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Update: Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

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Film Critic Roger Ebert wrote an impressive article about 3D technology in movies. It appears in Newsweek, an American magazine that is considered sometimes serious. 

In it, he leads with his top negative criteria, tells us that he is committing heresy by saying these things, then repeats these criteria with an additional sentence or two. These are some of the arguments that counter his logic.

1. IT’S THE WASTE OF A DIMENSION.
Perspective is one of more than a dozen clues that we use to discern whether an object is closer or farther from the viewing position. One imagines that when Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and de Vinci brought back and experimented with perspective, a lost technique since the fall of the Roman Empire, that the same arguments were made.

But this point is not valid any more than saying that it was a costly mistake bringing color into the film world, or pictures to stories that were previously done well over radio waves. The real point is that when a director is able to get an audience immersed in the story, the technology doesn’t matter. 

This is not the forum for describing exactly how there is no such thing as color, that it is all a trick done in the mind. But the same roles apply here. The mind can put the texture of a dress into a radio story, or the color of Bergman’s eyes into the last scene of Casablanca, and the depth required to allow an actor to roll down a hill, when logic says that a screen is flat, and gravity should make them fall, like down a cliff.

His point about Lawrence of Arabia is an interesting choice. Early in the transition to digital, that exact example was used to point out the difference between film and digital; that from a film our eyes would see a blurred object and skip through some logic to determine that it is a man on a horse descending from a dune. In digital, depending on the resolution, this would start as a square pixel (picture element), then keep adding pixels until there were enough information to allow it to take some form in the mind. This included an argument that said that the film Titanic could not be digitized for wide-screen digital presentation without smearing all the digital elements in the background, elements which were done with a technology that was just over the limit for what it was needed for (film release), but would be under the limit for the resolutions and technologies of digital release 5 years later.

2. IT ADDS NOTHING TO THE EXPERIENCE.
Again, he is right, but again, wrong. But I am prejudiced, as I have seen the final scene of Casablanca that was painstakingly converted to 3D. After that, I was converted from being anti-3D… knowing that if it was always done this well, if it always looked this natural, then this was the way it should be done.

He is asking the wrong question. Not what would it gain, but what is the more natural way to immerse an audience? The answer is that we see with 2 eyes, that we see with convergence of two pictures delivered to the brain that are slightly different, and the mind is relied upon to work out the differences.

Yes, the mind can discern depth by interpreting shades of colors and from shadows that move across objects, and by interpreting which pieces are blocking which other pieces in the frame. We can tell by the subtle differences in the fringing that occurs at the edges of objects (again, going back to the subtle clues that mark di Vinci’s work.)

All in all though, adding a second picture that is slightly different which gives us the natural clue that convergence brings…by its nature and by our nature…adds something to the experience.

3. IT CAN BE A DISTRACTION.
Now he is starting to have a reasonable argument. He should have led with this.

The current evolution of 3D is a technology searching for ways to do the right thing in an economical way. Since animated movies are no longer painted cell by cell, frame by frame, but rather created in computers using 3D technology anyway, this was the most natural starting place for movies to present 3D. Simultaneously, CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) was on a parallel track, getting quite sophisticated. It was the next logical step. A few tools were headed there.

But the challenges of getting the subtlety required, a subtlety not required by animation, meant that Cameron was developing technology on-the-fly, going through at least 3 generations of camera equipment, and pushing every other production and post-production envelop along the way. An evolution without Cameron’s work would have taken another 5 or 10 years.

It would be great to develop a master class that would discuss all the different technologies available to create 3D movies, centered on the many methods that Cameron used in Avatar. But this isn’t the place. Suffice to say that it takes time and money to do it well. And the recent Alice In Wonderland is a great launch to a short explanation of what Ebert’s real point 3 should be.

In making movies, the long standing complaint was that audio was always given the short shrift, forced to do months of work in a week or two, and at the last second, with the director and the executives from the lot all breathing flame down the backs of the mixers and crew.

According to one 3D house, this time it was their work that got the squeeze, and the product was less for the experience. It was known that Alice would have to go to a shop that takes each frame, makes a series of discrete elements from it, and expands upon the 3D clues already there by giving the slightly different view required to place all the objects in space. It is a people intensive, time intensive process. If you have less time, you need more people, but those people need training and experience, and a place to sit with computers and support personnel.

The story goes that Alice was tossed to the crew later than was promised, too late to do the 3D work that they promised, and too late to get the people and equipment to do it right. So, part of the work had to be farmed out to another facility who was given the task of ‘do the best you can’ for a large part of the movie, while the first group did the detailed work on the elements that were determined to be most critical.  

It is obvious while watching the movie. Some parts are very well done, and other parts are like Ebert says; people and objects moving between segmented planes of other objects. Interestingly, the effect is somewhat like Burton’s 3D Christmas Story from a few years before…some might guess that he didn’t object to the intra-scene effects.

There is a 2nd argument that Ebert wraps into this, partly correct and partly not. Using different focus on different planes is indeed a clever directorial tool. It is no less with digital as with film, though digital cameras are more touchy in this regard. So, to begin, this isn’t entirely a 3D issue. 3D equipment is no less capable of shifting this focus. In fact, in some ways it is more capable, allowing the director to shift the convergence and focal and ‘in focus/out of focus’ point in post-production. So, whether that deprives a director of a tool to guide our focus is debatable at best and hyperbole at worst.

4. IT CAN CREATE NAUSEA AND HEADACHES.
Again, I shouldn’t tell a professional like Mr. Ebert how to write, but a paragraph is meant to contain one focus. In this arguments paragraph he starts with 3D TV, and the Consumer Electronics Show. Then it switches to an odd, generalized and possibly incompletely or erroneously stated argument by a scientist, then washes the blood across the screen with a Consumer Report statement about eyestrain that blasts against 3D movies.

The conversation should stay on 3D movies. 3D TV is a different animal, moving on a different evolutionary path. That they may share media in the future shouldn’t make it allowable to get their medium technology confused. Suffice to say that 3D TV is somewhat harder and somewhat easier to do technically, and that there are a lot of considerations that need to be worked out.

What both do share is a lack of million person studies to tell the if and what and why of headaches and eyestrain. Any number that any person uses in this regard, for big screen movies or television, is pulled out of their hat…and if they aren’t wearing a hat…

There are a lot of numbers thrown around in the popular press, and one sometimes suspects data creep. Some data points out that there are some people who just don’t see the 3D effect at all. There are guesses that this is about 8%, and possibly 12-15%. Since one of the technologies works using a sophisticated color filter, this number could raise or lower with the number of people who have color problems in general.

Who gets headaches though, and why? Well, first, not enough people got headaches to make them leave Avatar in droves. And second, if there were studies that Dr. Micheal Rosenberg could have pointed to, I’m certain that Mr. Ebert would have used the enabling technology of hyperlinking to point us to them. For the most part, they don’t exist. There are a few done a colleges (with college age eyeballs) which point to areas that require further study. But there are none which have taken the general population and figured this out.

One area that is known to be a weak point is that the distance between our eyes is different, but this ‘inter-ocular’ distance is chosen for us at the movies. Children obviously have a different space between their eyes than adults do, but everyone gets the same glasses.

