Digital cinema

Digital cinema refers to the use of digital technology to distribute and project motion pictures. A movie can be distributed via hard drives, optical disks or satellite and projected using a digital projector instead of a conventional film projector. Digital cinema is distinct from high-definition television and in particular, is not dependent on using television or HDTV standards, aspect ratios, or frame rates. Digital projectors capable of 2K resolution began deploying in 2005, and since 2006, the pace has accelerated. (2K refers to images with 2048 horizontal pixel resolution.)

Technology

To match or improve the theater experience of movie audiences, a digital cinema system must provide high-quality image and sound. Additionally, theater managers require server controls for managing and displaying content in multiple theaters, and studios want their content encrypted with secure delivery, playback, and reporting of play times to the distribution company.

Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a joint venture of the six major studios, published a system specification for digital cinema. Briefly, the specification calls for picture encoding using the ISO/IEC 15444-1 "JPEG2000" (.jp2) standard and use of the CIE XYZ color space at 12 bits per component encoded with a 2.6 gamma applied at projection, and audio using the "Broadcast Wave" (.wav) format at 24 bits and 48 kHz or 96 kHz sampling, controlled by an XML-format Composition Playlist, into an MXF-compliant file at a maximum data rate of 250 Mbit/s. Details about encryption, key management, and logging are all discussed in the specification as are the minimum specifications for the projectors employed including the color gamut, the contrast ratio and the brightness of the image. While much of the specification codifies work that had already been ongoing in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the specification is important in establishing a content owner framework for the distribution and security of first-release motion picture content.

Digital cinema conforming to the DCI Standard is referred to within the film industry as D-Cinema while all other forms of digital cinema are referred to as E-Cinema. Thus, while D-Cinema is a defined standard, though one that is still partly being framed by SMPTE as of 2007, E-Cinema may be anything, ranging from a DVD player connected to a consumer projector to something that approaches the quality of D-Cinema without conforming to some of the standards. Even D-Cinema itself has evolved over time before the DCI standards were framed. However, the current DCI standards were made with the intention of standing the test of time, much like 35 mm film which has evolved but still retained compatibility over a substantial part of a century.

In addition to DCI's work, the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) released its Digital Cinema System Requirements. The document addresses the requirements of digital cinema systems from the operational needs of the exhibitor, focusing on areas not addressed by DCI, including access for the visually impaired and hearing impaired, workflow inside the cinema, and equipment interoperability. In particular, NATO's document details requirements for the Theatre Management System (TMS), the governing software for digital cinema systems within a theatre complex, and provides direction for the development of security key management systems. As with DCI's document, NATO's document is also important to the SMPTE standards effort.

Digital capture

Further information: [[:digital cinematography]]

As of 2007 the most common acquisition medium for digitally projected features is 35 mm film scanned and processed at 2K (2048×1080) or 4K (4096×2160) resolution via digital intermediate. Most digital features to date have been shot at 1920x1080 HD resolution using cameras such as the Sony CineAlta, Panavision Genesis or Thomson Viper. New cameras such as the Arriflex D-20 can capture 2K resolution images, and the Red Digital Cinema Camera Company's Red One can record 4K redcode *RAW. The marketshare of 2K projection in digital cinemas is over 98%. Currently in development are other cameras capable of recording 4K RAW, such as Dalsa Corporation's Origin, and cameras capable of recording 5K *RAW, such as the RED EPIC, and cameras capable of recording 3K *RAW (for budget filmmakers) such as the RED SCARLET. (Raw redcode is a proprietary wavelet compression scheme offered on the redone camera. It can be defined further on user sites such at reduser, but is not by definition RAW, and does potentially contain compression artifacts.)

Digital post-production

Further information: [[:digital intermediate]]

In the post-production process, camera-original film negatives (the film that physically ran through the camera) are scanned into a digital format on a scanner or high-resolution telecine. Data from digital motion picture cameras may be converted to a convenient image file format for work in a facility. All of the files are 'conformed' to match an edit list created by the film editor, and are then color corrected under the direction of the film's staff. The end result of post-production is a digital intermediate used to record the motion picture to film and/or for the digital cinema release.

