[Devinda Fernando]

Ha! There is usually a 6-12 month waiting list depending on the circuit. You have to pass the National Film corporation’s utterly arbitrary and capricious Censor board… No swearing, or nudity, or homosexuality… unless its in a historical context…(whatever the hell that means???) And obviously no overt political attacks against the government… Also the previous govt didn’t allow the display of Alcohol or Cigarettes, but all the previous films from 1940s to 1970s had this since they were a lot more lax on the issue… The equivalent of America’s Pre-code era.
However, being that this is a Socialist Dicta… errr, ooops, I mean Socialist ‘Democracy’, ruled by the same group of Political Elite Families since Independence from the British in 1948… If you falter at the Govt level you can easily use Political influence and circumvent the system and even jump the waiting list line. If you have no political influence you can also bribe your way into it. This is not even a secret, in fact sometimes if you didn’t bribe your way, and your film ended up sucking badly, you will be accused of bribery anyway…
There is no rule* that the film has to be in Sinhala (the Majority Language) but if its in English or Tamil you can’t hope to recover your money since no one will go to see it. (Tamils are only 3 Million of the 20 Million) and while everyone here can speak English to some degree, the movie-going audience does not go to see English language films.
(* The Govt circuit only screens Sinhala or Tamil Films)

*** And really, there is a serious opportunity for you or someone to move to the DCI. https://www.dcimovies.com/**

I have been in talks with some business investors about Digital projectors and new movie halls, but they all think too small… their mentality is that the Film industry sucks, and in order to make money they should make smaller theaters – so instead of 300 seats to scale it down to 100 seats and equip them with digital Projectors. What they fail to realize is that the industry sucks because it has too much Govt intrusion, and restrictions, AND the movies that are being made SUCK BALLS… they are cringeworthy and utterly awful… and that’s why no one goes to see them. So the first step in making the industry profitable and thriving is to create good content.
Most people (Producers) who make films here do it as some sort of Vanity project, where they get to sleep with a local famous Actress by bankrolling their next film. Some do it to launder money, you can get up to 35 Million Rupees tax free profits, No Questions Asked… which makes it a great Money laundering vessel for smugglers, drug dealers, and even government employees who get a lot of money in bribes.
The other major flaw in the system is that each theater only screens one Film at a time… and when you give your film for screening you sign a contract with the Circuit to run your film for a minimum of 50 days. So if your film ends up sucking balls, with in the first week theaters can be half empty and they play the projectors to empty film halls for upto a month sometimes. Very rarely do they yank the film from the halls so its just a huge waste of time and money for everyone. I have been banging my head on the table to get people who want to build theatres to make them larger.. or at the very least make them with multiple halls within a location, so that if one film fails then at least they can screen another at the same time and hopefully draw audiences that way… but sadly, like I said before… people think really small here, and don’t want to invest the additional capital to ‘Do it Right’ the first time.

[Devinda Fernando]

Ha! There is usually a 6-12 month waiting list depending on the circuit. You have to pass the National Film corporation’s utterly arbitrary and capricious Censor board… No swearing, or nudity, or homosexuality… unless its in a historical context…(whatever the hell that means???) And obviously no overt political attacks against the government… Also the previous govt didn’t allow the display of Alcohol or Cigarettes, but all the previous films from 1940s to 1970s had this since they were a lot more lax on the issue… The equivalent of America’s Pre-code era.
However, being that this is a Socialist Dicta… errr, ooops, I mean Socialist ‘Democracy’, ruled by the same group of Political Elite Families since Independence from the British in 1948… If you falter at the Govt level you can easily use Political influence and circumvent the system and even jump the waiting list line. If you have no political influence you can also bribe your way into it. This is not even a secret, in fact sometimes if you didn’t bribe your way, and your film ended up sucking badly, you will be accused of bribery anyway…
There is no rule* that the film has to be in Sinhala (the Majority Language) but if its in English or Tamil you can’t hope to recover your money since no one will go to see it. (Tamils are only 3 Million of the 20 Million) and while everyone here can speak English to some degree, the movie-going audience does not go to see English language films.
(* The Govt circuit only screens Sinhala or Tamil Films)

[Devinda Fernando]

Well, its a small island (Sri Lanka), and its a population of about 20 Million people. Around the country there are about 140-150 Film halls, and each one is part of 4 different main Circuits. Each hall usuallholds about 300-500 people. 3 of them are private and 1 is Government run… take a wild guess as to which one is the worst of them all? If you produce a film you would go with one of the main circuits which have about 30-70 theater halls attached. Most films go with about 35 theaters and run for about 50-100 days. For each Theater you want to screen in you have to produce a 35mm set of reels. That cost is one of most expensive costs of your overheads. Up until as recent as 5 years ago all Films here were shot on 35 mm cameras like the Arriflex 3,4, or 5. Then the Negative was developed in India and copies produced there, and then shipped back for screening. Now everything is shot on Digital – mostly Red cameras and then shipped to India for Reverse Tele-cine… and the then the reels sent back for screening. Though there is a guy here who does reverse Tele-Cine here on the island but he does not have a Tele-Cine machine… would you beleive he actually screens the digital footage onto a White projector wall, and re-records it on an Arriflex 35mm camera…then develops the negative and runs off the copies with that.