At the recent industry event, ShoWest in mid-March, several companies showed glasses which were more comfortable, and better suited for different faces. But 1=1. You can’t change one part of the 3D equation without effecting other parts. What happens if you change the glasses for a child? Frankly, that study hasn’t been done. Does it hurt them, like the story of Carl Reiner’s Opti-Grab invention in The Jerk? Probably not, since the gaming industry has a lot of kids of a lot of ages already wearing 3D glasses. It will change the perceived depth (as compared to someone else with different eye spacing), but it doesn’t seem to induce cross-eyed or wall-eyed individuals who can’t find the popcorn box.

But as we will see with Ebert’s other arguments and our discussion, 3D is part of a system that has evolved to the point of ‘kinda works’, introduced as digital projection was being adapted…and that technology has only recently left the sphere of ‘just kinda works’ itself.

5. HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT 3-D SEEMS A LITTLE DIM?
Phew. There’s a whole bunch of ‘inside baseball’ in this paragraph, much of it that doesn’t belong to this discussion. But since it was thrown in, it shows the confusion that a neophyte like Mr. Ebert has to go through – How can any of us mere mortals get along? (Actually, I can’t believe that he doesn’t know what a foot-lambert (ftL) is. In his decades as a professional in front of a screen reflecting light, he must have run across the common term that the professional standard is measured in.)

Notwithstanding, he and Lenny Lipton are partially right, and he has partially explained the reason. He hasn’t mentioned that new technologies were developed after Mr. Lipton left one of the major equipment developers, which has doubled the light to the screen, or that recently released projectors are able to give more light for the same electrical consuption. Nor does he mention that even though a little dim, the technique works.

On the other hand, this argument shouldn’t be slighted since it is the most valid argument. It is the reason that the majority of 3D screenings are done in mid-sized auditoriums. A larger auditorium would need two projectors beaming to fill the screen. If the technologists involved with the technology had their way, this would be the first area to change. The other desire to change the frame rate, which is made later in the article, would also be on the list, but not unanimous and certainly further down.

It also reminds one of the Yogi Berra quote; In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. The standard for light level to the theatrical screen is recommended by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers at 16 ftL, but there are caveats. First, it is set with no film in the projector. So actually, the standard is about 14 ft-L with clear film. Digital Cinema projectors project white, they don’t use ‘no film’ or clear film.

In a seminal book titled Understanding Digital Cinema by the late Charles S. Swartz, he points out that further study is required to determine if “whether increasing the Digital Cinema setting to 14 ftL improves the visual match to projected film.” They were using 12 ftL at the time.

In fact, the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative, a study group funded by the 6 major studios) made their recommendation at a nominal 14ftL, ± 3.0 ftL, at the center. (Like other standards, it allows for a uniformity reading of 70% of center at the corners and sides.) The point being, don’t scare me with the difference of big numbers when the reality is less.

In fact, the DCI Stereoscopic Addendum recommendation doesn’t give a luminance value, no doubt presuming it would change. What this recommendation does allow is where our experts Lipton and Ebert fall down, since it does show that there is a significant allowance for color degradation from the 2D standard. That may have been too much for Mr. Ebert to explain in a pop magazine, but it should have been worth the try instead of acting the Luddite.

Going back to the luminance level of 3D–Complain at your cinema. 3D can and should be displayed brighter. If there are no complaints, the standard will remain stuck at this least of possible worlds level.

Instead of changing the brightness as the technology advances (which it has), cinemas will move the movies into a larger room and keep the the same low brightness. This will give more people an social opportunity to sit with a larger crowd (I’m certain that is what the cinema owners are interested in), but it will not be all that 3D can and should be. (Presuming, of course, that you will agree with the author’s opinion that bringing the light level above a higher threshold does change the experience greatly. Again…no studies.)

Thus, Mr. Ebert blows his one good argument and his one great Howard Beale opportunity.

6. THERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE IN SELLING NEW DIGITAL PROJECTORS.

[1] These projectors are not selling themselves. [2] There was initial opposition from exhibitors to the huge cost of new equipment and infighting about whether studios would help share these expenses. [3] Some studios, concerned with tarnishing the 3-D myth, have told exhibitors that if they don’t show a movie in 3-D, they can’t have it in 2-D. [4] Although there’s room in most projection booths for both kinds of projectors, theaters are encouraged to remove analog projectors as soon as they can. [5] Why so much haste to get rid of them? [6] Are exhibitors being encouraged to burn their bridges by insecure digital manufacturers?

Teaching the movie-going audience about the nuance that they should be aware of when watching a movie is Mr. Evert’s one purpose, and he is listened to because he usually does it so well.

In this case, he fails, as there is not one completely true statement in that paragraph. The numbers in Ebert’s arguments above are the authors, to help analyze the statement.

[1] For some early adopters, digital projectors did indeed sell themselves…by the thousands. Digital Cinema brought crowds of people to those theaters who had the intelligence and capacity of teaching their audience, sometimes on a 5:1 ratio of their normal city-wide competition numbers.

[2] “There was initial opposition from exhibitors to the huge cost of new equipment…” Partially true, but so grossly understating the case and making it past tense when it is ongoing at many levels including exhibitors, but also at government levels, that it is a false statement.

In a nutshell, the quick argument is that digital equipment costs 3X what film equipment costs and needs replacing a lot quicker. Studios get the savings, since the cost of prints and distribution is in the billions per year. To offset this, the studios have offered some cinemas a method of reimbursing the cost of some digital equipment, a method known as the Virtual Print Fee (VPF). A VPF is not paid for 3D equipment. A VPF is not paid to cinema facilities who do not get 1st run prints, since the studios don’t normally have a cost associated with them playing a movie…therefore no cost to reimburse. They don’t pay a VPF for equipment that is playing entertainment not of their making. That is, if a facility were only to play live-opera, or sports, or movies from 3rd world communities (made much easier with digital distribution techniques), then a VPF isn’t warranted. In fact, there is no grand “Studios” in this regard. Each studio negotiates contracts individually. So, not only doesn’t Warners not want to pay for movies made by Pathé, they don’t want to pay for movies made by Fox.

[3] It is hard to parse this sentence since it presumes facts and slurs not in evidence. It should also be noted that any negotiation between studio and exhibitor would make the water wars of Chinatown seem like childs play. Anything can be said, everything is on the table. The presumption is that an auditorium must guarantee to play several weeks of Jaws Sequel 14 in order to get the next release of Harry Potter. The statement that there is a 3D myth is presumably built on the idea that there is little ongoing evidence that 3D pulls in more people who will spend more money. Since these deals are made months in advance anyway, and since the increase from single to double digit releases of 3D only happened this year, this is a red herring argument at best.

[4] Let’s face it. If you have to build a new cinema, or if you have to replace old equipment, are you really going to fight against the digital trend? Reality: The largest film projector manufacturer has left the field. Maybe they are involved in the conspiracy since they are also the largest manufacturer of digital projectors, but let’s face reality. Film is a dying technology.

Film, a very sophisticated piece of plastic, uses chemicals that are getting more expensive. (Shall we write about the alleged run on silver by JPMorgan, who is also funding thousands of digital cinema installations? Conspiracy again!) It is difficult and expensive to handle, and even in the best of hand it degrades with each showing. 10 years ago, perhaps even 5 years ago, one would put the film projector in the center port window and relegate the digital to the side. That just isn’t today’s reality.

[5] That environmental nightmare of chemicals and shipping tons of film around the world in secure airplanes and trucks instead of hard disks and eventually satellite and fibre is only part of the haste to get rid of film equipment. The ability of story tellers to make a movie or documentary for less, and distribute to thousands of places for less than it cost to make 5 prints is only one opportunity, plus the ability for communities to see live broadcasts of well done opera and sports that digital equipment gives them.

