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This article is kind of strange to me because it implies celluloid film is low quality, but it seems there’s a rough consensus that you can can scan that size

This article is kind of strange to me because it implies celluloid film is low quality, but it seems there’s a rough consensus that you can can scan that size of film in to create good 4K video, if not higher. That’s not enough for the Sphere’s full 16K resolution, but that’s more to do with it having extremely high resolution than the film being “tiny” or grainy.

chungy 1y ago
There is a 4K Blu-ray of the film, I have a copy, it looks wonderful :)
crazygringo 1y ago
Celluloid film from 1939 is good, but not that good. I mean it's perfectly watchable on a 1080p display, but in 4K it's nowhere near the kind of 4K quality you get with modern digital cameras with modern lenses. Sure you can watch it its 4K scan (heck, they scanned it in 8K), but most of those pixels above 1080p are just showing you film grain and blur. Which is nice in terms of looking like it would with a real projector! But it's not "4K quality" in terms of resolvable detail.
- actuallyalys 1y ago
  Thanks for the fact check. Saying you can get even better than 4K is definitely overstating it. It’s possible the sources I was looking at were thinking of later eras of film, which I’d assume would have higher quality (and the lenses certainly improved).
- mrandish 1y ago
  Anyone really interested in resolution, film scanning and digital cinema should see this in-depth comparison shot by an expert ASC cinematographer specifically to be a definitive set of proofs for the industry. He compares (and pixel-peeps) identical shots from a range of top digital cinema cameras (Arri Alexa, RED, etc) with a high-quality 6K film scan. https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html. I found the results pretty surprising. It really needs to be watched because opinions will vary based on aesthetic interpretation but in broad strokes, it's pretty clear that above well-shot, high-quality 2K (aka 1080P) other variables beyond resolution begin to matter more (color depth, film stock, shot style, etc.) This supports your contention to an extent but the test also shows that beyond well-shot, high-quality 2K, going to 4K doesn't matter very much either. To be clear, it can matter sometimes but other factors can easily be equally or more important than resolution once beyond 2K. From my own experience and experimentation, I already felt many in the industry over-weight the importance of 4k resolution vs 2k in overall image quality (assuming both are equally high-quality and well-photographed), but this convinced me 4K over 2K makes even less difference than I thought. And this was under controlled test conditions with pixel-peeping. In real-world theatrical or couch viewing distances of cinematic content, it's hard to think 4K matters much at all over good 2K. I already knew I will NEVER upgrade to 8K for theatrical or couch-distance viewing of cinematic content (and I have $50K of gear in a dedicated custom-built, soundproof, lightproof home theater room with high-end laser projector and 150-inch screen), but this shows even the idea of 8k is ridiculous overkill and a complete waste of money, bandwidth and tech for cinematic context viewing. (note before the inevitable objections: 8k can be useful for 2 ft distance desktop viewing of synthetic content and can be necessary for 2-inch distance head-mounted VR).
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Yup, I did my own comparisons a couple of years ago and agree greatly. Most of all, getting real 4K detail requires a level of precision in camera focus that frequently just isn't happening. Whether it's an anamorphic lens that is intentionally blurring everything except the center of the shot, or just a shallow depth of field that becomes even shallower in 4K. You can get some astonishing detail with fixed landscape establishing shots, but it really depends on the lens. The only place where you consistently get full 4K sharpness is in 3D animation. That being said, if you watch on a projector, 4K can be nice because you really can't see the square pixels anymore. You don't usually get more detail than with 1080p, but it does feel more like the detail limit is due to the limit of sharpness of the lens, rather than the pixel format. That being said, it barely matters. Spending money on brightness and contrast is 100x more important.
    - mrandish 1y ago
      > getting real 4K detail requires a level of precision in camera focus that frequently just isn't happening. 100% agree. Relevant examples: "The Batman" (2022) a gorgeous film which was shot with ARRI ALFA anamorphic lenses, intentionally modified and detuned to achieve a specific, "dirty" look and character. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) with Roger Deakins winning the Oscar for best cinematography even though he intentionally chose to shoot primarily on the Arri Alexa XT, a native 3.4K resolution camera. And the BR 2049 4K UHD is widely considered a reference grade disc and one of the best examples of what the 4K UHD format can achieve, despite technically being a 3.4K upscale. And a personal example, this year's Superbowl broadcast, which was produced and distributed in 1080P HDR10, looked shockingly good on my 150-inch calibrated screen, which was enabled by a combination of best-in-class cameras, lenses and production talent with a high bit-rate throughout the distribution chain. It turns out when your primary cameras have $85,000 Canon glass on the front, it makes a difference (especially when Canon has a team of techs on-site all week to custom tune the lenses). Canon also loaned them a couple prototype super long lenses able to instantly switch to a shallow depth of field mode with zero change in aperture or shutter. One of those created a shot that made me literally rewind my DVR and pause just to appreciate (and then go look up how they did it later) It was a beautiful close-up on one player's face full-screen with perfect soft bokeh from a camera at least 150 feet away. Incredible. > if you watch on a projector, 4K can be nice It's interesting because I upgraded from a very high-quality native 1080P DLP projector (with pseudo-4K pixel shift) to high-end native 4K laser only about 18 months ago (fairly late). I never saw pixels on the 1080P projector except when displaying test signals during calibration (and even then, barely). I'm glad I waited a few years for 4K laser to more fully mature because, while there was an uplift in overall image quality going to native 4K, it was almost disappointingly minor. Even having waited so long, I feel like a meaningful portion of the 4K upgrade cost was wasted. Frankly, I'd still be perfectly happy with the (very good) perfectly calibrated 1080P DLP projector that's now nearly 7 years old. If I was going to put more money into my AV system (and I'm not... because it wouldn't make anything look or sound any better), I'd invest in an even better