Consultants

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part Zero

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What they came up with is called the tri-stimulus system since the primary idea is that there are nerve endings in the eye which act as receptors, some of which primarily deal with green light, some with red and some with blue. These color receptors are called the cones (which don’t work at all in low light), while the receptors that can deal with low levels of light are called the rods.

Now, for the first of our amazing set of numbers, there are as many as 125 million receptors in the eye, of which only 6 or 7 million deal with color. When (predominantly) only one type of these receptors gets triggered, it will send a signal to the brain and the brain will designate the appropriate color. If two or more of these receptors are triggered, then the brain will do the work of combining them much the same way that a painter mixes water colors. (We’ll pretend it is that simple.)

OK; so how do you create a representation of all that color and detail on the TV or movie screen?

Let’s start with film. We think of it as one piece of plastic, but in reality it is several layers that each have a different dye of different sensitivity on it. Each dye reacts in a different and predictable manner when exposed to light through the camera lens. In the lab, each layer goes through a different chemical process to ‘develop’ a representation of what it captured when exposed by the camera system. There are a lot of steps in between, but eventually the film is exposed to light again, this time pushing light in the opposite manner, through the film and then through the lens. That light gets colored by the film and shows up on the screen.

One of the qualities of film is that the chemical and gel nature makes the range of colors in the image appear to be seamless. And not just ‘appears’ with the definition of “gives the impression of.” In fact, there is a great deal of resolution in modern film.

Then TV came along. We see a smooth piece of glass, but if we could touch the other side of a 1995 era TV set we would feel a dust that reacts to a strong beam of electricity. If we look real close we will see that there are actually different color dots, again green, red, and blue. Engineers figured out how to control that electric beam with magnets, which could trigger the different dots of color to make them light up separately or together to combine into a range of colors, and eventually combine those colors into pictures.
That was great, except people wanted better. Technology evolved to give them that. Instead of lighting up magic dust with a strong beam of electricity, a couple methods were discovered that allowed small colored capsules of gas to be lit up and even small pieces of colored plastic to light up. These segments and pieces were able to be packed tightly against each other so that they could make the pictures. Instead of only hundreds of lines being lit up by the electron gun in the old TV set, now over a thousand lines can be lit up, at higher speeds, using a lot less electricity.

Then a couple engineers figured out make and control a very tiny mirror to reflect light, then quickly move to not reflect light. That mirror is less than 25% of the size of a typical human hair.

Hundreds of these mirrors can be placed next to each other on a chip less than 2 centimeters square. Each mirror is able to precisely move on or off at a rate of 144 times a second, which is 6 times the speed that a motion picture film is exposed to light for a picture.

This chip is called a DLP, a Digital Light Projector, because a computer can tell each mirror when to turn one and off, so that when a strong light is reflected on an individual or set of mirrors, it will create part of a picture. If you put a computer in charge of 3 chips, one for green, one for red and one for blue, the reflected light can be focused through a lens and a very detailed picture will appear on the screen. There is a different but similar technology that Sony has refined for their professional cinema technology which uses crystals that change their state (status).

Now for the 2nd in our amazing set of numbers. There are 1,080 rows made up of 2,048 individual mirrors each for over 2 million 2 hundred thousand mirrors per chip. If you were to multiply that times 3 chips worth of mirrors, you get the same “about 6 or 7 million” mirrors as there are cones in each eye.

Without going into details (to keep this simple), we keep getting closer to being able to duplicate the range and intensity of colors that you see in the sky. This is one of the artists goals, in the same way as the engineers want to make a lighter, flatter, environmentally better television and movie playing system. It isn’t perfect, but picture quality has reached the point that incremental changes will be more subtle than substantive, or better only in larger rooms or specialist applications.

For example, a movie that uses the 2K standard will typically be in the 300 gigabyte size. A movie made in 4K, which technically has 4 times the resolution, will typically be less than 15% larger. This movie will be stored on a computer with many redundant drives, with redundant power supplies and graphics cards that are expressly made to be secure with special “digital cinema only” projectors.

Hopefully you have a feeling for the basic technology. It is not just being pushed onto people because it is the newest thing. The TV and movie businesses are going digital for a number of good reasons. To begin with, it wasn’t really possible to advance quality of the older technology without increasing the cost by a significant amount…and even then it would be incredibly cumbersome and remain an environmental nightmare. There are also advantages of flexibility that the new technology could do that the old couldn’t…or couldn’t at a reasonable price or at the quality of the new.

The technology of presenting a 3D image is one of those flexibility points. 3D was certainly one of the thrills of Avatar. The director worked for a decade learning how to handle the artistic and the technical sides of the art. He developed with closely aligned partners many different pieces of equipment and manners of using existing equipment to do things that haven’t been done before. And finally he spent hours on details that other budgets and people would only spend minutes. In the end James Cameron developed a technique and technology set that won’t be seen as normal for a long time from now…and an outstanding movie.

