id=13184003

[Penton-Man]

Attention dvdvision and others from France.
Get yourselves down to rue de Bercy…

http://www.vingtparismagazine.com/20...%C3%A8que.html

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

I'm guessing that 25Gb/s rate would be 4K at a deep color depth - the 16:8:8 level mentioned. Nothing over a single wire can support that bandwidth. Even Apple's "Thunderbolt" interface, based on Intel's Light Peak maxes out at 20 Gb/s. Hard disc drives have an even worse bandwidth bottle neck.

It's LightPeak, despite the fancy iName. I'd bet Apple would try to rename USB if they could get away with it.

Anyway, since the signal is RGB, how about three separate wires: one per color channel to it's own storage...sort of like three strip Technicolor.

[Bobby Henderson]

"Light Peak" or "LightPeak" it all sounds the same. When someone speaks the term is he supposed to say it really fast so those that hear it realize the space between what is really two words has been eliminated?

Apple is pretty ridiculous these days as well. I get the feeling the company would try to trademark every word in the English language (as well as an alternate version with a lowercase "i" in front of it) if they thought they could get away with it.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

While computing hardware and software continues to become ever more powerful it still takes a long time to render visual effects scenes. 4K has quadruple the pixel count of 2K. That also means it will take four times the amount of time or even longer to render a scene in 4K as opposed to 2K. Additionally, effects people must build up all their "assets" for 4K. The 3D models, texture maps, shaders, etc. have to do a lot more heavy lifting in 4K than they do in mere 2K.

Those productions unwilling or unable to do VFX at 4K resolution…and believe me, they can be done by a cutting edge studio division (or post house, for that matter) when the Producers desire it, as for example, Inception is known as laden with a lot of special effects and for that motion picture, all of the effects were completed at a minimum of 4K resolution by a facility in England. Sony Pictures Imageworks has, for quite some time, been doing digital VFX in 4K for at least some portion of the VFX footage of some past motion pictures.

Anyway, for those motion pictures in which the VFX elements are done at 2K resolution, with the help of a high performance up-conversion algorithm such as Dynamic Element Expansion Protocol, they can be interpolated and then the VFX elements can be merged with the 4K live action elements so that all the imagery is more visually seamless…if a 100% native 4K production is not possible due to budgetary or other concerns.

The appearance is obviously not as fine as true 4K but it is better than native 2K and it has a pretty nice texture with no jaggies. I can go into the mechanics of *how* the up-conversion algorithm works, later if desired, as the terminology is probably new to many readers and would take a bit of time to explain/translate.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

While I would love to see the 2K standard quickly replaced by 4K, I can't get my hopes up too high. I think we'll just slowly see more and more movies use the process. As long as we have movie theaters that is.

You are correct , the vast majority of motion pictures these days are still done with a 2K workflow but, we all have to start somewhere, no?

Especially since 8K applications are being investigated as we speak.

P.S. By the way, did you catch my past post about Glock getting all the face time in movies as compared to Sig?
If not, try to use the search word Sig or perhaps 'respect', I think it's back about 20? pages or so.

[sharkshark]

Managed to see the TAXI DRIVER "print" tonight - wasn't a humungoid screen, bu there was a decent sized audience, and the restoration looks...

AMAZING.

Completely, staggeringly good. Even the end stuff, it's never been clearer, even as it's, uh, "unclear" due to the process used at the time and discussed above.

Last time I saw it on screen was with Paul Schrader in attendance, got to dig up the interview I did with him.

So, congrats to Grover and the team at Sony, such a pleasure to be able to see something like this maintain completely its film look, yet be presented using some excellent digital projection. Brilliant.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

P.S. By the way, did you catch my past post about Glock getting all the face time in movies as compared to Sig?
If not, try to use the search word Sig or perhaps 'respect', I think it's back about 20? pages or so.

I must have missed that, but I agree Glock pistols do get a lot more "face time" in movies and TV shows than other makes of guns. Maybe it is a fashion/fad thing or the "movie people" are guessing what they believe is popular instead of researching what specific law enforcement agencies or military outfits issue as standard sidearms.

In the end it creates an unrealistic picture -kind of like how most characters using computers in movies and TV shows are using Macs despite the fact over 90% of the world's computer users are not using Apple-branded machines. In the case of Apple, I don't know if Apple is paying huge sums of money for all that product placement visibility. For all I know there could be enough militant Mac users on various movie/tv production sets forcing MacBooks into the hands of actors rather than something we would more likely see in real life -stuff sold for cheap at Wal-Mart, Staples, etc.

Many law enforcement agencies do use Glock pistols as their standard duty sidearm (our local cops carry the Glock 21). However, quite a few others prefer to issue something different, with SigSauer being a common choice. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol issues the SigSauer P226 chambered in .357 Sig. Glock pistols are popular because they're fairly reliable and relatively cheap. For what you pay to buy one SigSauer or H&K pistol you can almost buy two Glocks. And then you really have to open your wallet if you want a fine quality 1911 style .45.

It's a little annoying when a movie shows a police or military character sporting a Glock when I know his specific agency really carries SigSauer pistols or even something else that isn't Glock.

The other night one of the cable channels was showing Die Hard 2. I laughed out loud (again) when "John McClane" talked about a bad guy having a rare kind of Glock pistol: "That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun made in Germany. Dosen't show up on your airport X-ray machines, here, and it cost more than you make in a month." No such gun has ever existed. It's merely a call back to the media hysteria when the first Glocks went on sale more than 20 years ago. Oh my God, it's a plastic gun that won't show up in an airport X-ray machine! All porcelain framed guns have plenty of metal parts inside, the barrel in particular, that show up very well in any airport scan.