Digital mastering

When all of the sound, picture, and data elements of a production have been completed, they may be assembled into a Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM) which contains all of the digital material needed for projection. The images and sound are then compressed, encrypted, and packaged to form the Digital Cinema Package (DCP).

Digital cinema fulfillment

Technicolor, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., XDC, and Arts Alliance Media are leading companies in digital motion picture fulfillment. Other companies that engage in digital fulfillment include Kodak, Ascent Media, and Dolby.

Digital projection

There are currently two types of projectors for digital cinema. Early DLP projectors, which were deployed primarily in the U.S., used limited 1280×1024 resolution or the equivalent of 1.3 MP (megapixels). They are still widely used for pre-show advertising but not usually for feature presentations. The DCI specification for digital projectors calls for three levels of playback to be supported: 2K (2048×1080) or 2.2 MP at 24 or 48 frames per second, and 4K (4096×2160) or 8.85 MP at 24 frames per second.

Three manufacturers have licensed the DLP Cinema technology developed by Texas Instruments (TI): Christie Digital Systems, Barco, and NEC. Christie, long established in traditional film projector technology, is the maker of the CP2000 line of projectors—the most widely deployed platform globally (approximately 5,500 units in total). Barco launched the DP-series of 2K DCI-compliant Digital cinema projectors; next to this Barco designs and develops visualization products for a variety of selected professional markets. NEC manufactures the Starus NC2500S, NC1500C and NC800C 2K projectors for large, medium and small screen respectively and the Starus Digital Cinema Server system, as well as other equipment to connect PCs, analog/digital tape decks and satellite receivers, DVD, and off-air broadcast, etc. for pre-show and special presentations. While NEC is a relative newcomer to Digital Cinema, Christie is the main player in the U.S. and Barco takes the lead in Europe and Asia. In addition Digital Projection Incorporated (DPI) designed and sold a few DLP Cinema units when TI's 2K technology first debuted but then abandoned the D-Cinema market while continuing to offer DLP-based projectors for non-cinema purposes. Although based on the same 2K TI "light engine" as those of the major players they are so rare as to be virtually unknown in the industry. As of January, 2009, there are more than 6,000 DLP-based Digital Cinema systems installed worldwide, of which 80% are located in North America.

The other technology is made by Sony and is labeled "SXRD" technology. The projectors, the SRXR210 and SRXR220, offer 4096x2160 (4K) resolution and produce four times the number of pixels of 2K projection, yet Sony's systems are priced competitively with the lower resolution 2048x1080 (2K) or 2.2 MP (megapixels) DLP projectors.

Other manufacturers have been developing digital projector technology, but these have not yet been deployed into motion picture theaters and are not commercially available in versions that conform to the DCI specification.

Live broadcasting to movie theaters

Digital cinemas can deliver live broadcasts from performances or events. For example, there are regular {{#invoke:Metropolitan_Opera|Met_broadcasts_to_movie_theaters|live broadcasts to movie theaters of Metropolitan Opera performances}}.

Recent developments

In February 2005, Arts Alliance Media was selected to roll out the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network (DSN), a $20M contract to install and operate Europe’s largest 2K digital cinema network. By March 2007, 230 of the 241 screens had been installed on schedule, with the remaining 11 to be installed later in 2007 when cinemas have completed building works or construction.

In China, an E-Cinema System called "dMs" was established on June 2005, and is used in over 15,000 screens spread across China's 30 provinces. dMS estimates that the system will expand to 40,000 screens in 2009.

Chicken Little from Disney, with its experimental release of the film in digital 3D, increased the number of projectors using the 2K format. Several digital 3D films surfaced in 2006 and several prominent filmmakers have committed to making their next productions in stereo 3D.

By early 2006, Access Integrated Technologies (AccessIT) had announced agreements with nearly all of the major film studios and several exhibitors that enable the company to roll-out its end-to-end digital cinema systems.

