Bill Pope on 2K vs 4K - American Cinematographer

[Medavoym]

Hi,

Probably lots of people already read this, but I'm pasting a quote from this month's American Cinematographer because it's very interesting and it may interest us. Basically, Mr. Pope (the cinematographer of Spiderman 3) talks about the differences between 2K and 4K as far as film scans are concerned (not 2k vs 4k in general, mind you). He seems to favor 2K scans, for the reasons outlined below.

In any case, I remember another thread in which someone was advocating downsizing 4K to a 2K finish for basically the same resons. It is something to consider - aesthetically but also because finishing 2K is so easy nowadays compared to 4K.

Enjoy the short excerpt.

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Although the visual-effects work and final filmout were done at 2K, Spider-Man 3 was scanned at 4K for the DI. Pope notes he was very excited to do a 4K scan for Spider-Man 2 (see AC June ’02), but he would have preferred to work in 2K on its sequel. “I’ve found that I actually like 2K scans better. There’s a certain softness to 2K, in addition to softening filters that are not yet available in 4K, that hides a lot of flaws. 4K is so brutally sharp and clear there’s nowhere to hide. Every blemish, every wrinkle, every hour of work into a late night or a long week shows up on the actor’s face, and that’s not what I want to see — especially not in a movie like this, which is set in a made-up wonderland. It’s just too much to fight later on.
“In many ways, cinematography is about deciding what you don’t want to see, and if you don’t have the tools to erase what you don’t want to see later on, you tend to walk away from that tool the next time. Right now we’re doing 2K projection and 2K effects, so why bother to scan at 4K when it’s just too sharp? Honestly, if I’d thought about it more carefully, I would have shot all the actors through a light [Tiffen] Pro-Mist filter or something similar, just to take some of that sharp curse off the back end. I used a little filtration in the shooting, but not nearly enough.”
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article by Mr. Jay Holben

[Joe Aurili]

Great, now that an affordable 4K camera is available 2K is now better! ;)

[Graeme Nattress]

Yeah, right. The lower the resolution, the more the tendency for people to try and "sharpen" things up artificially. Best to have real resolution rather than fake sharpness.

If 2k hides flaws then surely HD would be better. If HD hides flaws, surely SD would be better. But Digibeta is too sharp, so let's go VHS. Colour hides flaws, so pixelvision it is!

Graeme

[Ace]

Even if your working at 2K. Sourcing at 4K and downsampling to 2K will be far superior to sourcing at 2K and working 1:1 without oversampling.

[Stuart English]

Thats an interesting point of view.

If you wish to you can certainly work in 2K RGB for the DI when shooting 4K RAW with RED. It is one of the options available to you in REDCINE.

[JD Holloway]

LOL Graeme!

I was waiting for that. Tell Kodak to make some chunky low-res hi-con neg. stock. Maybe with 3-7 stops latitude, like reversal.
Wouldn't want to see detail now...

[Jarred Land]

even if you decide to work in 2k and finish in 2k the extra resolution also helps when you need to do a pan and scan or punch in a little..

[Medavoym]

Hi,

I didn't post this to get negative feedback. It is just a very valid point of view in my opinion, and could anyway prove to be the workflow of most users due to the present difficulty of 4K finishing. It's just an option among many others.

Mr. Pope is not saying 2K is better than 4K, or 4K has flaws, or anything like that. With RED, you have the huge advantage of starting with a 4K image in the first place, so by downsizing the entire 4K image to 2K you still keep the very advantage that only RED can can offer. The initial 4K resolution still translates to the 2K downsize (as with any downsize), and if you gain some workflow advantages PLUS less artifacts and a pleasant softness that hides unwanted sharpness (if such thing exists), then WHY NOT?

[David Mullen ASC]

It's always easier to take away fine details than to add it.

Also, "Spider-Man 3" is probably going through the expense of making multiple IN's from the digital master (plus the 2K DLP version and the IMAX version) so 2K is probably fine, but if the bulk of the movie was being shown in prints made off an IP/IN, then Bill Pope might have changed his mind about 4K since there would be additional resolution loss later down the printing chain.

