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Episode 46 of The Terence and Philip Show

Resolution – how much is enough and will we adapt to higher frame rates.

Episode 46 of The Terence and Philip Show: Resolution – how much is enough and will we adapt to higher frame rates. http://t.co/BBZ0N5GE

Terence Curren and Philip Hodgetts discuss the importance, and relevance of resolution and frame rates. How much is too real? How will higher frame rates be distributed in the home market?

And yes, another 3D rant!

23 replies on “Episode 46 of The Terence and Philip Show”

I quite enjoy you and Terry’s chit-chats; but couldn’t you make them longer?

They vary in length. Usually around 30 minutes this one is shorter, while the last was nearly 60 minutes.

By Post Author

You and Terry both know what your talking about, so its nice to hear somebody like that. Keep up the good work!

Plotting opposites against each other can be fun… to an extent. But after seeing the utter NONSENSE Terence has been circulating on the L lately, I can’t bear to hear him blather any longer, sorry. Too bad, since I’m generally very interested in what Philip has to say. One spoils it for the other.

Can’t Terry just finally retire and put us all out of our misery, if life and “the biz” is just so *horrible* and unfair (for him and his limited perspective)?

You can post over at The Terence and Philip Show if you want Terry to read it.

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LOL… bravo Chris. If someone’s not YOUR opinion and aren’t in equal suck-up mode, they’re not “grown up”? Gotcha. Gotta say, that’s more than ironic in this context.

Just don’t bother contemplating what that says about you.

Andi – grow up!

I enjoy what both of them say; and guess what, I don’t always agree with them, shock horror.

Before you use big words like ‘ironic’, look it up first, then you wont look so silly in future… 🙂

You’re actually lacking any real arguments *that much* that you have to repeat the same drivel? 😀 You obviously don’t even grasp the most simple vocabulary, so feel free to rant on. Sorry I don’t share your high level of “f??king” argumentation.

Talk about looking silly. Wow.

Ouch. Talk about driving MY point home.

Out yourself as a complete TROLL much?

I’m with you guys on frame rates. We have around a hundred years of imprinting about what’s “filmic”, and there’s no way to combat that. If film as an art form were created out of whole cloth in 2012, with today’s technology, I’m sure it would look very different. But there’s a disconnection from reality that separates the look of 24p vs interlaced video or higher frame rate film- and to people all over the world, one says MOVIES, while the other says NEWS or REALITY.

Over the next 100 years, younger generations may not feel that attachment to 24p the same way they don’t particularly care about physical media for video or music. But I think that’s easily 20-30 years away.

On the other aspect, 4K (or 8K for that matter), I want to call you guys out on a fact I never hear anyone discuss: the longevity of your product.

Though the timescale to any widespread rollout of 4K beyond theatrical distribution is anyone’s guess. The fact that there are 4K sets being demoed already points to the fact that it’s COULD be less than 10 years on the horizon. With that in mind, I think content producers should be seriously considering how long they want their content to remain relevant. How crazy is it that shows produced in the 50s and 60s, with their entirely film based production, are able to reap the benefits of first DVD, and now HD; where shows produced in the 80s and 90s are in many cases dead-ended at 480i. Even shows shot on film at that time face a not inconsequential amount of work to be remastered and re-edited. Just look at all the work that’s having to go into Star Trek: The Next Generation to make it available on BluRay.

For things like commercial, corporate, news, and lifestyle shows- material that has a relatively limited lifespan, I absolutely agree that 1080 is the goal.

But if someone wants to have their product not only have a life for the next 5 years, but for the next 20, you have to be thinking about 4K workflows.

I’m starting on an animated tv special this year, and I’ve already decided to produce it at 4K. It won’t be that much more work, but should it be successful, it stands to have a much longer and more lucrative life.

The longevity question is no doubt a good point Marcus, but I think we over-estimate how much media has long term value. To be honest almost nothing I’ve produced in the last 25 years has any current value: training ages and becomes less relevant, sales/promotion materials date, etc.

I doubt Solar Odyssey will have a life expectancy over 2 years.

However, for the tiny sliver of stuff that really will have value beyond five years then 4K is probably a good idea. But that would exclude, in my opinion, every independent movie. 🙂

By Post Author

Now, now, Philip…

Agreed. For everything except feature and really top tear Broadcast narrative, 1080 is quite sufficient. That said, I’ve worked on 3 features in the last 5 years, and not one of them is going to have anything beyond a 1080 final master. One was shot on RED, but to go back now an rebuild effects is just never going to happen.

I hereby coin this issue, Resolution Lock.

It’s a tough thing to reconcile as a filmmaker. If your choice is, you either get to make your film with a Canon DSLR at 1080, or not at all- my advice would always be to make the movie. But the cost and convenience benefits to that do come with a cost that potentially puts a not-to-far-on-the-horizon sunset period on the marketable life of your film.

When you have z-grade movies like MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE from the 60s, than can be remastered for BluRay (and potentially beyond), it makes one wonder if features haven’t jumped on this bandwagon a decade too early.

Later this year RED will do a sensor upgrade to their EPIC cameras, bringing their RAW recording resolution to 6.5K. So in another iterative generation, the point will probably be moot, as the effective resolution of digital cameras will be fairly close to film.

Funny enough, I’ve been trying to find a reference from an analyst a couple of weeks back that said that Avid should focus much more on its consumer business. So they do the opposite. (That may, in fact, be smart – analysts are not usually that good a source of information.)

By Post Author

While listening to ‘Resolution’ I had a enjoyed a moment of whimsy.

We editors live in a boundary layer attempting to resolve two immiscible media. In the one medium swim camera manufacturers who are all competing to create equipment which works at ever higher data rates and resolutions. Then on the other side swim compression technologies aimed at doing just the opposite.

The dissonance of this state of affairs would make me smile if it wasn’t all so damned expensive.

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