The cost of film has gotten too expensive as digital cameras have gotten better at taking their place. One can mourn its loss, since there is a hundred years of tricks and gimmicks and a hundred years of our eye/brain/mind learning to convert its images to a reality. But the transition will bring more benefits than it takes away.

[6] “…burn their bridges by insecure digital manufacturers.” One would have presumed that Mr. Ebert is established enough that he doesn’t have to get paid by the word. But I can think of no other reason for this strawman of an argument. IS he implying that there is collusion between the manufacturers and the studios so grand that the colossus of the exhibitors must not only comply but also stay silent? Bigger players have come onto the field and left it than the players who remain. Boeing and Qualcomm appeared and disappeared, leaving a lot of upstarts to take their place. Technicolor remains as a “print” maker and distributor (among other talents), but their film areas are left in havoc. Texas Instruments has spent millions getting the technology up to the evolved standard, but they weren’t known for their clout in the industry. (Conspiracy players – check to see how many TI printers were on the studio lots and if they have a chip set to fail if the studios didn’t back DCinema.)

But, really, Ebert’s arguments are about the digital transition, not about 3D. That studios decided to make more of their movie slate into 3D, before they found that movie patrons would pay more for the 3D privilege, is argument enough, but that gets to the next argument.]

7. THEATERS SLAP ON A SURCHARGE OF $5 TO $7.50 FOR 3-D.
Ah, now the rub. Money for nothing, Kicks for free.

It is hard to speak about Titans without saying that they experimented with a technology, a different technology from Alice, yet from a post production house that derived elements for Avatar…experimented and seemingly failed.

But that doesn’t prove that the studios only did it for the extra $5.

The surcharges for digital and then 3D started slowly. First it was 1 euro or dollar to compensate for the extra stewards and stewardesses who were needed to hand out and retrieve the 3D glasses. Then when cinemas started with the technology that required sterilizing glasses between use, they felt justified adding a little more, especially since no one seemed to complain.

What Mr. Ebert doesn’t say is that the add-on equipment for the 3D capability costs another 20-30 thousand dollars…in some cases more. In addition to the equipment from Dolby, MasterImage, RealD or XpanD, two of those systems require replacing the screen with what is called a ‘silver screen’ to hold the circular polarization that the systems use. Those two systems use cheaper ‘throw-away’ glasses, but the first and last of those systems use expensive, but reusable, glasses that cost 10s of euros (or dollars.)

Are they making more money than they invested? Do the studios take half the money that the exhibitor charges? Unless Mr. Ebert is changing his arguments to a rant on capitalism or the manner that studio/exhibitor deals are made, this argument is using too wide a brush to make a point.

[I hope that you have gone to page two of the NewsWeek article by now.  Arguments 8 and 9 are multi-paragraph, though otherwise not unlike the other comments.

8. I CANNOT IMAGINE A SERIOUS DRAMA, SUCH AS UP IN THE AIR OR THE HURT LOCKER, IN 3-D.
What a critic can’t imagine is not the point. It is what a storyteller who uses a technology can imagine that is important.

There is also another concern. There are some odds that this 3D trend is not a gimmick and that it will continue to evolve to the point that it becomes the norm. If that is the case, no storyteller will want his/her product to be “dated”. No story teller is going to make anything in 4:3 TV size for the same reasons.  

“He is a master of cinematography and editing. Other directors are forced to use 3-D by marketing executives. The elephant in that room is the desire to add a surcharge.” “A scam to justify the surcharge.”

These arguments aren’t borne out by fact. Not only are surcharges are more recent than the decision to increase the number of 3D movies, but no one can tell directors of the caliber of Tim Burton or Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg or Werner Herzog what to do. Creative people like to experiment, some more than others. Do all experiments succeed? Do all movies make back their costs? When they don’t, was it because the studios forced things on the directors? Well, sometimes. But that is not the point that Mr. Ebert is making.

9. WHENEVER HOLLYWOOD HAS FELT THREATENED, IT HAS TURNED TO TECHNOLOGY: SOUND, COLOR, WIDESCREEN, CINERAMA, 3-D, STEREOPHONIC SOUND, AND NOW 3-D AGAIN.
That is big and deep and partly true, and partly revisionist history. It often should be seen the other way. Technologists get ideas, studios take them up, they make money, people think, “Gee, I’ll go to movies again.” But the reality is that these technology advances come without some group of studio heads coming down from Olympus to the rat-infested confines of technologists, with a declaration that their family dog will be shot if they don’t save Hollywood with a 9ml technology fix.

Further, studies have shown that nothing, none of the technologies Ebert mentioned above have done anything to affect the long-term curve of “Butts in Seats”, and further, he is missing the only technology shift that has affected that curve: stadium seating.

This is not to say that his point is wrong about cinema being under siege to Blu-ray and HD cable and home cinema projectors (not to mention flat-screens), and the closing window between wide-screen and DVD releases, and a horrible economy. Studios and exhibitors needed a killer-app, and 3D is a welcome just in time.

But it should be noted that the trend lines for income and butts-in-seat have been up for a couple years running (though I would love to have seen what the numbers would have been if Avatar had been an average blockbuster.)

Ebert closes with two paragraphs that bring him back to reality. The first deals with a technology shift to more frames per second. He thinks that he should be done with a film-based system named MaxiVision48. He points out that Douglas Trumbull had developed and promoted a higher frame rate system (Showscan), and fails to mention that Cameron has mentioned in interviews that a higher frame rate would be the proper direction for digital.

He also doesn’t note that the latest standards and capabilities for digital presentation allow for lower and higher frame rates, and many in between.

“These systems are so good that the screen functions like a window into three dimensions. If moviegoers could see it, they would simply forget about 3-D.”

Maybe Roger is capable of having his Howard Beale moment. Combined with the next paragraph, an ode to the good times past, and a screed against that “younger Hollywood is losing the instinctive feeling for story and quality that generations of executives possessed. It’s all about the marketing.”

Move to Europe Roger. Watch French (and Spanish and Hungarian and Italian) movies. Quit being so insular, damning the world after only inspecting the games and comic book sections of the store.

If digital cinema continues to follow the classic trends of new technology as it has, it won’t reach 50% saturation for another 18 months, at best. The last 50% are not necessarily fall over like dominoes. They would be a great market for EbertFilms. I would invest, though that wouldn’t finance more than a few connectors. But he has more than a few years to prove that well made films with a great story, done on a film based system, can take over the market. I’d love to see it.

But it is not going to happen.

This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Exhibitor News

NCM Adds Metropolitan Theatres

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<excise quotes from the lawyer-approved hive marketing spokes…uhm, people.>

Metropolitan represents the most recent assimilation of the NCM Cinema Network – the largest digital in-theater video and satellite distribution network in North America. NCM currently has exclusive, long-term cinema advertising agreements in place with its founding member exhibitors, AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark Holdings Inc. and Regal Entertainment Group , as well as network affiliate pacts with theater circuits such as Carolina Cinemas, Cobb Theatres, Galaxy Theatres, LLC, Georgia Theatre Company, Goodrich Quality Theaters, Hollywood Theaters, Kerasotes ShowPlace Theatres, MJR Theatres, Picture Show Theatres, Rave Cinemas, LLC, ShowBiz Cinemas, LLC, Starplex Cinemas, and Storyteller Theatres Corporation, among others.