projector lens. But that wouldn't matter unless Hollywood started releasing higher fidelity content. And even if they did, it wouldn't matter because there's no way to get a bunch of that higher fidelity content on my screen. Hollywood's not releasing anything beyond 4K HDR10+ UHD discs anytime soon (and maybe ever) and streamers don't want to distribute content at scale beyond 20-25 Mbps. OTA broadcast content could deliver slightly better fidelity (in theory) once (if) ATSC 3.0 ever rolls out widely but broadcasters have already made it clear they're going to divide any extra bandwidth the FCC gives them into more shopping channels at low bitrates. Frankly, I think we're pretty much at the end game for source quality in cinematic content for theater or couch-mode viewing. Now the only remaining battle is getting more people upgraded to gear, calibration, signal path and source content which can fully and correctly display what properly encoded high bit-rate 4K HDR10+ already provides (I include Dolbyvision in that because, in practice, it's pretty much the same quality as well-encoded HDR10+). I also agree with you that it's hard to even see a noticeable difference between good 2K and 4K except with synthetic content like CGI animation. I think people who report observing a significant difference are either having some placebo effect or something was wrong with their 2K setup, signal chain or content, so 4K looked better not due to the resolution increase but because it fixed whatever was wrong with their 2K setup. > Spending money on brightness and contrast is 100x more important. Indeed. And also HDR, higher quality source content (ie less compressed), getting rid of digital keystoning or any other subtle degradation in the signal chain and, of course, ambient light control. I always tell new projector owners to first leave their projector turned off, darken the room to viewing mode and then sit there in the dark staring at their blank white screen. Then I point out, "that white is the blackest black you'll ever see". And that will (sometimes) finally convince them to get serious about light control. :-) And then I walk by the row of 65 and 75 inch screens at Costco advertising "Amazing 8K Upgrade" to people who watch streaming movies from their couch 8-feet away from the screen and just shake my head. They're hawking grade-A homeopathic bullshit to nice people who don't know any better and should feel bad about themselves for lying to sell people something they don't need.
qingcharles 1y ago
I can answer this as I did some scanning work for Universal. It depends on a number of factors, including how the frame is rendered onto the celluloid (e.g. is it cropped). From my experience, 4K was the absolute edge you could pull from the best 35mm films. Most of the time it was really "3.5K" with a 4K sticker on it. I managed to pull 8K from some 70mm ride footage. I think it might have stretched to 10K if I'd had the equipment. Wizard of Oz is 3x35mm for the color scenes, though. So, in theory you could use some clever algorithm to almost certainly create 8K transfers from it by using the tiny differences between the three frames.
- actuallyalys 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing that! I’m sure there’s a lot of nuance. I was kinda shocked at the long list of motion picture film formats listed on Wikipedia when I was trying to figure out the equivalent resolution 35mm film has.
- mrandish 1y ago
  Thanks for weighing in with real-world experience doing film scans. > From my experience, 4K was the absolute edge you could pull from the best 35mm films... I managed to pull 8K from some 70mm ride footage. This matches the expert opinion I've heard elsewhere, as well as what was done when scanning Blade Runner (an historically important film now in the national archives). They scanned the 35mm camera negatives at 4K and the 65mm VFX camera negatives at 8k. I'd add that in film scanning, extended color depth is also very important to capturing the full fidelity of what's on the celluloid. An adjacent high-impact factor is how the grain structure of film is handled in post-scan processing. This entails artfully balancing a tricky set of trade-offs because the highest-frequency edge and chroma details are down in the noise floor. Extracting more signal is a knife-edge balance between amplifying noise on one side or suppressing filmic texture on the other. Ultimately, these choices move beyond technical correctness to aesthetic judgement, which I imagine has to be the sweat-inducing part of the job. Anyone really interested in resolution, film scanning and digital cinema should see this in-depth comparison shot by an expert ASC cinematographer specifically to be a definitive set of proofs for the industry. He compares (and pixel-peeps) identical shots from a range of top digital cinema cameras (Arri Alexa, RED, etc) with a high-quality 6K film scan. https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html. I found the results pretty surprising. > Wizard of Oz is 3x35mm for the color scenes, though. So, in theory you could use some clever algorithm to almost certainly create 8K transfers from it by using the tiny differences between the three frames. Yes, I really hope that whoever handled the source preparation contributes a technical paper or note on what they did and learned in the process. What I've found so far is far too vague technically but implies they started with the 3-strip camera negatives (perhaps from an earlier scan). As you mentioned, that would enable interesting possibilities for noise reduction by leveraging the differences between the three strips. I kind of hope that sort of noise reduction was actually done by film preservationists in an earlier scan (perhaps for a Blue-ray or UHD release) as the archival source scans deserve the highest fidelity. As I said in my other, longer post in this thread, I really hope that this effort for a Sphere version will also yield a less extreme 2.39:1 (Cinema Scope), 2.74:1 (Super Panavision) or even IMAX version from the 4:3 aspect original. I appreciate and value wide format cinema but personally think the Sphere FOV is so incredibly extreme it has more negatives than positives for cinematic storytelling. FOVs as extreme as Sphere are really only suitable for theme park attractions, amusement park rides or head-mounted immersive stereo 3D. I realize that the opportunity to collect $100 a ticket at the Sphere was too good for Warner to pass up but we're talking about a cinematic film that's become a cultural artifact. I'm not so purist as to balk at the idea of extending such a classic film with VFX and AI assist but a more "serious" cinematic version would be wonderful in addition to the over-the-top Sphere format. Hopefully, the Sphere version is a limited time release window and there's a subsequent IMAX release (15 perf / 70mm please) and an eventual 2.4:1 UHD (which I'd definitely buy).
hulitu 1y ago
> That’s not enough for the Sphere’s full 16K resolution, Is this real resolution ? Or is it "youtube" resolution ?

