Is 4K a game changer?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Many confuse scanning resolution (i.e. the resolution that a film scanner needs to be in order to capture all the detail off Super 35 and to prevent aliasing) for being the same number of K’s as the effective or measured (true) resolution of Super 35 original camera negative, which it is not. The former is much higher due to Nyquist’s oversampling recommendation.

Although it is variable due to film stock, exposure, camera movement, prime (or not) lensing, testing has shown, generally, that the effective (true) resolution of Super 35 film to be in the range of the low 3-ish K’s -
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...so#post5695796

^
In the above post, I notice that hyperlink to the respective thread on Roger Deakins’s forum has since expired or been deleted since I referenced it back in Jan. of 2012, so here is essentially the same assessment from David M. regarding the resolution topic as posted on the RED forum -

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...l=1#post768383

All I would add to last paragraph of David’s post ^, since he is a cinematographer rather than a post production specialist, is that if one desires to harvest all the detail off Kodak Vision 3 35mm frames, the typically used 10bit dpx may not be adequate.

For those not following, the Northlight outputs 10-bit or 16-bit log DPX/Cineon files (see page 2, upper right - http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/pdf/data...Northlight.pdf
). Selecting 16-bit log DPX output may be necessary for optimal scanning (archival quality) of Vision 3 35mm film but, that increases the cost of the project substantially. Luckily, Vision 3 stocks weren’t introduced until 2007 and later.

[Hypnosifl]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

That is why "If you're not sitting close enough to a 2K screen to resolve individual pixels" can be a lot misleading, how do you judge that? is it the same judgment that leads one to believe squares 1&2 are different shades? that the two lines are different lengths? that the car is going up hill when it is going down hill? that is his point. People assume they can resolve a lot less than they actually can because the brain is built to try and dismiss it because of the way the brain works.

Of course even when your eyes are optically capable of resolving individual pixels you may not notice them because the color gradations aren't sharp enough for your brain to notice a distinction, or other reasons having to do with how visual signals from the eye are processed by the brain. But I think when people talk about "resolving pixels" they are just talking about optics--obviously if the screen size/distance combination is such that two neighboring pixels get smeared together into a single blob when the light hits your retina (due to diffraction at the pupil), then there's no way you're going to be able to resolve even smaller details if that screen is replaced by a 4K screen with the same size/distance combination. And any lens with an aperture, which includes the human eye, has a minimum angular separation in details that can be resolved--see here. It's these sorts of optical considerations that are used to judge which size/distance combinations will allow people to make out details smaller than those of pixels on a 2K screen and which combinations won't allow that, see this page.

The point about compression might be relevant for blu rays that aren't mastered as well, but I have my doubts that the average person could notice a difference between a well-mastered blu ray shown on a 2K screen and the uncompressed version of the same movie shown on the same 2K screen (presumably fed to it by some source that can store more data than a blu ray).

[Scarface32]

Since viewing distance has been mentioned in this thread, I have a question: I have a 55" 1080p at a viewing distance of 12 feet in my bedroom, I just measured. Is my TV size ok for the distance? I have the TV on a stand, if mounted it would be 14 feet away instead of 12.

[Hypnosifl]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

Since viewing distance has been mentioned in this thread, I have a question: I have a 55" 1080p at a viewing distance of 12 feet in my bedroom, I just measured. Is my TV size ok for the distance? I have the TV on a stand, if mounted it would be 14 feet away instead of 12.

See the chart here--that distance is probably too large to be able to see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 55'' set.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by Hypnosifl

See the chart here--that distance is probably too large to be able to see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 55'' set.

