Anyone else notice massive 2K aliasing / jaggies in The Simpsons movie?

[Bruce Allen]

I saw The Simpsons at the Arclight last night. Film print, I think.

Anyway, right from the get-go (the thin lines on the slightly-altered Fox logo...) I noticed huge aliasing problems - lots and lots of jittery edges throughout.

Did any of the reviewers comment on this? I haven't seen anything so far... I just was wondering who else was irritated by the jaggies.

My stance on 4K finishing (that it is total wasteful overkill for Indies ;) remains unchanged. The Simpsons got 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. Let's face it, if the content is there, the public and critics don' care...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Keith Alan Morris]

ugh, i saw it at Universal Studios in Orlando at their massive AMC theater thinking that I'd get a watchable experience (biggest theater in town, blah blah blah)! what a nightmare.

the film was out of focus most of the time, the side speakers were completely off (they tried to come on for a sec there, i swear--lovely static), but worst of all, some family in the front thought the place was their living room and shouted their comments the whole movie. I've had better experiences at the ol' dollar theater on 46th and 8th in NYC. I almost strangled them.

I was stuck in the middle so i never got up and when i went out and told the manager, he gave me free tix, no questions asked. I think they'd rather do that every now and then bc its cheaper than have to hire the one extra guy to go theater to theater to make sure everythings running smoothly.

bah, theaters today...

i couldnt believe no one went out to complain. and the theater was packed. that doesnt say much for us as viewers. no one wanted to miss the movie i guess.

after all that, it was still great. :) i love the 3d/line art effect. i could watch that all day.

and yes, when it was in focus, huge aliasing problems. what was up with that?

[Tom Lowe]

Well did it go through a 2K DI?

BTW, I still disagree with you on the 4K post issue, Bruce. If Red shooters can afford it, and don't need overcranked shots, they might as well shoot and post in 4K, because it will future-proof their movies. Already we are seeing the spread of 4K projectors and soon 4K LCDs. Might as well finish in 4K. The amount of data and PC processing power needed are quickly becoming non-issues.

[Brian Kaz]

I saw this in a DLP theater and besides some slight red push and a dirty screen, I thought it looked great.

[Matthew Rogers]

I saw it in a Carmike DLP theater and it looked really good. Last film I saw digitally was the Chronicles of Narn. and I almost didn't like the digital projection because it lacked that "jitter/flicker" look which film has. In fact, the "digital" shots looked REALLY like 60i video:(

The only problem I had with the screening of the simpsons, was that the center speakers weren't loud enough. Therefore, I was hearing the dialog track rather loudly in the surround speakers....sigh...it's just hard to beat the home system anymore.

Matthew

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

I saw a Hans Zimmer scored movie where a whole row of (empty) chairs resonated with a certain bass note.

Sounded like two whales mating while somebody was drilling a hole in the wall.

[Sean]

Reviewers don't notice "artifacting," and neither do 99.9% of the general movie going audience. You got it right when you said that as long as the story's there, people are satisfied. But the gripes about the cinema experience in general struck a chord with me for sure. We saw Harry Potter a couple weeks ago, and the sound was screwed up so that 1/4 of the dialogue was almost incomprehensible. No one complained. But I'll be watching the next installment at home on Blu-Ray on my 42" LCD.

[Stephen Gentle]

I saw it on film, and the picture looked really good - a little bit of grain in some places though, but hardly noticeable. Any moving text looked pretty bad though - like the credits, and the fox ad ticker thing.

[laguun]

Sounded like two whales mating while somebody was drilling a hole in the wall.
??? How comes you know how that particular scenario sounds ???
are you living between a zoo and a construction champ?

scnr

[M Most]

Well did it go through a 2K DI?

BTW, I still disagree with you on the 4K post issue, Bruce. If Red shooters can afford it, and don't need overcranked shots, they might as well shoot and post in 4K, because it will future-proof their movies. Already we are seeing the spread of 4K projectors and soon 4K LCDs. Might as well finish in 4K. The amount of data and PC processing power needed are quickly becoming non-issues.

Really?

Try actually doing it. They we can talk.

[Jason Murphy]

One question here: are we confusing artifacts from hand animation with aliasing? Slightly jittery lines every now and then, as well as not lines that are slightly 'lumpy' for lack of a better term, those things are associated with hand drawn animation, which much of the Simpsons movie was.

I noticed aliasing a few times on the film print, but by and large it looked pretty nice; wasn't horribly distracting.

