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Digital Film Distribution System Coming
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:33 PM
from the beam-me-a-hit dept.
from the beam-me-a-hit dept.
aniyo~ writes with word of a collaboration of movie studios with distribution companies to come up with a system for rapid digital distribution of movie masters. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., and a company called Digital Cinema Implementation Partners are working on technology that will allow much more responsive film distribution based on local needs. DCIP is wholly owned by the Regal, AMC, and Cinemark theater chains, which among them run 14,000 screens in North America. The new system would be available to those and other interested theater operators. About 2,200 U.S. theater screens currently show digital films, and today these are, by and large, delivered on hard drives.
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Digital = More Piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
That is... would the quality be raised, i.e. the actual movie being copied vs. someone recording the screen? It would be a lot easier to borrow one of the HDDs, copy it, and return it rather than coming in w/ a tripod to record it.
Something to think about...
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Which is why they're working on a broadband setup to quickly send around encrypted movies for the digital projectors. It says so in TFA.
What I'm interested in was this line:
That kind of rapid delivery, Reid said, would allow theater operators the flexibility to economically market niche films that could be shown for just a day or two to a targeted audience.
Are they saying that cutting o
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Fuck capitalism.
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By the time digital is widespread, so to will be the 'loans' (they aren't called that, but essentially theatres get a loan from industry companies to go digital.) And that means they'll still end up paying an arm and a leg for digital film.
Eventually prices may go down, but why would you expect them to go down so soon? Right now there are very few digital projectors being installed nationwide.
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The reason they're not shown isn't usually because people wouldn't watch them (that's partly true as a function of the low advertising), but more because putting one of your say, six cinemas out of commission on a gamble for a few weeks is risky business. This way, a local movie theatre could make "Indie Thursdays" where they showcase a few
Re:Production costs (Score:5, Interesting)
You are dead on. I worked in a theatre for a while as a projectionest duing the economic downturn in the 1980's. To get one of the current releases, theatres bid on them. The submitted bid includes things liKe a percentage of ticket sales and number of seats in the auditorium and a factor from past performance and location in relation to other theatres.
This combo keeps new releases out of small theatres and theatres with poor performance. This is the big divide between new release theatres and second run theatres. It is common for a new release to get bid up to over 100% of ticket sales. Many theatres simply have no revenue except concessions sales due to the cost of the feature. They bid on the movies to fill the seats and get consessions sales. That is why it's over $10 for a bucket of popcorn and a couple drinks.
This is effecient for the distributor as they easly maximize profit and often take 100% of the ticket revenue for the limited number of reels, but it is devastiating for a smaller theatre. This is why many of them have moved to indi films or porn. They are stuck with small audiances due to the older flims and can't win any bids for new films. They fold or go to alternatives. I know. Been there done that.
Parent
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A movie can be over a mile of film, it's actually a pretty close ratio at roughly a mile of film for every hour. The film runs through the projector at about 1.022 miles per hour.
So for, say the recent release, Zodiac, that's about 2.6 miles of film, over 230,000 frames of film in all.
Larger theatre chains can of course bargain down a lot of prices, but nevertheless, the production cost is very real.
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Silly Rabbit... It's Camcorders in Montreal! (Score:2)
I find this line humourous. In one sentance they simultaneously assume that their encryption will not be broken or circumvented while at the same time blaming piracy on the mailman!
I whole-heartedly hope this system is implemented and suceeds since it offers obvious
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I find this line humourous. In one sentance they simultaneously assume that their encryption will not be broken or circumvented while at the same time blaming piracy on the mailman!
If they're a little clever, they'll give you a vpn-enabled black box that you connect to the intarweb and you'll have no real access to the content without breaking the box, costing you many thousands of dollars.
On a different subject, why are they even worrying about camcorder piracy in theatres? Who in their right mind would watch such crap anyway?
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I don't mean to nitpick, but how can it be more frequent? Every movie that comes out is already immediately available on filesharing networks and the like.
Beaming (Score:4, Funny)
Careful... (Score:5, Funny)
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Cool! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I know. And pigs may fly...
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Knowing that the DVD is probably going to be around $15 within a few months and will work in any certified player, would you still be interested in a locked down version with no extras solely for the sake of getting it earlier?
