Tag Archives: IBC

Laser Light Engines, LLC, Again the First

Laser Light Engines Announces First Shipment of Its Universal Laser Retrofit System for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema
SALEM, NH– May 22, 2013 –

Jeez, just the heading. “Universal” must mean One Product fits all. That ties into the other press release LLE had on the same day, that they will be teaming with Elbit Systems of Texas to productize a system with the name of DSG265. We’re guessing DSG is for De-Speckled Green, but 265 stumps us. 256 we could have understood if this were an 8 bit system, or 255 perhaps…but DCinema is 12 bit. Hmmm. Marketing.

“Retrofit” is interesting as well. The concept of productizing anything for a market that is essentially completely full – over 90% digital saturation in some markets – there just isn’t going to be a lot of customers looking to trade-in for new projectors. There also isn’t an overwhelming reason to do so since many of the future options of lasers for projectors aren’t developed yet. Plugging into the existing optics works well enough until the mysteries of bi-refringent glass and spinning the photons off the mirrors solves the problems of darkening and softening caused by post-lens 3D filters. So, expensive ultra fast lenses and a lot of optics (that the next generation of engineers will laugh at) will have to remain – retrofit is the way to make the investment in the laser-based light systems work in 2013.

“2D and 3D Cinema” – To those who say that 3D is dead or dying, let’s remember that the studio’s latest arrangements with the Chinese government is to bring the tentpole movies in 3D…not just some, but 100% in 3D. Most of the cinema conversions are 3D capable there, and the 3D-capable percentage in Russia and parts of the EU are higher than in the US as well.

But 3D to work correctly needs more light to the eyes. There are few articles and only a little science on what causes headaches and other problems with 3D, but from those who have seen 3D movies with more light, it is more comfortable. Logic says that more light will make tired eyes strain less with a concommittant reduction in headaches and complaints.

“Announces the First Shipment” – has a nice ring to it after all the speculation and probable NIH competition since LLE made their despeckle announcement a few CinemaCons ago. It seemed obvious to many that the Kodak flash was never going to be productized, and possibly was a stock play writ large. But an actual shipment…and to whom? Enquiring minds, etc.

Having to wait for the lawyers and the marketing team of the customer can be a boring proposition for a company, especially one which wants to avoid the arrows (and worse) that many pioneers have to suffer.

Laser Light Engines, Inc., (LLE), a leader in laser illumination for high brightness digital cinema and performance projection, announced the first shipment of a fully configured RGB-laser powered Universal Laser Retrofit System to a leading global innovator in the cinema space.

“Leading Global Innovator” – Isn’t that a nice way of saying that they are smart enough to buy our product?

“The shipment of this system marks a big step forward for LLE, toward full commercialization of our universal laser upgrade solution for the nearly 100,000 global 2D and 3D digital cinema projectors installed over the past few years,” said laser projection pioneer Bill Beck, founder and EVP at LLE. According to the company, the multi-engine system incorporates LLE’s recently announced, flagship DSG265™ despeckled GREEN color modules, and provides constant brightness, outstanding image quality, brilliant colors and smooth, immersive 3D.

One would think at first that Mr. Beck was hyperbolizing a bit there, implying that 100,000 is the potential market for LLE’s light engine. In fact, in a sense he probably is, but in a sense he is probably understating the potential. There are 4 DCinema projector manufacturers who all sell projectors in far greater volume outside the cinema. They are joined by dozens of other manufacturers who use the same TI chipset (minus the security bits) for other than cinema projectors. Given the way that 3D is developing and getting less expensive on the production and post-production side, creation of 3D material can slip into many more markets, from architecture and product design to executive or music auditoriums to amusement rides.

Productizing is the key, and the market is really huge.

In addition to providing numerous image quality benefits, the LLE solution eliminates frequent replacement of expensive Xenon arc lamps, and can reduce wall plug and HVAC energy consumption. “The LLE multi-engine system is projector, chipset, resolution and frame rate agnostic, and is compatible with most major 3D systems,” Beck said. “And the light from the engine can be delivered via optical fiber cable, enabling flexible new cost- and space-saving deployment models.”

What isn’t being said is almost as loud as what was said in that paragraph. The discussions at recent demonstrations left one with the impression that some companies are not actually able to move the laser position on the frequency curve in a way that benefits both the gamut but also the wall plug efficiency, actually saying that their system wasn’t showing any benefit there, and that the cost of fans at the lasers was a wash with the reduction of savings at the projector vent. One presumes that one is hearing someone saying that the brute force method is all we can do and it works but it doesn’t work well…and come’on, the music moves the screen more than these screen shakers do.

