[modfodder]

It takes more than just a competent film crew to adjust for 8k and HDR. New lighting, makeup and set design techniques have to make up for the higher fidelity. Suddenly the line where makeup is applied is highly visible, as happened during the switch over to HD (this led to makeup artists switching to air-brushing in the early days). Set design needs to look even more real than before (if you've ever been on set, you probably noticed how fake everything looks, yet on screen the flaws disappear). This will take time and experimentation. And money, money that the industry really doesn't seem willing to spend yet as they've spent tons moving over to a 4k pipeline. It'll take a blockbuster success from someone like Cameron releasing an 8k HDR film for the industry to even seriously entertain the idea (and they'll be more gun shy since the 3D push wasn't as successful as they hoped). And unless annual attendance shrinks drastically, they have little reason for the extra expense (and theater owners won't want to bear the cost of the upgrade since they're still working on the upgrade to 4k).

Douglass Trumbull, a pioneer in cinema techniques, is developing technology to allow mixed frame rates and resolution. So those panorama shots could be 8k HFR, while maybe the close up shots of the actors are 4k 24fps. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in a film that requires suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to reach cinemas in large numbers anytime soon.

All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.

[dpark]

> It takes more than just a competent film crew to adjust for 8k and HDR....

Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.

> Douglass Trumbull, a pioneer in cinema techniques, is developing technology to allow mixed frame rates and resolution. So those panorama shots could be 8k HFR, while maybe the close up shots of the actors are 4k 24fps. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in a film that requires suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to reach cinemas in large numbers anytime soon.

Sounds interesting, and promising, though I agree that it seems unlikely to be widespread anytime soon, even if it works beautifully.

> All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.

That's an odd comment to end on. At no point did I ever say it was simple. I said it's absurd to treat 4k like it's the pinnacle and anything beyond that is somehow actually a loss.

[modfodder]

> All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.

Sorry, I think this was meant for another comment, not yours, as I don't see the sentence I thought I was responding to in yours.

>Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.

This takes more than a "competent film crew". A competent film crew should have no problem working in well established techniques and workflows but wouldn't necessarily be prepared to venture outside that. If I was directing a production in 8k, HDR, VR, 3D or any edge cases, I want more than a competent film crew. I want creative thinkers and problem solvers. I want crew members who have experience on a wide range of projects, everything from digital video to imax (you might be surprised at how often even the crews of big budget productions have limited experience outside the status quo).

In the early days of the RED camera, the best footage came from cinematographers who had worked in lower budget HD productions, not film cinematographers. The HD crews had already been working in similar workflows, but the competent film crews were flummoxed by this one piece of equipment and even though they could see the results on set, they would still send back footage that was way underexposed and often unusable (and this was often from very well respected and experienced cinematographers).

I believe few people in the industry believe that 4k is the pinnacle. But most do believe that the technology to move to 8k is not even close to ready or worth the added cost, that workflows for 4k are just now becoming standard (the majority of projects are still finished in 2k, although that will change with distributors like Netflix now requiring 4k delivery). And that audiences won't care enough about beyond 4k enough to pay extra. Are you ready to pay extra for an 8k screening? The theaters have to recoup the cost for new projectors while they're still paying off the brand new 4k installs. Oh, and there aren't many cinema lenses that can cover an 8k image (especially since many DPs prefer the quality of older lenses).

There are old timers that lament the loss of film and resist moving from 24fps. But they'll be replaced by the younger generation who will be more open to experimentation and pushing the medium beyond its limits. The industry is driven first and foremost by profits, so once the pencil pushers see profit in 8k and HDR, the whole industry will move in that direction.

[dpark]

In fairness, I did not say that the transition to 8k was easy or that any "competent film crew" could make a beautiful 8k film or leverage 8k to its max. I said that a competent film crew could soften the look if appropriate. The lazy fix for "too sharp" is to just scale down to 4k or throw a slight blur at the frames. A slightly less lazy fix would be use lenses that yield a softer focus (which I assume some of the insanely expensive film lenses can deliver).

But I wasn't saying it's trivial to leverage 8k well, just that if 8k is too much to deal with in some cases, effectively reducing the resolution seems a tractable problem.

[mikeash]

What makes it difficult to mix frame rates and resolution? I would naively assume that you could just record each scene with whatever framerate and resolution you wanted, combine the whole thing into a single movie with the max resolution and framerate you used out of the bunch, and be done. For example, if you put 24fps material into a 48fps video, it still displays at 24fps.

Edit: since it's an ongoing theme in this discussion, I should point out that my "just record each scene" description is from a technical perspective only. Making it result in a nice-looking work of art is, of course, another matter entirely.

[modfodder]

Current playback technologies only playback one frame rate. yes you can mix frame rates in an edit, but they will be converted to the master frame rate of the timeline (so that 24fps footage would be converted to playback at 48fps, not it's native frame rate). Sometimes this looks fine, other times this can cause image problems.

And it's only recently that mixing frame rates in the same timeline has worked well. 5-10 yrs ago, we would have to convert the footage, typically using hardware specifically built for conversion (Teranex or Alchemist). Then came along desktop software that could do decent jobs converting. Now, if i'm cutting in Premiere or FCPX, I can just drop the footage in and the software will take care of it, usually without issue (Avid still has problems with non-native frame rates and it's recommended to convert before importing the media).

And it's been this way since playback frame rates were standardized (and automated). Projectors had no way of changing playback speed on the fly depending on what frames were projected. Television was locked into one broadcast frame rate spec (29.97 in N. America, 25 in Europe) and TVs were locked into one of those specs. Tapes and disc playback was typically locked into one in the early days, although DVD eventually allowed for multiple playback options, as does Bluray, but the hardware typically converted them for playback on 29.97 screens (pre-HD). We're still limited to what the screen can playback to some extent, the broadcast specs of 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60.

With computers and monitors we have the capability to playback multiple frame rates, if the software allows it, and that is where the current issue is. I can playback different frame rate QTs on the same screen, at the same time without issue. But there is no software (that I know of) to create or playback videos consisting of multiple frame rate videos. Game engines might be able to change playback on the fly, but I have zero knowledge of that tech.

And it would be advantageous to have tech that allowed switch on the fly playback. I'm currently consulting on a documentary that uses source footage from at least 3 frame rates (24, 25 and 29.97). And the editor is cutting in Avid, so we have to convert before import, which slows down the creative process and adds complications to the finishing process.