Resistance is Futile

Tangential Art and Science

On iPhone, beware of that AT&T Wi-Fi hot spot

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Typically, an iPhone will look for a specific MAC address–the unique identifier for the router–to verify that the wireless network is a device a user agreed to join previously. However, if the iPhone has previously connected to any one of the numerous free AT&T Wi-Fi hot spots (offered at virtually every Starbucks in the U.S., for example) the device will ignore what the MAC address says and simply connect to the network if it has “AT&T Wifi” attached, Kamkar said.

“The iPhone joins the network by name with no other form of authentication,” he said.

Read the entire article on CNET Reports:

On iPhone, beware of that AT&T Wi-Fi hot spot
April 27, 2010 1:33 PM PDT   —    by Elinor Mills

Kamkar said he made this discovery recently when he was at a Starbucks and disconnected from the AT&T Wi-Fi network.

“I went into the settings to disconnect and the prompt was different from normal,” he said. “I went home and had my computer pretend to be an AT&T hot spot just by the name and my iPhone continued to connect to it. I saw one or two other iPhones hop onto the network, too, going through my laptop computer. I could redirect them, steal credentials as they go to Web sites,” among other stealth moves, if he had wanted to.

To prove that a hijack is possible, Kamkar wrote a program that displays messages and can make other modifications when someone is attempting to use the Google Maps program on an iPhone that has been intercepted. He will be releasing his hijacking program via his Twitter account:  http://twitter.com/samykamkar.

Kamkar hasn’t attempted the hijack on an iPod Touch, but plans to determine whether it has the same vulnerability.

iPhone users can protect themselves by disabling their Wi-Fi, or they can turn off the automatic joining of the AT&T Wi-Fi network, but only if the device is within range of an existing AT&T hot spot, Kamkar said.

Asked for comment an Apple spokeswoman said: “iPhone performs properly as a Wi-Fi device to automatically join known networks. Customers can also choose to select to ‘Forget This Network’ after using a hot spot so the iPhone doesn’t join another network of the same name automatically.”

Kamkar, an independent researcher based in Los Angeles, first made a name for himself by launching what was called the “Samy” worm on MySpace in order to see how quickly he could get friends on the social-networking site. The cross-site scripting (XSS) worm displayed the words “Samy is my hero” on a victim’s profile and when others viewed the page they were infected.

He served three years of probation under a plea agreement reached in early 2007 for releasing the worm.

 

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.

Consultants

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part Zero

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What they came up with is called the tri-stimulus system since the primary idea is that there are nerve endings in the eye which act as receptors, some of which primarily deal with green light, some with red and some with blue. These color receptors are called the cones (which don’t work at all in low light), while the receptors that can deal with low levels of light are called the rods.

Now, for the first of our amazing set of numbers, there are as many as 125 million receptors in the eye, of which only 6 or 7 million deal with color. When (predominantly) only one type of these receptors gets triggered, it will send a signal to the brain and the brain will designate the appropriate color. If two or more of these receptors are triggered, then the brain will do the work of combining them much the same way that a painter mixes water colors. (We’ll pretend it is that simple.)

OK; so how do you create a representation of all that color and detail on the TV or movie screen?

Let’s start with film. We think of it as one piece of plastic, but in reality it is several layers that each have a different dye of different sensitivity on it. Each dye reacts in a different and predictable manner when exposed to light through the camera lens. In the lab, each layer goes through a different chemical process to ‘develop’ a representation of what it captured when exposed by the camera system. There are a lot of steps in between, but eventually the film is exposed to light again, this time pushing light in the opposite manner, through the film and then through the lens. That light gets colored by the film and shows up on the screen.

One of the qualities of film is that the chemical and gel nature makes the range of colors in the image appear to be seamless. And not just ‘appears’ with the definition of “gives the impression of.” In fact, there is a great deal of resolution in modern film.

Then TV came along. We see a smooth piece of glass, but if we could touch the other side of a 1995 era TV set we would feel a dust that reacts to a strong beam of electricity. If we look real close we will see that there are actually different color dots, again green, red, and blue. Engineers figured out how to control that electric beam with magnets, which could trigger the different dots of color to make them light up separately or together to combine into a range of colors, and eventually combine those colors into pictures.
That was great, except people wanted better. Technology evolved to give them that. Instead of lighting up magic dust with a strong beam of electricity, a couple methods were discovered that allowed small colored capsules of gas to be lit up and even small pieces of colored plastic to light up. These segments and pieces were able to be packed tightly against each other so that they could make the pictures. Instead of only hundreds of lines being lit up by the electron gun in the old TV set, now over a thousand lines can be lit up, at higher speeds, using a lot less electricity.

Then a couple engineers figured out make and control a very tiny mirror to reflect light, then quickly move to not reflect light. That mirror is less than 25% of the size of a typical human hair.

Hundreds of these mirrors can be placed next to each other on a chip less than 2 centimeters square. Each mirror is able to precisely move on or off at a rate of 144 times a second, which is 6 times the speed that a motion picture film is exposed to light for a picture.

This chip is called a DLP, a Digital Light Projector, because a computer can tell each mirror when to turn one and off, so that when a strong light is reflected on an individual or set of mirrors, it will create part of a picture. If you put a computer in charge of 3 chips, one for green, one for red and one for blue, the reflected light can be focused through a lens and a very detailed picture will appear on the screen. There is a different but similar technology that Sony has refined for their professional cinema technology which uses crystals that change their state (status).

Now for the 2nd in our amazing set of numbers. There are 1,080 rows made up of 2,048 individual mirrors each for over 2 million 2 hundred thousand mirrors per chip. If you were to multiply that times 3 chips worth of mirrors, you get the same “about 6 or 7 million” mirrors as there are cones in each eye.

Without going into details (to keep this simple), we keep getting closer to being able to duplicate the range and intensity of colors that you see in the sky. This is one of the artists goals, in the same way as the engineers want to make a lighter, flatter, environmentally better television and movie playing system. It isn’t perfect, but picture quality has reached the point that incremental changes will be more subtle than substantive, or better only in larger rooms or specialist applications.

For example, a movie that uses the 2K standard will typically be in the 300 gigabyte size. A movie made in 4K, which technically has 4 times the resolution, will typically be less than 15% larger. This movie will be stored on a computer with many redundant drives, with redundant power supplies and graphics cards that are expressly made to be secure with special “digital cinema only” projectors.

Hopefully you have a feeling for the basic technology. It is not just being pushed onto people because it is the newest thing. The TV and movie businesses are going digital for a number of good reasons. To begin with, it wasn’t really possible to advance quality of the older technology without increasing the cost by a significant amount…and even then it would be incredibly cumbersome and remain an environmental nightmare. There are also advantages of flexibility that the new technology could do that the old couldn’t…or couldn’t at a reasonable price or at the quality of the new.

The technology of presenting a 3D image is one of those flexibility points. 3D was certainly one of the thrills of Avatar. The director worked for a decade learning how to handle the artistic and the technical sides of the art. He developed with closely aligned partners many different pieces of equipment and manners of using existing equipment to do things that haven’t been done before. And finally he spent hours on details that other budgets and people would only spend minutes. In the end James Cameron developed a technique and technology set that won’t be seen as normal for a long time from now…and an outstanding movie.

Could Avatar have been made on film? Well, almost no major motion picture has been made exclusively on film for a long time. They all use a technique named CGI (for the character generated imagery), which covers a grand set of techniques. But if you tried to generate the characters in Avatar exclusively on a computer with CGI, they never would have come out as detailed and inspiring as they did. Likewise, if he tried to create the characters with masks and other techniques with live action, you wouldn’t get the texture and feeling that the actors gave to their parts.

