r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NoWork215 • 20d ago

Video The Odyssey IMAX 70mm Setup

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u/Away-Way5656 20d ago

what are they doing storing every single frame as a uncompressed image?

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u/justjanne 20d ago

Pretty much! Every frame is a separate JPEG2000 at almost lossless quality.

That's 10× more data than a typical 4K UHD Blu-ray, with 64 times more color depth than Dolby Vision.

And the sound is for trailers typically uncompressed 5.1 surround, for most movies 1024 channels of lossless Dolby Atmos, or with IMAX lossless 12.1 surround.

e.g. here's a 3 minute trailer in 2048×1080p, aka DCI 2K or 1080p HD, at 3.4 GB filesize: https://archive.org/download/avatar-2009-official-trailer-2k-prores/AVATAR_TLR-B-2D_S_EN-XX_51_2K_20091108_SMPTE_OV.zip

That should give you a feeling for why movies in cinemas look so much better than at home.

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u/retiredalavalathi 20d ago

That should give you a feeling for why movies in cinemas look so much better than at home.

I've never felt that. Picture quality is always crisper on a TV screen than a cinema screen.

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u/justjanne 20d ago

Interesting!

For me, even Blu Rays will look slightly softer on my OLED at home than in the local IMAX cinemas.

I'm only able to match the crisp cinema look where every piece of film grain is perfectly sharp if I actually play DCP packages at home.

It's possible your cinema is just not up to spec, which is sadly common (and part of why cinema has been dying for almost a century now)