Better Call Saul - Prequel to Breaking Bad
Discussion
Following on from myself and a few others commenting on how stunningly good the picture quality is to watch, I think I've cracked it.
Last night, I cranked it up onto a projector with a 105 inch screen. I've never even streamed onto it before as standard definition TV is pretty unwatchable.
I have a measly 2.5 meg rural internet connection, and it's got 5.1 surround encoded, and it still looks stunning. It looks better than Sky HD and BBC HD, and is not far off being blu-ray quality. I'd say closer to blu-ray than Sky HD... which is astonishing.
Going back to what I mentioned previously, I believed that this is a watershed moment as projects like this will be filmed primarily with streaming quality in mind. I've noted two things:
Firstly, Breaking Bad was shot on film. That's fine for TV, but when you're streaming, a lot of data is taken up capturing the film 'grain' for no clarity benefit. I am certain BCS is shot digitally, probably at 4K.
Secondly, this is a situation where the 'art' of filmmaking is somewhat a slave to technology. If you notice film-geek things, knowing the following might annoy you, so I'll spoilerise it as once it is seen, it can't be unseen:
95% of the shots are shot with the camera absolutely still, and the shots are long without too many short 'cuts'. This cuts down on the bitrate needed as they only have to encode the 'changes' from frame to frame. That's why it looks so good, it's not being compressed as much as other streams. Where there is a moving shot it's almost like they've been 'saving up' the data to make an impact and it still streams in HD, as the way Netflix streams it downloads ahead of itself.
But you really don't notice it. I've not seen House of Cards, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll use the same method to be able to stream it in 4K. Although they will of course use some compression, the real skill is in planning the camera work.
All good news for getting stuff to stream in 4K!
Last night, I cranked it up onto a projector with a 105 inch screen. I've never even streamed onto it before as standard definition TV is pretty unwatchable.
I have a measly 2.5 meg rural internet connection, and it's got 5.1 surround encoded, and it still looks stunning. It looks better than Sky HD and BBC HD, and is not far off being blu-ray quality. I'd say closer to blu-ray than Sky HD... which is astonishing.
Going back to what I mentioned previously, I believed that this is a watershed moment as projects like this will be filmed primarily with streaming quality in mind. I've noted two things:
Firstly, Breaking Bad was shot on film. That's fine for TV, but when you're streaming, a lot of data is taken up capturing the film 'grain' for no clarity benefit. I am certain BCS is shot digitally, probably at 4K.
Secondly, this is a situation where the 'art' of filmmaking is somewhat a slave to technology. If you notice film-geek things, knowing the following might annoy you, so I'll spoilerise it as once it is seen, it can't be unseen:
95% of the shots are shot with the camera absolutely still, and the shots are long without too many short 'cuts'. This cuts down on the bitrate needed as they only have to encode the 'changes' from frame to frame. That's why it looks so good, it's not being compressed as much as other streams. Where there is a moving shot it's almost like they've been 'saving up' the data to make an impact and it still streams in HD, as the way Netflix streams it downloads ahead of itself.
But you really don't notice it. I've not seen House of Cards, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll use the same method to be able to stream it in 4K. Although they will of course use some compression, the real skill is in planning the camera work.
All good news for getting stuff to stream in 4K!
davepoth said:
Yazar said:
Was good to see a swimming pool again!
The ending bit was a few seconds two long as they pulled each way, as you knew what the bag contained.
I'm pretty sure that making that bit a little bit too long was a conscious choice. The attention to detail on things like that is acute - like getting the cardboard tube out of the roll of kitchen towel. There was no narrative point to that at all (he could have grabbed an empty one from a bin), but it was a fantastic few seconds of showing how things work in Saul/Jimmy's head.The ending bit was a few seconds two long as they pulled each way, as you knew what the bag contained.
Personally, I think the point of making that bit a little bit too long was that we were supposed to be shouting the obvious thing at Saul/Jimmy, since he was so excited about not getting killed by Nacho he wasn't thinking about what he was doing.
Edited by davepoth on Tuesday 17th February 23:48
JustinP1 said:
Following on from myself and a few others commenting on how stunningly good the picture quality is to watch, I think I've cracked it.
Last night, I cranked it up onto a projector with a 105 inch screen. I've never even streamed onto it before as standard definition TV is pretty unwatchable.
I have a measly 2.5 meg rural internet connection, and it's got 5.1 surround encoded, and it still looks stunning. It looks better than Sky HD and BBC HD, and is not far off being blu-ray quality. I'd say closer to blu-ray than Sky HD... which is astonishing.
Going back to what I mentioned previously, I believed that this is a watershed moment as projects like this will be filmed primarily with streaming quality in mind. I've noted two things:
Firstly, Breaking Bad was shot on film. That's fine for TV, but when you're streaming, a lot of data is taken up capturing the film 'grain' for no clarity benefit. I am certain BCS is shot digitally, probably at 4K.
Secondly, this is a situation where the 'art' of filmmaking is somewhat a slave to technology. If you notice film-geek things, knowing the following might annoy you, so I'll spoilerise it as once it is seen, it can't be unseen:
95% of the shots are shot with the camera absolutely still, and the shots are long without too many short 'cuts'. This cuts down on the bitrate needed as they only have to encode the 'changes' from frame to frame. That's why it looks so good, it's not being compressed as much as other streams. Where there is a moving shot it's almost like they've been 'saving up' the data to make an impact and it still streams in HD, as the way Netflix streams it downloads ahead of itself.
But you really don't notice it. I've not seen House of Cards, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll use the same method to be able to stream it in 4K. Although they will of course use some compression, the real skill is in planning the camera work.
All good news for getting stuff to stream in 4K!
I've noticed Samsara has recently been added to Netflix, pretty sure that was filmed in 70mm 4k and that looked stunning on Blu Ray. Be interesting to see how it looks on Netflix Last night, I cranked it up onto a projector with a 105 inch screen. I've never even streamed onto it before as standard definition TV is pretty unwatchable.
I have a measly 2.5 meg rural internet connection, and it's got 5.1 surround encoded, and it still looks stunning. It looks better than Sky HD and BBC HD, and is not far off being blu-ray quality. I'd say closer to blu-ray than Sky HD... which is astonishing.
Going back to what I mentioned previously, I believed that this is a watershed moment as projects like this will be filmed primarily with streaming quality in mind. I've noted two things:
Firstly, Breaking Bad was shot on film. That's fine for TV, but when you're streaming, a lot of data is taken up capturing the film 'grain' for no clarity benefit. I am certain BCS is shot digitally, probably at 4K.
Secondly, this is a situation where the 'art' of filmmaking is somewhat a slave to technology. If you notice film-geek things, knowing the following might annoy you, so I'll spoilerise it as once it is seen, it can't be unseen:
95% of the shots are shot with the camera absolutely still, and the shots are long without too many short 'cuts'. This cuts down on the bitrate needed as they only have to encode the 'changes' from frame to frame. That's why it looks so good, it's not being compressed as much as other streams. Where there is a moving shot it's almost like they've been 'saving up' the data to make an impact and it still streams in HD, as the way Netflix streams it downloads ahead of itself.
But you really don't notice it. I've not seen House of Cards, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll use the same method to be able to stream it in 4K. Although they will of course use some compression, the real skill is in planning the camera work.
All good news for getting stuff to stream in 4K!
Miguel Alvarez said:
Yazar said:
I have come across your previous work
Lol. Quality. Way too much time on their hands
Gassing Station | TV, Film, Video Streaming & Radio | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff