The pixel does the job for most digital imagery -- it sure makes for a fine shirt -- but it's not so hot for video, where growing resolutions chew up gobs of bandwidth. There may be a wiser strategy coming from the University of Bath, whose researchers have developed a more efficient approach to movie codecs. Their new format uses vectors to render footage with colored contours that demand fewer resources than a dot-by-dot approach. While vector-based rendering isn't original in itself, the researchers' method is supposedly unique in filling the gaps between the contours with the kind of visual quality a pro videographer would crave. The university team is confident enough that it's talking to major companies about using the codec for post-production tools, and sees it spreading to mobile devices where connection speeds and storage are at a premium. It could take years for vector-based video to catch on; if the technology ever upsets the pixel's reign, though, more than a few Vectrex owners may see it as poetic justice.

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Via: Popular Science

Source: University of Bath

With M. Night Shyamalan already shooting his next movie -- After Earth -- on the F65 4K camera, Sony's PR machine is going all out to assuage remaining doubters in the film industry. One of the more curious aspects of the awareness campaign is that it doesn't focus solely on the exorbitant resolution -- in fact, it gives almost equal weight to other visual promises that Sony hopes will persuade producers, directors and cinematographers to make the leap before anyone else does.

What might those eyeball treats be? Philippe Ros, a DoP hired by Sony to shoot a 4K promo film, put it succinctly at a showing we attended in London this week: "Only the first row in the cinema may notice the resolution, but I'm more interested in the colors than in the 4K." According to Ros, every terabyte that floods out of the F65 per hour of filming contains color and dynamic range info way beyond what you normally get when shooting digital. The end result? Crews on the ground can relax just that little bit more, knowing that any mundane-looking scenes can be given far greater impact later. Now, even bearing in mind that Ros couldn't have said anything bad about 4K without things getting awkward, it's still interesting that he admits to being skeptical of the resolution itself. But if others on independent shoots discover the same post-production flexibility that he did, then the push for 4K might come from filmmakers rather than those further down the food chain.

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