Could Avatar have been made on film? Well, almost no major motion picture has been made exclusively on film for a long time. They all use a technique named CGI (for the character generated imagery), which covers a grand set of techniques. But if you tried to generate the characters in Avatar exclusively on a computer with CGI, they never would have come out as detailed and inspiring as they did. Likewise, if he tried to create the characters with masks and other techniques with live action, you wouldn’t get the texture and feeling that the actors gave to their parts.

Could Avatar have been displayed with film, in 2D. Yes, it could have and it was.

3D is dealt with in more detail in Part II of this series, but here are some basics:

To begin, 3D is a misnomer. True 3 dimension presumes the ability to walk around a subject and see a full surround view, like the hologram of Princess Leah.

In real life a person who is partly hidden in one view, will be even more hidden or perhaps exposed from another view. On the screen of today’s 3D movie, when a character appears to  b partly hidden by a wall as seen by a person on the left side of the theater, they will also appear the same amount of hidden by someone on the right side of the theater.

In fact, what we see with out eyes and what we see in the new theaters is correctly termed “stereoscopic”. We are taught some of this in school, how to make two lines join somewhere out in space (parallax) and draw all the boxes on those lines to make them appear to recede in the distance…even though they are on one piece of paper. There are several more clues in addition to parallax that we use to discern whether something is closer or farther, and whether something is just a drawing on a sheet of paper or a full rounded person or sharp-edged box…even in a 2D picture.

And we have been doing this for years. We know that Bogie and Bergman are in front of the plane that apparently sits in the distance…our eyes/brain/mind makes up a story for us, 3 dimensions and probably more, even though it is a black and white set of pictures shown at 24 frames per second on a flat screen.

Digital 3D is an imperfect feature as of now. It has improved enough that companies are investing a lot of money to make and show the movies. The technology will be improved as the artists learn the technology and what the audiences appreciate.

Although we are in a phase that seems like “All 3D, All The Time”, 3D isn’t the most important part of the digital cinema transition. At first blush the most important consideration is the savings from all the parts of movie distribution, including lower print costs and transportation costs. But actually, because prints no longer cost over a thousand euros, and because it will be simple to distribute a digital file, lesser known artists will have the opportunity to get their work in front of more people, and more people will find it easier to enjoy entertainment from other cultures and other parts of the world.

This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Consultants

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 Part Two

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SMPTE refined the work that the studios sponsored and summed up in a series of compliance documents (See: DCI Movies) done in the spirit of, “This is the minimum that we require if you want to play our movies.” As the saying goes, “Standards are great! That’s way there are so many of them.” And as an executive stated, “We can compete at the box office, but if we cooperate on standards, it benefits everyone.”

In fact, the cinema standard that is known as 2K is beyond good enough, especially now that the artists in the post-production chain have become more familiar with how to handle the technology at different stages. Most people in the world don’t get to see a first run print anyway, and a digital print (which doesn’t degrade) compares more than favorably with any film print after a few days. Plastic which is constantly brought to its melting point becomes an electrostatic dust trap, stretch and gets scratched, and the dyes desaturate.

To this date, most digital projectors are based upon a Texas Instrument (TI) chip set. Sony’s projector is based upon a different technology, and has always been 4K (4 times the resolution of 2K), but not many movies have been shipped to that standard yet. The TI OEMs will be shipping 4K equipment by the end of the year (or early next year.) Except in the largest of cinemas, most people won’t be able to tell the difference between 2K and 4K, but the standard was built wide enough to accommodate both.

Confusing the consumer, 2K in pixels (2048 picture elements in each line) seems near enough to the 1920×1080 standard of TV know as 1080p. But there are other differences in the specification besides pixel count, such as the color sample rate, that are more important. In addition, many steps of the broadcast chain degrade the potential signal quality so that hi-def broadcast is subject to the whims of how many channels are being simultaneously broadcast, and what is happening on those channels. (For example, if a movie is playing at the same time as 15 cooking channels, it will have no problem dynamically grabbing the extra bandwidth needed to show an explosion happening with a lot of motion. But if several movies all dynamically require more bandwidth simultaneously, the transmission equipment is going to have to bend some of them in preference to others, or diminish them all.) Blu-ray will solve some of that, depending on how much other material is put on the disc with the movie. Consumers like the “other stuff” plus multiple audio versions. Studios figure that only a relative handful of aficionados optimize their delivery chain enough to be able to tell the difference. So they end up balancing away from finest possible quality for the home, while finest quality is maintained for the cinema by virtue of the standards.

With all the 3D movie releases announced, people question whether they should expect 3D in the home. It is quite possible. The restrictions or compromises are many though. First, special glasses are required, and there seems to be a reaction against the glasses. Many companies are attempting to develop technologies that allow screens to do all the work (no glasses), but when the largest company, which spent the most money over the last few years, pulls out of the market, it isn’t a good sign. (Philips pulls out of 3D research | Broadband TV News) The reality is that one person can see the 3D image if they keep their head locked in one position, and perhaps another person in another exact position, but it isn’t a marketable item.

