PT Were the cameras used on 2 and 3 really that bad?

to be honest with you I don't notice this type of thing, sometimes I can't even tell the difference between a good quality DVD vs Blu-Ray.

As long as it works, the picture is clear, that's all that should really matter.

 

That's just not true, those videotape problems exist on any TV show shot on videotape as well, often much worse of course, and there is a big difference between those TV shows shot in 480i or 576i and those that were shot on film. Have a look at the difference in quality between Fresh Prince and Sienfield for example. It is true the cameras used by GL for AOTC were the best available at the time, however there is still a big noticeable gap between the quality of video and film at that time. This is really obvious if you watch TPM and then AOTC one after the other on a 60 inch 1080p TV and you will notice a noticeable reduction in quality in the film. It's not just a matter of resolution, the dynamic range in AOTC is terrible.

Matte lines are still on a true 2K+ high dynamic range format... most shots in the OT are not effects shots and their quality does not depend on the sophistication of the special effect. Of course digital compositing is better, but even it looks funny in places in the PT especially when hand-drawn mattes were used around actors hair and such.

Digital is the standard yes, but it still does not equal the quality of 65mm film. This is really obvious if you want to convert the film to digital, as it will contain 8-10K detail and the only way to fully extract all the information in the film is to use a mono sensor and expose each channel separately (triple flash).

A lot of the problems with video have been overcome, but still not all of them. Smearing etc still is a problem, it can be mitigated with lighting sets to reduce the problem of course, but that doesn't help if you're doing a location shoot. I'm not saying people should still use film, film has its own challenges as well, but just pointing out that if it's a question of quality you're after digital is not necessarily better, and it does actually make sense to still have film cameras on hand for certain shooting conditions where it noticeably outperforms digital. Film is only an intermediate format now though, once you've filmed it you will have to scan it for editing and delivery on DCP, but the scan is done under controlled conditions and you can use a mono sensor which isn't possible if you're filming colour in digital. If you're filming it with a 4K sensor you will have the bayer mask problem or some other dithering problem.

As I mentioned before, you wouldn't have had R2D2's panels turning purple and green if shot on film. Even if you re-shot that today with today's digital cameras it wouldn't have that problem, but the primitive cameras used for AOTC were not very good at picking up the correct colours, and their dynamic range is terrible.

 

I saw AOTC on the big screen in 2015, and I think it looked just fine. I didn't notice a single frame that looked questionable in terms of quality/resolution to me. And ROTS looked absolutely stunning. An experience I wish I could have again. If only this year's marathon could be in more than 4 theaters across the country.... alas

The thing with digital vs. film is that as it stands now, and as it stood in the early 2000s, there are pros and cons to each. Take, for example, the very first scene filmed for TPM, one which was also filmed with a digital camera - Maul and Sidious on the balcony. For much of the scene, the camera brings both of their faces into focus despite the fact that they're at significantly different depths. Not nearly as easy to accomplish with traditional film, if not impossible

I fully believe that eventually digital cameras will be just as capable as traditional film in every way, and superior in other ways. Perhaps not right now, but the time will come. That's the wonder of technology. It grows and evolves to make up for such shortcomings. I think GL was innovative in that way. Seeking the future of filmmaking. It's a bit of a shame, imo, that the ST isn't willing to reach into the future the same way

 

"The Future Is Now"-THX1138

 

Not at all. It was more cost effective, considering over 2000 shots would need to be processed digitally to add digital effects and such. So, from that perspective it was a smart move, but from a photographic quality perspective there's no superiority, none...

 

Cinema must be the only artform where it is considered a requirement (by some) to use the newest technology except for nostalgia's sake.

 

Yes to all. It's not an opinion.

Cost effective, time effecient, more flexible. Key advantages when you're financing the film with your own money.

Photographic quality? There's virtually no generation loss with digital. No dust, film artifacts or degradation. Digital also has better light sensitivity. And the advantages of digital over film aren't exclusive in regards to picture quality as pointed out above. Film has other advantages, nobody is saying otherwise. But let's not pretend that digital was/is some kind of irrational option.