I remember asking Conrad Hall about what filters he used for "American Beauty" and he said that he used the lightest grade ProMist to take the edge off, but once he saw the optical printer blow-up from Super-35 to 35mm anamorphic, he wondered if the diffusion had been necessary afterall.

The trouble is that movies look sharp in the answer print stage or in the D.I. theater, but what generally gets released is going to be knocked-down a little in sharpness, so you have to factor that in when doing the post and not overly soften the image. Even when I test diffusion filters for a diffused look that I want to achieve, I generally look at my tests, pick the filter I like... and then choose the next lighter grade to actually shoot with. So if I liked the 1/2 Classic Soft, for example, I'd probably shoot with the 1/4 Classic Soft. It's always better to err on the side of less softening.

I would consider that Bill Pope is also talking about film scans, and one of the advantage of 2K scanning is that it does act to some degree as a slight grain reducer, which wouldn't be necessary with a 4K digital image.

[Medavoym]

Exactly Jarred.

Matte work can be of a much higher quality, too, if you finish at 2K but use matte originated in 4K (from the same frame or not)

[JD Holloway]

Agreed whole heartedly,

particularly with wide masters and landscapes.

As for actors skin flaws, resolving power is different from acutance (correct if im wrong here), which makes skin look brutal if handled poorly, and this can exist in poor neg scans or digital imaging, though film neg is gentle.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm

[PaulClements]

Methinks some of you may find the following commentary of interest:

http://cineform.blogspot.com/2007/04/myth-busting-4k-vs-2k.html

Interesting article, but what I'd like to see them do is blow up the 2k to marry the 4k and look at the artifacts that occur and the loss of detail or blurring. It's one thing to say that you can use 4k and 2k together well when the final output is 2k it's another when the final output is 4k. I imagine it would require sharpening to look like the 4k version or blurring of the 4k version, which I'm sure would present it's own problems. Nevertheless it's still interesting.

I don't think anyone buying a RedOne is anti-2k anyway, many people are excited by the prospect of 60fps 2k onboard recording (And 120fps with RAW port) and I'm sure we'll see many people mixing the faster 2k footage with 4k.

[Graeme Nattress]

We're not anti-anything, but we do think that 4k is something special.

Graeme

[JD Holloway]

This is generally accepted, unless you are looking for 60 foot plus screens. Much of it has to do with viewing distance, obviously.

The FAQ demonstrates pretty well. But there are other obvious advantages. Keying, reframing...looking like 4K.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

dont shoot porn in 4k.. no one likes visible ass pimples

[Joe Carney]

This isn't a problem, it's an opportunity. New careers in digital makeup.

[Bruce Allen]

I think this helps confirm my "4K finishing folly" argument...
(http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=781&highlight=4k+finishing+folly)
...that right now, shooting 4K but finishing at 2K makes a lot of sense.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[tj williams]

Already there are outfits in Hollywood getting ready to do 4.5K uncompressed.
tis after all the land of excess....

[Tom Lowe]

Either way, you are talking about a downsample. 35mm to 2K is a downsample. And 4K to 2K is a downsample.

I plan to finish at 2K anyway, because I love the way digital shots look once they have been downsampled by at least 20% or so.

[Brook Willard]

We're not anti-anything, but we do think that 4k is something special.

Graeme

So you love sharpening, eh? ;)

[David Mullen ASC]

So you love sharpening, eh? ;)

Sort of the opposite actually -- 4K needs less "sharpening" because it's already sharp.

[David Mullen ASC]

Either way, you are talking about a downsample. 35mm to 2K is a downsample. And 4K to 2K is a downsample.

I plan to finish at 2K anyway, because I love the way digital shots look once they have been downsampled by at least 20% or so.