Fortunately, there were three companies at ShoWest which offered much cooler glasses for watching 3D, including clip-ons. Since there are 3 different types of 3D technology in the theaters, it a complicated task for the consumer. At best, the cinema will hype that they have 3D, but they rarely give the detail of which type or equipment they are using.

There are several clues that humans use to establish depth data and locations of items from a natural scene. Technically, these items in the 3rd dimension are placed on what is called the `z axis’ (height and width being the x and y axes.); Matt Cowan details a few of these clues in this presentation, and there are others. Filmmakers have understood how to use these in 2D presentations for ages.

But the challenge for decades has been synchronizing the projection and display of two slightly different images, taken by cameras 6.4cm apart (the same as the `average’ eye distance), in a manner that shuts out the picture of the right eye from the left eye, and a moment later shuts out the picture of the left eye from the right eye fast enough that the eye gets info to the brain in such a way that the mind says, “Ah! Depth.” Digital projectors makes this attempt easier. It has evolved even in the last 2 years, and that evolution will continue.

There are four companies (Dolby, RealD, MasterImage and XpanD) who produce 3 different technologies for digital 3D systems for the cinema theater. Each coordinates with the projector in a slightly different manner. The projector assists by speeding up the number of frames presented to the eyes, 300% more in fact, with a technique called “triple flashing”.

For comparison, 2D film projector technology presents the image two times every 1/24th of a second. This means that the film is pulled in front of the lens every 24th of a second, allowed to settle, then a clever gate opens to project light through the film to the screen, which then closes and opens and closes again. Then the film is unlocked and pulled to the next frame. With digital 2D, motion pictures are handled the same, presenting the same picture to the screen twice per 24th of a second, then the next picture and so on. Triple flashing a 3D movie increases the rate from 48 exposures per second to 72 per second…for each eye! Every 1/24th of a second the left eye gets 3 exposures of its image, and the right eye gets 3 exposures of its slightly different image; L, R, L, R, L, R, then change the image.

Since it would be difficult to get everyone to blink one eye and then the other in the right sequence for an hour or two, the different 3D systems filter out the picture of one eye and then the other,. The Dolby systems does this (simply stated) by making one lens of the glasses an elaborate color filter for one eye, with the complimentary twin for the other eye. The projector has a spinning color wheel with matching color filters which, in effect, presents one image that one eye can’t see (but the other can), then presenting the opposite. RealD does this with a circular polarizing filter in front of the projector lens that switches clockwise then counter-clockwise, and glasses which have a pair of clockwise/counter-clockwise lenses. The XpanD system does this with an infra-red system that shutters the opposing lenses at the appropriate time. There is a 4th system named MasterImage which uses the same polarizing glasses as RealD, but with a spinning filter wheel instead of a very clever and elaborate (read, “expensive”) LCD technology.

Suffice to say that there are advantages and disadvantages to each system. Dolby’s glasses are made from a sphere of glass so that the eye’s cornea is always equidistant from the glass filter. They are also more expensive, though they have had two price drops as quantities have gotten up, from an original $50 a pair, to last year’s $25, and now $17 each. They need to be washed between uses for sanitary reasons, which provides jobs of course, but also adds to logistics and cost. XpanD glasses also need washing between use and have a battery that needs changing at some point. (Without going into the detail, the XpanD IR glasses are thus far the technology of choice for the home market, though no company should be counted out at this stage.)

RealD were the first to market and originally marketed with the studios, who provided single use glasses for each movie. Dolby sold against this by taking the ecology banner, announcing that they had developed their glasses with a coating that can be washed at least 500 times. RealD found that their glasses could be recycled to some minor extent and have now put green recycling boxes into the lobbies of the theater for patrons to drop them into for return to the factory, washing, QC and repackaging (of course, in more plastic.) There are no statistics as to how many get returned and how many get re-packaged.

A few cinemas are selling the glasses for a dollar or a euro, and seeing a lot of people take care of, and return with, their glasses. Eventually this model will be more wide-spread, with custom and prescription glasses, but the movie industry was concerned with putting up a barrier while 3D was in infancy, and glasses makers weren’t interested when the numbers were low.

Since the three systems are different, and there is no way to make a universal pair of glasses, patrons are going to have to know what type of system is used at their cinema of choice, or buy multiple pairs. In any case, the glasses are not going to be ultra-slim and sexy. In addition to being the filter for the projected light, they must also filter extraneous light. If they allow too much light from Exit signs or aisle lighting or your iPhone, the brain-trickery technology will not work. There are enough problems with 3D in general, and today’s version of it in particular, to allow any variables.

The most grievous is the amount of light getting filtered by all the lenses, coupled with the fact that half the light is being filtered from both eyes by making you blink 72 times per second. Less than 20% of the original light is seen in the eye by some systems. Up till now there hasn’t been a way to crank up the light level to compensate, and if projectionists tried, the cost in electricity goes up and life of the system would go down. This is one major reason that manufacturers of new projectors are hyping lower light levels.