In mid 2006, about 400 theaters have been equipped with 2K digital projectors with the number increasing every month.

In August 2006, the Malayalam digital movie Moonnamathoral was distributed via satellite to cinemas; thus becoming the first Malayalam digital film to be so distributed. This was done using the end-to-end digital cinema system developed by Singapore based DG2L Technologies.

The UK is home to Europe's first DCI-compliant fully digital multiplex cinemas. Odeon Hatfield and Odeon Surrey Quays (London) have a total of 18 digital screens and were both launched on Friday 9 February 2007.

As of March 2007, with the release of Disney's Meet the Robinsons, about 600 screens have been equipped with 2K digital projectors that feature Real D Cinema's stereoscopic 3D technology, marketed under the Disney Digital 3-D brand.

In June 2007, Arts Alliance Media announced the first European commercial digital cinema VPF agreements (with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures).

As of July 2007, there are some cinemas in Singapore showing digital 4K films to public using Sony's 4K digital projector. They are located at Golden Village Cinema in Vivocity (Hall 11), Eng Wah Cinema in Suntec (Hall 3), Shaw Cinema in Bugis (Hall 1 & 3) and at Cathay Cineplex (Hall 7).

In September 2007, Muvico Theaters Rosemont 18 in Rosemont, Illinois became the first theater in North America to have Sony's 4K digital projectors for all 18 screens.

By October 2007, DG2L Technologies was reported to have supplied 1500 Digital Cinema Systems to UFO Moviez Ltd. in India and Europe.

As of October 2007, there are over 5,000 DLP-based Digital Cinema Systems installed.

In March 2009 AMC Theatres announced that it closed on a $315 million deal with Sony to replace all of its movie projectors with 4k digital projectors starting in the second quarter of 2009 and completing in 2012.

Economics

Savings in distribution

Digital distribution of movies has the potential to save money for film distributors. A single film print can cost around US$1200 (or $30,000 for a 1-time print of an 80-minute feature), so making 4,000 prints for a wide-release movie might cost $5 million. In contrast, at the maximum 250 megabit-per-second data rate (as defined by DCI for digital cinema), a typical feature-length movie could fit comfortably on an off the shelf 300 GB hard drive—which sell for as little as $40 (retail price, volume prices are even lower) and can even be returned to the distributor for reuse after a movie's run. With several hundred movies distributed every year, industry savings could potentially reach $1 billion or more.

Alternative content

An added incentive for exhibitors is the ability to show alternative content such as live special events, sports, pre-show advertising and other digital or video content. Some low-budget films that would normally not have a theatrical release because of distribution costs might be shown in smaller engagements than the typical large release studio pictures. The cost of duplicating a digital "print" is very low, so adding more theaters to a release has a small additional cost to the distributor. Movies that start with a small release could scale to a much larger release quickly if they were sufficiently successful, opening up the possibility that smaller movies could achieve box office success previously out of their reach.

Greater protection for content

A last incentive for copyright holders for digital distribution is the possibility of greater protection against piracy. With traditional film prints, distributors typically stagger the film's release in various markets, shipping the film prints around the globe. In the subsequent markets, pirated copies of a film (i.e. a cam) may be available before the movie is released in that market. A simultaneous worldwide release would mitigate this problem to some degree. Simultaneous worldwide releases on film have been used on The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Mission: Impossible III amongst others. With digital distribution, a simultaneous worldwide release would not cost significantly more than a staggered release.

Costs

On the downside, the initial costs for converting theaters to digital are high: up to $150,000 per screen or more. Theaters have been reluctant to switch without a cost-sharing arrangement with film distributors. Recent negotiations have involved the development of a Virtual Print License fee which the studios will pay for their products which allows financiers and system developers to pay for deployment of digital systems to the theaters, thus providing investors a certain payback.