It's amazing, because as a kid we were always told not to sit too close to the TV, but the chart suggests you must sit very close indeed.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Hypnosifl

Of course even when your eyes are optically capable of resolving individual pixels you may not notice them because the color gradations aren't sharp enough for your brain to notice a distinction, or other reasons having to do with how visual signals from the eye are processed by the brain. But I think when people talk about "resolving pixels" they are just talking about optics--obviously if the screen size/distance combination is such that two neighboring pixels get smeared together into a single blob when the light hits your retina (due to diffraction at the lens), then there's no way you're going to be able to resolve even smaller details if that screen is replaced by a 4K screen with the same size/distance combination. And any lens, including the one in the human eye, has a minimum angular separation in details that can be resolved--see here. It's these sorts of optical considerations that are used to judge which size/distance combinations will allow people to make out details smaller than those of pixels on a 2K screen and which combinations won't allow that, see this page.

yes there is more than just pixel size that matter, that is the point. Most (and even the charts in your link) tend to under value the difference.

That is why I like as an example to go the opposite route (since let's face it visual acuity is individual)

if you take content with film grain at any resolution and from where you sit you can't tell it is there but if you move closer you can see it, then you are sitting too far to resolve a pixel of that size on that display, since the human mind will be very good at focusing on it. If on the other hand you see it where you are sitting then your eyes can resolve it and you will benefit by more resolution

a different test is by using a black scene with a single white pixel in the middle, if it looks 100% black you can't resolve more but if you can tell that white pixel is there you can resolve more than you have today.

yes, maybe if they are very similar shades it might be hard to tell they are different pixels but
1) you should not be able to tell an image has any pixels
2) that is not the only thing that will happen in all the films.

what I find is most of the tables and charts (when using the tests described above) are wrong and under estimate what people can see using what I described above). Simply because they start with what I believe is a wrong premise. Let's take your Red link where they talk about the Snellen chart 9the one with the letters). For someone like me that wears glasses and had to deal with often

1) sometimes you can read some of the letters on a line but not others. From a functional perspective the details are too small (not reliable) but from a pixel perspective it would be wrong to say I can't see the difference since on some letters I can. this idea of all or nothing used to make charts based on pixel angularity would only work if it was all or nothing

2) obviously with TVs it is the same thing but the chart moves in large increments, so if someone can read one line completely but not the next one it can't really say anything about anything in between. 20/20 means that the person can see at 20' what a normal person can see at 20' but 20/40 means that person who is still at 20' can read the line representing a normal person at 40' and 20/10 that that person can see at 20' what a normal person can see at 10' but there is no line 20/20.1 or 20/19.1 so precisoion is assumed for something that is not precise (and the same for the TV, maybe 4K is not needed for Joe's set-up but that does not mean that 3K would not help or 3.5k or 2.5 or any resolution more than 1080p.

The point about compression might be relevant for blu rays that aren't mastered as well, but I have my doubts that the average person could notice a difference between a well-mastered blu ray shown on a 2K screen and the uncompressed version of the same movie shown on the same 2K screen (presumably fed to it by some source that can store more data than a blu ray).

if you have a 1080p camcorder that can capture uncompressed video, you would be amazed how much is lost even when re-encoded in BD format, but obviously BD is the best we have and most other formats are much worst. But my point was not about compression but a simple reality if you look at this optical illusion



obviously there are no triangles but your brain wants to assume there is a triangle with a black outline and three black circles and there is a white triangle on top of them (which is why you don't see the rest of the circles or the full black outline. The point was that the brain likes what it likes and so it can be good at tricking you if you don't account for the tricks it can play on you. Compression artifacts are that way, even though they are sometimes glaring and obvious (by people that know what they are seeing) they can go semi-unnoticed by people that don't know better. That is why a long time ago I decided to never help anyone to see them (because once you learn how to see them and that they are un natural your brain does not try and hide from you what your eyes see). I brought it up because resolution is the same way, I was OK with DVD until I started watch BDs and then what was wrong in the pictures before became obvious. Now maybe with 4K it won't be as bad, but only time will tell because right now like the image above our brains want to find that 1080p image acceptable and it will assume the details that are missing just like it did with DVD before BD.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

It's amazing, because as a kid we were always told not to sit too close to the TV

yeah, don't know about you but the reason was that as a kid you knew better and so you always tried to sit closer, but then you were in front of that very small TV and blocking the image for your parents in back of you.