The other technical compromise with the polarizing lens systems is that they require what is called a “silver” screen to help maintain the polarization (and secondarily, to help maintain light levels.) But there is no free lunch with physics. Silver screens can be optimized, but the worst of them will have ‘hot spots’ in the room that make the side seats or upper seats see a different (darker) image while some seats have brighter or hopefully some with even the ‘correct’ amount of light. The major screen manufacturers have done a lot of work to mitigate this effect, and will tell you this problem is now virtually solved, but there are a lot of older screens out there, and incorrectly installed screens and a lot of people who have walked around and still see the effect. Sit in the center of the cinema and you will have the best odds, somewhat toward the front (the projector is higher than you are, and presuming that the screen is flat, the theoretical correct angle to your eyes is down. On the other hand, audio mixers mix from about three quarters back. YMMV.

Part 3 and 4 deals with acquisition, with and without 3D, more considerations of digital and 3Ds evolution, how to make your own master, where in the world are these digital boxes? and whether there will be 50% saturation by the end of 2011.

Cross posted to: DCinemaTools

Tangential Art and Science

Wind’s Latest Problem: it … makes power too cheap

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But despite the generally negative tone of the article, it’s actually a useful one, because it brings out in the open a key bit of information: wind power actually brings electricity prices down!

 

windmills (…) operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years

The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers.

Spanish power prices fell an annual 26 percent in the first quarter because of the surge in supplies from wind and hydroelectric production

This tidbit of information, which will hopefully begin to contradict the usual lies about the need for hefty subsidies for the wind sector, has been publicised by EWEA, the European Wind Energy Association in a report on the merit order effect (PDF). This is the name for what happens when you inject a lot of capital-intensive, low-marginal-cost supply into a marginalist price-setting market mechanism with low short term demand elasticity – or, in simpler words: when you have more wind, there is less need to pay to burn more gas to provide the requisite additional power at a given moment.

I’ve long argued that this was one of the strongest arguments for wind (see my article on The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind from last year), and I’ve pushed the EWEA people to use it more – so this study (which I was not involved in) is most welcome.

The article (and several excellent comments) continue at:
Wind’s Latest Problem: it … makes power too cheap
In the Eurotrib 

Consultants

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 | Part One

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Two years ago, the evolution and rush to all things digital in the cinema world reached a classic chasm point, especially for digital cinema presentation to the theater screen. (See bottom question/answer.) It seemed that the technology was worked out, it seemed that the politics were worked out, it seemed that the financing models were worked out…and yet, the number of installations and new sales sat flat…or worse.

Huge companies like Texas Instruments (TI) and Sony had spent millions getting the technology ready for a secure and marketable implementation. Their OEM partners where ready to throw the handle to ‘Plaid’ to fill the needs of 125,000 screens in a world that needs to go from film-based to digital server based systems. The changeover requires a 60-80 thousand euro projector and 20,000 euro server to replace a 30,000€ film chain, a mature technology that typically lasted multiple decades with minor maintenance. But to the rescue, the studios offered plans that would pay back the initial investment by a mechanism known as a Virtual Print Fee (VPF). These were developed to compensate certain cinemas, over time, for playing inexpensive digital copies (distributed via hard disk and eventually satellite and fiber) instead of expensive film prints (distributed by trucks and airplanes.)

So, with all the ducks so apparently in a row, why weren’t the 7,000 ‘innovators’ and early adopters of 2007 joined by 10’s of thousands more screens by early 2010, when the number was merely double that (even after the initial 3D explosion)?

The reality was that the technical, political and financial realities weren’t really ready. Notwithstanding the world financial collapse that hindered access to the billions needed for the transition, there were nuances that made financing not so simple. In addition, the standards were still in transition, both on paper and in the labs and factories.

Financially, the major Hollywood studios are prepared to finance the transition up to the amount that they save in print costs and distribution. The nuance is that they only send out prints to the first-run cinemas, leaving the 2nd and 3rd level cinemas with no funding. (The background nuance is that once the digital transition is complete, the studios save billions per year forever, but are only helping to fund the initial roll-out. The exhibitors save a few low cost employees, and benefit from better quality and the ability to present features other than movies.)

World-wide, the Hollywood studios that developed the VPF mechanisms also didn’t find it fair that they should have to finance cinemas which made income from movies other than Hollywood movies. Nor did they want to overpay for equipment if a cinema made money from operas, concerts, sports or other alternative content that digital projection allows. This caused many national groups, in particular those in the UK, France, Italy and Germany to search for ways to fund the smallest to mid-sized facilities so that they would have digital equipment when enough critical mass was reached for film prints to become ancient history.

The UK funded several hundred screens with lottery money in one partially successful experiment, but it exposed a few holes in the plans. Simply stated, a movie’s life starts in one screen for a week or two, then moves to a smaller screen while the next movie in line attempts to take the larger audience in the larger room. But if there is only one set of digital gear, and that in the larger room, then the cinema still needs a film print to complete the movie’s run. One of the points of a Hollywood VPF is an agreement to get 50% of screens digital in one year and 100% in three years (with at least one capable of 3D.)