Could Avatar have been displayed with film, in 2D. Yes, it could have and it was.

3D is dealt with in more detail in Part II of this series, but here are some basics:

To begin, 3D is a misnomer. True 3 dimension presumes the ability to walk around a subject and see a full surround view, like the hologram of Princess Leah.

In real life a person who is partly hidden in one view, will be even more hidden or perhaps exposed from another view. On the screen of today’s 3D movie, when a character appears to  b partly hidden by a wall as seen by a person on the left side of the theater, they will also appear the same amount of hidden by someone on the right side of the theater.

In fact, what we see with out eyes and what we see in the new theaters is correctly termed “stereoscopic”. We are taught some of this in school, how to make two lines join somewhere out in space (parallax) and draw all the boxes on those lines to make them appear to recede in the distance…even though they are on one piece of paper. There are several more clues in addition to parallax that we use to discern whether something is closer or farther, and whether something is just a drawing on a sheet of paper or a full rounded person or sharp-edged box…even in a 2D picture.

And we have been doing this for years. We know that Bogie and Bergman are in front of the plane that apparently sits in the distance…our eyes/brain/mind makes up a story for us, 3 dimensions and probably more, even though it is a black and white set of pictures shown at 24 frames per second on a flat screen.

Digital 3D is an imperfect feature as of now. It has improved enough that companies are investing a lot of money to make and show the movies. The technology will be improved as the artists learn the technology and what the audiences appreciate.

Although we are in a phase that seems like “All 3D, All The Time”, 3D isn’t the most important part of the digital cinema transition. At first blush the most important consideration is the savings from all the parts of movie distribution, including lower print costs and transportation costs. But actually, because prints no longer cost over a thousand euros, and because it will be simple to distribute a digital file, lesser known artists will have the opportunity to get their work in front of more people, and more people will find it easier to enjoy entertainment from other cultures and other parts of the world.

This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Consultants

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 Part Two

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SMPTE refined the work that the studios sponsored and summed up in a series of compliance documents (See: DCI Movies) done in the spirit of, “This is the minimum that we require if you want to play our movies.” As the saying goes, “Standards are great! That’s way there are so many of them.” And as an executive stated, “We can compete at the box office, but if we cooperate on standards, it benefits everyone.”

In fact, the cinema standard that is known as 2K is beyond good enough, especially now that the artists in the post-production chain have become more familiar with how to handle the technology at different stages. Most people in the world don’t get to see a first run print anyway, and a digital print (which doesn’t degrade) compares more than favorably with any film print after a few days. Plastic which is constantly brought to its melting point becomes an electrostatic dust trap, stretch and gets scratched, and the dyes desaturate.

To this date, most digital projectors are based upon a Texas Instrument (TI) chip set. Sony’s projector is based upon a different technology, and has always been 4K (4 times the resolution of 2K), but not many movies have been shipped to that standard yet. The TI OEMs will be shipping 4K equipment by the end of the year (or early next year.) Except in the largest of cinemas, most people won’t be able to tell the difference between 2K and 4K, but the standard was built wide enough to accommodate both.

Confusing the consumer, 2K in pixels (2048 picture elements in each line) seems near enough to the 1920×1080 standard of TV know as 1080p. But there are other differences in the specification besides pixel count, such as the color sample rate, that are more important. In addition, many steps of the broadcast chain degrade the potential signal quality so that hi-def broadcast is subject to the whims of how many channels are being simultaneously broadcast, and what is happening on those channels. (For example, if a movie is playing at the same time as 15 cooking channels, it will have no problem dynamically grabbing the extra bandwidth needed to show an explosion happening with a lot of motion. But if several movies all dynamically require more bandwidth simultaneously, the transmission equipment is going to have to bend some of them in preference to others, or diminish them all.) Blu-ray will solve some of that, depending on how much other material is put on the disc with the movie. Consumers like the “other stuff” plus multiple audio versions. Studios figure that only a relative handful of aficionados optimize their delivery chain enough to be able to tell the difference. So they end up balancing away from finest possible quality for the home, while finest quality is maintained for the cinema by virtue of the standards.

With all the 3D movie releases announced, people question whether they should expect 3D in the home. It is quite possible. The restrictions or compromises are many though. First, special glasses are required, and there seems to be a reaction against the glasses. Many companies are attempting to develop technologies that allow screens to do all the work (no glasses), but when the largest company, which spent the most money over the last few years, pulls out of the market, it isn’t a good sign. (Philips pulls out of 3D research | Broadband TV News) The reality is that one person can see the 3D image if they keep their head locked in one position, and perhaps another person in another exact position, but it isn’t a marketable item.

Fortunately, there were three companies at ShoWest which offered much cooler glasses for watching 3D, including clip-ons. Since there are 3 different types of 3D technology in the theaters, it a complicated task for the consumer. At best, the cinema will hype that they have 3D, but they rarely give the detail of which type or equipment they are using.

There are several clues that humans use to establish depth data and locations of items from a natural scene. Technically, these items in the 3rd dimension are placed on what is called the `z axis’ (height and width being the x and y axes.); Matt Cowan details a few of these clues in this presentation, and there are others. Filmmakers have understood how to use these in 2D presentations for ages.

But the challenge for decades has been synchronizing the projection and display of two slightly different images, taken by cameras 6.4cm apart (the same as the `average’ eye distance), in a manner that shuts out the picture of the right eye from the left eye, and a moment later shuts out the picture of the left eye from the right eye fast enough that the eye gets info to the brain in such a way that the mind says, “Ah! Depth.” Digital projectors makes this attempt easier. It has evolved even in the last 2 years, and that evolution will continue.

There are four companies (Dolby, RealD, MasterImage and XpanD) who produce 3 different technologies for digital 3D systems for the cinema theater. Each coordinates with the projector in a slightly different manner. The projector assists by speeding up the number of frames presented to the eyes, 300% more in fact, with a technique called “triple flashing”.

For comparison, 2D film projector technology presents the image two times every 1/24th of a second. This means that the film is pulled in front of the lens every 24th of a second, allowed to settle, then a clever gate opens to project light through the film to the screen, which then closes and opens and closes again. Then the film is unlocked and pulled to the next frame. With digital 2D, motion pictures are handled the same, presenting the same picture to the screen twice per 24th of a second, then the next picture and so on. Triple flashing a 3D movie increases the rate from 48 exposures per second to 72 per second…for each eye! Every 1/24th of a second the left eye gets 3 exposures of its image, and the right eye gets 3 exposures of its slightly different image; L, R, L, R, L, R, then change the image.

Since it would be difficult to get everyone to blink one eye and then the other in the right sequence for an hour or two, the different 3D systems filter out the picture of one eye and then the other,. The Dolby systems does this (simply stated) by making one lens of the glasses an elaborate color filter for one eye, with the complimentary twin for the other eye. The projector has a spinning color wheel with matching color filters which, in effect, presents one image that one eye can’t see (but the other can), then presenting the opposite. RealD does this with a circular polarizing filter in front of the projector lens that switches clockwise then counter-clockwise, and glasses which have a pair of clockwise/counter-clockwise lenses. The XpanD system does this with an infra-red system that shutters the opposing lenses at the appropriate time. There is a 4th system named MasterImage which uses the same polarizing glasses as RealD, but with a spinning filter wheel instead of a very clever and elaborate (read, “expensive”) LCD technology.