chungy 1y ago

There is a 4K Blu-ray of the film, I have a copy, it looks wonderful :)

crazygringo 1y ago

Celluloid film from 1939 is good, but not that good. I mean it's perfectly watchable on a 1080p display, but in 4K it's nowhere near the kind of 4K quality you get with modern digital cameras with modern lenses. Sure you can watch it its 4K scan (heck, they scanned it in 8K), but most of those pixels above 1080p are just showing you film grain and blur. Which is nice in terms of looking like it would with a real projector! But it's not "4K quality" in terms of resolvable detail.

actuallyalys 1y ago
Thanks for the fact check. Saying you can get even better than 4K is definitely overstating it. It’s possible the sources I was looking at were thinking of later eras of film, which I’d assume would have higher quality (and the lenses certainly improved).
mrandish 1y ago
Anyone really interested in resolution, film scanning and digital cinema should see this in-depth comparison shot by an expert ASC cinematographer specifically to be a definitive set of proofs for the industry. He compares (and pixel-peeps) identical shots from a range of top digital cinema cameras (Arri Alexa, RED, etc) with a high-quality 6K film scan. https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html. I found the results pretty surprising. It really needs to be watched because opinions will vary based on aesthetic interpretation but in broad strokes, it's pretty clear that above well-shot, high-quality 2K (aka 1080P) other variables beyond resolution begin to matter more (color depth, film stock, shot style, etc.) This supports your contention to an extent but the test also shows that beyond well-shot, high-quality 2K, going to 4K doesn't matter very much either. To be clear, it can matter sometimes but other factors can easily be equally or more important than resolution once beyond 2K. From my own experience and experimentation, I already felt many in the industry over-weight the importance of 4k resolution vs 2k in overall image quality (assuming both are equally high-quality and well-photographed), but this convinced me 4K over 2K makes even less difference than I thought. And this was under controlled test conditions with pixel-peeping. In real-world theatrical or couch viewing distances of cinematic content, it's hard to think 4K matters much at all over good 2K. I already knew I will NEVER upgrade to 8K for theatrical or couch-distance viewing of cinematic content (and I have $50K of gear in a dedicated custom-built, soundproof, lightproof home theater room with high-end laser projector and 150-inch screen), but this shows even the idea of 8k is ridiculous overkill and a complete waste of money, bandwidth and tech for cinematic context viewing. (note before the inevitable objections: 8k can be useful for 2 ft distance desktop viewing of synthetic content and can be necessary for 2-inch distance head-mounted VR).
- crazygringo 1y ago
  Yup, I did my own comparisons a couple of years ago and agree greatly. Most of all, getting real 4K detail requires a level of precision in camera focus that frequently just isn't happening. Whether it's an anamorphic lens that is intentionally blurring everything except the center of the shot, or just a shallow depth of field that becomes even shallower in 4K. You can get some astonishing detail with fixed landscape establishing shots, but it really depends on the lens. The only place where you consistently get full 4K sharpness is in 3D animation. That being said, if you watch on a projector, 4K can be nice because you really can't see the square pixels anymore. You don't usually get more detail than with 1080p, but it does feel more like the detail limit is due to the limit of sharpness of the lens, rather than the pixel format. That being said, it barely matters. Spending money on brightness and contrast is 100x more important.
  - mrandish 1y ago