 

Because when you're appreciating the qualities of a movie or any piece of art, one of the most important things that the viewer recognises is the ease with which the equipment might have been set up and how quickly playback could have been enjoyed. And also how the camera equipment affected the finances of the film, or how many generation losses might have been involved.

 

Sorry, but you're completely off the mark here. We're not comparing today's digital cameras with film. We're comparing 2002-2005 digital cameras with film (the subject of this thread), and then there's just no comparison, especially in the case of the first generation digital cameras. Early digital cameras did not have better light sensitivity, and suffered from all sorts of digital artifacts not seen on film (and to a much more limited extend still do) as extensively explained above by Valeyard. Take for example the issue digital image sensors have with blooming:

Blooming occurs when a group of photodiodes on an image sensor receive more light than they can handle. The resulting electrical charge overflows into adjacent photodiodes, which lose their ability to record a signal that is proportional to the incoming light they receive. This will produce an area in which the image data is corrupted. Blooming is most obvious in regions in digital photographs that are over-exposed. It can appear in any part of a photograph - including the centre - and, because different colour channels react differently to over-exposure, the edges of areas of blooming can vary with different wavelengths. Hence the coloured fringes. Most CCD manufacturers include anti-blooming gates on the sensor to drain off the overflow of charge. These 'drains' can limit the degree of over-saturation but may not totally eliminate the blooming effect. Unfortunately, they may also reduce the overall sensitivity of the sensor, leading to increased image noise.

Source: http://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/shooting/Colour-fringing-explained

Had AOTC and ROTS been shot on 65mm film stock, there would have been tons more image information than is currently available on the digital masters for these films, both in terms of resolution, and dynamic range. There's no generation loss with film now either, since film can now be scanned at 6K-8K resolution, and 16 bit color. It would thus have been possible to greatly improve the image quality of AOTC and ROTS by re-scanning the negative, and creating a new 4K 12 bit digital master, as is currently becoming the standard for digital cinema, or a 6K 16 bit digital master as will most likely become a future standard. In short, up till the last few years (and probably even now), film still offered the best quality in almost every respect for archiving material:

Archiving digital material is turning out to be extremely costly, and it creates issues in terms of long-term preservation. In a 2007 study, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences found that the cost of storing 4K digital masters is "enormously higher – 1100% higher – than the cost of storing film masters." Furthermore, digital archiving faces challenges due to the insufficient longevity of today's digital storage: no current media, be it magnetic hard drives or digital tape, can reliably store a film for a hundred years, something that properly stored and handled film can do.

Source: wikipedia.

Largely due to this property, it's possible to re-release the OT and TPM, safely archived on film, in a much higher quality than will ever be possible for AOTC and ROTS, which will forever be stuck at 1080p and 10 bit color depth.

Now, Lucas deserves a lot of credit for spearheading the advances in digital cinema, but we should not delude ourselves, that this also reflects positively on the image quality displayed by these early fully digital productions.

 

He was talking about film vs HD digital not SD.

Also for an actual comparison of Fresh Prince and Seinfeld at the time it'd be the SD version of Seinfeld not the remastered from the original film and now in widescreen version.

It's noticeable if you are looking for it and know what to look for. If you are actually watching the movie rather than observing it you are not really going to worry about it anymore than all sorts of things in a movie's presentation.

AOTC looked startling on digital projection in 2002 compared to movies at that time that were still exhibited on film. The IMAX version also looked great.

Which is great and all but again it goes to real world performance over technical lines of resolution and other tech factors that are great for making movies.

If we want to be really technical about it then JJ should either use 65mm for IX (as CT was going to do) or the Alexa 65 that Rogue One used.

Rogue One's all-digital images are far beyond TFA's film-digital ones in so many ways. That said I am not thinking about it when watching the movie. ROTS looks just as superb as either TFA (ROTS is far better looking) or R1. Actually since R1 did the same kind of thing as the PT did in it's making that creates a kinetic bond that really means nothing but does play with my own perception.