It is just that one can’t help remembering the earthquake in the San Fernando Valley in 1994 when two earthquakes happened in close time and proximity. The joining of the concentric waves caused a much stronger reaction in a nearly straight line from the source points to dozens of miles away, to the extent of chimneys falling and houses being thrown off their foundations all along and to the end of that line, with much less severe damage a block away on either side.

Likewise, the patterns from the shakers was discernible after two weeks, with the light changing colors all along the path where concentric circles joined. Dont’ get the wrong impression; it was a brave and noble act to hold a 2 week demonstration of laser technology. Christie and their parent company Ushio should be lauded. The industry needed it. There is only one way to learn such things and groups should be given honors for taking the expense and the risk.

“Frame rate agnostic” means the future of High Frame Rate is secured and the rest of the PR is stating that compromises no longer have to be made. If history is a guide, the studios allow compromises with specifications until a manufacturer shows that the compromise is no longer required and then sets a date certain for not making prints in that format. MPEG to JPEG, the evolution of security keys and the disappearance of pre-ghostbusted prints all followed that path: one day accepted, one day ‘no mas’.

Resolution agnostic is interesting since it implies 4K, and sure enough – though it isn’t in this press release – if one goes to the LLE website and clicks on the coming event link on

June 11, 2013, 5:00pm
“Laser6P™: A New Laser Illumination System for Premium Dual Projector 3D”
Projection Summit
Orlando, FL

one sees in plain black and white that Mr. Beck of LLE will speak about “LLE was the first to demonstrate laser illuminated, “6 primary”, true 4K 3D with full color and resolution in November of 2012. Both DLP Cinema and LCOS 4K projector platforms have been integrated.”

As exciting as seeing the new RealD screen technologies in action with multiple screens at different angles and light levels, seeing any of the matrix of what that sentence speaks of would be very interesting. The implication is that others have already seen it in private demonstrations,  since the verbiage says ‘already been demonstrated’.

In addition to this major milestone for digital cinema, Beck said LLE will be shipping other new products in the coming months, including both cinema and non-cinema applications such as precision 3D metrology.

“Precision 3D metrology” – We haven’t yet seen anything of the industry’s attempt to create a precision metrology on speckle (or when the distortion goes from bad to unacceptable) and these guys are making products dealing with the measurement of 3D. Wonders never cease.

About Laser Light Engines — Laser Light Engines, Inc. (LLE) is a leader in laser illumination for performance projection, such as 3D cinema; premium large venue and rental/staging. LLE’s laser illumination systems replace traditional, high-pressure gas discharge lamps, producing dramatically brighter and sharper images, with less energy use and lower operating costs. LLE’s universal engine can plug and play with new projection systems or retrofit tens of thousands of installations, worldwide.

Partnerships with key industry players, a portfolio of patented technology and expertise, and a multi-year head start in building laser illumination systems, all combine to make LLE the leader in this large and rapidly emerging market. The venture-funded company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. For additional information visit: http://www.laserlightengines.com Laser Light Engines, LLE, DSG265 and Laser6P are trademarks of Laser Light Engines, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Boilerplate. Wish I had some. But actually, there is data in there. The beauty of boilerplate is that it is all lawyer vetted, so yes Alice, someone is thinking beyond retrofit and those lawyers are sure there is lower operating costs and less energy use in our future all from replacing xenon lamps with laser light.

Laser Light Engines, LLC, Again the First

Laser Light Engines Announces First Shipment of Its Universal Laser Retrofit System for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema
SALEM, NH– May 22, 2013 –

Jeez, just the heading. “Universal” must mean One Product fits all. That ties into the other press release LLE had on the same day, that they will be teaming with Elbit Systems of Texas to productize a system with the name of DSG265. We’re guessing DSG is for De-Speckled Green, but 265 stumps us. 256 we could have understood if this were an 8 bit system, or 255 perhaps…but DCinema is 12 bit. Hmmm. Marketing.

