O.K., I get it… Blu-ray support HD video, and “higher resolution is always better.” But is that really true?
Was watching a film on Blu-ray the other night, and there were some close-up shots of an actor’s face. I could see every little wrinkle in his skin, and even his nose hairs. I assume these would still be visible on the standard DVD version, but I would also assume they would be much less noticeable and less distracting.
So it got me thinking: can too much video resolution be a bad thing?
My understanding is that analog/film-based cinema generally exceeds the resolution of HDTV; so assuming the movie theatre has decent projector quality, you’re going to see even more detail at the theatre than you would with a Blu-ray at home.
Modern digital cinema has a resolution that is approximately equal to HDTV, and the very latest is about twice the resolution of HDTV. So if you don’t like seeing every pore and blackhead on an actor’s face, you’ll definitely want to stick with home movies on DVD.
Most people, however, regard a more faithful reproduction (Blu-ray, HDTV) of the original as being better than a less faithful reproduction (DVD). If the original movie features an actor who has flawed makeup and zits, then that’s what I want to see when I watch it.
I happen to like watching documentaries and seeing every strand of fur on a lion and every grain of sand in a rock wall, so I think HDTV (whether the content is broadcast, streaming, or Blue-ray) is great. And I’m looking forward to the day Ultra HD (and content for it) becomes popular. If you get a chance to see a demonstration of an HDTV and a UHDTV side by side in the store, the difference is as amazing as HDTV was compared to SDTV a decade ago.
I do recall that with the advent of HDTV, makeup artists were caught off-guard; whereas their work had been adequate for SDTV for decades, HDTV suddenly had news anchors and other on-air personalities looking like shit, forcing the makeup folks to up their game. I wonder what will happen if/when things change over to UHDTV…
And amusing (if gross) side effect of this is that the porn industry (pro & amateur) quickly learned that, mother of god!, fans DO NOT want HD porn*!!*
The number of lines able to be perceived by a cinema audience on a release print for 35mm film is roughly 1000, which is pretty much what you get with Blu-ray. If it’s mastered in 4K (i.e. downsampled from a scan at around 2000 lines), a good Blu-ray will pretty much recreate a 35mm theatrical presentation.
So Blu-rays, if properly mastered, give you a comparable experience to seeing a 35mm print in the cinema. It’s definitely not showing any more detail than you’d not already see at the theatre.
But not be even close to a 70mm or 105mm film, if the original was filmed in that format.
I don’t know how much a projector will degrade the image, but still photogs use a rule of thumb that a single 35mm neg can hold 3600x2400 pixels. A still frame from a standard film camera is “sideways” compared to movie 35mm, so a single movie frame of the same kind of film would be 2400x1800, subject to different emulsion formulas, of course. That would be double your spec of 1000 lines. And I’m not even considering anamorphic distortions.
Do any movie theaters nowdays still use film? I thought they were all video now.
I had a chance to see some of my son’s favorite 3D animated movies on blu-ray on a large HDTV, and I wasn’t impressed and neither was he.(Ice Age series for one example)
It was TOO detailed, too sharp and busy looking(why do I need to see every hair moving individually?) and the movement of the animation was off somehow, too fast and jerky, not smooth looking.
I have been similarly unimpressed with live action movies in this format, except for very new visual spectacle movies designed with blu-ray and HDTV’s in mind when doing the CGI.
Also there is a new style of makeup in movies, I assume in response to HD, where the actors have very obvious caked on makeup that makes them look like plastic.
Maybe it is just me, but for a lot of stuff I prefer SD.
I’m always amused at the complaints from those who say 48fps, widescreen, hi-def video is terrible! A lot like those who made similar comments when digital sound and noise reduction was perfected. It doesn’t sound like a real record – all the hiss, clicks and pops are gone!
Or movies where, due to 48fps and hi-def, the motion blur is gone – not like real life, where there is motion blur and distortion everywhere! And the picture doesn’t jiggle and jump anymore like it used to – I just can’t stand the realism!
As for me, I’m going back to mono recording the way Og intended, on wax cylinders, hand cranked!
