Tag Archives: Digital Cinema

There are many tangential groups who create and capture and manipulate the bits, from one lens at the capture point to the other at the exhibition point. There are a lot of specialty magazines and blogs and a lot of distractions in one’s own field to keep focused upon.

We feel that there is a blank spot for people who want to get the highlights of the many various and closely aligned segments that are just outside their daily purview.

Thus, Industry Online.

Our goal is to focus more on tech news and white papers than on commercial press and sales press releases. We won’t have advertising, but we will allow vendors to post special sales (when that directory and page is set up.)

The idea for this tool was formed when Marvin Hall gave a seminal SMPTE presentation at NAB 2007 which spoke to the issues that Modern Video/Film had to go through on each piece that they take in, massage and kick out. Clearly, among the pages of standards and constant deadlines, among the headlong-rush of technology in every particular sub-category, there seems to be a need for cross communication.

Since we are all forced to be computer experts and help protect copyright interests, we’ll also attempt to keep an eye out for important security information.

And, of course, training—the field is not only fast moving, but we are requiring IT and digital expertise in places where mechanical skill was more important. The long hours of creating standards, and the benefits derived, will be for nought if they and best practices aren’t passed along.

So, we thank you for this opportunity. Your editor began in the pro-audio world in the 70’s. Since then he has sold, installed and trained people on entertainment technology equipment in film and TV studios around the world. He remembers how complicated and expensive motion tracking and 16 gig RAIDs were in the 90’s. In 2002 he was part of the installation groups who installed the first hundred digital cinema systems for the Star Wars II release. Since then, hundreds of HD-SDI cables and projectionist training hours later, he presents this journal.

If you see something interesting, pass it along. If you want to cut out a space to broadcast a message, please feel free to use this forum. Also, we take advice well. Please make any comments, requests or complaints to:

Charles ‘C J’ Flynn

OpsCenter Technologies, Inc. | Cheyenne, WY
Internet Marine, SARL | Sophia Antipolis, FR

cjflynn @ ops center tech .com <remove spaces, of course>

This news magazine is part of the OpsCenterTechnologies online publishing empire (sic – in many ways).

DCinemaTools was introduced in June of 2009, but not live until mid-January 2010.

Centered On Quality Control

Training Sites–Exhibition

December 12, 2008 Like Tangents In The Rain Leave a comment

As digital cinema exhibition makes the transition from a science project to a commercially viable network of locations and activities, there are several places to learn the basics.

Each year, for example, the EU/Italian group Media Salles holds a D-Cinema Training. The last few were in England, and the next course will be in Finland in 2010. Details are available at their site, Media Salles Training. Media Salles is also a member of the EDCF, the European Digital Cinema Forum, which has information from their many meetings available to the public. If you become a member, you can download even more information, including pdf files of their two magazines on Mastering and Alternative Content.

Barco has a complete schedule of classes. Harry Mathias at DCMP also holds classes on demand.

Learning Online

Another consulting group with an enormous amount of information on DCinema, ranging from history to politics and emerging technology is Michael Karagosian’s MKPE Site. Look especially at the different topics under the menu pull down marked Digital Cinema.

The group Film Tech is a great resource for documentation, and sprinkled throughout is information on DCinema. There are also several dcinema forums where projectionists discuss the good and bad that they have found in the booth. In the same vein, of a film-centric site making the transition to providing digital information, is the Mad Cornish Projectionist. Humour abounds.

A phenomenal group of videos from Disney Digital Cinema give essential data to a projectionist on how to handle digital movies, especially 3D. Likewise, there is a terrific site of very instructive movies at the site of the Cine Tech Geek.

The real essentials of Digital Cinema are conveyed in the hundreds of pages of documents at DCI Movies. That site contains the Digital Cinema Specifications and the System Specification Compliance Test Plan. Anyone who reads them all gets bonus points. NATO also has an important document, the Digital Cinema System Requirements (pdf), which goes through many technical digital cinema points from the exhibitor’s viewpoint.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Science & Technology Council has a downloadable paper named The Digital Dilemma which brings out much of the data concerning long term storage of digital productions.

More simply and in a Socratic way, working through the Digital Cinema Naming Convention will give a lot of information, and also help organize the data with the relevance to other information. In the same way, the powerpoint at the Harkness Screens site aligns many important points.

Last but hopefully not least, The Directory of DCinema Glossaries on this site lists a number of sites which are filled with DCinema data from the acquisition/camera, post production and exhibition fields. In full disclosure, DCinemaTools is part of the DCinemaCompliance Group, with training and compliance plans as described in this document: Coordinating DCinema Training and Compliance. The link below (seen only if you are logged in) will download the same file.

Please mention other resources as you find them in the comments.

Centered On Quality Control

DCinemaTools Editorial

October 9, 2006 Like Tangents In The Rain Leave a comment

Welcome to the Industry Online news magazine for the Professional Digital Cinema Industry.

Defining DCinema is like defining the Cote d’Azur and the Riviera. Some people say one or the other goes from St. Tropez into parts of Italy, while some people limit them from Cannes to Monaco.

Our definition of professional DCinema (in addition to David Reisner’s definition) is whatever is involved in capturing, manipulating and exhibiting image and sound using high end, professional digital technology. Digital has been part of the post-production world for a long time, in the acquisition world on a more limited level and the exhibition side is just leaving its science phase.

Our goal is to bring together the tangential pieces of information from throughout the internet, so that people focused on one area can find nuance and trends from other areas of the community. But because the exhibition end is expecting to have a tech revolution without a lot of tech savvy people, our focus will tend to be at that group. We hope that we are not “All 3D, All the Time”, but we will cover 3D implications.

We will gather items from blogs and newsletters, but we don’t mean to replace them, just direct you to them as appropriate.

Please contact us whenever you have ideas that might help us help the community.

Finally, the disclosure bit: DCinemaTools is part of the DCinemaComplianceGroup, an organization set up to assist exhibitors in fulfilling their requirements of staying compliant with SMPTE and DCI requirements. It is a work in progress, hopefully available Q2 2011, when the SMPTE specs take over. Our project will include projectionist training in the basics as well as maintaining databases of the daily, weekly and monthly inspection reports.

Exhibition Glossaries

Post Production/Mastering Glossaries

3D Glossary

Production Glossaries

Associated Glossaries

…Like Tangents In Rain