What's the resolution of the source material from filming movies?

[WolverineX]

Older films probably won't be too great but what about current film recorders. Just curious on what hd-dvd can really do.

 

[phaxmohdem]

http://www.studio-systems.com/broadfeat...e%20evolution%20of%20resolution/47.htm

I believe the terms used in this artivle (1.5K, 2K, 4K, 6K etc) refer to horizontal resolution lines.... such as your standard NTSC TV resolution has about 480-500 lines of resolution. (NTSC Spec = 720x480)

 

[Matthias99]

There's some debate about this, but modern movie film generally has an effective resolution of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000x3000 discrete film grains (give or take a thousand here or there). It's tougher to measure than, say, a computer monitor, because the molecules aren't laid out in a nice grid, and there is some variance between samples.

That's about the same as a 12MP digital still camera, and well above current HD resolutions.

 

[WolverineX]

At least we're getting closer to the source. Resolution isn't top priority in my opinion, it's compression. Practically all the movies I have suffer from grain/noise and blocks.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: WolverineX
At least we're getting closer to the source. Resolution isn't top priority in my opinion, it's compression. Practically all the movies I have suffer from grain/noise and blocks.

Grain/noise (depending on exactly what you are seeing) could be due to poor downsampling, or just a lousy source. Blockiness is almost always due to overly aggressive compression/processing.

Most DVD movies use relatively high bitrates, although some are noticeably worse or better (eg. the 'Superbit' series of DVDs is pretty much maxing out the DVD spec in terms of video bitrate). Any video that has been compressed to less than 6-7Mbps (at DVD resolution) is going to show noticeable compression artifacts, getting much worse as the bitrate drops. MPEG4 (DivX) and WMV9 are better than MPEG2 for lower bitrates, but it's still there.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
There's some debate about this, but modern movie film generally has an effective resolution of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000x3000 discrete film grains (give or take a thousand here or there). It's tougher to measure than, say, a computer monitor, because the molecules aren't laid out in a nice grid, and there is some variance between samples.

That's about the same as a 12MP digital still camera, and well above current HD resolutions.

but don't each of those grains carry a distinct color? if so, wouldn't the resolution of a digital camera need to be several times larger than that because the image sensor pixels each see only red, green, or blue, but not all 3?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: Matthias99
There's some debate about this, but modern movie film generally has an effective resolution of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000x3000 discrete film grains (give or take a thousand here or there). It's tougher to measure than, say, a computer monitor, because the molecules aren't laid out in a nice grid, and there is some variance between samples.

That's about the same as a 12MP digital still camera, and well above current HD resolutions.

but don't each of those grains carry a distinct color?

That resolution is taking the multiple colors into account (that is, it's about 4000x3000 each for red, green, and blue). But yes, each individual grain is only sensitive to one color of light.

if so, wouldn't the resolution of a digital camera need to be several times larger than that because the image sensor pixels each see only red, green, or blue, but not all 3?

A "12MP" camera has enough pixels to capture a full-color image at a 12MP resolution. I believe they generally do this by taking samples through color filters rather than having discrete elements for each 'subpixel', though.

I was just trying to give some comparison to the resolution; movie film is about as good as a pretty high-end digital camera.