The real question is, with 20/20 vision, the number of lines that can be perceived by an audience in a cinema setting–if a 70mm print is outstripping that, it’ll still make no difference.
My issue is it looks less realistic than real life, I don’t see every pore or individual hair when I look at someone unless I’m inches away from their face.
Maybe the real issue is that film producers need to adjust to the new reality and shoot from distances taking HD into account?
I don’t understand this complaint. There is in fact motion blur in real life. Don’t believe me? Put your hand in front of your face and move it fairly quickly Can you see it in full detail the entire time? During part of the time, your hand even looks like it is in two places at once.
And I agree with the OP. Too much detail can be bad. Real life is not perfectly sharp all the time. Only a small part of what we see is actually in focus and detail. With the advent of higher resolutions and ultrasharp LCDs, you have to start paying attention to stuff that you didn’t in the past. You can’t just go for maximum sharpness and detail all the time.
Sure, theaters were higher resolution than SD TVs. But do you ever remember seeing these faults like caked on makeup, or blemishes on the actor’s skin? It sure wasn’t an issue back when I still went to theaters. I don’t know if it has to do with grain or what.
I’ve seen good HD and bad HD. And bad HD very often comes from things not originally intended to be in HD. A good HD rescan takes work.
That’s why he said “roughly”. Not being digital, film cannot be exactly pinned down to an exact, discrete resolution, but to a fairly consistent and small range. 35mm film falls within this range.
Well I, I mean my friend, only watches streaming internet porn anymore (are porn DVDs even still made?) and although some sites do sometimes have HD links most do not. And it’s the ultimate VHS vs Beta argument: Non-HD porn is good enough (and like I said, probably preferable). Just because everything is shot on HD-capable digital video cameras today does not mean it’s being distributed in true HD.
Yes there is motion blur in real life, but at a higher frame rate than 24fps. In fact to the human eye a huge ‘line of demarcation’ exists between 24fps and 30fps (the difference between film & SD videotape). This is primarily why the two look so different.
Maybe I should clarify RE “motion blur.” Under incandescent or sun light, the human eye doesn’t perceive “frames” like video or film cameras, so it could be argued that motion blur does or doesn’t exist for all practical purposes. Pick your point of view.
But video/film capture devices all store a single image; a snapshot in time, if you will, and if that snapshot is subsequently displayed along with other images in time sequence, it can be perceived as separate images or continuous movement, depending on several factors, the most important being the frame rate per second.
I can recall being terribly bothered as a kid by 24fps cartoons if the picture panned. It was noticeably jerky, and not realistic. If the frame rate had been increased, or the frames had been made with a suitable pseudo-blur, it might not have been as annoying to me.
So when I see movie makers changing the process of recording and projecting the image to eliminate such artifacts, I generally applaud them, in quite the same way as when I found out that tape hiss and vinyl clicks/pops could be eliminated with modern technology. Wonderful! I’ve been waiting for this all my life, and now it’s here! Enjoy, and quit yer bitching!
Well, my friend tells me that torrent sites are filled with true HD porn, and that it’s very popular. SD resolution may be preferable to many–especially when streaming–because of bandwidth limitations rather than aesthetic preferences.
As to the larger (non-porn) question: I have several movies that I bought on DVD and then upgraded to Blu ray and, yes, they look much better to me in HD. When I first got HD cable television, I used to flip back and forth between the SD channel and its corresponding HD feed. The difference was night and day.
Assuming they’ve used good masters and properly converted them, yes, bluray is better than the same thing on DVD.
Even before I had an HDTV, I had started buying/renting blurays, as even on a old tv connected to the PS3 via s-video, the blurays just looked loads better, due to not being as compressed to hell. Actually playing them on an HDTV at 720p or higher, it’s not even close.
Sounds like your issue is you’re just focusing too much on the nitty gritty details of the image. Can’t see the forest for the trees, if you will. I can easily see that being a problem for some people, and if that’s you, by all means, stick to your DVD’s or set your bluray player to output 480i/p.
I wonder if there were people who found color too distracting when it first came out? (not snark, serious thought I just had)