If you are unfortunate enough to make a feature that gets released on a print made from a dupe neg made from an IP... made from the digital neg you output... you may have wished you left it in 4K to begin with, since the IP/IN route is a type of downrezzing in a way. Working in 4K helps mitigate some resolution loss in the release printing chain. Now you can say that you're only going to project it digitally in 2K or only make prints off of the original negative output at 2K, but the truth is that you often don't have that kind of control once you sell a movie to a distributor.

[Alexander Nikishin]

After attending last thursday nights Spiderman 3 screening at the WGA where Bill Pope had a Q&A session afterward, I think Bill just has a bit of dislike towards the film in general.

He continuosly made remarks about how crazy the shoot was in terms of storyboards being changed every morning and new shots being created nearly every step of the way. Also, it seems he felt an inconsistency with his work on the film stating that every scene looked like it were from a different film in all.

If he had a 4k scan of The Matrix trilogy, I'm sure he'd see things differently.

[Jim Arthurs]

What I took from the article (with a little time passing probably fuzzing my memory since I read it) is that since the VFX is 2K then under optimal viewing conditions (like the special IMAX screenings) the VFX will be a notch or two lower in quality than the rest of the film scanned and DI'ed at 4K.

Now we're not likely to see a 200 million plus FX blockbuster of this magnitude with a pure 4K VFX work from beginning to end anytime soon, so the logic of just wanting part of the film at 4K nominal for DI escapes me.

This makes sense to me. I personally would rather see a show at "one" quality, even if that is a bit less than perfect, than being constantly reminded of the VFX degrading the picture on every FX shot. Reminds me too much of the issues of optical printer FX in general. Anyone remember the quality hit at each dissolve or transition in older films? Or how VFX shots stood out in films because of dirt/dust/contrast and grain issues due to the dupe work?

Note: I'm glad RED is 4K. Thank you team! This means we can stomp the heck out of that picture and still have a great 2K deliverable. Give us all four years or so and we'll re-evaluate.

[Policar]

After attending last thursday nights Spiderman 3 screening at the WGA where Bill Pope had a Q&A session afterward, I think Bill just has a bit of dislike towards the film in general.

He continuosly made remarks about how crazy the shoot was in terms of storyboards being changed every morning and new shots being created nearly every step of the way. Also, it seems he felt an inconsistency with his work on the film stating that every scene looked like it were from a different film in all.

If he had a 4k scan of The Matrix trilogy, I'm sure he'd see things differently.

Very interesting. What else did he say? Did he compare it with the Matrix Sequels at all?

Bill Pope is one of my favorite DPs; I think The Matrix is beyond brilliant and Spiderman 2 looks phenomenal. I actually thought Spiderman 3 was very well shot, but yes--it was kind of scattershot visually, but so too was the script inconsistent.

As for his comment on resolution, it makes some sense, especially for close ups. I didn't notice a loss of detail in the wide shots, either, but probably because I as watching 35mm and not 4k digital projection--which will probably require 4k scans, and probably more diffusion on close ups as a result.

[Tom Lowe]

If you are unfortunate enough to make a feature that gets released on a print made from a dupe neg made from an IP... made from the digital neg you output... you may have wished you left it in 4K to begin with, since the IP/IN route is a type of downrezzing in a way. Working in 4K helps mitigate some resolution loss in the release printing chain. Now you can say that you're only going to project it digitally in 2K or only make prints off of the original negative output at 2K, but the truth is that you often don't have that kind of control once you sell a movie to a distributor.

Well this is good to have in mind.

Alexander, the new issue of AC has a huge article about the making of Spiderman 3. It sounds like it was an extremely complicated shoot. Interesting read.

[David Mullen ASC]

I once sat in on a screening with some post experts of one 35mm reel of "Spider-Man 2", which was a 4K D.I. with 2K efx and titles, on a big screen.

It's not so much that the efx shots stood out because they were only 2K, but if you looked at the images carefully, what you noticed was that the 2K efx shots were more edge-enhanced (sharpened) to match the look of the 4K non-efx footage, which had a smoother look actually, but grainier (since the grain was not being softened in any way.) The 2K efx shots were "edgier" but less grainy.

