Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 09:15:27 -0500 To: telecine group From: Dave Corbitt Subject: [TIG] C-Reality demos I guess by now many people have had a chance to see the C-Reality demo in Valencia during the October SMPTE LA conference. How about some eye witness accounts and impressions? Inquiring minds want to know. Dave Corbitt ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ * Dave Corbitt * Director of Telecine Engineering * Manhattan Transfer * 545 Fifth Ave * New York, NY 10017 * vox (212) 687-4000 * fax (212) 687-8023 * http://www.mte.com/ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ From: rob@alegria.com (Rob Lingelbach) Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 18:36:32 -0600 To: telecine internet group Subject: [TIG] C-Reality from C-Bacon --the following is from ka2iqb@worldnet.att.net--- > I guess by now many people have had a chance to see the C-Reality demo in > Valencia during the October SMPTE LA conference. How about some eye > witness accounts and impressions? Inquiring minds want to know. > > Dave Corbitt Hi Dave, I "saw Reality" on Saturday (Halloween) night. It was a treat, but there were still some tricks to it as well. The good news is that anybody who thought the machine (and/or its maker) fell off the face of the earth at NAB last Spring need not have worried. The machine I looked at (at 1080i and 525i, there was no 2K data output) handled film beautifully and made great pictures. Great in color, resolution, blacks, whites, detail, you name it. There were a couple of neat surprises to it as well. The picture did not look "video sharp" without enhancement. It looked more fluid, like projected film, yet a quick look at a resolution chart indicated that the machine was nowhere near out of steam at 800 lines on 35mm. It may be the difference between the sharply defined pixels in CCDs and the gaussian distribution of light from the flying spot on the CRTs, but even this skeptical engineer could see why some colorists have already said the C-Reality makes more filmic images than the CCD machines. (Sorry if that stirs up the old endless debate again). The other stunt was to zoom in on some part of an image and show you all the fine detail you never even knew was there. Like the pores on an orange, or the texture of a molded black plastic flower pot. C-Reality is able to do such things right down to the grain of the film (on a piece of Kodak 5245 negative) without introducing visible noise of its own. And as far as the operator is concerned, it works like a Rank, with pretty much the same feel and control response. Where were the tricks? I'd say they've still got some work to do on steadiness, and the 16mm gate needs some help. 2K data output, 720P output, optical sound, and some other minor details couldn't be tested in our visit because either they weren't implemented yet, or there was way to monitor them. The C-Reality has rather extensive audio facilities, by the way, including internal Dolby A and SR decoders, and a digital delay that can be adjusted as needed to match the suite video delay. It would have been nice if somebody hooked the speakers up! There was another C-Reality present that had SDTV and 2K, but we were told that it was having problems so we didn't try to do anything with it. I guess the biggest weakness I saw is the lack of scratch concealment (the optical device that had been on the machines shown at IBC was removed "for more work," we were told). Electronic scratch removers for real-time operation in a telecine suite can be a real handful to operate and are not always successful; nobody is saying when HDTV versions of these products will be available, or if they will work any better than the SDTV units. One could concievably build a liquid gate for the C-Reality, but this would be rather difficult due to the fact that the film passes through the gate vertically (similar to a typical projector) instead of horizontally as on previous Cintel machines. Perhaps an updated version of the old "Pic Clear" system that used to be attached to just about every TP-66 film chain projector in the world would work if anybody could figure out a way to get the EPA to approve it! My guess is that by NAB '99, "C-Reality" will "B-Reality." Best regards, Christopher Bacon (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are strictly my own. I receive no compensation from anybody concerned with the manufacture or sale of any of the above-mentioned products, except that I have been known to occasionally rescue TP-66 projectors from the dump!) Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 06:42:32 +0000 To: telecine internet group From: Geoff Boyle Subject: Re: [TIG] C-Reality from C-Bacon At 00:36 06/11/98 , Rob Lingelbach wrote: >Where were the tricks? I'd say they've still got some work to do on >steadiness, and the 16mm gate needs some help. This was definitely the case with the S16 that I transferred on CR, However, as I'm not going to do any compositing on 16mm and my director said it made it more "filmic" I'm not going to worry :-) I'm shooting a job next week with a lot of white and intense reds, it's 16:9 S35, transferring on CR on Friday. I'll let you know. Cheers Geoff From: DBClrst@aol.com Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 03:37:28 EST To: telecine@alegria.com Subject: Re: [TIG] 1080i color space?/ C-Reality demo In a message dated 11/4/98 4:15:37 PM Pacific Standard Time, rob@alegria.com writes: << What is the difference in colorspace between 1080i and 601? What is done to convert from one colorspace to the other? >> I work with a 601 SDTV monitor and a 709 HDTV monitor side by side, and when both monitors are carefully calibrated, the color difference between them is very slight. The HDTV signal tends to exhibit slightly more red, especially in the skin tones. Of course, keeping an HDTV monitor in careful calibration is no small task, as anyone using one can tell you. I am definitely ready for a more stable display than a huge CRT that can't hold it's color values when there is too much white in the frame. In regard to the C-Reality demo recently, I too was duly impressed. I viewed an I.P. reel on the HD machine, and the picture was very crisp and natural, with no noticeable video noise, only the film grain structure was visible. The resolution was amazing. Color control was a bit crude, as only the local panel was able to operate the machine at that time, the communication bugs between the CR and the daVinci 2K are still being worked out. I liked what I saw, and I'm anxious for a more in depth evaluation. These opinions are my own, I receive no compensation, blah blah...although I did get a nice pen from daVinci. David Bernstein Senior Colorist High Definition Telecine Center, Universal Studios