    > getting real 4K detail requires a level of precision in camera focus that frequently just isn't happening. 100% agree. Relevant examples: "The Batman" (2022) a gorgeous film which was shot with ARRI ALFA anamorphic lenses, intentionally modified and detuned to achieve a specific, "dirty" look and character. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) with Roger Deakins winning the Oscar for best cinematography even though he intentionally chose to shoot primarily on the Arri Alexa XT, a native 3.4K resolution camera. And the BR 2049 4K UHD is widely considered a reference grade disc and one of the best examples of what the 4K UHD format can achieve, despite technically being a 3.4K upscale. And a personal example, this year's Superbowl broadcast, which was produced and distributed in 1080P HDR10, looked shockingly good on my 150-inch calibrated screen, which was enabled by a combination of best-in-class cameras, lenses and production talent with a high bit-rate throughout the distribution chain. It turns out when your primary cameras have $85,000 Canon glass on the front, it makes a difference (especially when Canon has a team of techs on-site all week to custom tune the lenses). Canon also loaned them a couple prototype super long lenses able to instantly switch to a shallow depth of field mode with zero change in aperture or shutter. One of those created a shot that made me literally rewind my DVR and pause just to appreciate (and then go look up how they did it later) It was a beautiful close-up on one player's face full-screen with perfect soft bokeh from a camera at least 150 feet away. Incredible. > if you watch on a projector, 4K can be nice It's interesting because I upgraded from a very high-quality native 1080P DLP projector (with pseudo-4K pixel shift) to high-end native 4K laser only about 18 months ago (fairly late). I never saw pixels on the 1080P projector except when displaying test signals during calibration (and even then, barely). I'm glad I waited a few years for 4K laser to more fully mature because, while there was an uplift in overall image quality going to native 4K, it was almost disappointingly minor. Even having waited so long, I feel like a meaningful portion of the 4K upgrade cost was wasted. Frankly, I'd still be perfectly happy with the (very good) perfectly calibrated 1080P DLP projector that's now nearly 7 years old. If I was going to put more money into my AV system (and I'm not... because it wouldn't make anything look or sound any better), I'd invest in an even better projector lens. But that wouldn't matter unless Hollywood started releasing higher fidelity content. And even if they did, it wouldn't matter because there's no way to get a bunch of that higher fidelity content on my screen. Hollywood's not releasing anything beyond 4K HDR10+ UHD discs anytime soon (and maybe ever) and streamers don't want to distribute content at scale beyond 20-25 Mbps. OTA broadcast content could deliver slightly better fidelity (in theory) once (if) ATSC 3.0 ever rolls out widely but broadcasters have already made it clear they're going to divide any extra bandwidth the FCC gives them into more shopping channels at low bitrates. Frankly, I think we're pretty much at the end game for source quality in cinematic content for theater or couch-mode viewing. Now the only remaining battle is getting more people upgraded to gear, calibration, signal path and source content which can fully and correctly display what properly encoded high bit-rate 4K HDR10+ already provides (I include Dolbyvision in that because, in practice, it's pretty much the same quality as well-encoded HDR10+). I also agree with you that it's hard to even see a noticeable difference between good 2K and 4K except with synthetic content like CGI animation. I think people who report observing a significant difference are either having some placebo effect or something was wrong with their 2K setup, signal chain or content, so 4K looked better not due to the resolution increase but because it fixed whatever was wrong with their 2K setup. > Spending money on brightness and contrast is 100x more important. Indeed. And also HDR, higher quality source content (ie less compressed), getting rid of digital keystoning or any other subtle degradation in the signal chain and, of course, ambient light control. I always tell new projector owners to first leave their projector turned off, darken the room to viewing mode and then sit there in the dark staring at their blank white screen. Then I point out, "that white is the blackest black you'll ever see". And that will (sometimes) finally convince them to get serious about light control. :-) And then I walk by the row of 65 and 75 inch screens at Costco advertising "Amazing 8K Upgrade" to people who watch streaming movies from their couch 8-feet away from the screen and just shake my head. They're hawking grade-A homeopathic bullshit to nice people who don't know any better and should feel bad about themselves for lying to sell people something they don't need.