By the way, I saw "Spider-Man 3" digitally projected in 2K at the Mann Village in Westwood -- it looked great. I didn't feel that the cinematography was inconsistent, at least not technically. The image was very fine-grained considering the whole movie was shot on 500 ASA Vision-2 5218 stock, even day exterior scenes. I think perhaps the director, Sam Raimi, wanted a more high-key type of lighting than Pope maybe would have normally done -- even most of the night scenes were soft-lit.

Since too much detail is only ever a problem in close-ups, not wide shots, I would think the ideal scenario would be a 4K D.I. and to just control the sharpness of the close-ups, either with lens diffusion or digital diffusion in post, while leaving the wide shots more detailed. It's always in the wide shots where a 2K D.I. tends to look soft.

[Jim Arthurs]

David thanks for your observations... I hope to see it on an IMAX screen next week and will watch for these "tells"... Most recent IMAX blow-ups I've seen (Posidon, Batman, Wille Wonka, etc.) tend to have that edge-enhanced feel as well... will be interesting to compare, knowing the exact nature of the source...

[Alexander Nikishin]

I think perhaps the director, Sam Raimi, wanted a more high-key type of lighting than Pope maybe would have normally done -- even most of the night scenes were soft-lit.

According to Bill Pope Raimi wanted just that, high key lighting.

Pope said that he prefers lighting more "artsy" as he put it (low key) and defined the lighting for Spiderman 3 as straight forward.

He definitely prefers low key and finds the high key look to be a more challenging lighting style.

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I don't understand why people feel the need to sharpen when working down in 1080p let alone 2k.

Haven't any of you seen a robert rodriguez flick? That dude thought that the f 900 was sharp enough.

[Graeme Nattress]

But an F900 has sharpening built into the video processing.

Graeme

[Júlio Taubkin]

Bill Pope is one of my favorite DPs; I think The Matrix is beyond brilliant and Spiderman 2 looks phenomenal. I actually thought Spiderman 3 was very well shot, but yes--it was kind of scattershot visually, but so too was the script inconsistent.

I completely agree. The bleach bypassed scene at the end (not saying what it is - no spoilers!) was the only one that really stood out, for me. But I also think the script is much more inconsistent than the cinematography, and kind of liked the changing mood of the cinematography when peter gets looney...

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't understand why people feel the need to sharpen when working down in 1080p let alone 2k.

Haven't any of you seen a robert rodriguez flick? That dude thought that the f 900 was sharp enough.

Even 2K is often sharpened before it's output to 35mm film, usually by the laser recorder. All D.I. facilities use some formula for sharpening images before going out to film, just usually it's very subtle. Even if you turned off the Detail in a camera like the F900, some form of sharpening will probably get applied at the last step for the film-out.

You see all sorts of sharpening artifacts in Rodriguez's F900 movies on the big screen.

4K is practically the lowest-rez image you can put out on a big theater screen without needing any form of artificial sharpening; unsharpened 2K for a smaller screen.

And usually even your 1080P HD monitor is also adding its own form of sharpening. I don't think people realize how many ways artificial sharpening gets added to images at some point in the chain. Even film has its own form of chemical edge enhancement...

[David Mullen ASC]

People are so often fooled into thinking that 1080P/2K looks as "sharp" as 35mm negative when it's actually lower in resolution, just that sharpening tricks in post can make the apparent sharpness match. Like I've said in the past, that's not sharpness, it's sharpening, a big difference.

I was at a demo for a new intermediate stock by Fuji designed specifically for laser recorders, to improve sharpness of film-outs and reduce flare, improve saturation, reduce grain, etc. At some point after this very technical presentation by some Fuji and ARRI engineers who worked on the Arrilaser, a person in the audience asked "When are you people going to design a SOFTER stock to get rid of that extra resolution that HD has over 35mm??? I'm about to shoot a feature on the Genesis camera and I'm worried that it will be too sharp compared to 35mm!"

