When I later ran the DLP version, it was very sharp, with much more detail visible than on the the film. Naturally, a computer-rendered movie like "Ice Age" is well-suited to electronic cinema, but the appearance on film was pretty disappointing.

However, this proves a point: DLP Digital cinema looks AWSOME when taken from a digital source. Many people judge DLP based on films that were transefered to digital from a film print - in part because not many DLP movies relesed are "Digital Native." For this reason, i am realy looking forward to see AOTC, which is digitally sourced. After that, we will be able to pass more accurate judgement as to the future of DLP and Digital Cinema.

I saw Final Fantasy (which had very good film prints) in both 35mm and DLP, and the results were about the same, although the contrast was much better on film. Before that, I had seen Toy Story 2 on both film and DLP, and DLP was the clear winner, due to the fact that the film prints for Toy Story 2 were absolutely awful. I heard there were some dye-transfer prints of Toy Story 2 made, but I didn't get to see one. Perhaps that would have been better.

Statements from Lucas's people have made it sound as though they will be putting some effort into making the film prints of Ep. II as good as possible, so it will make for an interesting comparison, no doubt. Especially given the fact that Ep. II is finalized at HDTV resolution, and DLP is currently much lower than that. If the transfer is done right, the 35mm prints should actually show more detail than the DLP version.

I would also be very interested in seeing Ep. II on Kodak's full 2K resolution digital cinema system, as it will not have the 1280x1024 limitation that DLP does.

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As far as transferring digital images back to film, the ultimate quality will depend upon the quality of the input material, the resolution used, and the output device. Recording directly to the multiple duplicate negatives used for release printing costs more, but offers better quality than recording a single master positive from which the multiple duplicate negatives are made.

Here are some links to information:
http://www.cinesite.com/la/digital/background.html
http://www.cinesite.com/la/digital/technical.html
http://www.cinesite.com/CineonTech/resoultions/ResChart.html

Even today, more expensive 4K resolution is being used for scanning and recording when maximum quality is desired. For example, I've read that cinematographer Steven Poster ASC insisted that 4K be used for scanning and recording of "Stuart Little 2", even though most of the CGI and effects work would be rendered at lower resolution.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Ice Age
John Donkin, Blue Sky Studios
"Ice Age" is a fully computer graphics animated feature film from Blue Sky Studios and Twentieth Century Fox. Set against the on slought of the Ice Age, the story revolves around three characters: a woolly mammoth, a sabre-tooth tiger, and a giant sloth. Together this unlikely group of characters takes an unexpected passenger, an abandoned human baby, on a journey home. Blue Sky's propietary renderer CGIstudio(tm) is featured. Alias|Wavefront's Maya is used for modeling and animation. Nothing Real's Shake software is used for compositing.
http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=pageone&article_no=1342&page=1
http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/details/iceage.html
http://www.blueskystudios.com/

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"Using Digital Intermediate to Provide the 70mm Quality in Theatres" by Roger A. Morton, Michelle A. Maurer, G. Fielding and Christopher L. DuMont of Kodak. (Nov.6, 2001)

"Evolution of Resolution in Film Scanners" by Peter Swinson, SMPTE Journal, December 2001

"Assessing the Quality of Motion Picture Systems from Scene-to-Digital Data" by Roger A. Morton, Michelle A. Maurer and Christopher L. DuMont, SMPTE Journal February/March 2002.

Most of the 1280 x 1024 pixels end up on the screen, as a 1.5X anamorphic lens is used for 1.85:1 aspect ratio pictures, and a 1.9X anamorphic lens is used for 2.39:1 "scope" images.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

quote:

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Maybe the film was made soft on purpose to make it seem like DLP had a technical edge.

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I don't think the director would be willing to reduce the quality of the film output just to boost E-Cinema's reputation, especially knowing that the vast majority of the theater audience will see the movie on film. He would want it to look as good as possible for everyone.

I somehow suspect that the company that did the filmout was given fairly low resolution files to start with, but I don't know where one would find that information.

If so, then there's a potential dithering problem to produce both DLP and film from the same digital source. (This is presuming that they're only going digitally render things at one resolution, which makes sense since it's a really expensive process.) If the film recorder's resolution is not an integral muliple of DLP resolution, then unless the rendering is done at the product of their common factors, one of the two formats will have dithering artifacts, which will translate into lower perceived resolution...right?

Maybe this is a non-issue? Seems like it might be, at least for vertical resolution, 2K and 4K are integer multiples of 1024