While a theater can purchase a film projector for US$50,000 and expect an average life of 30–40 years, a digital cinema playback system including server/media block/and projector can cost 3–4 times as much, and is at higher risk for component failures and technological obsolescence. Experience with computer-based media systems show that average economic lifetimes are only on the order of 5 years with some units lasting until about 10 years before they are replaced.

Archiving digital material is also turning out to be both tricky and costly. In a 2007 study, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences found the cost of storing 4K digital masters to be "enormously higher - 1100% higher - than the cost of storing film masters." Furthermore, digital archiving faces challenges due to the insufficient temporal qualities of today's digital storage: no current media, be it optical discs, magnetic hard drives or digital tape, can reliably store a film for a hundred years, something that properly stored and handled film can do.

History

Digital media playback of hi-resolution 2K files has at least a twenty year history with early RAIDs feeding custom frame buffer systems with large memories. Content was usually restricted to several minutes of material.

Transfer of content between remote locations was slow and had limited capacity. It wasn't until the late 1990s that feature length projects could be sent over the 'wire' (Internet or dedicated fiber links).

There were many prototype systems developed that claim a first in some form of digital presentation. However, few of these had a significant impact on the advance of the industry. Key highlights in the development of digital cinema would likely include: demonstrations by TI of their DMD technology, real-time playback of compressed hi-resolution files by various vendors, and early HD presentations from D5 tape to digital projectors.

Standards development

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers began work on standards for digital cinema in 2001. It was clear by that point in time that HDTV did not provide a sufficient technological basis for the foundation of digital cinema playback. (In Europe and Japan however, there is still a significant presence of HDTV for theatrical presentations. Agreements within the ISO standards body have led to these systems being referred to as Electronic Cinema Systems (E-Cinema).)

Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) was formed in March 2002 as a joint project of many motion picture studios (Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. Studios) to develop a system specification for digital cinema. In cooperation with the American Society of Cinematographers, DCI created standard evaluation material (the ASC/DCI StEM material) and developed tests of 2K and 4K playback and compression technologies. DCI published their specification in 2005.

Claims to significant events

One claim for the first digital cinema demonstration comes from JVC. On March 19, 1998, they collaborated on a digital presentation at a cinema in London. Several clips from popular films were encoded onto a remote server, and sent via fibre optic for display to a collection of interested Industry parties.

The Last Broadcast apparently made cinematic history on October 23, 1998, when it became the first feature to be theatrically released digitally, via satellite download to theaters across the United States. An effort headed by Wavelength Releasing, Texas Instruments, Digital Projection Inc. and Loral Space, it successfully demonstrated what would become a template for future releases. In 1999, it was repeated utilizing QuVIS technology across Europe, including the Cannes Film Festival, making The Last Broadcast the first feature to be screened digitally at the Cannes Film Festival.

Several feature films were shown in 1999 using DLP prototype projectors and early wavelet based servers. For example, Walt Disney Pictures Bicentennial Man was presented using a Qubit server manufactured by QuVIS of Topeka, Kansas. DVD ROM was used to store the compressed data file. The DVD ROMs were loaded into the QuBit server hard drives for playout. The file size for Bicentennial Man was 42 GB with an average data rate of 43 Mbit/s.

In 2000, Walt Disney, Texas Instruments and Technicolor with the cooperation of several U.S. and international exhibitors, began to deploy prototype Digital Cinema systems in commercial theatres. The systems were assembled and installed by Technicolor using the TI mark V prototype projector, a special Christie lamphouse, and the QuBit server with custom designed automation interfaces.

Technicolor manufactured the DVDs for uploading on these test systems and was responsible for sending technicians out to the locations for every new feature film that was played. The technicians would typically spend ten or so hours to load the files from the DVD to the QuBit, set up the server to play the files, and then set up the projector. A full rehearsal screening of the feature was mandatory as was the requirement to have back up DVDs and backup QuBits available should something fail.