Which makes my point. I'm not looking at R2D2 panels in a background shot.

Not sure what the point here is referencing 65Mmm. I don't see anything at all convincing that scanning at 6K or 8K really means anything besides technical resolution mumbo-jumbo.

Does the image work on a theatrical or giant IMAX screens? OK then it's fine for homescreens.

 

The latter is actually not true. Home video often reveals much more detail than the relatively dark and murky cinema screens. Effects that look great in the cinema often look less convincing on our bright tv screens. So, as our TVs get bigger what looked great once will start to look dated. Future 4K TVs will reveal the limitions of Lucas' early adamptation of digital. The increase in detail is quite obvious on the average size 4K TV.

 

These discussions are just so baffling to me. The argument "it looked great on an IMAX screen" really isn't very convincing, generally based on fading memories of screenings of over a decade ago. Laserdisc looked great once, yet it pales in comparison to modern day home video releases. The numbers simply don't lie. Does the 4K UHD bluray offer a significant quality improvement over HD? If your TV is large enough, most definitely! Can films shot at 1080p benefit from this increase in resolution? Most definitely not! Will films like AOTC and ROTS become substandard compared to modern digitally shot films or older films shot on film? Most definitely! It's not even a matter of debate. It is a fact.

 

Yeah that's right, but the problems I pointed out are all problems carried over from SD videotape, so they're much easier to see on TV shows shot in SD. I don't know if I pointed out the haloing in this thread, but that's another thing that's a part of shooting digitally:



Notice the haloing on the umbrellas and other "hard edge" objects such as the monitors? John Knoll's comments were that people "aren't going to notice that", I disagree. It may not always be noticeable, but there are examples where it is clearly noticeable in motion. The limitations of the 8 stops of dynamic range in the TPM/AOTC digital shots also limits how much you can manipulate your image before banding and other ugly artefacts appear, it's not only about what you can perceive in the cinema but also what can be done in post-production.

Once we scan this by the way we can see how these digital scenes actually looked alongside the other scenes in 1999 - that screenshot above is from the Bluray and it has been very heavily de-noised. So has AOTC, the HDTV version of AOTC shows a lot more video noise, and I can distinctly remember there being 2 or 3 really noisy shots in AOTC when I saw it on 35mm in 2002, that never looked that noisy again. Comparing what audiences see today on an enhanced de-noised DCP or Bluray doesn't tell you what they saw in 2002 on DLP or 35mm.

Yeah that's right, but the "SD version" won't have in-camera smearing, blooming, haloing and other problems... it might have some of that introduced in the telecine, but it will look better than if it had been shot straight to videotape. Think of it this way, the telecine digitises the image in exactly the same way that an on-set camera would, however it has the advantage of being in a completely controlled environment and it can take as much time as it needs and doesn't need to film at 24fps.

Also keep in mind that syndicated broadcasters are not sent the episodes on tape, they are sent to them on o-neg for them to telecine, and as the telecine quality improves so does the show. Here's an example of 2-perf o-neg sent to a TV station in 2007 (for The Champions):



Each time an episode is shown on a re-run they do it from a fresh telecine that will often look better than it did the first time around, and it keeps looking better each time they upgrade their telecine equipment and play it again. With video-tape all the problems and limitations of the format are baked-in.

I strongly disagree. The human eye can see at least 16-stops of dynamic range (especially so in shadows/dark areas), film contains IIRC about 12-stops of dynamic range, AOTC only had 8 stops of dynamic range (256 levels per red green blue). ROTS only had 10 stops of dynamic range. Anyone would notice the drop in quality.

Sure it might look better than some 35mm prints, I've seen prints that look terrible. Some studios were notorious for ordering low quality prints just to save money. On the other hand there are really good quality prints as well.

DLP projection in 2002 was 1280x1024... so maybe get a data projector and convert the bluray to that size and see how it looks projected in an 800 seat cinema with a 60ft+ screen. Then project Phantom Menace from 35mm and compare.

