Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pupdogg 2312 days ago
The highest resolution LED panel pixel pitch I've seen to date is 0.7mm...wouldn't this result in a lower resolution capture of the projected background? Specifically, when they're trying to shoot movies at or above 4K range? Also, how do they cope with the scan rate of the background video being played back to sync with the camera recording the footage?
3 comments

In some photos, you can see that from the camera's POV, the area around the actors is displayed on LED as green screen so the actors can be masked out. Then, a higher resolution background is composited in. Thus, the original LED serves to accurately light the scene to reflect the background but not always to actually be the background.
This makes more sense!
One of the details from the article is that using anamorphic lenses essentially treats the camera sensor as if it is larger than it actually is, which reduces the effective depth of field.

If you look carefully at the backgrounds in Mandalorian scenes, a lot of the time, they are slightly soft (out of focus)--which hides the pitch of the LED wall by expanding each LED point into larger, overlapping circles of confusion. To be clear, that softness is a physical effect of the camera lens, not a digital effect on the wall, so it can be captured by the camera sensor up to any resolution you want.

> Also, how do they cope with the scan rate of the background video being played back to sync with the camera recording the footage?

In the article they say the latency is about half a frame, which they handled by using slow camera moves--which conveniently is similar to how the original Star Wars films were shot.

If you're talking about the refresh rate of the LEDs, I believe those can be cranked up way higher than the frame rate of the camera, which was likely 24 or maybe 30 frames per second to give that cinematic feel.

Depending on your viewing distance, the pixel pitch of 2.84mm is practically a retina display if you look at it 10m away.