Excitement at CEDIA about 8K Film
The 8K Association hosted four panel sessions in the 8K Pavillion at this year’s CEDIA trade show. We plan to report all of them, and we’re starting with the ‘From Classics to Cutting Edge’ panel. It’s shown in full on our YouTube channel, if you prefer the full visuals!
Juan Reyes, Executive Director of the Association, introduced the panellists after highlighting the continued development of the 8K ecosystem from content to display. The speakers were
- Greg Ciaccio – VP, Post Production Original Content & Image Capture of IMAX
- Miles DelHoyo – Executive Director of Technical Strategy & New Format Integration for Warner Bros. Discovery
DelHoyo explained that he works in the post production side of Warner Bros. Discovery (WB) where he works to help with technical aspects of the group’s work – as the firm creates many different SDR/HDR and other versions of its content. He helps ensure that the masters are suitable for this. In the last five years he has worked a lot on the catalog of WB films, taking them out of the archive and scanning them for preservation and for new uses.
Ciaccio said that part of his job is working with the IMAX film group. When movie makers go out with IMAX film cameras, he is involved. He also works with the ‘Films for IMAX’ team (13 or 14 titles this year) where he helps with technical choices in pre-production (lenses/cameras/aspect ratios) to give creatives the look and feel that they want. He also works on ‘Alt content’ such as music documentaries and concert films. He is also involved with the IMAX Enhanced Group and Streaming Group. This latter work is about bringing the IMAX advantages to the home.
DelHoyo explained that at WB, the 8K effort is mainly concentrated around preservation rather than on distribution. The aim is to scan the full catalog in ultra high resolution at 8K (or even higher) to capture all the content that is in the original. Once this is in a digital medium, the precious film negatives can be simply retained for posterity, while the digital version is used for future distribution needs. So far, most of the delivery work has been on 4K HDR content but he said that an 8K version could be released later. The firm is getting as much content as possible into the archive in 8K.
IMAX has been working on 8K since 1972, Ciaccio said. He showed an example 7:23) of the IMAX film format from the ‘Sinners’ title that came out earlier this year. The film was originally a WB film, DelHoyo said. The film was shot on IMAX film cameras by Ryan Coogler (said to be a friend of Christopher Nolan who had such success with Oppenheimer which was shot the same way). Ciaccio said that the resolution of the large IMAX film format could be as high as 18K and the firm had an old Northlight scanner that was past its prime, so it invested in a Lasergraphics Director 13.5K scanner. He described the scanner as ‘The best out there – and the only one that really works’.
It’s hard to be definitive about resolution in the analog/film domain, Ciaccio explained. To capture the full resolution, the film was scanned in three ‘five perf’ frames to capture the full ’15 perf’ format. The master is then processed for final production at 8K or 4K, depending on the requirements of the post production process.
For films such as Oppenheimer, the firm is working in 8K. All post production these days is in the digital domain, but if being shown at an IMAX film venue, it will go back to film, so the post production process needs to be in as high a quality level as possible. Ideally it should match the performance and ‘feel’ of the original film-based content. As it has film back to 1972, IMAX can produce its content in any digital format needed.
More Film ‘Show & Tell’
DelHoyo then produced his strips of 65mm and 35mm film (from The Shining). The larger format allows the capture of much more detail allowing higher resolutions when you go to digital. He explained that for 35mm content, 8K is probably the limit of resolution, depending on how the film was shot, the film stock, the lenses used etc. Warner Bros. goes through a thorough assessment of each title at the scanning stage to decide if the extra cost (in storage and in processing time) of 8K is warranted. Vistavision is a 35mm widescreen format but is captured horizontally with 8 perforations. In this case, the film is automatically in 8K.
This year WB has scanned three Vistavision titles:
- John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’
- Hitchcock’s ‘North by Northwest’
- High Society.
These were actually captured at 13K – with two scans of around 6.5K which were then stitched together digitally. These have gone to market as 4K, but DelHoyo emphasized that they could easily be delivered in 8K. The speakers agreed that these formats create ‘a lot of pixels’ and Ciaccio said that with a triple 13.5K scan, “The 8K image is stunning”.
The Challenge is Time (so money!)
DelHoyo identified the biggest challenge for high res processing as the time it takes. As the resolution goes up, the time and storage requirement goes up and so the cost goes up too. He is working at WB to remove cost barriers and make 8K more affordable and easier to get to market. At the moment, the emphasis is on preservation. Each frame is captured as separate RGB frames with 16 bit color and 8K takes around 3.5 times longer to scan each frame (at 35mm) than 4K.
His group thoroughly evaluates each movie – checking where ‘dupes’ have been added in post production. If the dupes are low quality and there are a lot of them, you may not get the benefit of an 8K scan as you may have lost a lot of detail. The colorists look at detail to see if you can really see the difference. Later in the talk, DelHoyo confirmed that in the last two or three years, WB has scanned 35-40 titles in 8K or higher. As well the Vistavision 13.5K scans, the firm has scanned one in Technorama. Seven of the films were originally in 65mm, but that shows that a lot of titles in 35mm also benefit from 8K scans.