There were so many things wrong with that idiotic question that the Arri and Fuji people were a bit speechless for a moment. Josh Pines at Technicolor TDI sort of answered diplomatically, that an intermediate stock is basically like a xerox machine -- all you want from it is to accurately reproduce the source material without adding its own texture or look. So the new laser recorder stock would more accurately copy over the digital files to film. It's not meant to be a creative tool. If you want to added softening, the place for that would have been in shooting the movie or in post color-correction.

One reason that HD/2K digital cine cameras seem to handle large screen projection well is that lack of grain in the image, a telltale clue usually as to the size of the original format. It's one reason why all material blow-up to IMAX using the DMR process is first completely de-grained digitally, so you won't see 35mm grain enlarged on an IMAX screen. But when you look at a 2K/HD movie on the big screen -- like "Flyboys" for example, which I saw in a 35mm scope print made off the original output negative -- you see that in wide shots, fine details are often blurred, like grass in a field or something. Close-ups look plenty sharp because our eye doesn't need to see as much detail there.

[TJXCam]

People are so often fooled into thinking that 1080P/2K looks as "sharp" as 35mm negative when it's actually lower in resolution, just that sharpening tricks in post can make the apparent sharpness match. Like I've said in the past, that's not sharpness, it's sharpening, a big difference.


Well you can't blame them. There is a lot of disinformation. Also digital projection looks great, most people think that if the see digital projection that the camera must also have been digital. I head someone say how great the new digital cameras are after walking out of The Incredibles. No comment.

TJ

[laguun]

4K is practically the lowest-rez image you can put out on a big theater screen without needing any form of artificial sharpening; unsharpened 2K for a smaller screen.


Hello, its rare that i have to disagree with your opinion, but in this case i have a different position:

the bottleneck isn´t the filmout, its usually the chain of copies & cinema.
as has been measured by different organisation and conformed by several independent organisations, the usual 35mm cinema won´t even show 2k, but rather 650-850 lines@1.4-6K:
http://www.cst.fr/IMG/pdf/35mm_resolution_english.pdf

so, i wouldn´t recommend -any- at all sharpening for many productions.

imdeed, the opposite can be true. recent fullfeature we recorded to film @1080p was goodlooking on the 35mm testouts in the cinema.

later on, we did a digital screening via sony 4k srx - and they added some "mild" sharpening with the bad sideeffect, that suddenly the invisible noise patterns became visible. the audience wasn´t surprised, but we knew the difference and did indeed preferred the neutral 2k/1080p over the 4k (softly sharpened, with "enhanced" noise).

35mm mechanical projection is pretty unsharp in itself, when used in its typical chain today.



Even 2K is often sharpened before it's output to 35mm film, usually by the laser recorder. All D.I. facilities use some formula for sharpening images before going out to film, just usually it's very subtle.

we often don´t. ~30% of the DI-outs here don´t get any sharpening, some even a mild antialiasing.

especially when going 1080p->2k, any sharpening before the scale can produce unwanted artefacts.

however, our position on this topic is highly dependent on the particular movie, some stuff typically wants sharpening (i.e. wide architecture), other really looks better without (i.e. dark interior cu of actors).



Even if you turned off the Detail in a camera like the F900, some form of sharpening will probably get applied at the last step for the film-out.

we recommend all rental customers who use our hdcams to set sharpening to off when shooting for cinema. its a different thing for broadcast, but for film out: deactivate sharpening in the camera and in the postprocess.