I just find it funny in todays society when an adult will use a laptop or table less then an arms length away but still believes a TV needs to be many feet away or something bad will happen. A few months ago I had someone over (an engineer) that saw my row 10' away from my 10' screen that said "won't It ruin your eyes because you are so close", so I go "how close is your tablet when you use it" he goes "yeah but it is a much smaller screen" and I r4eplied why would the size of the image ruin someone's eyes" , thought about it a second and goes "you are right".

[octagon]

Originally Posted by scorpiontail60

Yes, I'm sure in a hundred years from now we're still going to be watching everything on 1080p TVs. My grandchildren are going to be watching videos at the same resolution I watch them at now. Yep. Sounds about right.

This is it folks. We've reached the end game. Video display technology will never progress past Blu-ray according to Mr. Blu-21 here. Humans in the year 3000 will still be sitting around watching 'high definition' TVs. There will never be a higher resolution format ever in all of mankind's future. We're never going to see 4K or 8K become widespread and we're never getting holodecks.

So I guess we better pack it up folks, because it looks like we're in for the long haul.

Of course display technology will continue to change and while the cumulative effects of those changes will likely be dramatic the individual changes themselves are more likely to be evolutionary than revolutionary.

4K is clearly a step forward. Will it be an incremental step forward or a so-called game changer?

My guess is the former but who knows.

Originally Posted by Anthony P

yeah, don't know about you but the reason was that as a kid you knew better and so you always tried to sit closer, but then you were in front of that very small TV and blocking the image for your parents in back of you.

Heh, I think the real reason was that even the small tvs weighed a zillion pounds and could brain a kid if it fell over on him.

[bhampton]

All I want is Blu.

No 4K for me.

I just recently got a new 1080p Pj with 3D and I'm set for 10 years ... maybe then I will look into 4K just for the upconvertion of my blu ray library which will be huge by then.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by octagon

Heh, I think the real reason was that even the small tvs weighed a zillion pounds and could brain a kid if it fell over on him.

but ,at least when I was a kid TVs were small in screen size and deep and heavy because of the CRT in them, the chances they would tip should have been almost inexistent.

Also

More than 17,000 children — one every 30 minutes — are treated in emergency rooms across the country for TV-related injuries every year, and the rate of kids hurt from TVs tipping over has nearly doubled in two decades, according to a study to be released Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...-gianna-hadjis


todays flat screens are a much bigger tipping issue since some dumb parents just plop them on furniture (and so the large size makes them more prone to typing) or badly install them on the wall (you need good screws/bolts gripping into the stud, the TVs are still pretty heavy even though they are light compared to when I was a kid and constantly cantilevering on the screws).

Also if a kid was sitting 4' from that 30" TV even if it tipped it would not fall on him.


So maybe your parents believed it was a risk and told you not to sit too close but it really did not make sense at the time.

PS also a TV is much more likely to tip on a kid while a kid is playing around it (pull on some cords....) than if he is just watching.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

So maybe your parents believed it was a risk and told you not to sit too close but it really did not make sense at the time

Or it was just an off-hand comment (hence the introductory 'heh').

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

yeah, don't know about you but the reason was that as a kid you knew better and so you always tried to sit closer, but then you were in front of that very small TV and blocking the image for your parents in back of you.

I just find it funny in todays society when an adult will use a laptop or table less then an arms length away but still believes a TV needs to be many feet away or something bad will happen. A few months ago I had someone over (an engineer) that saw my row 10' away from my 10' screen that said "won't It ruin your eyes because you are so close", so I go "how close is your tablet when you use it" he goes "yeah but it is a much smaller screen" and I r4eplied why would the size of the image ruin someone's eyes" , thought about it a second and goes "you are right".

You only had one TV?

[Hypnosifl]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

yes there is more than just pixel size that matter, that is the point. Most (and even the charts in your link) tend to under value the difference.

