RealD vs Dolby 3D?

[CINERAMAX]

Wow moment at Infocomm was 1080p video games in 3-D-PERFECT EYE CANDY.

[kevinsert]

Real3D working with special HDD's or 70mm film?

[Lee Stewart]

Originally Posted by kevinsert

Real3D working with special HDD's or 70mm film?

According to this website, there are no 70mm productions scheduled other than documentaries:

http://www.in70mm.com/

Buuuuut . . .

I would LOVE to see a 70mm 3D film made.

[Dbuudo07]

I saw Under the Sea in 70mm 3D and it was pretty amazing. Your entire field of view is filled and you're placed in the film. I loved it.

[Lee Stewart]

RealD Achieves 100% Growth Worldwide, 400% Growth in Europe in First Half of 2009

Over 8,700 Screens Contracted and Over 3,200 RealD 3D Screens Installed

http://www.dcinematoday.com/dc/PR.aspx?newsID=1479

[Dbuudo07]

I thought the 3D for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was really good. I saw it on a RealD system and it was tight, with no ghosting. I also liked how the movie and the 3D really complimented eachother and not just adding depth to the picture. There were moments where you felt you were in the adventure with the characters and felt like you were in the environment going along for a ride with them.

[ice_blu5]

I saw ice age 3D in Australia at reading cinemas with dolby 3D. The 3D is incredible in that movie. The dolby 3D is mind blowing in terms of the quality and depth. the objects really do come into the audience and into the distance. its by far the best utilised 3D to date. There is full colour and 100% no ghosting. The image was extremely bright and i have never seen a digital projector with the sharpness and clarity this one had. Dolby has really achieved a milestone in creating very real high quality 3D That feels natural and not artificially 3D.

[johnty]

Colorado got its first Dolby 3D theater in late May so I was finally able to A/B both RealD and Dobly3D over the past two days. My observations…

The film was Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Screen width was about 32’ in both theaters. I sat back about 1.5 screen heights in both auditoriums, perfectly centered. The Dolby3D theater was using a Barco. I watched the brightness level on the screen go down very slightly as the color wheel moved into position after the 2D previews. The spinning color wheel, per se, did not introduce any noticeable artifacts. The RealD theater was using a Christie. I don’t know the model number or lamp wattage of either but both seemed to be very bright for the 2D video, easily 14fl or above.

From my vantage point, the 3D was essentially perfect for both systems. No image ghosting and good depth although I thought the stereo image was slightly better with Dolby. It was also slightly sharper although I would attribute that to the Barco which seemed to have a slightly crisper image in 2D. As the end credits rolled, I walked up to the last row of each stadium theater. The credits appeared to be exactly on the screen but random artwork on each side of the letters appeared to be about 4’ in front of the screen in my normal seating position. At the back of the theater, they looked like they were much further in front of the screen with Dolby. In RealD nothing changed.

Then I walked down to about 1 screen height and to the edge of the screen. RealD had real ghosting issues. The first time I’d ever seen a double image in RealD. I’m sure it has to do with loss of polarization and the angle of light off of the silver screen. IMAX and others have produced charts of seating areas in their theaters that are not suitable for 3D viewing. Obviously, if you get too far off of center axis, the same holds true for RealD. Dolby had no ghosting problem at screen edge.

RealD also had more light loss than Dolby when the glasses were in place. Not a problem for most of the movie but in some cave scenes shadow detail, clearly visible without the glasses, disappeared with the glasses on. A brighter Christie might have fixed that.

Did Dolby3D have any issues? Absolutely. Since they fiddle with the color spectrum to achieve 3D, I was most interested to see if it changed the color of the movie in any manner. It certainly does. Ice Age is an ideal movie for an A/B because there is a lot of pure white in it; snow, ice, etc. Without glasses, snow-capped mountains look perfectly white. With RealD glasses they were still white although a bit subdued because of the gray filters. With Dolby glasses they took on a very slight hue of red/orange. If the viewer weren’t lifting their glass out of the way dozens of times a minute as I was the color shift probably wouldn’t be as apparent.

Most astonishing, though, was the green spectrum. There’s a point in the movie where everyone is surrounded by a dense green fog. In Dolby it looked like pea-green soup. In RealD it had more of the hue of a well maintained lawn of grass.

Supposedly, Dolby applies color correction in real time to the PJ video feed to compensate for the color shift introduced by the color wheel and the filtering on the lenses of the glasses. This is done with “look up” tables to ensure compliance with DCI color parameters. If that be true, some of the tables need new numbers.