I'd co
Three Strip Technicolor (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes real "stuff" is better than bits and pixels.
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The problem is, most of today's movies are drained of their color & contrast at the post production stage, near as I can tell merely for "artistic" reasons. Dull, desaturated images are all the rage for some reason. If a movie were to come out that actually tried to deliver as vibrant an image as today's mater
I am sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:I am sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Dates.
2. Teenagers who want to get out of the house.
3. People who want to get together and watch a movie with a bunch of friends, and don't have a $3000+ entertainment system and a living room that seats 20+ people comfortably.
4. New movies that aren't on DVD yet.
5. Art films and foriegn films that aren't available on DVD.
6. Imax.
Parent
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Yep. And no matter how much you handwave - no (ordinary) home big screen even remotely approaches the quality of experience that comes with a movie theatre screen. 24" monitors? Don't make laugh - the difference is beyond apples and oranges.
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Is there a quantifiable measure of dynamic range so we can check this?
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4. New movies that aren't on DVD yet.
5. Art films and foriegn films that aren't available on DVD.
The other points are fair enough, sometimes you want to go out because that's your choice (or lack of space, cash or interest in a home theater setup). But those two, that's sorta like saying chopsticks are good for eating noodles because we won't give you a fork. Even if you don't have a $3000 home theater system, it has several other advantages:
1. You have it permanently, every time
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You can't get IMAX quality at home, and likely won't for 20 years at least, if ever.
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I think you've totally missed the point of Imax.
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Last time I went to a theater was about 10 years ago with the wife & kids and it was a miserable experience.
The teenagers running the system obviously were suffering severe hearing loss (from their 200,000 watt ghettomobiles). They had turned the sound levels up in the theater so loud that the speakers rattled and it hurt my ears. I was PISSED. The picture quality was shit too. And every dumbass in there had a cell phone going off every 10 minutes.
Of course the ki
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As for the idea of a home theater, even if I could afford such a setup (which I can't), I don't have the room in this small apartment to set one up. Plus, if I did have one, the neighbors would complain about the noise
I have no plans to stop going to th
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Don't people make fun of people with ridiculous hair, fatties with three tubs of popcorn, and hav
Coming Soon? (Score:2)
Not to mention *cough* that other place videos get posted that every savvy internet user knows about, but which everyone else seems to have forgotten...
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If you could instantly download any movie.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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One word... (Score:2, Funny)
Not likely to lower ticket prices, but (Score:2)
Now, on the face of things that sounds like a good idea, however when analyzed with a critical thought process it gets much worse than you think.
First, movie theaters are losing business for a number of reasons and one of the biggest is that many new releases pretty much suck. Add to that the myriad of financial pressures on the public at
24 fps... (Score:2, Interesting)
I can only wonder what a 60 fps film would look like, but I do know that I've had my fill of backwards spinning wagon wheels and nausea inducing camera pans.
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While it's fine and dandy that the film industry is making use of modern technology, I'm wondering if any "bold" filmmaker will ever part from the 24 fps standard.
I can only wonder what a 60 fps film would look like, but I do know that I've had my fill of backwards spinning wagon wheels and nausea inducing camera pans.
People can readily (although subconsciously) distinguish between "shot on film" and "shot on video" - it's the frame rate that is the biggest giveaway (24 vs 30). They'll probably initially feel like there's something "wrong" with a 60fps image. Having grown up watching movies and television, both with well established conventions, I suspect many will be quite resistant to anything that pushes these conventions aside too quickly.
Probably the best way is to start with the Pixar-type films for kids and the
2x30 fields per sec != 30 frames per sec... (Score:2)
People can readily (although subconsciously) distinguish between "shot on film" and "shot on video" - it's the frame rate that is the biggest giveaway (24 vs 30)
You're right that a greater frame rate gives a more "video"-like look. However, 24 vs. 30 fps is a minor difference, and doesn't explain why video loks different. In fact, PAL uses 25 *full* frames per second, such a minor difference that the easiest way to show 24fps movies on PAL is to simply speed them up to 25 frames per second. Yet, there's still an obvious difference between film and PAL video. Why?
It's because standard PAL/NTSC video doesn't work with complete "frames". The picture is made up of
Cool (Score:2)
Digital distribution (through teh intarweb / closed network, not hard drives you chumps..) would make her life much, much easier, make it easier to fill more sessions with less cost and generally make life rather rosy for cinema workers and projectionists everywhere.