Suffice to say that there are advantages and disadvantages to each system. Dolby’s glasses are made from a sphere of glass so that the eye’s cornea is always equidistant from the glass filter. They are also more expensive, though they have had two price drops as quantities have gotten up, from an original $50 a pair, to last year’s $25, and now $17 each. They need to be washed between uses for sanitary reasons, which provides jobs of course, but also adds to logistics and cost. XpanD glasses also need washing between use and have a battery that needs changing at some point. (Without going into the detail, the XpanD IR glasses are thus far the technology of choice for the home market, though no company should be counted out at this stage.)

RealD were the first to market and originally marketed with the studios, who provided single use glasses for each movie. Dolby sold against this by taking the ecology banner, announcing that they had developed their glasses with a coating that can be washed at least 500 times. RealD found that their glasses could be recycled to some minor extent and have now put green recycling boxes into the lobbies of the theater for patrons to drop them into for return to the factory, washing, QC and repackaging (of course, in more plastic.) There are no statistics as to how many get returned and how many get re-packaged.

A few cinemas are selling the glasses for a dollar or a euro, and seeing a lot of people take care of, and return with, their glasses. Eventually this model will be more wide-spread, with custom and prescription glasses, but the movie industry was concerned with putting up a barrier while 3D was in infancy, and glasses makers weren’t interested when the numbers were low.

Since the three systems are different, and there is no way to make a universal pair of glasses, patrons are going to have to know what type of system is used at their cinema of choice, or buy multiple pairs. In any case, the glasses are not going to be ultra-slim and sexy. In addition to being the filter for the projected light, they must also filter extraneous light. If they allow too much light from Exit signs or aisle lighting or your iPhone, the brain-trickery technology will not work. There are enough problems with 3D in general, and today’s version of it in particular, to allow any variables.

The most grievous is the amount of light getting filtered by all the lenses, coupled with the fact that half the light is being filtered from both eyes by making you blink 72 times per second. Less than 20% of the original light is seen in the eye by some systems. Up till now there hasn’t been a way to crank up the light level to compensate, and if projectionists tried, the cost in electricity goes up and life of the system would go down. This is one major reason that manufacturers of new projectors are hyping lower light levels.

The other technical compromise with the polarizing lens systems is that they require what is called a “silver” screen to help maintain the polarization (and secondarily, to help maintain light levels.) But there is no free lunch with physics. Silver screens can be optimized, but the worst of them will have ‘hot spots’ in the room that make the side seats or upper seats see a different (darker) image while some seats have brighter or hopefully some with even the ‘correct’ amount of light. The major screen manufacturers have done a lot of work to mitigate this effect, and will tell you this problem is now virtually solved, but there are a lot of older screens out there, and incorrectly installed screens and a lot of people who have walked around and still see the effect. Sit in the center of the cinema and you will have the best odds, somewhat toward the front (the projector is higher than you are, and presuming that the screen is flat, the theoretical correct angle to your eyes is down. On the other hand, audio mixers mix from about three quarters back. YMMV.

Part 3 and 4 deals with acquisition, with and without 3D, more considerations of digital and 3Ds evolution, how to make your own master, where in the world are these digital boxes? and whether there will be 50% saturation by the end of 2011.

Cross posted to: DCinemaTools

Tangential Art and Science

Wind’s Latest Problem: it … makes power too cheap

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But despite the generally negative tone of the article, it’s actually a useful one, because it brings out in the open a key bit of information: wind power actually brings electricity prices down!

 

windmills (…) operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years

The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers.

Spanish power prices fell an annual 26 percent in the first quarter because of the surge in supplies from wind and hydroelectric production

This tidbit of information, which will hopefully begin to contradict the usual lies about the need for hefty subsidies for the wind sector, has been publicised by EWEA, the European Wind Energy Association in a report on the merit order effect (PDF). This is the name for what happens when you inject a lot of capital-intensive, low-marginal-cost supply into a marginalist price-setting market mechanism with low short term demand elasticity – or, in simpler words: when you have more wind, there is less need to pay to burn more gas to provide the requisite additional power at a given moment.

I’ve long argued that this was one of the strongest arguments for wind (see my article on The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind from last year), and I’ve pushed the EWEA people to use it more – so this study (which I was not involved in) is most welcome.

The article (and several excellent comments) continue at:
Wind’s Latest Problem: it … makes power too cheap
In the Eurotrib 

Consultants

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 | Part One

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Two years ago, the evolution and rush to all things digital in the cinema world reached a classic chasm point, especially for digital cinema presentation to the theater screen. (See bottom question/answer.) It seemed that the technology was worked out, it seemed that the politics were worked out, it seemed that the financing models were worked out…and yet, the number of installations and new sales sat flat…or worse.

Huge companies like Texas Instruments (TI) and Sony had spent millions getting the technology ready for a secure and marketable implementation. Their OEM partners where ready to throw the handle to ‘Plaid’ to fill the needs of 125,000 screens in a world that needs to go from film-based to digital server based systems. The changeover requires a 60-80 thousand euro projector and 20,000 euro server to replace a 30,000€ film chain, a mature technology that typically lasted multiple decades with minor maintenance. But to the rescue, the studios offered plans that would pay back the initial investment by a mechanism known as a Virtual Print Fee (VPF). These were developed to compensate certain cinemas, over time, for playing inexpensive digital copies (distributed via hard disk and eventually satellite and fiber) instead of expensive film prints (distributed by trucks and airplanes.)

So, with all the ducks so apparently in a row, why weren’t the 7,000 ‘innovators’ and early adopters of 2007 joined by 10’s of thousands more screens by early 2010, when the number was merely double that (even after the initial 3D explosion)?

The reality was that the technical, political and financial realities weren’t really ready. Notwithstanding the world financial collapse that hindered access to the billions needed for the transition, there were nuances that made financing not so simple. In addition, the standards were still in transition, both on paper and in the labs and factories.

Financially, the major Hollywood studios are prepared to finance the transition up to the amount that they save in print costs and distribution. The nuance is that they only send out prints to the first-run cinemas, leaving the 2nd and 3rd level cinemas with no funding. (The background nuance is that once the digital transition is complete, the studios save billions per year forever, but are only helping to fund the initial roll-out. The exhibitors save a few low cost employees, and benefit from better quality and the ability to present features other than movies.)

World-wide, the Hollywood studios that developed the VPF mechanisms also didn’t find it fair that they should have to finance cinemas which made income from movies other than Hollywood movies. Nor did they want to overpay for equipment if a cinema made money from operas, concerts, sports or other alternative content that digital projection allows. This caused many national groups, in particular those in the UK, France, Italy and Germany to search for ways to fund the smallest to mid-sized facilities so that they would have digital equipment when enough critical mass was reached for film prints to become ancient history.

The UK funded several hundred screens with lottery money in one partially successful experiment, but it exposed a few holes in the plans. Simply stated, a movie’s life starts in one screen for a week or two, then moves to a smaller screen while the next movie in line attempts to take the larger audience in the larger room. But if there is only one set of digital gear, and that in the larger room, then the cinema still needs a film print to complete the movie’s run. One of the points of a Hollywood VPF is an agreement to get 50% of screens digital in one year and 100% in three years (with at least one capable of 3D.)