If Dolby can ever achieve true whites, and get the rest of the color spectrum correct, I think it would be the best (passive) 3D system. As it stands, the color shift is the deal breaker for me. The hot setup would be a RealD system on a Barco PJ. Since most RealD systems in Denver are Christies, it will take some looking to find such a combination. If I find it I can do an apples to apples A/B. Until then, game point goes to RealD.

[CINERAMAX]

Jonhnty,

Great writeup. There is an advantage in sharpness and MTF on the Dolby; comes from the wheel being placed in between the lamp and the light engine where it does not affect ansi contrast-a proxy for MTF. The encoding for Movies is done by the studios, is not real time. There may be an adjustment to white fields that was not performed, as other demonstrations of the format have not shown the hue issue. Thank you for bringing it up.

[johnty]

Peter,

Thanks for the compliment. Quite right, the Dolby color wheel is before the optical path. I would infer, then, that if the Barco didn’t have a color wheel but instead a RealD ZScreen at the end of the optical path, that the ANSI contrast and MTF would both be affected? Also true that RealD does ghost busting encoding before the movie is sent to the theater. But from your previous post I don’t think Dolby does any pre-encoding.

Originally Posted by CINERAMAX

Dolby 3-D Article

In this link you provided last May in this thread, Jim Slater talks with the Dolby3D folks about some of the technical details. I’ve re-read the article several times and I quote a few lines:

“However, the Dolby 3D system has been designed so that a standard ‘unprocessed’ 3D movie file can be used, with any additional processing required for the 3D version being applied in real time in the Dolby Digital Cinema server during playback. Effectively, a process of compensation for any effects of the filtering on left and right eye images is performed in the server, and an additional 1U high control rack is used to synchronize the operation of the filter with the projector and server.” (Emphasis added.)

“I asked how they ensure that all the necessary DCI colour parameters are complied with, knowing how stringently DCI applies its specifications, although there isn’t yet a compliance testing procedure in place, and was told that there are agreed reference ‘look up’ tables which are used to ensure compliance.”

I’m sure that thousands of eyeballs tested the Dolby system before it was released and if other demos have not shown hue issues, then something was wrong with the theater’s Dolby3D equipment. Yet, it was a brand new install (less than 45 days) and without the glasses the snow-capped mountains were white (D6500, give or take), with the glasses they weren’t the same color.

It would be interesting to hear from any Dolby people reading this thread as to a possible cause. I think Dolby3D is the better system but in at least one theater the artifacts are too apparent to ignore.

John

[CINERAMAX]

I stand corrected Jonhnty. SPOKE TO DOLBY It is a simple adjustment of the crosstalk cancellation value . This is built into the dp-2000 or in the dp3000 it is outside the box in Dolby's processor, essentially the wheel from the "other side" is showing".

Dolby is licensing a Variant of the IDC superflex to encode Dolby 3-D for 120hz double flash content to upconvert to triple flash and play on DCI projectors.

http://www.datacast.com/Media/Conten..._ProCinema.pdf

One of these new realtime encoders will be needed if you want to do gaming 3D (A KILLER APP) on a DCI, also if you want to play BD3D which will most likely not be triple flash (although we sure are hoping to eliminate conversions).

[Terry Montlick]

Originally Posted by GXM

I see a lot of bad info about this, so I just wanted to post some fact and a little opinion. I will just give some technical details about the two systems. ...

Thanks for the excellent explanation. I sat through an overly long and yet superficial SMPTE presentation on 3D projection systems, and your info was more detailed and concise.

My 2 cents on the future of 3D: It's all about the acceptance of the glasses. In the early 50's (even allowing for the host of bad movies and the use of red/green separation filters as a cheapie and headachy alternative), I think that people just couldn't put up with having to wear special glasses. Now, folks stick all kinds of technological stuff on their person: earbuds, electronic fruit (BlackBerrys), etc.

- Terry

[CINERAMAX]

Today I saw Ice Age 3D- a much more entertaining flick than the first 2 combined, the 3D was almost as good as MVA, very very close in portraying a natural world view with very little popping off the screen, the action takes place in a virtual space that ends 9 feet in front of the screen to a horizon in the hundreds of feet deep..

This is similar to MVA and the story is kept entertaining as well but what makes MVA trump IceAge 3D is the CINEMASCOPE aspect ratio (not so in Imax which sorto sucked).

I know everyone is saying Avatar this and Avatar that but strictly from the previews seems to me that G Force is going to be the game changer in live action 3D, with some risks taken in the coming at ya aspect of things.