The systems were eventually replaced or upgraded after TI made improvements to the projectors and Technicolor developed a purpose-built digital cinema server in a venture with Qualcomm, the engineering giant from San Diego best known for advanced mobile phone technology. The new systems were called AMS for Auditorium Management Systems and were the first digital cinema servers designed to be user friendly and operate reliably in a computer-hostile environment such as a projection booth. Most importantly, they provided a complete solution for content security.

The AMS used removable hard disk drives as the transport mechanism for the files. This eliminated the time required to upload the DVD ROMs to the local hard drives and provided the ability to switch programs quickly. For security, the AMS used a media block type system that placed a sealed electronics package within the projector housing. The server output only 3DES encrypted data and the media block did the decryption at the point just before playout.

The first secure encrypted digital cinema feature was Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. The system functioned well but was eventually replaced because of the need to create a standard data package for D-cinema distribution.

Universal Pictures used their film Serenity as the first DCI-compliant DCP to be delivered shown to an audience at a remote theater, although it was not distributed this way to the public. Inside Man was their first DCP cinema release, and was transmitted to 20 theatres in the United States along with two trailers.

In April 2005, DG2L Technologies announced that it had been awarded the multi-million dollar contract for the world's largest satellite based MPEG4 digital cinema deployment to be done in India, which encompassed 2000 theaters for UFO (United Film Organizers), a subsidiary of the Valuable Media Group. In March 2006, United Film Organizers Moviez (UFO Moviez), had reached a significant milestone—surpassing 30,000 shows using the DG2L Cinema System platform. This figure increased to 100,000 shows in August 2006. In September 2006, UFO Moviez acquired 51% stake in DG2L Technologies in a deal estimated at around $50 million.

Stereo 3-D images

In late 2005, interest in digital 3-D stereoscopic projection has led to a new willingness on the part of theaters to co-operate in installing a limited number of 2K stereo installations to show Disney's Chicken Little in 3-D film. Six more digital 3-D movies were released in 2006 and 2007 (including Beowulf, Monster House and Meet the Robinsons). The technology combines two digital projectors fitted with polarizing filters with the use of polarized glasses and silver screens. A single projector can also be used in conjunction with a simple adapter in the front (a single-cell LCD screen that acts as a quarter-wave retarder, also known as a zscreen) that rotates the polarity of projector's light output several times per second to alternate quickly the left-and-right-eye views. Another system from Dolby Laboratories called Dolby 3D makes use of a special color filter and glasses and has the advantage that doesn't require a silver screen. Also, some theaters use a system that requires no modification on the screen or the projector but uses active liquid crystal shutter glasses that quickly block the views of each eye alternatively.

List of digital cinema companies

• Arts Alliance Media (Arts Alliance Digital Cinema) — theater system integrator
• Barco — digital projector manufacturer
• Christie — digital projector manufacturer
• Cinedigm (formerly Access Integrated Technologies, Inc. or AccessIT) — theater system integrator
• d2 - digital darwin — digital cinema integrator
• Deluxe Digital Studios — distributor and theater system integrator
• Doremi Labs — manufacturer of digital cinema servers and digital cinema mastering systems.
• Dolby Laboratories — theater system integrator
• Dvidea — Theater Management System (TMS) — Software solutions for digital cinema
• Kodak — theater system integrator
• Motion Picture Solutions — Digital Cinema Mastering
• NEC — digital projector manufacturer
• RED Digital Cinema Camera Company — digital cinema camera manufacturer
• Sony — manufacturer of digital projector and digital cinema servers and theater system integrator
• Technicolor — distributor and theater system integrator
• Texas Instruments — developers of DLP projector technology
• XDC — theater system integrator

See also

• Digital cinematography
• Digital projector
• Digital intermediate
• Digital film post-production
• Digital Cinema Initiatives
• Display resolution
• List of film-related topics (extensive alphabetical listing)
• Asian Academy Of Film & Television

External links

• CNN story on Star Wars Episode II
• Digital Cinema FAQs — information targeted for exhibitors
• HD at Sundance
• Panavision / Canon presentation on digital camera specs
• Digital Cinema Industry News and Equipment Buyers Guide