Beyond in what way? GL shot much of the original trilogy with a nylon stocking over the lens to intentionally soften it. Much of TPM was shot through a Tiffen Pro Mist soft filter. TFA was shot on 35mm, that alone doesn't tell you what stock they used, what look they were going for, or what optical/digital filters may have been applied. Shooting on 4K Digital is similar quality to shooting on 35mm, neither is necessarily better than the other in terms of quality, however both formats have limitations.

So? It doesn't just affect background objects, what about the queen's green eyebrows and red cheeks? There are lots of shots where that happens in AOTC, and it never happens in TPM. And it's very noticeable!

 

Yep. In 2002 people didn't have HDTV sets at home, so they didn't have a high quality point of reference, and even early adopters of HDTVs available from the late 90's didn't have a way to watch most films in HD anyway until they began getting broadcast which wasn't until 2004 in Europe for example, and we all know that broadcast bandwidth MPEG2 720p/1080i does not look as nice as a high bitrate AVC encode. And even if they could watch HD content, the quality of HDTVs wasn't that great. By 2002 standards DLPs may have looked great, but if you were to show them today alongside a 2K or 4K DLP or a good 35mm or 70mm print there would simply be no comparison.

In theory the 35mm prints of AOTC should have looked better than DLP, but there's no guarantee we'd have to find a print and see how it looked. The DI would have been 2K though, which as mentioned is printed to film at an image size of 1828x1556 (not counting the soundtrack area which is added separately). DLPs were up to 1280x1024. The IMAX version would also have been printed at 2K like the 35mm prints (although it has no soundtrack so the full 2048x1556 resolution), so I would expect that there was a noticeable increase in quality observed at the IMAX shows over the DLP shows. Also, IMAX has an aspect ratio of 1.43:1, so they probably used the full height of the digital image (all 1080 lines) as much as they could, increasing the perceived vertical resolution by 32%. The horizontal resolution of 2048 would also represent a 60% increase in perceived horizontal resolution for mostly digital scenes, and up to a 21% increase in perceived resolution of live-action (as the digital image would be cropped from 1920 to 1544 pixels wide... or from 1440 to 1158 for the stuff shot to HDCAM). People are less sensitive to the horizontal resolution though, especially as it extends into our peripheral vision. These numbers tell me that the IMAX version would have looked much better than the DLP and I would expect people who saw both versions to have had praise for it. But their point of reference was the DLP, not a modern 2K or 4K DCP.

It's not technical mumo-jumbo it's real-world facts. If you take a 35mm negative and scan it on a Spirit 4K with a 4K colour CCD sensor, then what you actually get is Green at 4K 4:4:4, and Blue and Red at 4K 4:2:2 due to the bayer pattern in the CCD. The image data has to be interpolated and it results in dithering. If you want to extract the full dynamic range of the film the only way to do it is with a mono sensor and flashing the back-light for each colour separately. It's impossible to do that in real time, I think the fastest they've been able to get is about 2-4 fps or something like that. You can get closer to that quality with a 6K sensor for 4K scanning, but it still doesn't fully equal it.

 

I just remembered we have a decent scan of a TPM trailer, so I asked its owner if I could share it and he said yes. Here it is:



It was scanned at the same lab as the rest of the trailers and stuff on my Vimeo channel, meaning the low digital quality of some of the shots is in the digital master used to make the trailer and is not due to our scan. They may not look as bad on the 35mm prints if Lucasfilm had those scenes re-scanned in better quality, but I'll bet most of it is at the same quality. This probably explains why they opted to go digital for Episode II as it's definitely an improvement in quality when compared to this trailer!

 

Dark and murky? What cinemas are you going to?

Also the point is that DCP's have something like 8x more data than a BD. Whatever that technically means the point is that the actual cinema image is way better for a giant screen than a BD on a home screen. Then there is the actual projection.The better the projection the better the image.

If AOTC is 200 GB on a DCP and less than 50GB on a dual-layer BD then obviously there is a lot of compression going on. So on a triple layer 4K disc you can double it to being on a 100GB disc and get about halfway.