On the weird side, my girlfriend and I were watching the movie when a huge thunderstorm moved in right over the theater, and during the more emotionally tense scenes in Alaska, huge peals of thunder started going on in the theater. We looked at each other and both thought the sound design was just a little over the top, until the scenes continued to change, and there was still tons of thunder; at this point we realized that it was coming from outside. Guess the theatre's soundproofing wasn't particularly good.

That and there was a guy sitting three rows behind us who felt the need to repeat each and every joke of the movie while laughing about it. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE audiences laughing at comedies. But when you get to the point where someone's loudly saying "Spider Pig! Ha ha ha! That's so great! Spider Pig! Does whatever a Spider Pig does! Heh heh..." , etc. throughout the entire movie, it gets kind of old. Should have known it was going to be a problem when he laughed and repeated each joke through the entire "Daddy Day Camp" trailer. "They got sprayed by a skunk! Ha ha! The bathroom blew up! Ha ha, he puked!"

*sigh*

[Tom Lowe]

Really?

Try actually doing it. Then we can talk.

Care to place a little wager on whether the average person will be able to post, edit and CC at 4K wavelet on a high-end PC by next summer? Say, 20 bucks? :)

[Keith Alan Morris]

That and there was a guy sitting three rows behind us who felt the need to repeat each and every joke of the movie while laughing about it. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE audiences laughing at comedies. But when you get to the point where someone's loudly saying "Spider Pig! Ha ha ha! That's so great! Spider Pig! Does whatever a Spider Pig does! Heh heh..." , etc. throughout the entire movie, it gets kind of old. Should have known it was going to be a problem when he laughed and repeated each joke through the entire "Daddy Day Camp" trailer. "They got sprayed by a skunk! Ha ha! The bathroom blew up! Ha ha, he puked!"

*sigh*

seriously, theres gonna come a day when we as a society go from road rage to theater rage. someones going to get killed. or at least beaten up. its like going to the live "theatuh" in LA. when we saw a play at elephant (The Elvis Test--great play, btw), which can seat like 40 people max, two young guys sitting closest to the stage (feet propped up on stage, no less) answered their phones and got up and down twice to go outside and take calls! in NYC at live theater, they wouldve never made it to the door!

one of em actually checked his phone when the whole theater turned off ALL the lights in the most dramatic scene. His blue light from his cellphone lit the whole place up.

I threw my Twizzlers at his head.

why do people think theyre in their living room? how did we as a society ever get so stupid, thoughtless, and uncaring?

rant over. sorry.

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

??? How comes you know how that particular scenario sounds ???
are you living between a zoo and a construction champ?

scnr

Story of my life........

Jochen

[Michael Ragen]

theater rage has been around for a while. there was a shooting about ten years ago in seattle when a guy asked another guy to shut up and the guy turned around and shot him in the chest.

a few months ago i was watching a movie here and a guy stood up and starting peeing on the floor. a few of us went and told management but they told us they couldn't do anything because they didn't see it happen...

also, anyone here seen a movie in the kabuki in japan town in sf? i've been in a movie there with up to 4 cell phone conversations going on at once.

[Rocket]

Care to place a little wager on whether the average person will be able to post, edit and CC at 4K wavelet on a high-end PC by next summer? Say, 20 bucks? :)

Yeah, not gonna happen. If it was that easy, I'd be out of business before I even got started. A 4K finish will remain with the high end DI facilities for a few years to come. I disagree that it has to be out of reach for indie filmmakers however. I know this because I have crunched the numbers, and when we open our doors here in Jo'burg, we'll be able to offer full 4K start to finish at below current 2K costs, especially in U.S. and Europe.

[M Most]

Care to place a little wager on whether the average person will be able to post, edit and CC at 4K wavelet on a high-end PC by next summer? Say, 20 bucks? :)

The "average person" won't be able to do that because the "average person" is not an editor, a colorist, and a finishing artist, regardless of how cheap technology might or might not be and how well it might or might not work. Nor are they likely to have proper environment, monitoring, or measuring devices to do it at a professional level of acceptability.

But even having said that, yes, I would bet a lot more than 20 bucks. For all the talk here about rebellion, revolution, and independent distribution, the fact remains that the vast, vast majority of projects that actually make their money back do so because they're distributed by the existing distribution network. That's how they get into potentially profitable distribution channels like theatrical distribution, DVD, and both broadcast and cable television. Ultimately, professional filmmaking - independent or not - means creating projects that can be financially self-sustaining - a concept which is often very elusive, and learned much too late in the process. For "real" distribution, there are technical standards that need to be met, and deliverables that need to be created to those standards. Creation of acceptable distribution elements takes a lot more than an "average person with a PC." Shooting on a Red will be a great way to create the original material for such deliverables, but there's a lot more to post production than just loading Redcode files on a Mac.

