We already knew that at least one film was
getting a 6K makeover before hitting a Blu-ray Disc, but before
A Star is Born can even leave the studio, it's being trumped by
Baraka. Hailed as a "transcendent global tour that explores the sights and sounds of the human condition like nothing you've ever seen or felt before," the film was shot in 70mm in 24 countries on six continents in order to provide breathtaking views of "wonders of a world without words, viewed through man and nature's own prisms of symmetry, savagery, harmony and chaos." All marketing hoopla aside, even Roger Ebert has exclaimed that this is in and of itself a "sufficient reason to acquire a Blu-ray player." In a separate review, the critics were flatly amazed by the visuals and the audio alike, and they blurted out the obvious by suggesting this as your de facto reference / wow-onlookers disc. Expect it to ship on October 28th for $34.98 (MSRP).
Read - Ship date
Read - Review
posted Oct 24th 2008 9:22PM
ok, sounds good, but can a blu ray player display an 8k film? Maybe a computer with a blu ray
drive is needed and a 30" display to be able to see at last the 2560*1600 0f it. Can anyone help?
vlad is correct; the box is misleading. However, just as plain DVDs benefit from a source mastered in high def, Blu-ray can also benefit from a 2K or higher resolution master.
8K resolution is theoretically approaching the limits of a 70mm print, depending on the emulsion process used. At these resolutions, though, doubling from 4K to 8K will improve picture quality by a much smaller percentage.
No, blu-ray maxes out at 1920x1080, though of course having a higher master and downscaling is better then scanning it in at 1920x1080. I mean it's not a world of difference but you usually get less grain but I am sure someone can explain it better then I can. Also of course when Blu-Ray2 or whatever comes a long the content will be ready for it.
I'm just trying to figure out how close you have to sit to see 8k worth of resolution... I'm guessing about 5-6ft away from a 120in screen or so.
Our local CBS affiliate has NO HD whatsoever. But the difference in clarity now that Survivor is shot/edited in HD is amazing. Same goes for Price is Right and ET. There's a huge difference since the shows are being produced HD, even though that much of the 'chain' is still standard-def.
I think mastering in 8K might be approaching diminishing returns, but it does prove useful for archival purposes.
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/2880/the-truth-about-6k.html
That article is spot on for transferring 35mm film into digital, but this was shot at 70mm, which means you actually do get a benefit from going beyond 4k.
Where are the 200, 300GB blu-Ray 4K,8K discs?
Theoretically, 4K, 6K and 8K encodes are not impossible on a Blu-ray disc. All we'd need is those 200GB / 400GB discs and a new profile. The new profile could define new specs. The current blu-ray players would see that the content only plays with profile 5.0 or higher (or something like that) and will display an error message saying this disc is incompatible with this player. This would of course upset people, so they would likely have to include a 1080p encode as well for backwards compatibility with lower profiles.
That would be awesome, but can a standard BD player read a 200GB disc?
From the review:
"The Picture
Wow."
It sure is kick ass!
I'll diverge from all the techno-babble comments and get back to the actual film. I've seen Baraka in theatres, VHS, and DVD, always aware that the visuals filmed in 70mm had more potential that what I was seeing. i'm so excited to get this on Bluray. It really is an amazing film, and it's not a far cry to suggest that it inspired the Planet Earth Series.
Anybody thinking that 300GB+ discs will make it possible for 2K+ resolution for your Blu-rays should just put it out of their minds. Blu-rays resolution limits cannot be changed by its profiling and firmware, unless you want to go lower.
Blu-rays Maximum Bitrate relating to video and audio is 54.0Mbps. Now 2K/4K won't be home video formats, They are film only and even when used are uncompressed, the home video format will be QuadHD 2160p, knowing this though we can figure out the data transfer rates uncompressed though. 1080p HD requires 550GB to 1TB uncompressed storage for a movie and a transfer rate of 1.24Gbps, 2K requires 3.5TB to 7TB for storage of a movie and a transfer rate of 8.27Gbps. The format is 8 times as large as 1080p when it comes to data, not resolution, so unless there is some amazing discovery with fine quality compression, which there hasn't been since MPEG standard was developed, MPEG2 and MPEG4 follows the same formating standards and ideas just uses different compression ratios to get better quality, you can not expect any major change in required bitrates to actually make a transfer from 2K to 2160p. So what you're looking at with the new format of 2160p, which isn't exactly 2K or 4K but its close when it comes to transfers, is not only a new profile standard but new transfer rates, which Blu-ray and HD DVD systems can't do on their boards, lasers or, transfer cables, so you'll have to buy whole new equipment just to do so.