When the slow wheels of national finance plans got past the proposal stage, the largest cinemas in France and Germany complained that the ‘tax’ they paid per ticket was funding their competitors. Both plans were recently (in the last few months) thrown out as unfair by the country’s legal systems. (Norway figured it out on their own and are on their way to digitizing the entire country’s cinemas.

Meanwhile, the standards committees within the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) completed the last of the standards documents in 2009, submitting them to the ISO in the process. What should have been to no one’s surprise, some of the equipment, in particular the installed projectors that utilize the Texas Instruments chipset (the vast majority), didn’t meet those standards. In fact, the first projectors (dubbed ‘Series II’) to meet those standards were released in March 2010, at the industry’s ShoWest convention. Unlike the WiFi industry’s ability to ship equipment for over a year before the standards validated their presumed compliance, there are several pieces of older digital projection gear that will need expensive updating, with some equipment updatable and technically passing compliance requirements, but not able to include some important ‘modern’ features.

In addition to finally getting compliant projectors, those who waited for the new Series II equipment will also be getting equipment that is able to run with lower power consuming bulbs, and of course, give more light to the all important 3D image.

The invasion of 3D movies has been a boon to cinemas. The studios have all embraced it by announcing an ever increasing 3D release schedule, first with animated releases, but now (famously with the Avatar release) with CGI enhanced live action. The exhibitors not only are able to attract larger audiences with this nascent technology, but they are able to charge more per ticket in the process. This helped give the industry its first 10 billion dollar year in 2009, and keep actual ticket sales on an upward trend. In the alternative content area, live opera is still the most prevalent and successful, but live pop concerts have been successful, and more are slated. Sporting events have been experimented with, some in 3D, and will probably become more successful in the near future.

Coincidently, a few major installation groups have gotten financing in the last few months – It appears that the three largest US chains have the financing to cover 10 or 12 or 14,000 of their 17,000 screens. The disparity between PR and reality is not a trifle, but public information is hard to come by. The announcement that they were working with JPMorgan for money in 2007 mentioned numbers that were twice (Celluloid Junkie-More Rumblings About DCIP’s Financing) what they announced recently. And, the recent announcements don’t mention how they will finance 3D equipment, which costs up to $30,000 per screen…and is not covered by VPF agreements.

Notwithstanding those hidden nuances, it finally is movement across the chasm from innovators to more conservative early adopters. In addition, several integrators in Europe, India, China, Japan and Korea have recently announced hundred and multi-hundred piece installation deals in their areas. See: DCinemaToday for up to the minute market news for the exhibition side of digital cinema.

With the release of the Series II equipment, other features that were built into the standards are driving manufacturers to build matching equipment. Most welcome is equipment for the deaf/hard of hearing and visually impaired communities (HI/VI). There was a special exhibition at ShoWest of these company’s works-in-progress; devices that use special glasses that create closed captions which float the text over the screen (so that one doesn’t have to constantly look up and down to see both), and another system that will use WiFi to put captions on one’s iPhone (among other devices), as well as new ways to put dialog-enhanced audio into earphones.

The best news for the HI/VI field is that the SMPTE and ISO standards are are in place, have been recently ‘plug-fest’ tested for interoperability, and contrary to the previous film-centric systems, the new standards are based upon open, not proprietary (read: patented, licensable, expensive, frustrating) technology. (For a brief discussion on HI/VI captioning and the `enthusiasm’ of differing viewpoints, see: Smashing Down The Door – Digital Cinema and Captions For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing)

The arguments still persist around the excellent qualities of film, much like the arguments in the audio world about the qualities of tape recording and vinyl. While some of the arguments are interesting and some of those even true (the ability/inability to wash a screen with the indescribable transitions of Lawrence of Arabia‘s desert sunset comes to mind), the arguments against film are too many. Film is an ecological nightmare, the prints are expensive to ship around, re-gather and store, and whatever qualities that they exhibit at first runs are grossly diminished after a week of getting banged around within the film projection process. And unlike the audio business, where specialty houses can still afford to make tape for those who want to record on it, as fewer companies use film for shooting and exhibition, the cost of material and processing will become too expensive for the budgets of even the Spielberg’s of the art.

Fortunately, the evolution of quality in digital production and post-production equipment has substantially gone beyond the requirements of ‘film’ makers. As with all recent digital technology, quality points are also being hit at the low end, so that artists can make motion pictures which can fill the big screen for less money and take advantage of the substantial distribution benefits of the digital infrastructure. At the high end, artists can do more, perhaps more quickly and certainly with more flexibility and features. For the consumer, this means that quality is possible from a wider range of storytellers and the possibility to see material from other regions around the world becomes more easily accomplished.  

Part II of this series goes into more detail on specifications, some current realities of 3D technology, what “substantially gone beyond the requirements” really means, and a brief excursion on how it relates to the home market.

References:
DCinemaToday
MKPE’s Digital Cinema Technology FAQ

This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Courses

Digital Cinema Tango! at Cannes Festival

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Starting the dance this year is the Observatory’s cinema analyst Martin Kanzler who will look the overall 2009 box office trends. Stepping out nearby will be Elisabetta Brunella of Media Salles with an analysis of digital roll-out in Europe for 2009. They will be joined by Susan Newman, the Observatory’s film funding analyst who will present a guide to the public funding currently available for digital roll-out. Also tripping the light fantastic will be Francisco Cabrera, Legal Analyst at the Observatory, who will focus on the complex legal issues surrounding state aid for digitisation by looking at recent national decisions in the field.

A distinguished line-up of speakers, moderated by André Lange, Head of Department at the Observatory, will then take to the floor to look at the challenges and threats posed by digital roll-out to European films and their space on cinema screens in Europe. Confirmed speakers include Ian Christie, Vice President of Europa Cinemas and Christine Eloy of Europa Distribution, Aviva Silver, Head of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, and Antoine Virenque, President of the European Digital Cinema Forum.

The Observatory will have its stand, as ever, on the Cannes Film Market and will be presenting three new cinema-related information products. The access-free KORDA database on all sources of public funding for film and audiovisual works in Europe has been totally re-vamped and the new improved KORDA will be available for consultation on the Observatory’s stand (A6 Riviera) throughout the market. Susan Newman, will demonstrate the new database on Saturday 15 May. Francisco Cabrera will be present to talk about his new IRIS plus report on the legal aspects of digital cinema roll-out which will be available on the Observatory’s stand. A further issue of IRIS plus on product placement will also be published during the Cannes Film Market. As every year, the latest issue of the FOCUS – World Film Market Trends, published in collaboration with the Cannes Market, will be available as a give away on the stand.

As usual, the Observatory can be found on the Marché du Film on stand A6 Riviera (tel.: + 33 (0)4 92 99 33 17).

To register for the Observatory’s conference
fill in the WORD registration form you can download here and email it to: [email protected]

Participation is free to anyone with a Cannes Film Market or Festival accreditation.

Alternatively, you can fax it to us on: + 33 (0)390 21 60 19
Or send it to:
Cannes conference
European Audiovisual Observatory
76 Allée de la Robertsau
F-67000 STRASBOURG

For further information about this conference, contact
Alison Hindhaugh, [email protected]
Tel.: +33 (0) 3 90 21 60 10 – Fax : 33 (0) 3 90 21 60 19

Cannes contact telephone: +33 (0) 6 84 35 27 43

 

 

 

Integrator News

Twentieth Century Fox Selects Solar Power, Inc. for a 158 kW Solar System

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Full article at:

Twentieth Century Fox Selects Solar Power, Inc. for a 158 kW Solar System

Monday, Apr 19, 2010—ROSEVILLE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)

“We are very pleased to have been selected by Twentieth Century Fox to design and build a solar system to help them provide meaningful environmental benefits and begin to mitigate rising electricity costs,” said Brad Ferrell, President of Business Development for Solar Power, Inc. “Our SkyMount® system is a perfect fit for their needs.”

