HDTV and the Future of Entertainment/ film & video/feb99
Roundtable Participants...
Kim Aubry, vice president of engineering and technology,
American Zoetrope
Emory Cohen, CEO, LaserPacific Media Corp.
Kathy Gramecy, Artists Rights Foundation
Lou Levinson, colorist, Post Logic
Don Miskowich, vice president of business development,
Sony Pictures High Definition Center
Barry Nulman, president, The Post Group Westside
Steve Poster, ASC
Horace Scott, vice president of engineering operations, KCET
John Sprung, director of technology, television postproduction, Paramount Pictures Television
Michael Zakula, television segment manager, Eastman Kodak
Digital Television is obviously here or at least hanging out in a holding pattern somewhere near here, patiently waiting for a few new receivers (or converters) to invite it in. But what about the signal's high-end format, the species dubbed High Definition? Will HDTV turn out to be the ultimate uninvited guest available but unwanted due to the amount of precious bandwidth it eats up? Or will HDTV prove the answer to every broadcaster's prayer, a finely tuned signal so visually appealing that it actually draws viewers away from their computers and back to their television sets?
To explore the possible futures of this wayward super-class, the editors of FILM & VIDEO invited experts from the fields of broadcast, postproduction and cinematography to participate in a roundtable discussion. Hosted by Kodak executive Michael Zakula at the company's Hollywood campus, this often heated debate revealed that, although the HD picture may look crystal clear, even the most well informed fortune tellers find its future cloudy at best.
FILM&VIDEO: HDTV took to the air this fall with CBS's two NFL broadcasts, KCET's documentary Chihuly Over Venice, an episode of Chicago Hope and the Rose Parade, to name a few. Whether or not any consumers, other than those invited to special events at their local electronics stores, were able to watch these airings is another matter. Assuming that HD flies and actually becomes a part of the American television viewing lifestyle, how will the production and delivery of HD impact your work?
Steve Poster: First off, could we challenge that assumption? I don't see any reason for broadcasters to be economically interested in HD or any other enlarged format unless there's an installed base of receivers. And it doesn't seem to be something the public is really interested in.
Emory Cohen: I think HD will happen because of competitive forces. On the supply side, once Home Box Office, for example, starts to broadcast HD, then those people who are after their audience are going to say, "Gee, even though it's a small fraction today, we can't afford to give it up to HBO." On the demand side, the consumer side, there is absolutely no reason for anybody to be interested in HD until they see it.
John Sprung: There are really three things that have to happen before we'll see a turnover to HD. First, the consumer electronics manufacturers have to stop milking the early adopters and produce something that people can afford. Second, the networks have to put enough product on the air to entice people to buy sets. And third, we have to resolve the must-carry issue and determine that the cable companies will pass HD along to their subscribers.
Don Miskowich: We also have lots to overcome in terms of properly preparing the source material for broadcast. I've been led to believe that the changes in color correction won't be very large, but I see that problems such as tracking 3/2 pulldown in pictures and breaking away to commercials and going back into a 3/2 cycle is a very tough order of business.
Lou Levinson: That may be the simplest part because, in theory, we can hope that our friends at SMPTE will get us a serial digital stream so that the next generation of converters will be able to read it on the fly. But the minute you mention that we don't have to color-correct too much to make it work, I worry — especially when it comes to issues of compression. As we go from HD to SD [standard definition], the color space changes.
Poster: When the ASC was lobbying for reasonable standards, we were hoping that there would be a header-descriptor that would lock in the color space all the way to the home. Unfortunately, that did not happen. So we are very, very worried about all the conversions that are going to go on, about the rights of artists and what we're going to see over the air.
Kathy Gramecy: It has even become a subject of discussion in Congress with what is called the WYPO Treaty, or the Digital Millennium Act, that just passed. This act brought up a lot of talk of encryption and how to protect films as they become easier and easier to manipulate digitally. We managed to keep the rights of the copyright holders at least peripherally protected through encoding, encryption, watermark or some kind of identification on the original product. But getting back to what you said, Steve, I think the question on the table should be about the rights of the public to know what they're watching, to know whether the product has been manipulated from its original form.
Kim Aubry: I think that's really important. We need to promote and publicize the fact that to watch a movie in its most enjoyable form, the film needs to be watched in the aspect ratio it was shot in.
Gramecy: I'm glad you brought that up because we're actually launching a consumer awareness campaign to do exactly that right now. Our goal is to inform consumers about the choices available to them.
Aubry: I'm pleased that there's such concern, but at the same time it seems a little ironic. The way films are edited for content, form and time slot for television presentation is an abomination. I almost want to say, how much worse could it get?
Gramecy: I'm not just talking about television. I'm assuming that we're talking about the Internet, where anyone anywhere in the world at any time could pull down your product and alter it.
Poster: We are talking about a paradigm shift here in terms of the delivery of entertainment and images. I read an article about a sampling of people who have access to the Web. Forty-three percent of those people said they watch far less television now than before they had the Internet.
Barry Nulman: There's debate over that, but I don't think people who sit in a chair all day long in front of a computer monitor are going to come home and sit in front of another one. I've done that most of my day today, and I'm not interested in going home and watching my computer.
Cohen: The computer is why we need High Definition. People in this industry are in the future business. Our customers need to make a product today that they can sell five years from now. They have to ask, is the thing I'm making today going to be competitive with the other guy's thing five years from today?
Miskowich: We need to put something on the shelf from which we can derive anything that a customer asks for in the future — a master that I can make a PAL out of, an HD 720p or 1080i.
FILM & VIDEO: But what will that one thing be?
