4K Blu-ray Confirmed, Coming in

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Esox50

For some of the bigger movies though, why wouldn't they go back and do it in 4K? Let's take the Avengers for example. Couldn't they theoretically go back to the original film elements, re-transfer, and use some upscaled effects?

I know lots of films were finished in 2K, but I refuse to believe that the economics aren't there for some of the bigger blockbuster films over the last decade or so. Now, maybe the 4K ecosystem needs to catch up to where it's "standard" in most people's homes. That I could see taking years, and could possibly push out some of the blockbusters from the last decade.

But what do I know. I don't work in the film industry and am more likely to be on the financing and economic side of it in my field.

Sure, I'm not saying it won't happen but no-one's taken that leap yet and it's all a bit of a grey area. It won't be cheap, not initially, and the studios will have to weigh up the cost of outfitting a movie in 4K vs what they'll get back from 4K home video revenues which, as everyone keeps saying, will be a niche of a niche blah blah. And seeing as how UHD BD has a provision for higher quality 1080p - heck, it may have been put in for this purpose - I don't forsee a pressing need for 4K rebuilds any time soon.

[hajiketobu]

Question: Titanic was remastered in 4K for the 2012 release.
How was this done for example since there was no digital intermediate? Do they rescan the complete film roll along with the cgi scenes and use those to work with, or do they add the cgi scenes from a digital source and rework those (add grain etc.) ? do they handle complete cgi scenes and green screen scenes with 'just' cgi backgrounds differently? this is also general question in terms of 4k remasters for uhdbd.


what do you think of this picture? if this indeed from a higher than 2K source, then the cg looks kinda upscaled, especially the waves in the water. and around the ship are a lot of line-like artifacts, which could also be due to the shitty jpeg compression. then again there is could also be a stylistic element...cgi being purposely unsharp to simulate motion and depth of field, which i guess seems to be the case with the waves. but yes, i think i read somewhere that the titanic cgi was done in 2k and then upsampled, which seems plausible given the age of the film. still this frame looks a lot better then what we have on bd. possibility 2: could it be that they rendered single frames in higher resolution back then to use for promotional purposes?

titanic and lord of the rings are for me those films that are being released again and again every few years, because there will never be a definitive edition.

[Geoff D]

Titanic was finished entirely on film, i.e. the VFX work was filmed out and cut into the camera negative. That's what was scanned, that's what was remastered, there was no tomfoolery with separate CG elements AFAIK (aside from the shots that Cameron changed, like the shot of the stars as Rose looks up at the sky). So yeah, in a sense you could say that the VFX is 'upscaled' on the 4K transfer because it was probably finished at 2K before being rendered out onto film, but this is true of any such pre-DI movie. Even ye olde opticals and dupes have obvious degradation in 1080p, never mind 2160p.

[hajiketobu]

There is this one scene in Titanic, which looks really awful (blurry), even on BD...the scene of the first class lounge, which was done with green screen. I don't have a reference shot atm, but it is this scene:

Titanic - green screen clips - YouTube

[jono3000]

I hope that when (if?) Harry Potter gets a UHDBD release they re-render the CGI elements. Some of the CGI stuff in the quiditch games on the first couple movies looks pretty poor even at 1080p

[Kirsty_Mc]

Originally Posted by JohnCrooks

Why can't it simply be letterboxed?

You'd lose out due to interpolation. A 16:9 1080P pixel will convert directly to a 2x2 pixel pattern at UHD (barring any software upscaling processing). A 17:9 2K pixel will require interpolation of each pixel to upscale it to letterboxed 16:9 UHD. So you'd probably lose more in the interpolation than the extra width would give you.

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Singh: movies are graded in DCI P3 which is turned into 12-bit XYZ for the DCP. That's why even though .2020 is being listed as the colour space for UHD BD it's more of a container at this point, and the smart money is going on a straight migration of the P3 grading. HDR will have to be specifically regraded in any case.

Thanks for the info. XYZ has a larger color space than P3, right? If you grade it in P3 and try to open up to XYZ, aren't you losing information?

It sounds like someone utilizing a 4K scan of a film and doing scratch removal and color correction at 2K. Bam! Your final product is now locked in at that resolution. Does this adage hold to color grading as well?

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Once a routine is established, producing an HDR version should end up being quicker and cheaper than what content creators have experienced in the past with restoration/remastering projects (new scan, dirt and scratch removal, etc. color correction) which have lead to ‘newly restored’ or ‘newly remastered’ traditional (standard dynamic range) Blu-rays, given this caveat, see 2nd half of post….https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...n#post10290485

Exciting times ahead.

Indeed, Penton, indeed. Thanks for the info.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by singhcr

Thanks for the info. XYZ has a larger color space than P3, right? If you grade it in P3 and try to open up to XYZ, aren't you losing information?