[Tom Lowe]

I'm talking about basic editing and CCing. I'm not trying to diss post-production houses; I'm just saying that sitting down at a high-end machine and editing Red 4K is not out of reach. In fact, many people used to consider editing any type of HD, including Varicam footage, to be something out of reach for the average PC editing machine. Now it's a walk in the park.

Artistic skills aside, I say that an average high-end video editing PC in someone's house will be able to edit 4K Red footage without trouble by next summer. The Cineform guys were doing this with 4K footage a year ago on PCs that today are already far outdated.

[Rocket]

I'm talking about basic editing and CCing. I'm not trying to diss post-production houses; I'm just saying that sitting down at a high-end machine and editing Red 4K is not out of reach. In fact, many people used to consider editing any type of HD, including Varicam footage, to be something out of reach for the average PC editing machine. Now it's a walk in the park.

Artistic skills aside, I say that an average high-end video editing PC in someone's house will be able to edit 4K Red footage without trouble by next summer. The Cineform guys were doing this with 4K footage a year ago on PCs that today are already far outdated.

Editing 4K compressed footage, like Redcode, Cineform or the like, natively on the timeline, stored in it's compressed format locally on the workstation, ok, I can see that because 27MB/sec is far more manageable than 1300MB/sec.

However, I can't see any reason to edit something at that resolution for the "average person" unless it's destined for theatrical distribution, either to be projected digitally at 4K or printed back out to film. Even if this was the case, you would want to finish uncompressed media, not Redcode or Cineform, so at best your home edit would end up nothing but a EDL to be finished at a facility for delivery to your distributor, and if all you need is a EDL, we come full circle around to not needing it at 4K. You could edit DV proxies at home, or even HD proxies.

Until we have 4K home theatre systems, or 4K TV's, I don't see why the "average person" would need to finish at 4K themselves. 4K, and even 2K are not mainstream consumer formats, and I doubt they ever will be.

It's going to remain a format for theatrical projection, and most "average people" will never see their film distributed worldwide by a major theatrical distributor.

For the majority of "indie" producers shooting Red, I'd advise to shoot 4K, archive 4K, edit and finish in HD or 2K at the most, and if your film gets picked up, you've got the 4K material for a professional finish.

[Tom Lowe]

The difference in datarates between 2K and 4K Red is negligible. I edit uncompressed SD footage on my machine with datarates far exceeding that of REDCODE 4K. So why not keep the footage at 4K and output to 2K or 1080 as needed for film festivals, Bluray discs, etc? Then you have your finished copy, in full 4K res, on the off chance that your picture gets picked up for 4K projection or a film out. At that point, we can worry about taking it to a post house.

To me 4K Red footage will be treated just the same way I treated HVX200 MFX footage. Yes, the image is larger and the data rates have increased, but so has the processing power of PCs of Macs, big time.

[Tom Lowe]

This is also kind of surreal because I remember having this EXACT same conversation with some people on DVXUser when a few of us, early on, were talking about how we were planning to edit HVX 720p footage on high-end PCs. Many people spoke up to say how we were being unrealistic, etc.

[Rocket]

Well, I guess in the end, that is the nature of technology. It keeps outrunning people's ability to accept the change.

[M Most]

The difference in datarates between 2K and 4K Red is negligible. I edit uncompressed SD footage on my machine with datarates far exceeding that of REDCODE 4K. So why not keep the footage at 4K and output to 2K or 1080 as needed for film festivals, Bluray discs, etc? Then you have your finished copy, in full 4K res, on the off chance that your picture gets picked up for 4K projection or a film out. At that point, we can worry about taking it to a post house.

To me 4K Red footage will be treated just the same way I treated HVX200 MFX footage. Yes, the image is larger and the data rates have increased, but so has the processing power of PCs of Macs, big time.

There is little comparison between SD uncompressed footage and what you would be doing with Red. The overhead involved in real time decompression/demosaic/scaling is far heavier than what is involved in playing back material that doesn't even need decompression, as is the case with SD uncompressed material, even if the data rate of the file itself is smaller. The primary load in the first case is on your storage, whereas the primary load in the case of Red's material is on the CPU and GPU.

Either way, it doesn't really matter. What is clear is that you haven't done what you're claiming is simple. The issues of technical requirements for straight playback on a computer are not the primary ones. I stand by everything I said previously.

[Tom Lowe]

I hadn't done real-time editing on my HVX either, before I got the camera. You should read Cineform's blogs about real-time 4K editing and CCing.