Levinson: Today you finish on film. As much as I get into virtual telecine discussions with people, we are not currently technically able to effectively manufacture material at a level that allows us to hit all these targets.
Cohen: It would be very difficult and impractical to finish episodic television in film today.
Levinson: Oh, I agree.
Cohen: Today the highest quality single object to put on the shelf for episodic purposes, we believe, is 24 fps 1080p — whether it's recorded on tape, segmented, or on tape progressive doesn't make any difference. Sprung: That's another side fight, segmented versus progressive.
Cohen: But that doesn't matter. A 24p videotape on the shelf in 1080 is, at this point, the best object we can make today. Is it the best object we are ever going to be able to make? No.
Sprung: Actually, it's the best object we will be able to make eight to ten months from now. It's not the best object we can make today because we can't quite make it today.
Cohen: When I say today, I say for the beginning of the 1999-2000 season.
Miskowich: John, when you transfer a feature film to 1080i, what you're recording is a progressive image.
Sprung: Almost.
Miskowich: And you can convert back to 24 frames progressive by throwing out the extra field in the 3/2 cycle.
Sprung: For an interlaced display there is one caveat. You have to soften it enough to get rid of the flicker.
Levinson: Now that's not true. You rely on the display master to do the softening. In terms of being able to make 1080i and 1080p back and forth technically, that's some months away.
Cohen: But there wouldn't be any reason to deliver 1080p.
Poster: And what will the refresh rate be at progressive 24?
Cohen: It's an IP. It's not intended for consumption. It's an intermediate not intended to ever be seen, projected or consumed.
Poster: Can we talk a little more about this, because we jumped right into 24 frame image capture. To whose advantage is it to consider acquisition on tape? It certainly isn't to my advantage, and it won't be for many, many years.
Levinson: I agree. I don't see electronic image systems on the capture level catching up yet.
Poster: As each generation of video chip gets better, film gets better. Michael Zakula: As a company, we've invested about a billion dollars in the ‘90s to date on various film products and capture products, but at the same time we're also looking at digital and where we'll go from here.
Horace Scott: I have a question for those of you in the film industry. Is there going to be a day soon, say in five or six years, when we're going to see electronic cinema with HDTV projectors?
Aubry: Yes. I worked my way through college as a union projectionist, and it's been the bane of my existence ever since to go into an ordinary cinema. But they're getting better, and I applaud Kodak, THX and others for their efforts. The economics for exhibitors and distributors are complicated and I'm not certain they will finance conversion to electronic cinema, but there are other deep pockets willing to do that.
Cohen: Everything is possible. This preparation for HD we're going through right now is a wrenching agony. It's not an anything-goes proposition.
Aubry: What doesn't go?
Cohen: How about different frame rates, for starters?
Sprung: Does that mean that HD really becomes an interim format?
Cohen: Everything is an interim format, but 24 fps is not what's broken.
FILM & VIDEO: What's broken?
Cohen: The image quality of NTSC is broken, and HDTV can improve that. Will HDTV make it perfect? No, but it can improve it substantially. There will be a new set of issues having to do with compression we'll all have to learn about. Frame rate is not broken. Aspect ratio, who knows whether it's broken or not. If you want a near-term thing to be concerned about, it's the raising of a very recent old issue — so we make a product in HD. Do we deliver one tape or two? That sounds like such a mundane question, but, boy, is it dynamite. As soon as you produce for HD in 16x9, somebody has to decide if you take a center slice or you pan and scan or tilt and scan to get the 4x3. And if the network says they want only one tape, that says it's going to be a mechanical slice out of the center. If they say they want two tapes, who is going to decide what the 4x3 tape looks like?
Scott: In doing that re-composition, do you use much of the frame that you have above and below the 1.85:1?
Poster: I tend to do a lot of blowing up.
Cohen: Here's a practical question. Shall I include this on the postproduction budget as a separate transfer for the downconversion with some time allotted for pan and scan?
Poster: If you're asking me, of course.
Cohen: Well, if you feel strongly about that, then there is a very current issue to tackle. It's not big dough, but it isn't going to be in the budget. Anything that's not in the budget doesn't happen.
Levinson: If I'm going to deliver two tapes, then the question becomes, to the gentleman from KCET, are you going to provide two tape machines to play it back?
Scott: No. I mean short-term, no. And let me give you a perspective of the broadcasters. We have aired Dr. Zhivago in its native format letter-boxed and we have aired it 4x3. We got complaints after each airing from both factions. Recently we ran an HDTV 16x9 program, Chihuly Over Venice, and I don't remember any complaints coming into the engineering department about the tops and bottoms being cut off. It's a question that we really don't know the answer to. We have heard people say that's room we can use to do a promotion over in the corner. The commercial broadcasters would love that, but then the artists would say they don't want a Coca-Cola logo out there taking away from the program content. Even though that program is sponsored by Coke.
Sprung: So far there are two networks that have given us delivery requirements. ABC requires two tapes and CBS will allow you to send two tapes if you want to and if you have two different compositions, so it looks like we're heading into a two-tape delivery.
FILM & VIDEO: It appears that a good summary of this discussion is that no matter how clear HD is, its future is still fuzzy. Does anyone think that ratings for television could possibly go up due to an HD broadcast?
Aubry: I have to answer that with a question because I look around this room and count five or six people who are doing HD work at their facilities every day. Is there a single person here who has an HD receiver in their home?
Sprung: No, we're not in Orange County. The joke is that there are three transmitters in the Los Angeles market and one receiver. There was actually one sold in Orange County someplace.
Levinson: I can take a look at an NTSC receiver from across the room and see the spaces between the lines. In context, I think the answer is, at its best, HDTV will slow down broadcast's current erosion of viewers.
kipinet.com |