That is dependent on how you adjust your screen. I've went to people's houses where what they like is terrible to me to watch.

Sure. Just as the OT looks dated. Just as anything looks dated. You can't get ever fully away from the datedness only lessen the effects as with the above with getting closer to the actual cinema presentation.

I don't know the ins and outs but obviously it's basic that the less compression you have for the files then they will be that much better. The difference between SD material with lesser compression on BD compared to the compression on DVD is very noticeable.

Facts yes. Actual true real world results outside of a laboratory I don't know.

It's not that it shouldn't be done or that there is nothing to it.

Would AOTC look better if it had been done with film to capture the images? Overall the answer is yes.

Does it really matter to how great the films looks as it is? No. Not really.

TPM was done on film that way and some find it disappointing. From the same BD article:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Star-Wars-The-Complete-Saga-Blu-ray/14903/#Review

The main culprit here is digital noise reduction. Unlike the other two prequels, Episode I was shot on 35mm, but here it's been fairly strongly filtered so that grain is scrubbed out, giving a more video-ish appearance. I'm assuming this was probably done to give a sense of visual continuity to the prequels, but it frequently results in softened textures and smeared over detail. The application of DNR isn't nearly as egregious as it was in the notorious Predator re-release, but the image does look a bit off at times, with faces taking on that distinctly smooth, waxy quality that always accompanies excessive filtering. It's not all bad however; the predominately CGI scenes—like the battle on Naboo—look excellent, if a bit outdated and cartoonish, and there are no issues with color or contrast. Edge enhancement isn't a concern either—which is kind of surprising given that DNR is usually accompanied by oversharpening to compensate for the inherent softening—and there are no blatant compression problems.

Regardless the error on "the predominately CGI scenes—like the battle on Naboo" are actually predominantly practical effects work the point is that this reviewer doesn't like all the DNR. Many reviewers never do because they want the grain of film.

I appreciate all the technical things you bring up. Thing is to me it makes my point. You have particular knowledge where you will see all these things and analyze and very quickly no doubt.

I doubt I know even a tenth (or 20th) of what you do but I know just enough and if I want to I can stop the image, zoom in and look for things. I can turn off my "enjoy watching and getting swept up in the story" and do that sort of thing.

To me in that joyful way ROTS and R1 (plus TPM and AOTC) destroys TFA in every way. So whatever they did for TFA technically the results don't work for me. It's certainly not about resolution or haloing and other "hard edge" objects.

I doubt they would unless they knew what they were looking for. They might feel something but for myself what is the real world point here is that TFA by that technical standard should therefore look more dynamic than AOTC. Yet it doesn't compare to AOTC in color because it doesn't use them in the first place to anywhere near the effect. This goes even further for ROTS which is superior again to AOTC.

TFA might have the potential to be more dynamic but if it doesn't use it then that's all it is. TFA was satisfied with creating the most picture postcard Earth-like environments and colors ever seen in Star Wars as opposed to the PT or R1.

 

No, this is actually not correct. Blurays (35GB at 1920x1080) are often more compressed than double layer DVDs (7GB at 720x480). The difference is, that better compression algorithms are used for bluray than the crude MPEG2 used for DVD. H264 compression is far more efficient. Did you never notice how a 1080p mp4/mkv file compressed to 2GB size generally looks much better than a DVD if 7GB? 4K UHD blurays are encoded with H265 which is even more efficient. So, the 100GB 4K disc will contain much more information than "half way" assumption you just made. To cut a long story short, you will hardly notice the difference if you were to project the 200GB DCP of AOTC and a 4K UHD disc. Even so, you will notice a significant jump in image quality comparing the 4K UHD disc of a film like AOTC, which only has a native resolution of 1080p and 256 intensity levels per color channel (leading to noticable color banding), and a film like TFA with a native 4K resolution and 1024 intensity levels per color channel on a UHD bluray (64x more colors, and far less color banding), or even the OOT, which has a native resolution of 4K to 6K, and would also have 1024 intensity levels per color channel on an UHD bluray. So, any proper restoration of a classic film shot on 35mm would look far better than AOTC on 4K UHD bluray, and would also trump ROTS's 1080p resolution, for which the colors fortunately do benefit from it's higher dynamic range. ROTS will look significantly better on 4K UHD bluray than HD for this reason.