When the slow wheels of national finance plans got past the proposal stage, the largest cinemas in France and Germany complained that the ‘tax’ they paid per ticket was funding their competitors. Both plans were recently (in the last few months) thrown out as unfair by the country’s legal systems. (Norway figured it out on their own and are on their way to digitizing the entire country’s cinemas.

Meanwhile, the standards committees within the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) completed the last of the standards documents in 2009, submitting them to the ISO in the process. What should have been to no one’s surprise, some of the equipment, in particular the installed projectors that utilize the Texas Instruments chipset (the vast majority), didn’t meet those standards. In fact, the first projectors (dubbed ‘Series II’) to meet those standards were released in March 2010, at the industry’s ShoWest convention. Unlike the WiFi industry’s ability to ship equipment for over a year before the standards validated their presumed compliance, there are several pieces of older digital projection gear that will need expensive updating, with some equipment updatable and technically passing compliance requirements, but not able to include some important ‘modern’ features.

In addition to finally getting compliant projectors, those who waited for the new Series II equipment will also be getting equipment that is able to run with lower power consuming bulbs, and of course, give more light to the all important 3D image.

The invasion of 3D movies has been a boon to cinemas. The studios have all embraced it by announcing an ever increasing 3D release schedule, first with animated releases, but now (famously with the Avatar release) with CGI enhanced live action. The exhibitors not only are able to attract larger audiences with this nascent technology, but they are able to charge more per ticket in the process. This helped give the industry its first 10 billion dollar year in 2009, and keep actual ticket sales on an upward trend. In the alternative content area, live opera is still the most prevalent and successful, but live pop concerts have been successful, and more are slated. Sporting events have been experimented with, some in 3D, and will probably become more successful in the near future.

Coincidently, a few major installation groups have gotten financing in the last few months – It appears that the three largest US chains have the financing to cover 10 or 12 or 14,000 of their 17,000 screens. The disparity between PR and reality is not a trifle, but public information is hard to come by. The announcement that they were working with JPMorgan for money in 2007 mentioned numbers that were twice (Celluloid Junkie-More Rumblings About DCIP’s Financing) what they announced recently. And, the recent announcements don’t mention how they will finance 3D equipment, which costs up to $30,000 per screen…and is not covered by VPF agreements.

Notwithstanding those hidden nuances, it finally is movement across the chasm from innovators to more conservative early adopters. In addition, several integrators in Europe, India, China, Japan and Korea have recently announced hundred and multi-hundred piece installation deals in their areas. See: DCinemaToday for up to the minute market news for the exhibition side of digital cinema.

With the release of the Series II equipment, other features that were built into the standards are driving manufacturers to build matching equipment. Most welcome is equipment for the deaf/hard of hearing and visually impaired communities (HI/VI). There was a special exhibition at ShoWest of these company’s works-in-progress; devices that use special glasses that create closed captions which float the text over the screen (so that one doesn’t have to constantly look up and down to see both), and another system that will use WiFi to put captions on one’s iPhone (among other devices), as well as new ways to put dialog-enhanced audio into earphones.

The best news for the HI/VI field is that the SMPTE and ISO standards are are in place, have been recently ‘plug-fest’ tested for interoperability, and contrary to the previous film-centric systems, the new standards are based upon open, not proprietary (read: patented, licensable, expensive, frustrating) technology. (For a brief discussion on HI/VI captioning and the `enthusiasm’ of differing viewpoints, see: Smashing Down The Door – Digital Cinema and Captions For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing)

The arguments still persist around the excellent qualities of film, much like the arguments in the audio world about the qualities of tape recording and vinyl. While some of the arguments are interesting and some of those even true (the ability/inability to wash a screen with the indescribable transitions of Lawrence of Arabia‘s desert sunset comes to mind), the arguments against film are too many. Film is an ecological nightmare, the prints are expensive to ship around, re-gather and store, and whatever qualities that they exhibit at first runs are grossly diminished after a week of getting banged around within the film projection process. And unlike the audio business, where specialty houses can still afford to make tape for those who want to record on it, as fewer companies use film for shooting and exhibition, the cost of material and processing will become too expensive for the budgets of even the Spielberg’s of the art.

Fortunately, the evolution of quality in digital production and post-production equipment has substantially gone beyond the requirements of ‘film’ makers. As with all recent digital technology, quality points are also being hit at the low end, so that artists can make motion pictures which can fill the big screen for less money and take advantage of the substantial distribution benefits of the digital infrastructure. At the high end, artists can do more, perhaps more quickly and certainly with more flexibility and features. For the consumer, this means that quality is possible from a wider range of storytellers and the possibility to see material from other regions around the world becomes more easily accomplished.  

Part II of this series goes into more detail on specifications, some current realities of 3D technology, what “substantially gone beyond the requirements” really means, and a brief excursion on how it relates to the home market.