 

“This project is an important addition to Fox’s ongoing sustainability initiative and we are very happy to be getting it started,” said Hal Haenal, Senior Vice President of Fox Studios Operations. “This marks our first venture into on-site renewable energy and Solar Power, Inc. has helped to make the decision a very easy one for us.” The solar project is scheduled to be completed this summer.

Security Sites and Blogs

Happens to the best of them-Apache Passwords Exposed

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The full article is at IT Pro:
An attack on Apache’s project server has resulted in passwords being stolen from all users.
By Jennifer Scott, 14 Apr 2010 at 11:25 

And continues:
“If you are a user of the Apache hosted JIRA, Bugzilla, or Confluence, a hashed copy of your password has been compromised,” said a blog post from the Apache Infrastructure team.

It has warned users of any of these programs to change their passwords, especially if they logged in between 6-9 April.

It has also left those who had Atlassian accounts before July 2008 in danger as an old unencrypted database containing customer passwords was left online and could have been compromised.

“We made a big error,” admitted Mike Cannon-Brookes, chief executive of Atlassian, in a blog post. “For this we are, of course, extremely sorry.”

He added: “The legacy customer database, with passwords stored in plain text, was a liability. Even though it wasn’t active, it should have been deleted. There’s no logical explanation for why it wasn’t, other than as we moved off one project, and on to the next one, we dropped the ball and screwed up.”

Apache is running JIRA on a proxy configuration for the meantime and has made a number of changes to make the server safer.

“We hope our disclosure has been as open as possible and true to the ASF spirit,” concluded the Apache blog. “Hopefully others can learn from our mistakes.”

Cameras

Great Camera Shoot Out…Film Not Dead [Updated]

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Regarding the Great Camera Shoot-Out 2010, Philip Bloom says on his site (where there are also behind the scene photos: 

The webisodic series showcases the top performing hybrid HD-DSLR cameras: Canon: 5D MKII, 7D, 1D, 550D/T2i Rebel, Nikon D3s, Panasonic GH1 and compares the image quality of these cameras against the gold standard of 35mm film. In addition, the Canon 5D MKII test includes the new 24p firmware. 

The Vimeo site where the films prints files are also posted:

Each webisode of the series features various controlled camera assessment tests which include: resolution, latitude, sensitivity, speed & ultra high speed, noise, color & green screen. The battery of tests were administered under strict controls and conducted by Robert Primes ASC, Gary Adcock, Philip Bloom, Jens Bogehegn and colorist Ryan Emerson. See the reactions to this test following 2K screenings, where “HD DSLR is compared to 35mm Film”. The test results were projected in a 2K theatrical environment at three screening locations: Stag Theater at Skywalker Ranch, LucasFilms Ltd., AFI (American Film Institute) Theater in Hollywood and the FilmWorkers Astro Color Timing Theater in Chicago. Hear commentary from the screenings by top ASC, Hollywood, Indie Film and Event & Convergence Photographers.

There is nothing this author can say that the Zacuto website and comments don’t.

[Update: There are now 3 in the series. Look out for the tabs at the same Zacuto Shootout link.]

Tangential Art and Science

De-Flash the laptop | Coming HTML Tech

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Like many Mac users, I complain about the fan noise and heat and CPU usage of Flash when it seems to take over the computer. Coupled with Adobe’s constant problems with keeping the hackboi crowd away from their software, I always rejoice when I can take a step from using it.

Thus, happy to join the YouTube HTML5 Beta– a tasty little logo comes up to tell you that non-flash is going to play soon.

Adobe claims that they will prove Steve Jobs wrong when Flash version 10.1 is stable and released. With reports that the uninstaller doesn’t remove 10.1 betas, and that it crashes on certain sites, I’m not willing to play victim. Staying up to date isn’t as simple as finding an application and clicking Search for Updates, so we have placed a Flash Version Check in the column of important links on the front page. 

I have messed with ClickToFlash for Safari and Flashblock for Firefox, finding them slightly frustrating to have to load it when a site comes up with something I might want to see…but it is small pain…then I try the next version of Flash until is locks up Safari and spins Firefox into using all my RAM, and hard disk and asks for a USB stick to consume as well.

Your milage may vary, but this foray into the coming HTML5 standard does me fine.

More as it happens, 

C J Flynn

PS—The newest Open Standards coming online with HTML5 are CSS3 and SVG (for web based vector graphics). For an interesting table, see; When Can I Use?

Want to see what SVG can do? SVG Edit

For seeing what HTML5 and CSS3 will mean for the future: The HTML5/CSS3 Cheatsheet

 

In the News

More SSL Flaws Found by MS

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Users of Internet Information Services (IIS) < 6.0 in default mode are not affected by potential man-in-the-middle attack…kinda…must use workarounds…Microsoft advises not to use their workarounds though. In fairness to MS, this is old SSL exploit news that they are acknowledging affects all their current OSs. 

Read the ars technica report…and read a newspaper instead of using wifi at the coffeeshop, or at your clients…or on the trian.

Microsoft warns of TLS/SSL flaw in Windows

By Emil Protalinski | Last updated February 9, 2010 4:12 PM

Microsoft has issued Security Advisory (977377) to address a publicly disclosed vulnerability in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. The TLS and SSL protocols are implemented in several Microsoft products, both client and server. Currently Microsoft has concluded that it affects all supported versions of Windows: Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft says it will update the advisory as the investigation progresses.

Cameras

Matching Lenses and Sensors–Optics White Paper

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Remember: A lens is not guaranteed to perform in a 5-Mpixel camera simply because it is specified as a 5-Mpixel lens.

Edmund Optics and Schneider Optics explain aspects of matching one technology’s advances with another’s.

Pictures and arrows at the following link:

Matching Lenses and Sensors

With pixel sizes of CCD and CMOS image sensors becoming smaller, system integrators must pay careful attention to their choice of optics

Greg Hollows and Stuart Singer—Mar 1, 2009

Each year, sensor manufacturers fabricate sensors with smaller pixel sizes. About 15 years ago, it was common to find sensors with pixels as small as 13 µm. It is now common to find sensors with standard 5-µm pixel sizes. Recently, sensor manufacturers have produced pixel sizes of 1.4 µm without considering lens performance limits. It is also common to find sensors that contain 5 Mpixels and individual pixel sizes of 3.45 µm. In the next generation of image sensors, some manufacturers expect to produce devices with pixel sizes as small as 1.75 µm.


Articles and News

Universal Offers Open and Closed Captions to Wolfman

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Unlike some film-based systems, the closed caption DCP does not provide DTS time code. To take advantage of these new capabilities, the cinemas must have ordered “an open caption DCP and/or the closed caption DCP from Universal, when ordering their digital movie.

The Wolfman opened Friday, 12 Feb 2010.

Studios have indicated that they are interested in getting to the point of one digital master. The technology and the standards are maturing now to make that a possibility. Universal is certainly not the first distributor to make such prints available. But they have indicationed that they indend to provide such captions for all feature releases in the future.

The next step is adding descriptive narrative, which studios have said will be coming as the equipment becomes available.