Digital Film Distribution System Coming 124
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.
Three Strip Technicolor (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes real "stuff" is better than bits and pixels.
If you could instantly download any movie.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
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?
Re:And nothing else (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 pixels, for crying out loud! (page 14)
Agree here too. Why did they do this? I'm sure most projectionists are capable of swapping a lens to anisotorpic.
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.
That's less of a problem. This gives 4096 greyscales. That's plenty to prevent any banding. The problem is maximum contrast. I don't think more levels will help here. 16 bit is usually used to compensate for rounding errors if a lot of filters are used. 12 bit is plenty for a final print.
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).
True. Especially if they feel the need to go up to 6K
They do need a per-frame limit at some point. No idea why they went for such a low value. Are they assuming that everyone will use 48fps? Even then, they're only looking at 384Mb/s. No idea what they're using for transfer, but Firewire 800 can manage twice that. SCSI can handle a lot more.
Re:I am sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't people make fun of people with ridiculous hair, fatties with three tubs of popcorn, and have a good time being in the company of strangers anymore? It just feels different when you're doing something with 200 people instead of 5.
Yeah, lots of other people suck, and yes, you can have a far more undisturbed experience at home--but getting out in the world and being among people used to be a fairly basic part of life. Now people complain about having to deal with anyone other than themselves.