References:
DCinemaToday
MKPE’s Digital Cinema Technology FAQ

This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Courses

Digital Cinema Tango! at Cannes Festival

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Starting the dance this year is the Observatory’s cinema analyst Martin Kanzler who will look the overall 2009 box office trends. Stepping out nearby will be Elisabetta Brunella of Media Salles with an analysis of digital roll-out in Europe for 2009. They will be joined by Susan Newman, the Observatory’s film funding analyst who will present a guide to the public funding currently available for digital roll-out. Also tripping the light fantastic will be Francisco Cabrera, Legal Analyst at the Observatory, who will focus on the complex legal issues surrounding state aid for digitisation by looking at recent national decisions in the field.

A distinguished line-up of speakers, moderated by André Lange, Head of Department at the Observatory, will then take to the floor to look at the challenges and threats posed by digital roll-out to European films and their space on cinema screens in Europe. Confirmed speakers include Ian Christie, Vice President of Europa Cinemas and Christine Eloy of Europa Distribution, Aviva Silver, Head of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, and Antoine Virenque, President of the European Digital Cinema Forum.

The Observatory will have its stand, as ever, on the Cannes Film Market and will be presenting three new cinema-related information products. The access-free KORDA database on all sources of public funding for film and audiovisual works in Europe has been totally re-vamped and the new improved KORDA will be available for consultation on the Observatory’s stand (A6 Riviera) throughout the market. Susan Newman, will demonstrate the new database on Saturday 15 May. Francisco Cabrera will be present to talk about his new IRIS plus report on the legal aspects of digital cinema roll-out which will be available on the Observatory’s stand. A further issue of IRIS plus on product placement will also be published during the Cannes Film Market. As every year, the latest issue of the FOCUS – World Film Market Trends, published in collaboration with the Cannes Market, will be available as a give away on the stand.

As usual, the Observatory can be found on the Marché du Film on stand A6 Riviera (tel.: + 33 (0)4 92 99 33 17).

To register for the Observatory’s conference
fill in the WORD registration form you can download here and email it to: [email protected]

Participation is free to anyone with a Cannes Film Market or Festival accreditation.

Alternatively, you can fax it to us on: + 33 (0)390 21 60 19
Or send it to:
Cannes conference
European Audiovisual Observatory
76 Allée de la Robertsau
F-67000 STRASBOURG

For further information about this conference, contact
Alison Hindhaugh, [email protected]
Tel.: +33 (0) 3 90 21 60 10 – Fax : 33 (0) 3 90 21 60 19

Cannes contact telephone: +33 (0) 6 84 35 27 43

 

 

 

Integrator News

Twentieth Century Fox Selects Solar Power, Inc. for a 158 kW Solar System

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Full article at:

Twentieth Century Fox Selects Solar Power, Inc. for a 158 kW Solar System

Monday, Apr 19, 2010—ROSEVILLE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)

“We are very pleased to have been selected by Twentieth Century Fox to design and build a solar system to help them provide meaningful environmental benefits and begin to mitigate rising electricity costs,” said Brad Ferrell, President of Business Development for Solar Power, Inc. “Our SkyMount® system is a perfect fit for their needs.”

 

“This project is an important addition to Fox’s ongoing sustainability initiative and we are very happy to be getting it started,” said Hal Haenal, Senior Vice President of Fox Studios Operations. “This marks our first venture into on-site renewable energy and Solar Power, Inc. has helped to make the decision a very easy one for us.” The solar project is scheduled to be completed this summer.

Security Sites and Blogs

Happens to the best of them-Apache Passwords Exposed

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The full article is at IT Pro:
An attack on Apache’s project server has resulted in passwords being stolen from all users.
By Jennifer Scott, 14 Apr 2010 at 11:25 

And continues:
“If you are a user of the Apache hosted JIRA, Bugzilla, or Confluence, a hashed copy of your password has been compromised,” said a blog post from the Apache Infrastructure team.

It has warned users of any of these programs to change their passwords, especially if they logged in between 6-9 April.

It has also left those who had Atlassian accounts before July 2008 in danger as an old unencrypted database containing customer passwords was left online and could have been compromised.

“We made a big error,” admitted Mike Cannon-Brookes, chief executive of Atlassian, in a blog post. “For this we are, of course, extremely sorry.”

He added: “The legacy customer database, with passwords stored in plain text, was a liability. Even though it wasn’t active, it should have been deleted. There’s no logical explanation for why it wasn’t, other than as we moved off one project, and on to the next one, we dropped the ball and screwed up.”

Apache is running JIRA on a proxy configuration for the meantime and has made a number of changes to make the server safer.

“We hope our disclosure has been as open as possible and true to the ASF spirit,” concluded the Apache blog. “Hopefully others can learn from our mistakes.”