It will actually be interesting to see what additional detail can be retrieved at 4K resolution for AOTC and ROTS with the technique called super resolution. Super resolution retrieves additional detail by combining information from different frames. This way the native resolution of AOTC and ROTS can be increased to an effective resolution of something like 2.5K in terms of detail.

 

Thanks for the tech point. It still goes to my point that movies will look that much better in that way on 4K discs than BD. Now will it be some total startling revelation of all-time?

No. Will it be even noticeably better? It may or may not. I think there are various factors more than just resolution and compression.

Yes. The 1080 is HD the DVD is SD.

Thanks again.

Here is where we get to art and human perception.

As I said above to me ROTS destroys TFA on every level of image and color. It's a total no contest. TFA comes to the Lightsaber duel with a padawan learner blade.

As for the OOT having "native" resolution of 4 to 6K just as many people I have read say that is nonsense and it's more like just over 3K from 35mm film.

Once again if you don't use the color then saying this method gets you more is pretty hollow.

 

Even 3K will give you significantly more detail than 1080p. The resolution of film depends on the film stock. Very good film stock can reach an effective resolution of about 6K. Scans of technicolor prints have shown there is still detail to be retrieved at 4K resolution for Star Wars. However the most important advantage the OOT has over a film like AOTC is the enormous dynamic range of film. Film has a dynamic range of more than 60,000 intensity levels per color channel (compressed to 1024 intensities for UHD bluray), compared to the 256 intensities per color channel for AOTC.

 

Here's an example of the amount of detail that can be retrieved from a technicolor print scanned at 4K resolution compared to the bluray for ANH.

Bluray:



4K scan of a technicolor print:



This is a clear indication of the quality jump in terms of resolution expected from a 4K release of the OT, and of the amount of detail captured by 35mm film in general.

 

Huh? They already are dude. It isn't 2005 anymore when Lucas shot AOTC on soap opera HD cameras. Digital cameras today are ON PAR and some say even exceed 35mm film. They have a different aesthetic to them that some purists like Nolan and Tarentino refuses to accept but today most theatrical films from Marvel and major studios are all on Arri or Red camera.

 

I don't think anyone would argue that the early generation digital cameras used for AOTC produced visual results technically on par with what film was capable of at the time. That wasn't the goal. The goal was to produce visual results which wouldn't detract from the enjoyment of the movie among general audiences without technical knowledge. In order to push the industry forward and show that digital was a viable alternative, Lucas was willing to accept a certain level of compromise. Someone always has to do it. And as Qui-Riv-Brid points out, at that level of sufficient quality all this technical stuff plays second fiddle to the creative imagination of the director when it comes to creating something that is visually arresting. I find AOTC to be a very visually pleasing movie despite the fact that I (a non-expert) can perceive the presence of certain technical limitations if I choose to look for them instead of simply enjoying the movie.

 

Heh. Wouldn't know. You're clearly more well-versed in the world of film than I am

I suppose I should've mentioned the possibility digital cameras actually have caught up and exceeded in every feasible way, but I didn't want my post to drag on. Alas, the exponential growth of technology! I'll amend it with this rambling mess....

I fully believe that eventually digital cameras will be just as capable as traditional film in every way, and superior in other ways. Perhaps not right now, or perhaps even maybe now. If it hasn't already, the time will come.

Ah, got my bases covered now!

 

One problem with that, that's MikeV's scan and we don't have access to it. Here is the same shot from the 4K TN1 scan:



It still does look very good (especially in motion), but it doesn't show the same level of quality improvement. Mike also completely de-grained his saying that he'll add grain back in post.

 

I agree. Like I said earlier nothing prevents AOTC from being the greatest movie ever to anyone, even if Lucas had shot it on video. Artistic merit isn't judged along these lines.