How do you figure? Do you understand that your eyes are physically incapable of seeing details below a certain scale? The optical illusion effects you mention deal with how your brain processes information from the eye, not the optics of the eyes themselves. Because of the quirks of how the brain processes information it gets, it may be that in some cases your visual acuity is worse than what would be calculated from optics alone, but it can never be better. For it to be better would be like one of those ridiculous scenes where people "enhance" photos to show way more detail than was there in the data from the camera...

Let's Enhance (HD) - YouTube

Originally Posted by Anthony P

if you take content with film grain at any resolution and from where you sit you can't tell it is there but if you move closer you can see it, then you are sitting too far to resolve a pixel of that size on that display, since the human mind will be very good at focusing on it. If on the other hand you see it where you are sitting then your eyes can resolve it and you will benefit by more resolution

If the film grains are about the size of a pixel, then if you can resolve the grain you can resolve pixels. If the grains are larger, then the fact that you can resolve grain doesn't prove you can resolve pixels, and if you can resolve grain but not pixels you wouldn't benefit from higher screen resolution.

Originally Posted by Anthony P

a different test is by using a black scene with a single white pixel in the middle, if it looks 100% black you can't resolve more but if you can tell that white pixel is there you can resolve more than you have today.

That's not a good test. In terms of optics, the reason there's a limit to resolution is that any circular opening that light comes through (like the pupil of the eye) will smear the light from a pinpoint over some finite area (an effect of diffraction), so that if two nearby pinpoints of light in an otherwise black region are too close together, their smears overlap so much that they just look like a single blob. See the illustration from this page:



So even if the size of a pixel is below the limit of what your eye is able to physically resolve (based on what they call the Rayleigh criterion), you still may be able to see a white spot on the black background, but it'll be smeared out to a size larger than a pixel, and pixels of different colors next to each other will be blended together like a watercolor.

Originally Posted by Anthony P

what I find is most of the tables and charts (when using the tests described above) are wrong and under estimate what people can see using what I described above). Simply because they start with what I believe is a wrong premise. Let's take your Red link where they talk about the Snellen chart 9the one with the letters). For someone like me that wears glasses and had to deal with often

1) sometimes you can read some of the letters on a line but not others. From a functional perspective the details are too small (not reliable) but from a pixel perspective it would be wrong to say I can't see the difference since on some letters I can. this idea of all or nothing used to make charts based on pixel angularity would only work if it was all or nothing

Well, the page on the Rayleigh criterion I linked to did mention there is some variation between what people with normal eyes can see in practice and what the theoretical maximum resolution is calculated from the physics of light diffraction, but as I said above it's in the direction of being a bit worse that the theoretical maximum. According to that page, the theoretical maximum angular resolution is 1.22 * 10^-4 radians (and the page explains that this is just based on considering the diffraction given the size of the pupil, but there's a separate effect called "aberration" which could make it a little worse depending on the light levels, not to mention other imperfections in the shape of the lens and such which may make things work). On the other hand, they mention that the empirical data shows most people have a resolution limit closer to 5 * 10^-4 radians, and that with "most acute vision, optimum circumstances" the limit is about 2 * 10^-4 radians. And the wiki page on visual acuity says that "At 20 feet or 6 meters, a human eye with nominal performance is able to separate contours that are approximately 1.75 mm apart", which works out to a resolution of 2.9 * 10^-4 radians. The chart about viewing distance here that I linked to before seems to be based on that last figure--for example, seeing things 1.75 mm apart at 20 feet is equivalent in angular resolution to seeing things 0.875 mm apart at 10 feet, and the chart says that for a distance of 10 feet "full benefit of 1080p visible" when the screen is a little over 75 inches diagonally, so if we figure a 76 inch diagonal that gives the screen a height of 37.26 inches, so each pixel would have a height of 37.26/1080 = 0.0345 inches = 0.876 mm.