A number of the 8K scans were originally filmed with spherical lenses, rather than anamorphic. However, even some of the anamorphic titles in Cinemascope can look great. A recent title scanned this way was Ben Hur, although it has gone to market. However, DelHoyo said, in 8K
“It looks phenomenal”.
(It seems that at the time of publication, the UltraHD Blu-ray version of the title is not yet available although it has been released, DelHoyo said to Digital Cinema)
Ciaccio said that local Science Centers often have a lot of high quality content that can be scanned, generally from the intermediate print (to preserve the original negative). IMAX has 35-40 locations globally that can show 15 perf 70mm film directly. IMAX has a number of documentaries that can be seen this way, dating back to the “early ’70s”. They haven’t all been scanned to 8K as “Someone has to be prepared to pay for it”, but they could be.
“The Crown Jewels are intact and well taken care of and preserved”.
Ciaccio pointed out that TV and headsets are likely to go 8K before cinema does as there is not yet a DCI standard for 8K digital cinema. He has the advantage of seeing the original film versions, with fantastic resolution, but if you see the DCI version, the resolution goes down.
“Lethal Weapon” was scanned in 8K and downsampled for the 4K version. DelHoyo emphasized that a 4K master created from an 8K scan looks much better than a 4K scan or capture. His group looks at detail and will keep pushing the resolution until the effect is just to better capture grain or other artifacts. “Dirty Harry” was also scanned in 8K although released in 4K. However, the color work has already been done so could be applied to an 8K raster, although there would still be hurdles in the restoration and finishing at 8K.
“Purple Rain” was scanned last year and DelHoyo said that it had been a ‘budget production’ in the 1980s. However, when it was scanned in 8K and processed, there was a great deal more detail in the 8K scan than in 4K. The 4K finish benefitted from the higher resolution scan. He is excited to see the 8K scan on a very large screen. Viewing the original is ‘underwhelming’, he said but with HDR and 4K you see details that you didn’t see before. “It’s a new experience” he said.
IMAX worked on “Chapter 51”, clips of which were being shown in the 8K Pavillion at CEDIA. Ciaccio explained that the Director, Tyler Shields, is a photographer and was very interested in the technology. The title used “practically every film format ever devised” including Vistavision and both Scope and anamorphic. He wanted to exploit the large format of IMAX.
At the show, IMAX showed clips of three older documentaries:
- “Destiny in Space”
- “Fires of Kuwait”
- “Journey to the South Pacific”
The quality was really amazing even though the films were shot decades ago. IMAX re-released Prince’s “Sign of the Times”. Even though this wasn’t filmed in IMAX, the final deliverable looked a lot better after processing. Ciaccio explained that AI may be usable to fix some of the issues in the original captures, such as poorer quality lenses. Can the image be enhanced, he asked, so that it looks as though it was captured on 15 perf IMAX format.
DelHoyo said that WB is not using AI so much in image restoration but is using it to improve processes and assess content quality.
“It’s so exciting to take old films and restore life into them. You see things you never saw before”
Both panellists said that the whole aim is to get away from the idea for viewers that “I’m watching something” to get to a fully immersive experience where they feel a part of the action.
“It’s not like looking at a grid of pixels, but looking through a crystal clear glass window” – DelHoyo
8K helps you get to this point.
DelHoyo worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 2018 when it was the first 8K movie shown on its new channel (at the time) by NHK of Japan. Clips were being shown by the 8KA at the show and was drawing amazement from viewers when they realized it was shot in 1967! The result in HDR is amazing.
Ciaccio said that when you have the better colors, dynamic range and resolution and a big screen takes up your peripheral vision, you really get the full experience. You start with a good source and need to take full advantage of that. DelHoyo pointed out that some of the movies shot on large format film many years ago look better than recent content that was shot in 4K on digital sensors. The digitization process loses some of the visual information immediately whereas film works more like the human eye.
Budget is Often the Decider
VFX and CGI work is often done in just 2K, he added, and that limits the final quality which is very dominated by budget decisions.
SMPTE is working on a new IMF format that can support 8K as the current format is limited to 4K. That format is used by WB as a ‘component-based’ package to clients or partners to get to market. It allows a high quality base with added components, which is important for 8K. The end user can then use localized assets to add to the base high quality format. This is part of a mechanism to allow the industry to be ‘future ready’ for 8K.
Immersive experiences outside the home are getting more common (The Sphere/COSM etc). Consumers are getting the realization that there is more available than a simple screen. Audio is really important to build a great experience. DelHoyo wants to create experiences that consumers really can’t forget. The immersive facilities are opening up the possibilities and as bigger displays come into the home, 8K can help by avoiding distracting artifacts such as pixellation.
TV sets are getting bigger and bigger, but the screen is staying at the same distance, so you need more pixels, Ciaccio said. Immersive sound is also important, and in the future 8K per eye headsets will drive immersive experiences.
In conclusion, it is the new experience and seeing things you didn’t enjoy before that is really being enabled by the new technology. You want to forget the technology and enjoy the emotion. Ciaccio pointed out that everyone is looking at ways to produce content that avoids judder but at the same time avoids the ‘soap opera effect’.
In summary, it was great to hear the excitement of those that are actually getting the chance to experience the benefits of 8K – and to see that there is work already going on to extend the number that can enjoy it in the future.