Cameras

Great Camera Shoot Out…Film Not Dead [Updated]

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Regarding the Great Camera Shoot-Out 2010, Philip Bloom says on his site (where there are also behind the scene photos: 

The webisodic series showcases the top performing hybrid HD-DSLR cameras: Canon: 5D MKII, 7D, 1D, 550D/T2i Rebel, Nikon D3s, Panasonic GH1 and compares the image quality of these cameras against the gold standard of 35mm film. In addition, the Canon 5D MKII test includes the new 24p firmware. 

The Vimeo site where the films prints files are also posted:

Each webisode of the series features various controlled camera assessment tests which include: resolution, latitude, sensitivity, speed & ultra high speed, noise, color & green screen. The battery of tests were administered under strict controls and conducted by Robert Primes ASC, Gary Adcock, Philip Bloom, Jens Bogehegn and colorist Ryan Emerson. See the reactions to this test following 2K screenings, where “HD DSLR is compared to 35mm Film”. The test results were projected in a 2K theatrical environment at three screening locations: Stag Theater at Skywalker Ranch, LucasFilms Ltd., AFI (American Film Institute) Theater in Hollywood and the FilmWorkers Astro Color Timing Theater in Chicago. Hear commentary from the screenings by top ASC, Hollywood, Indie Film and Event & Convergence Photographers.

There is nothing this author can say that the Zacuto website and comments don’t.

[Update: There are now 3 in the series. Look out for the tabs at the same Zacuto Shootout link.]

Tangential Art and Science

De-Flash the laptop | Coming HTML Tech

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Like many Mac users, I complain about the fan noise and heat and CPU usage of Flash when it seems to take over the computer. Coupled with Adobe’s constant problems with keeping the hackboi crowd away from their software, I always rejoice when I can take a step from using it.

Thus, happy to join the YouTube HTML5 Beta– a tasty little logo comes up to tell you that non-flash is going to play soon.

Adobe claims that they will prove Steve Jobs wrong when Flash version 10.1 is stable and released. With reports that the uninstaller doesn’t remove 10.1 betas, and that it crashes on certain sites, I’m not willing to play victim. Staying up to date isn’t as simple as finding an application and clicking Search for Updates, so we have placed a Flash Version Check in the column of important links on the front page. 

I have messed with ClickToFlash for Safari and Flashblock for Firefox, finding them slightly frustrating to have to load it when a site comes up with something I might want to see…but it is small pain…then I try the next version of Flash until is locks up Safari and spins Firefox into using all my RAM, and hard disk and asks for a USB stick to consume as well.

Your milage may vary, but this foray into the coming HTML5 standard does me fine.

More as it happens, 

C J Flynn

PS—The newest Open Standards coming online with HTML5 are CSS3 and SVG (for web based vector graphics). For an interesting table, see; When Can I Use?

Want to see what SVG can do? SVG Edit

For seeing what HTML5 and CSS3 will mean for the future: The HTML5/CSS3 Cheatsheet

 

In the News

More SSL Flaws Found by MS

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Users of Internet Information Services (IIS) < 6.0 in default mode are not affected by potential man-in-the-middle attack…kinda…must use workarounds…Microsoft advises not to use their workarounds though. In fairness to MS, this is old SSL exploit news that they are acknowledging affects all their current OSs. 

Read the ars technica report…and read a newspaper instead of using wifi at the coffeeshop, or at your clients…or on the trian.

Microsoft warns of TLS/SSL flaw in Windows

By Emil Protalinski | Last updated February 9, 2010 4:12 PM

Microsoft has issued Security Advisory (977377) to address a publicly disclosed vulnerability in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. The TLS and SSL protocols are implemented in several Microsoft products, both client and server. Currently Microsoft has concluded that it affects all supported versions of Windows: Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft says it will update the advisory as the investigation progresses.

Cameras

Matching Lenses and Sensors–Optics White Paper

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Remember: A lens is not guaranteed to perform in a 5-Mpixel camera simply because it is specified as a 5-Mpixel lens.

Edmund Optics and Schneider Optics explain aspects of matching one technology’s advances with another’s.

Pictures and arrows at the following link:

Matching Lenses and Sensors

With pixel sizes of CCD and CMOS image sensors becoming smaller, system integrators must pay careful attention to their choice of optics

Greg Hollows and Stuart Singer—Mar 1, 2009

Each year, sensor manufacturers fabricate sensors with smaller pixel sizes. About 15 years ago, it was common to find sensors with pixels as small as 13 µm. It is now common to find sensors with standard 5-µm pixel sizes. Recently, sensor manufacturers have produced pixel sizes of 1.4 µm without considering lens performance limits. It is also common to find sensors that contain 5 Mpixels and individual pixel sizes of 3.45 µm. In the next generation of image sensors, some manufacturers expect to produce devices with pixel sizes as small as 1.75 µm.


Articles and News

Universal Offers Open and Closed Captions to Wolfman

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Unlike some film-based systems, the closed caption DCP does not provide DTS time code. To take advantage of these new capabilities, the cinemas must have ordered “an open caption DCP and/or the closed caption DCP from Universal, when ordering their digital movie.