It sounds like someone utilizing a 4K scan of a film and doing scratch removal and color correction at 2K. Bam! Your final product is now locked in at that resolution. Does this adage hold to color grading as well?

Much larger, IIRC it's based on the entire range of human perception of colour! The P3 grading is mapped across to XYZ, you're not losing anything in relation to your P3 grade although obviously it's not taking advantage of the entire XYZ gamut (similar to .2020 on UHD BD, think of XYZ more as a container [edit] which in this case means that the DCDM's colour is display-independent, it isn't limited to any one colour space). And yes, any decisions made for a particular grade are locked into that particular master, with protection assets made to preserve those decisions, although as long as you have the original film or data files then it can always be revisited.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by jono3000

I hope that when (if?) Harry Potter gets a UHDBD release they re-render the CGI elements. Some of the CGI stuff in the quiditch games on the first couple movies looks pretty poor even at 1080p

You're talking millions of dollars there.


Not going to happen.

[Krelldog1977]

Hey guys,

What's the real deal behind The Abyss?

This has been promised years ago....why no release?

....unless I missed it

thx fellas

[bailey1987]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

You're talking millions of dollars there.


Not going to happen.

I can see it happening at some point but probably not on Ultra HD Blu-ray, apparently the mastered in 4K release of Godzilla 1998 has his effects redone in 1080p I have both but I can't see a difference.

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by bailey1987

I can see it happening at some point but probably not on Ultra HD Blu-ray, apparently the mastered in 4K release of Godzilla 1998 has his effects redone in 1080p I have both but I can't see a difference.

Considering that the movie came out in 1998, the VFX would have been printed out to film and joined to the original camera negative.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

Only if they use HDR technology to recreate the original look of a movie on a consumer level and not try to pump the brightness knob to 11 for "vididiots" who think that is the only thing that makes for a quality image.

Well, to be clear, the HDR remaster is not intended to create the ‘original look’ as that look is based upon the brightness (14fL peak white), gamma (2.6), etc. of the DCI mastering projector used to master in P3, or, on a consumer level, 100nits in rec709 (which, for good matching, usually requires about a 5-8% percent reduction in saturation for HDTV of the original cinema content) but, I get your drift …..don’t abuse the tool , like was done with some early Blu-ray releases in terms of grain management and digital sharpening.

‘Extremists’ could do more harm than good in the early rollout. Which is yet another reason to get the original filmmaker directly involved by in-the-room supervision to allow for his/her meaningful blessing as to creative intent on the re-imagining of the motion picture with more contrast.

For those new to extended dynamic range, the thing that is exciting about HDR is that it’s not simply about luminance output, see visual illustrations.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

Specifically, though, The Avenger's was photography digitally using the Arri Alexa, a 2.8K camera.

As an aside, since then ^ , for Alexa users, there is a relatively new tool (as of last March) which will allow (if filmmakers desire it) to uprez their footage to 4K…. http://www.arri.com/about_arri/press...37fabafe8be252
so they can then work in 4K OpenEXR in post.

[singhcr]

I came across an interesting primer on color space. I think it was very useful in explaining some basic terms that we are all using here.

http://www.amiatechreview.org/V12-05...colorspace.pdf

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

As an aside, since then ^ , for Alexa users, there is a relatively new tool (as of last March) which will allow (if filmmakers desire it) to uprez their footage to 4K…. http://www.arri.com/about_arri/press...37fabafe8be252
so they can then work in 4K OpenEXR in post.

Alexa's Open Gate mode looks tasty as well, delivering the full 3.4K res of the sensor. People may still think 'well, that's not 4K is it?' but seeing how 35mm acquisition delivers >4K only in the most ideal conditions I think the regular Alexa's gonna be getting a lot of work well into the 4K era, never mind that lovely looking Alexa 65.

[q-BUZZ-p]

I bought the Blu-ray for Fury (2014) today and it says on the back it is a 4K film. I haven't popped it into the Blu-ray player yet, but I'm guessing the picture quality is gonna be great. We get to see Brad Pitt in all his 4K glory LOL.

th.jpg

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by q-BUZZ-p

I bought the Blu-ray for Fury (2014) today and it says on the back it is a 4K film. I haven't popped it into the Blu-ray player yet, but I'm guessing the picture quality is gonna be great. We get to see Brad Pitt in all his 4K glory LOL.

Attachment 107237

It only means it was mastered from 4k elements. You won't actually see it in 4k, just 1080p. You'll have to wait for the Ultra HD Blu-ray version for the full monty.

[KubrickKurasawa]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

It only means it was mastered from 4k elements. You won't actually see it in 4k, just 1080p. You'll have to wait for the Ultra HD Blu-ray version for the full monty.

My girlfriend always tells me it's not the resolution on screen but how much action and explosions take place that matter.