Quote:
Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland
The Fifth Element
|
Ah, memories
of a mastering practices milestone in video. That ^ title has history
. It being
thee movie, of all others, which precipitated the concept/movement of bringing consumer grade flat panels (instead of, up until then, only using CRTs exclusively) into the mastering suites of both studio lot based and independent post production facilities.
As mentioned back in Dec. 2007 in a summary by the Editor of American Cinematographer Magazine recounting the work of the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) Technology Committee over the course of 2007, for the Cliff notes version, I’ve bolded the pertinent paragraphs for peoples’ convenience……
Tomorrow's Technology
ASC Tech Committee Update
The ASC Technology Committee made significant headway this year. Foremost, after two years in development in the Digital Intermediate Subcommittee, the ASC Color Decision List (CDL) version 1.0 is in the process of being published for open implementation. "Acceptance has been pretty much ubiquitous throughout the industry," notes Curtis Clark, ASC, chair of the Technology Committee. "This truly is a cross-platform data-exchange mechanism for RGB, lift, gain and gamma primary color corrections, although we have renamed lift, gain and gamma to offset, slope and power, respectively, to better define those three functions."
The CDL is a way to move basic color-correction information between applications, meaning image "looks" can be maintained throughout the post process. Through collaboration with vendors, the selected methods of transport for CDL information are via XML, CMX comment field, ALE and Flex files. At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Expo last April, a number of companies were already touting CDLcompliant systems.
Not bad for a five-year-old group of volunteers from various sectors of the motion-picture and television industry.
As the Technology Committee proactively addresses digital/film issues that arise with emerging digital technologies, other organizations have taken note. The Producers Guild of America formed its own technology group and is collaborating closely with the ASC's Workflow Subcommittee to address that aspect of the technology revolution.
"We're not necessarily looking to optimize the infrastructure of your SAN [storage area network] or deal with those kinds of IT issues," Clark remarks. "The ASC CDL is the linchpin of our approach because we're looking at ways we can help facilitate maximum control over creative input from cinematographers, directors and production designers and ensure that the integrity of those image 'look reference' parameters are maintained throughout the workflow. The ASC CDL functionality also provides a more accessible and flexible opportunity for cinematographers to monitor and effect any look reference changes that might take place at all stages of the workflow, per creative needs and requirements."
The Technology Committee recently formed a Previsualization Subcommittee, which will work in conjunction with the Art Directors Guild. "That subcommittee is charged with the task of understanding the growing importance of previz applications and how the cinematographer should be playing a role in their use," says Clark.
The producers' and art directors' guilds are participating in the ASC Camera Subcommittee's long-gestating Camera Assessment Series (CAS), a repeatable series of shots typical of motion pictures that are impartially designed to show the characteristics and performance of digital cameras available for use in cinema. The resulting library of standard footage from the cameras will be available to the members of the ASC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences so that filmmakers can make educated choices when choosing camera systems. CAS material will be refreshed as new camera and associated technologies are developed. The series is scheduled to begin in May 2008 and will involve camera manufacturers and rental houses, and it will be a companion to the Academy Sci-Tech Council's quantitative analyses of cameras. (The council has been taking scene-driven measurements of each camera to characterize behavior in numerically quantifiable ways.)
With the issues of digital cinema identified and standards largely in place, the Technology Committee is focusing on non-theatrical displays with the newly formed - and aptly titled Non-Theatrical Display Subcommittee. 'This plays into understanding the different characteristics of non-CRT [cathode ray tube] display devices that are proliferating in the HD world," Clark says, "and particularly what that means in reference to Blu-ray and HD-DVD, new platforms that could become the primary distribution medium for many films."
The venerable CRT is rapidly giving way to flat-screen hi-def technologies such as plasma, LCD (liquid crystal display), LED (light emitting diode), LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) and Texas Instruments' DUP (digital light processing). And standard-definition DVD will be bowing out as Sony's Bluray and Toshiba's HD-DVD formats gain traction in the marketplace. Clark notes, "With the increased emphasis on enhanced resolution and drastically improved image quality over standarddef comes certain baggage that needs to be addressed in terms of the variances between different display devices and how that impacts the creative results the filmmaker had in mind. We discovered through Don Eklund at Sony that there were some serious artifacts showing up in the process of how the down-converts were being done to HD that were not seen on CRT monitors, and certainly not seen in standard-def. They are artifacts that got into the system at some point."
The longstanding benchmark for mastering, the industry-standard Sony BVM-D24E1WU 24" monitor, and CRTs in general had been disguising most of the down-convert artifacts because of the way in which the CRT creates an image. The new display technologies are showing the true down-conversions, digital warts and all. As noted by Eklund in the 2007 ASC Technology Committee Report for SMFTE Journal in June: "Under typical home viewing conditions, a growing number of consumers now have a day-to-day display that provides a more critical view of HD sources than what is in popular use in the facilities that master these sources."
A number of new technology displays, professional and consumergrade, are being evaluated by post facilities. Drawbacks to using consumer displays for mastering are:
1)the model phanges often, making it difficult to standardize;
2) a lack of professional signal format support and
3) the potential for variable performance within a particular model because consumer build specs aren't as stringent.
"[Non-theatrical display] is the new area of concern that is linked to trying to find ways to ensure that filmmakers' creative intent is realized all the way through to whatever platform it is released on," Clark points out. "For a lot Of this stuff, the train has already left the station, but it doesn't mean we should just throw our hands up in the air. We wouldn't have been able to influence the manufacturers at an earlier stage because we didn't understand the issues. I think there still is hope that some kind of influence can be brought to bear if ways are found for us to ameliorate the problem. It may even raise questions about the way certain material is shot."
The Advanced Imaging Subcommittee has been studying monitors with regard to trichromatic color systems like RGB and X'Y'Z', which define their primaries and color characteristics using xy coordinates (based on the 1931 CIE two-degree standard observer). All monitors are calibrated using xy measurements, but 1931 CIE contains known errors. Advanced Imaging has been analyzing whether these errors cause a particular set of CIE xy coordinates to represent different colors to different observers, thus affecting color matching. Complicating matters isthe personal factor: two people might see the same color differently.
Using Macbeth Color Checker charts and still images from the ASC Standard Evaluation Material, the subcommittee tested LCD and plasma flat-panel monitors (and the Sony BVM CRT) to see how well the displayed images matched from monitor to monitor, as well as to the source. Each display's spectral measurements (in CIE) were converted to trichromatic representations and then back to see what errors or out-of-gamut colors developed. The subcommittee is continuing to test and analyze this subject....
https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-139...w-s-technology
If anyone is interested and I’ve got more time at a later date, maybe I’ll pull and post that entire Non-Theatrical Display Subcommittee report from 2007, referenced above by the Editor, as it represented a watershed event in thinking
beginning with testing consumer displays for evaluating the quality of HD masters.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
for a few select titles. The more important thing is whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze. And (from the great state of New York), it sure will look better than ‘VHS 4K’…..
Linear Mode