And usually even your 1080P HD monitor is also adding its own form of sharpening. I don't think people realize how many ways artificial sharpening gets added to images at some point in the chain. Even film has its own form of chemical edge enhancement...

in the case of the sony bvm crt class 1 monitors - you can control if and how much sharpening will be applied. for filmout or dci we also recommend off.

the importance of having a constant production pipeline without hidden scalings, colorspace/model conversions and sharpenings is often underestimated - it is however cruicial for look and qualiyt of the master and sharpening is something one only should want as an -option-.

this is indeed one of the reasons why we ordered red - even when the audience won´t see 4k in the cinema - especially not when using 35mm film - it guarantees a excellent overhead of quality.

its the same with audio. nobody would need 24bit/96khz (except if you want to entertain your dog & cat better) because you don´t hear the difference to 16/48, especially not via dts & dd5.1.

however, if the recorded sound is at -85 db, you donßt use 16bit of 16bit, but rather 4 bit. when this is enhanced in level, the audio will be reduced in quality in 16, but still will be good in 24bit. same applies to all kinds of scaling/sharpening/bicubic translation from 4k for 2k.

[David Mullen ASC]

imdeed, the opposite can be true. recent fullfeature we recorded to film @1080p was goodlooking on the 35mm testouts in the cinema..


I've seen unsharpened 1080P recorded out to 35mm myself -- yes, it looks OK but it's not as sharp and detailed as original 35mm photography contact-printed and projected. It's just that in most cases, when looking at 1080P film-outs, you don't have a 35mm frame of reference to compare to, so it looks adequate.

I did shoot a movie that intercut 1080P HD-shot footage transferred to 35mm with 35mm photography that was straight-cut and printed (no D.I.) and the 1080P material is simply not as detailed or sharp when shown in the same scene, not in the answer print and not even in release prints that were down a couple of film generations. There are even a few 2K D.I. shots cut into the original negative and you can see a resolution hit when comparing 35mm-to-2K-to-35mm to non-D.I. 35mm.

[laguun]

I did shoot a movie that intercut 1080P HD-shot footage transferred to 35mm with 35mm photography that was straight-cut and printed (no D.I.) and the 1080P material is simply not as detailed or sharp when shown in the same scene, not in the answer print and not even in release prints that were down a couple of film generations.

that surprises me - our 35mm & 1080p intercut projects (had 3 in 2006 alone)
don´t show this behaviour, 1080p and 35mm were excellent side by side.

however, there might be differences in our workflow which favour the opposite format i suppose - when we record 1080p directly to uncompressed disc, you could have been using hdcam and we also had a 2k 35mm scan cropped to 1080, and you had straight cut 35mm - so that might be the reason.

my personal experience meanwhile has become that the usual 35mm projection is the bottleneck. The resolution loss between the master image on 2k projection and the recorded ip/in 35mm projection. is visible.

furthermore, there also might be better 35mm projection in your screening theaters - here its just good.


I've seen unsharpened 1080P recorded out to 35mm myself -- yes, it looks OK but it's not as sharp and detailed as original 35mm photography contact-printed and projected. It's just that in most cases, when looking at 1080P film-outs, you don't have a 35mm frame of reference to compare to, so it looks adequate.

hm, bizarre, we do have differen experiences there. when i am leaving the studio after a days work in front of 2k and go to the movies with friends, i usually have the feeling that everything in 35mm projection is much less sharp in the cinema than what i do have in the studio, no matter if shot on 35mm or 1080p.



There are even a few 2K D.I. shots cut into the original negative and you can see a resolution hit when comparing 35mm-to-2K-to-35mm to non-D.I. 35mm.
agreed, and that might be the explanation - if you have the (here meanwhile uncommon & rare) situation where you projects direct prints from the neg, i had the same impression. however, this workflow begun fading away here when we started to go DI.

btw - even if audiences won´t see the difference between 2k or 4k projection in average cinemas - i still think that it makes sense to go as high as possible with critical 35mm material when scanning it - simply to create headroom for the following recording generations on film.

as a trend i did notice that more and more directors -like- the "crisp" look of sharpening images, while dps seem to be less favouring it. i am personally in the mid - in my opinion, it strongly depends on the images at hand.

also, thinking about ulltraviolet and other recent rather unconventional movies, i did notice that a combination of strong grain/noise removal and then applied sharpening is getting used quite bit recently. it certainly looks, lets say, a little bit surreal with the ultraclean skins on the one hand, and the extremly detailed hair etc on the other hand. i am still not decided if i really like that, it is however an interesting look.

finally, in 90% of the cases the audience will have the 35mm projection as bottleneck, and i basicly would prefer two have 2 masters, one for filmout and one for dci, to compensate for both projections. especially troubling is that some digital cinema 2k/4k projectors meanwhile are used -with- sharpening on, this is something really uncalled for. how goes that chinese curse? "may you live in interesting times"?