So long story short, variations in which letters you can resolve on eye charts probably happen when the size of the gaps between parts of the letter (like the three gaps in the letter E) are just barely larger than what your eye is physically capable of resolving, but some letters are easier to recognize than others because of how your brain is processing the information coming to it from the retina (pattern recognition and such). But this is only going to be when the size of the gaps is very close to the limit of what you can resolve, and it should be physically impossible for anyone's visual resolution to be more than about twice as good the figure of 1.75 mm at 20 feet usually given for 20/20 vision (and apparently the empirical data suggests the resolution for "most acute vision, optimal circumstances" is just under 1.5 times as good).

Originally Posted by Anthony P

if you have a 1080p camcorder that can capture uncompressed video, you would be amazed how much is lost even when re-encoded in BD format, but obviously BD is the best we have and most other formats are much worst.

Like I said, the issue of compression is separate from the issue of number of pixels. You may be right about a lot being lost, but do you have any examples? If you've seen uncompressed video converted to a blu ray and noticed a difference, are you sure the person doing the conversion was skilled at choosing the best compression algorithms, and encoding everything on the disc to fill as much available space as possible? For really high-quality blu rays like those in the "mastered in 4K" series, I wonder if there would really be much visible difference between an uncompressed 2K file produced from the 4K master, and what is actually seen on the blu ray.

[Blu-21]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

Since viewing distance has been mentioned in this thread, I have a question: I have a 55" 1080p at a viewing distance of 12 feet in my bedroom, I just measured. Is my TV size ok for the distance? I have the TV on a stand, if mounted it would be 14 feet away instead of 12.

12/14 feet? That's more then double the distance I sit from my 55". You might be sitting too far but I might be sitting too close, or at least right on the bare minimum at 5.5 or 6 feet away myself.

[Steedeel]

Hi, I sit in my garden and watch my 50 inch plasma through my telescope at a distance of around 80 feet. Do you guys think this is acceptable? I don't see the whole screen but for spy films etc.. I really feel part of the action.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by Blu-21

12/14 feet? That's more then double the distance I sit from my 55". You might be sitting too far but I might be sitting too close, or at least right on the bare minimum at 5.5 or 6 feet away myself.

Well I lay in bed when waching, going from wall to wall it's 14.5 feet in my room. Half a foot behind my headboard and pillows, and 2 feet between the TV and the wall behind it.

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Hi, I sit in my garden and watch my 50 inch plasma through my telescope at a distance of around 80 feet. Do you guys think this is acceptable? I don't see the whole screen but for spy films etc.. I really feel part of the action.

That's just rediculas, I can't imagine looking through a telescope would be very enjoyable.

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I was OK with DVD until I started watch BDs and then what was wrong in the pictures before became obvious. Now maybe with 4K it won't be as bad, but only time will tell because right now like the image above our brains want to find that 1080p image acceptable and it will assume the details that are missing just like it did with DVD before BD.

The two leaps in quality can't possibly be compared. In movies, I don't believe that there are fine details that the director intended to be seen by the viewer, but that can't be seen on a great 1080p transfer. Whereas on DVD, some of these details were nowhere near being visible. Example:

http://caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleich...ss=1#vergleich

Sure they will be even clearer on a 4K transfer, but the difference between "visible" and "more visible" is nowhere near as big and important as the difference between "visible" and "not visible".

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Hi, I sit in my garden and watch my 50 inch plasma through my telescope at a distance of around 80 feet. Do you guys think this is acceptable? I don't see the whole screen but for spy films etc.. I really feel part of the action.

You have the entire process backwards. I have a 10" TV and a very powerful magnifing glass that I put in front of it. It looks just like a movie theater!

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by singhcr

You have the entire process backwards. I have a 10" TV and a very powerful magnifing glass that I put in front of it. It looks just like a movie theater!

But can you look at the stars instead of watching trailers before the film? No you can't!

[UFAlien]

So despite the opinions of most analysts/reviewers who've tried their low-bitrate "technically 4K" streams and predictably found them worse-looking than a good Blu-ray, Netflix's new shareholder report says "the best quality consumer video in the world is now streaming Internet video," referring of course to theirs.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...14%20final.pdf