qingcharles 1y ago

I can answer this as I did some scanning work for Universal. It depends on a number of factors, including how the frame is rendered onto the celluloid (e.g. is it cropped). From my experience, 4K was the absolute edge you could pull from the best 35mm films. Most of the time it was really "3.5K" with a 4K sticker on it. I managed to pull 8K from some 70mm ride footage. I think it might have stretched to 10K if I'd had the equipment. Wizard of Oz is 3x35mm for the color scenes, though. So, in theory you could use some clever algorithm to almost certainly create 8K transfers from it by using the tiny differences between the three frames.

actuallyalys 1y ago
Thanks for sharing that! I’m sure there’s a lot of nuance. I was kinda shocked at the long list of motion picture film formats listed on Wikipedia when I was trying to figure out the equivalent resolution 35mm film has.
mrandish 1y ago
Thanks for weighing in with real-world experience doing film scans. > From my experience, 4K was the absolute edge you could pull from the best 35mm films... I managed to pull 8K from some 70mm ride footage. This matches the expert opinion I've heard elsewhere, as well as what was done when scanning Blade Runner (an historically important film now in the national archives). They scanned the 35mm camera negatives at 4K and the 65mm VFX camera negatives at 8k. I'd add that in film scanning, extended color depth is also very important to capturing the full fidelity of what's on the celluloid. An adjacent high-impact factor is how the grain structure of film is handled in post-scan processing. This entails artfully balancing a tricky set of trade-offs because the highest-frequency edge and chroma details are down in the noise floor. Extracting more signal is a knife-edge balance between amplifying noise on one side or suppressing filmic texture on the other. Ultimately, these choices move beyond technical correctness to aesthetic judgement, which I imagine has to be the sweat-inducing part of the job. Anyone really interested in resolution, film scanning and digital cinema should see this in-depth comparison shot by an expert ASC cinematographer specifically to be a definitive set of proofs for the industry. He compares (and pixel-peeps) identical shots from a range of top digital cinema cameras (Arri Alexa, RED, etc) with a high-quality 6K film scan. https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/ResDemoPt2.html. I found the results pretty surprising. > Wizard of Oz is 3x35mm for the color scenes, though. So, in theory you could use some clever algorithm to almost certainly create 8K transfers from it by using the tiny differences between the three frames. Yes, I really hope that whoever handled the source preparation contributes a technical paper or note on what they did and learned in the process. What I've found so far is far too vague technically but implies they started with the 3-strip camera negatives (perhaps from an earlier scan). As you mentioned, that would enable interesting possibilities for noise reduction by leveraging the differences between the three strips. I kind of hope that sort of noise reduction was actually done by film preservationists in an earlier scan (perhaps for a Blue-ray or UHD release) as the archival source scans deserve the highest fidelity. As I said in my other, longer post in this thread, I really hope that this effort for a Sphere version will also yield a less extreme 2.39:1 (Cinema Scope), 2.74:1 (Super Panavision) or even IMAX version from the 4:3 aspect original. I appreciate and value wide format cinema but personally think the Sphere FOV is so incredibly extreme it has more negatives than positives for cinematic storytelling. FOVs as extreme as Sphere are really only suitable for theme park attractions, amusement park rides or head-mounted immersive stereo 3D. I realize that the opportunity to collect $100 a ticket at the Sphere was too good for Warner to pass up but we're talking about a cinematic film that's become a cultural artifact. I'm not so purist as to balk at the idea of extending such a classic film with VFX and AI assist but a more "serious" cinematic version would be wonderful in addition to the over-the-top Sphere format. Hopefully, the Sphere version is a limited time release window and there's a subsequent IMAX release (15 perf / 70mm please) and an eventual 2.4:1 UHD (which I'd definitely buy).

hulitu 1y ago

> That’s not enough for the Sphere’s full 16K resolution, Is this real resolution ? Or is it "youtube" resolution ?