[David Mullen ASC]

It's the Wild West out there once a movie leaves the hands of the filmmaker. I don't even want to think about the people watching my latest shot-in-35mm-anamorphic movie while flying in an airplane, panned & scanned, on a 6" LCD screen...

I recognize the fact that a lot of presentation methods suck in various venues, but I also have to believe that the film industry should be working towards higher standards, not "let's settle for the average quality we see in a multiplex today" sort of thinking.

4K origination with 4K digital projection for large cinema screens, for example, would be a worthy goal. 2K projection for mid-size theaters. It might start to see the return of the quality we got in the 1960's with 70mm productions and reverse current downward trends in image quality.

[Policar]

I remember when my parents rented The Aviator in full screen DVD and I tried to prevent them from watching it.

[Sam Druckerman]

I remember when my parents rented The Aviator in full screen DVD and I tried to prevent them from watching it.

LOL I know a older couple who own a Large 16x9 TV and still buy full screen DVD's, huh? The TV stretches the full screen DVD..... you get the idea. I tried to explain, oh well.

[david farland]

I know it's easy in retrospect but...and I suppose a lot of dop's, editors draw on their experience...but i'd thought it'd be prudent to shoot some test shots and take them through the E2E process to see what the final result was. I know phud about this in 'real' film productions, but I've tried to always do this with HD because I don't want to get near the end and find I'm in a place I don't wanna be and have to dig up the road i.e re-edit/change codecs, etc when I'm about to complete the job. I guess all this just means that this 4K world is new for a lot of experienced DOP's, editors so there'll be more experimentation.
By the way, I sure everyone has a story about the first time (older) actresses/models who saw themselves on HD rushes for the first time! Personally I didn't give a damn but they'll wouldn't let the shots out of the building...well kind of.

I'd also expect..as you all, that going from 4K to 2K master would ensure cc, pan/scan, keys,noise levels are all much more forgiving. Also isn't this 4K~2K master just a copy of the 4/5K film negative to <2K release print paradigm.

Also another penny just dropped for me on this 4K/DI workflow stuff. The compression, process and delivery of 4K/film is simply a 'container' for the actual 4K/film source. True rolloff/latitude/color fidelity/resolution at your source is key. It's how big those pixel wells were for DR in the first place & interpolating hue/saturation thru bayer filter that determines fidelity of signal.

Cheers,

[David Mullen ASC]

Also isn't this 4K~2K master just a copy of the 4/5K film negative to <2K release print paradigm.


Yes, but I'm questioning whether that's just "good enough" thinking when something better is possible. We've come to live with 2K now for D.I.'s over the past few years and I'm afraid it will be hard to shake people out of their complacency once 4K becomes more affordable. When I see movies in theaters nowadays, it's hard for me not to notice this sort of slightly dull "rounded-off" quality we've come to see with 2K D.I. work (the high-contrast movies tend to hide this better). Since most movies these days are shot in close-ups it seems, 2K looks plenty sharp but you see the limitations in the wide shots.

[david farland]

To be honest I didn't see the extra two page of comments you/laguun wrote when I posted and was about to 'stoppress when I saw you comment.
I agree, Laguun's link mentions 1.3K as the final resolution which I'm not sure has anything to do with DCI spec but 1.3K has been suggested as a D-Cinema standard in the regions here in Oz.

On the sharpening topic does this page (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm) describe what your've been mentioning?

[Jay A. Kelley]

dont shoot porn in 4k.. no one likes visible ass pimples
ROTFLMAO

:)