The Wolfman opened Friday, 12 Feb 2010.

Studios have indicated that they are interested in getting to the point of one digital master. The technology and the standards are maturing now to make that a possibility. Universal is certainly not the first distributor to make such prints available. But they have indicationed that they indend to provide such captions for all feature releases in the future.

The next step is adding descriptive narrative, which studios have said will be coming as the equipment becomes available.

Workflow

Ten Ways The iPad Could Enhance The Film Scoring Process

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[Editor’s Note: Mark Northam at FilmMusic Magazine has written the only interesting article that I’ve seen about the iPad. In reference to this 3rd idea, porting something like the Lemur or Dexter App to the iPad would be very cool.]

TrackPad – … laying at roughly the same angle as your computer keyboard does now and functioning as a huge trackpad …

DemoPad – Imagine sitting down with a director and playing a demo of your latest cues on your iPad, …

ScorePad – Imagine a world where recording musicians brought their iPads to the session and their parts were downloaded electronically to the iPads, or maybe even …

SpotPad – One of the most important events in the creation of a film score is the spotting meeting the composer has with the director …

PracticePad / TunePad – Imagine the ability … “monitor” the player’s practicing. …

SpeechPad – … Imagine “telling” your sequencer to “stretch the time in bars 48 through 52 so that bar 53 begins art 01:20:35:15, or to “change the g sharp in bar 80 to a d”…

NotePad – …During a film scoring project, a composer will receive a great deal of feedback, notes and other information, and recording those notes into an iPad …

[Editor note: One thing that I would add is an easy to use GPG encryption and/or watermarking tool. The nature of sending scores back and forth via mail and wireless is going to be a big temptation for letting something ‘cool’ onto the intertubz.]

Read the entire article at:

Ten Ways The iPad Could Enhance The Film Scoring Process
by Mark Northam

Alternative Content

Better than Avatar, live big-screen opera

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exhibition logoIn the wake of a successful initiative by the New York Metropolitan Opera, national opera companies are increasingly relaying live performances to cinemas across Europe. Svenska Dagbladet waxes lyrical about the new technique which will boost accessibility to high culture.

On 14 January, an opera performed in Stockholms Konserthus was broadcast via live satellite to cinemas throughout Sweden. The event was marked by an exceptional request from the concert hall CEO, Stefan Forsberg, who asked celebrated singer Malena Ernman to invite the public to sing. The result was the spontaneous creation of the largest opera chorus in the history of the country. All of the seats in the Stockholms Konserthus had been sold out for weeks, but most of the audience watched the performance from a network of 30 cinemas across the country, which projected live high-definition footage with Dolby 5.1 surround sound.

In Sweden, the trend for the live broadcast of cultural events to networks of remote venues was launched last winter, when nine concerts at the New York Metropolitan Opera were relayed to 83 cinemas. The scheme was a runaway success, to the point where audiences for performances at the Metropolitan were larger in Sweden than they were inside the prestigious Manhattan opera house. For example, on 16 January 2009, a performance of Carmen at the New York Met, which has a maximum capacity of 3,800, attracted an audience of 7,000 in Sweden — and  Swedish music lovers have already purchased 53,000 tickets for this year’s Metropolitan programme.

20 euros a seat

Stockholm’s Royal Opera, which is also taking advantage of the trend for satellite broadcasts to remote cinemas, relayed performances of Falstaff and Cinderella from the People’s House venue last spring. The experience proved to be so successful, that it is now planning to retransmit four further performances to cinemas this year. “The Royal Opera House can seat around 1,000 people, but we had three times that number at venues around the country. Our mission is to encourage popular appreciation of opera, so we are planning to continue the transmissions,” explains the Royal Opera’s technical director Kurt Blomquist. Audiences in small provincial towns across Sweden will now be able to experience the thrill of live performances from capital cities around the world for the relatively affordable price of 20 euros a ticket.

Read More at:

Better than Avatar, live big-screen opera


Johan Hellekant

Also read the adjoining:

CONTROVERSY

On 14 January, the live broadcast of the New York Metropolitan’s Carmen was shown in 850 cinemas in 31 countries De Standaard. The Flemish daily explains that the initiative is designed to “reinforce the Met’s brand image” and “its reputation as a magnet for international opera stars.” Notwithstanding the relatively high cost of retransmissions — approximately 710,000 euros per event, which is usually offset by sponsorship deals — many of the world’s major opera hosues, including La Scala in Milan and London’s Covent Garden, are planning to follow in the footsteps of the Met.

Tangential Art and Science

A Few Moments Sorting Quantum Entanglement

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The original September ’09 Scientific American article is here, and important in itself, but not as important as someone holding hands with the non-physicists who want to know more of this topic.

Quantum Entanglement, Photosynthesis and Better Solar Cells: Scientific American

A May ’09 article with more detailed thoughts from Foresight.org is here:
the Foresight Institute » Quantum entanglement in photosynthesis?

A pdf of the original Berkley article:

Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes

 

…Like Tangents In Rain