[Devinda Fernando]

Because the Movie Theaters in this country have Projectors that show film on 35mm reels.

[Devinda Fernando]

*** but regular h.264 IPB compression hinges on key frames. ***

Yeah, I know the mechanics of IPB, which is why I usually avoid using that setting. Actually the 2K RAW info is useful because I wanted to shoot a feature film, which would be shown on the Big Screen, which means I have to convert the finished product to 35mm film. For budget reasons I was hoping to get away with DSLR Equipment, but I think now after this discussion that it would be infinitely better to spend the extra money and go for the Red Camera equipment and get the 2K RAW output to work with. I would love to use 4K but my editing systems would just not be able to handle the size of the files. I was thinking about using 4K for some takes where it would save time by not having to take the Close ups and Mid shots because I could just pan and scan around the 4K frame in editing, and not lose any resolution on the final output .

Anyway this discussion has been most fruitful and I thank everyone for their input.

Cheers.

[Devinda Fernando]

Fantastic article Richard… Thanks for sharing… it will probably take me a week or more to actually digest all that info in there as its quite complicated and more scientific than I am used to.

[Devinda Fernando]

Well you certainly have a point about Noise, but I was trying to compare Apples to Apples here… That’s why I said 160GB of 1 hour of footage for each scenario… So assuming proper lighting and no Noise, then would that be the case, or does higher ISO automatically translate into less detail in the image?

[Devinda Fernando]

Wow, that was a Fantastic explanation (assuming its all true)… Thank you.

***when you increase the size of the clip by 200%, that single black pixel would be subsampled across four canvas pixels (not two, because remember it doubles in both x and y dimensions). Now you have four black pixels on a white field. ***

That also explains the last guy’s point about why the Software’s scaling calibration quadruples the number of Pixels, and not doubles it, when it comes to increases of 100% in size.

*** This process is called interpolation, and there are different algorithms that can be used for different results….

Basically, it’s the software trying to average out the values for each pixel, based on what’s around it. ***

So sticking close to your example… if we had 4 Pixels on a white canvas and those Pixels were 2 x Red and 2 x Orange, then a scale up of 50% would cause the Software to interpolate those existing pixels and create two additional pixels (now total of 6 pixels), that were a cross between the two colors? Yes/no? So in essence, you would be left with 2 x Red, 2 x Orange, and 2 x Red-Orange crossbreed Pixels – am I understanding that correctly?

*** Of course, the other factor that we’re not taking into account is the quality of your initial footage. Super clean, 4:4:4 ProRes is going to look a lot different than highly compressed 4:2:0 DSLR footage, ***

OK, that really cleared up another nagging question I had. But does H264 footage ‘JPEG’ an image? As in, when it compresses an image, does it block/lump similar or same color pixels together? Take for example your example: Instead of a black pixel on a white canvas, lets assume that the pixel is a square of 100×100 black pixels… does the H264 Codec then just create a mathematical representation of that entire square as a single X and Y coordinate and a single Color Space data point for all 10,000 pixels within that square? I guess what I’m trying to understand is how the actual ‘JPEGGING’ works in the compression?

*** Don’t you love it when the answer is “it depends?” I sure do 🙂 But knowing about all the factors definitely helps when making an educated guess. ***

No, No, I Love it… So I think I’ve learned some very important points from this:

So RAW footage (i.e. 4:4:4 ProRes) is actually far more detailed than .H264 compressed footage in terms of Pixels AS WELL AS Color Space, simply because the Pixels in H264 are ‘JPeged’ into groups to save space(Memory). So while the two images have the same Number Of Pixels on each frame, the RAW footage has more detail per pixel, whereas the H264 footage has created blocks of pixels of the same Color Space and thus lost a lot of detail.

So that being said would it be logical to assume that a RAW file, which if we take the example of REDCODE R3D (which is about 160GB per 1 hour of footage for 2K), when compared with H264, which is approx. 16GB for 1 hour of footage for 2K) – the comparable scaling for the R3D would be roughly 10 times that of the H264…? – Because the H264 has been already compressed to a tenth of the size of the RAW footage? So the visible resolution of up-scaling a RAW file to 100% of its original size, would have the same ‘look’ to the human eye, as H264 footage scaled by only 10%. Is that logical, or have I derailed?

[Devinda Fernando]

Hi Blaise,

I am outputting to the same size (1080) that it was taken on the cam, so just wanted to know the limits of how much I can push the zoom and crop on a clip without losing any resolution. I have as a practice, been also avoiding zooming in more than 10%, but was hoping to find out a more scientific or mathematical understanding of what goes on when the software zooms in on the footage.

In practice, I have on rare occasions zoomed in up to 100% on some projects for clients and they have not noticed any difference in the resolution – most likely because, like most lay people, they really would not have a trained enough eye to know the difference – but it would be good to know the exact science behind it.

I guess it all boils down to how the software actually manipulates the clip on a pixel level… or maybe even the codec level?

[Devinda Fernando]

Ah Ok… I see what you are saying… the Adobe Premiere’s Software calibration of “100%” means that it actually quadruples the size of the image… (like with 720p which is approx 900K pixels when scaled up to 1080 is said to be a 50% increase).

I was referring to the actual standard definition of up-scaling to 100% (as in, doubling the size).