It's a Good Thing(tm).
Re:Cool - hate replying to myself.... (Score:2)
This distribution method is awesome, but of course it doesn't solve the problem of poor content. Not yet anyway.
If distribution gets so cheap and easy to do, there's real potential for indy film makers to get their work seen. Dupe their movie to a few hard drives and hand them out in person, or send their local cinema a link to a torrent of their work and offer it to be screened for free or at minimal costs. The potential for new, unsigned work and interesting local cinema i
Amazing New Technology (Score:4, Funny)
Great but... (Score:2)
I still think they should distribute the movie on specially-encrypted HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, where the movie is stored in a lossless compression format over 2-3 discs. It's still way cheaper to send out 2-3 discs per movie than six 35-pound reels of 35 mm film stock for a movie about two hours long. More long term, once holographic video disc (HVD) technology reaches production they could store 1 TB on a single di
They really put a lot of thought into the security (Score:5, Interesting)
After all the video, audio, subtitle, and auxiliary data channels (things like cues for curtains, theater lighting, etc.) are compressed and packaged, it's encrypted via AES with a 128-bit key. Along with the compression and encryption process, a watermark is embedded into the video source. The Digital Cinema Package (DCP), as it is now called, is delivered to the theater via satellite uplink, hard drive delivery, internet, etc. However, the encryption key is delivered separately, via secure courier, and each theater will get a different key. The DCP is uploaded into a central server in the theater, where it will then be scheduled by the manager to be loaded into a specific screen on a set schedule. Each screen will have a digital projector along with its own server to store a local copy of the DCP.
Key entry and decryption only actually happens when the movie is played, and as everything is decrypted, the forensic watermark is added to the video as well as the audio. This watermark is unique not only to the theater, but to the specific projector and even the time that it was played. This ensures that if anyone is sitting in a theater with a camcorder, they can trace it back to the exact showing using the embedded watermarks.
If anyone is interested in checking out the Digital Cinema System Specifications, they were awarded final approval on July 20, 2005 and can be found at http://www.dcimovies.com/DCI_Digital_Cinema_Syste
And nothing else (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look through the document you linked, the security section is 25 pages long, while only a few pages are dedicated to image and sound. For the image, the system mostly talks about 2K, with some additional modes for 4K, but no requirement to use it, and no inclusion of the higher framerate 48fps mode for 4K. Considering there are already 4K film releases [efilm.com] and 2K is already in the home, this does not seem very forward thinking. Home theater freaks have been saying for years what they have at home is better than what's in theaters. For the first time, they will actually be right, if theatrical 2K becomes the de-facto standard (which it already has to some extent, thanks to an overload of crappy 2K digital intermediates).
Another short-sighted mistake is that it defines the image as a constant width format, meaning you get fewer pixels for a scope image vs. non-scope. Does that seem backwards to anyone else? The 2K scope image only has 858 vertical pixels, for crying out loud! (page 14)
Page 14 also specifies: "The bit depth for each code value for a color component shall be 12 bits. This yields 36 bits per pixel." Doesn't say whether it's linear or log (like Cineon). I assume linear, but considering most linear film work is done in a 16-bit space (see the GIMP spin-off "CinePaint), this doesn't seem like enough. All theatrical digital presentations I've seen so far have been severely lacking in dynamic range compared to film. This document totally fails to address that.
There is also a data limitation of just over 1MB per frame, regardless of whether the image is 2K or 4K (page 25). That's just stupid (hopefully I don't have to explain why).
There seems to have been very little consideration given to quality for either the present or the future. Simply slapping a big HDTV into theaters is a bad, short-sighted idea, and will surely be a further nail in the coffin for theatrical presentations. AMC for example has lost money for nine years straight, and now they want to dump money into this shit?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
True. And film can be better than this (you'll need a good print but it's possible).
Another short-sighted mistake is that it defines the image as a constant width format, meaning you get fewer pixels for a scope image vs. non-scope. Does that seem backwards to anyone else? The 2K scope image only has 858 vertical
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Several BILLION (yes, with a "b") feet of motion picture print film are printed every year. Even when mass-scale digital conversion reall