Neither format was prepared for the upgrade to 2160p, which both Toshiba and Sony knew it was going to come within 15 years of their format launch, now its looking more like 10, placing it around 2015, which is the year DVD Forum has stated that optical media life would be surpased by other portable digital storage mediums in size, cost, and use.
Oh and the studio putting this out better watch their step, putting 8K ultraHD on the box like that could be construed as false advertising, because I garantee on the back of the box it says presented in 1080p 24fps, which is no where near 8K.
It appears only a small FEW of you actually read the article after the jump. Because had you done so you would understand the benefit an 8k transfer has even after it is scaled to 1080p as opposed to capturing at 1080p. So advertising 8k has its merits for those who can READ.
From the publicity still from the shoot it is possible to see the Panavision 65/70 cameras this was shot on:
Camera aperture: 2.066 by 0.906 in (52.48 by 23.01 mm)
(Source Wikipedia)
Compared to Full aperture 35mm 0.980" x 0.735" or Academy 0.866" x 0.630 camera apertures. Take the *width* as the height is ratio dependant and you find 65mm is > 2 times the width. So given a fixed film stock and thus grain size and resolution limit, you need to sample that many more pixels for the same resolution capture (excluding lens MTF differences for the 2 formats and scanners).
Normal process for 35mm is 4K scan oversampled to 2K, so for 65mm you'd want to do 8K to 4K for a similar quality scanning process. You would want to do this if you felt that you restoration should work on the 4K digital cinema standard or if you want to be prepared for future video standards.
Alternatively if your scanner is noisy, you can trade the resolution for increased signal to noise by down sampling.
Now if you were to then try sell your disk as "8K UltraDigital HD" one would have to include a big tutorial on this process to explain why Blu-Ray is not 8K. Otherwise they would be miss selling the product:
• Available for the first time ever on Blu-Ray in 8k UltraDigital HD
• Includes over 80 minutes of all new bonus features – "Baraka: A Closer Look", "Baraka: Restoration"
not that I expect most people to even play the extra content never mind actually understand the process or even for it to include a suitable description of the process anyway :-)
So is this a documentary of sorts about his lead up to Mortal Kombat 2? Or does this take place afterwards?
Haha, I laughed.
I am watching this right now on my 42" Panasonic plasma, even though its only 720p the video is unreal. By far the best I've seen so far, especially killing Iron Man hands down. My mom saw part of it with me and just wowed. I only have 3 of my Onkyo HTS5100 speakers hooked up right now so I can't really comment on the sound, but it sounds damn good with just the three. Oh by the way I'm watching it off my PS3 with the latest firmware.
Buyer beware!!!! It seems that this 8k transfer does not sit well with my Sony sbp-300. A box pops up indicating that it can't read. I haver updated to version 4.20 (sick!) which was released in August, but no luck. Hoping it was just a defective disk, brought it back to best buy (Anotrher alert: in store price $29.99, online, $21.99 - so tell them to look it up and dont pay more than advertised - kinda hate when B&M stores do that) and they were kind enough to play the blu-ray in their denon ($800)/sony projector unit(don't even wnat to know) system, and voila, the picture that Ebert says demands pruchase of blu-ray player. Somewhat miffed that the best reference disc available to date cannot play on 2nd or 3rd genration blu-rays. Any suggestions from the great minds found here? I guess you can keep updating (firmware) the software, but if you dont have the hardware (no puns please) no show baby. I will give bestbuy a shout out for giving me credit to purchase another moive with store credit, as they usually do not make that accomodation. The manager tried to lighten the news by trying to sell me the denon player, but would not offer me his employee reduced price. :)
I got my first Digital Camera in 1997. it was a higher end model (1 mp) 1152x864 when the norm in th day was 640x480 and some rare 800x600's.
I took a few pictures, then the the resolution of my brand spakning new 19" Hitachi CRT to 1152x864 and was ready to be wow'ed.... Talk about a bummer...!
I realized that resolution is just one of several variables in getting a high res, good quality picture. Now I take snaps at 8mp, down rez then to 1152x864 and they are so much better... As someone said down rezing has benefits... though I fear the difference I see is a result of less noisy processing in newer equipment.
I used to be a HD-DVD fanboi... still am, even thouh I got a BR.... HD-DVD with it's lower bitrate etc is still a lower noise solution, I am astounded how the same movie on BR is so noisy...