“Retrofit” is interesting as well. The concept of productizing anything for a market that is essentially completely full – over 90% digital saturation in some markets – there just isn’t going to be a lot of customers looking to trade-in for new projectors. There also isn’t an overwhelming reason to do so since many of the future options of lasers for projectors aren’t developed yet. Plugging into the existing optics works well enough until the mysteries of bi-refringent glass and spinning the photons off the mirrors solves the problems of darkening and softening caused by post-lens 3D filters. So, expensive ultra fast lenses and a lot of optics (that the next generation of engineers will laugh at) will have to remain – retrofit is the way to make the investment in the laser-based light systems work in 2013.

“2D and 3D Cinema” – To those who say that 3D is dead or dying, let’s remember that the studio’s latest arrangements with the Chinese government is to bring the tentpole movies in 3D…not just some, but 100% in 3D. Most of the cinema conversions are 3D capable there, and the 3D-capable percentage in Russia and parts of the EU are higher than in the US as well.

But 3D to work correctly needs more light to the eyes. There are few articles and only a little science on what causes headaches and other problems with 3D, but from those who have seen 3D movies with more light, it is more comfortable. Logic says that more light will make tired eyes strain less with a concommittant reduction in headaches and complaints.

“Announces the First Shipment” – has a nice ring to it after all the speculation and probable NIH competition since LLE made their despeckle announcement a few CinemaCons ago. It seemed obvious to many that the Kodak flash was never going to be productized, and possibly was a stock play writ large. But an actual shipment…and to whom? Enquiring minds, etc.

Having to wait for the lawyers and the marketing team of the customer can be a boring proposition for a company, especially one which wants to avoid the arrows (and worse) that many pioneers have to suffer.

Laser Light Engines, Inc., (LLE), a leader in laser illumination for high brightness digital cinema and performance projection, announced the first shipment of a fully configured RGB-laser powered Universal Laser Retrofit System to a leading global innovator in the cinema space.

“Leading Global Innovator” – Isn’t that a nice way of saying that they are smart enough to buy our product?

“The shipment of this system marks a big step forward for LLE, toward full commercialization of our universal laser upgrade solution for the nearly 100,000 global 2D and 3D digital cinema projectors installed over the past few years,” said laser projection pioneer Bill Beck, founder and EVP at LLE. According to the company, the multi-engine system incorporates LLE’s recently announced, flagship DSG265™ despeckled GREEN color modules, and provides constant brightness, outstanding image quality, brilliant colors and smooth, immersive 3D.

One would think at first that Mr. Beck was hyperbolizing a bit there, implying that 100,000 is the potential market for LLE’s light engine. In fact, in a sense he probably is, but in a sense he is probably understating the potential. There are 4 DCinema projector manufacturers who all sell projectors in far greater volume outside the cinema. They are joined by dozens of other manufacturers who use the same TI chipset (minus the security bits) for other than cinema projectors. Given the way that 3D is developing and getting less expensive on the production and post-production side, creation of 3D material can slip into many more markets, from architecture and product design to executive or music auditoriums to amusement rides.

Productizing is the key, and the market is really huge.

In addition to providing numerous image quality benefits, the LLE solution eliminates frequent replacement of expensive Xenon arc lamps, and can reduce wall plug and HVAC energy consumption. “The LLE multi-engine system is projector, chipset, resolution and frame rate agnostic, and is compatible with most major 3D systems,” Beck said. “And the light from the engine can be delivered via optical fiber cable, enabling flexible new cost- and space-saving deployment models.”

What isn’t being said is almost as loud as what was said in that paragraph. The discussions at recent demonstrations left one with the impression that some companies are not actually able to move the laser position on the frequency curve in a way that benefits both the gamut but also the wall plug efficiency, actually saying that their system wasn’t showing any benefit there, and that the cost of fans at the lasers was a wash with the reduction of savings at the projector vent. One presumes that one is hearing someone saying that the brute force method is all we can do and it works but it doesn’t work well…and come’on, the music moves the screen more than these screen shakers do.

It is just that one can’t help remembering the earthquake in the San Fernando Valley in 1994 when two earthquakes happened in close time and proximity. The joining of the concentric waves caused a much stronger reaction in a nearly straight line from the source points to dozens of miles away, to the extent of chimneys falling and houses being thrown off their foundations all along and to the end of that line, with much less severe damage a block away on either side.

Likewise, the patterns from the shakers was discernible after two weeks, with the light changing colors all along the path where concentric circles joined. Dont’ get the wrong impression; it was a brave and noble act to hold a 2 week demonstration of laser technology. Christie and their parent company Ushio should be lauded. The industry needed it. There is only one way to learn such things and groups should be given honors for taking the expense and the risk.

“Frame rate agnostic” means the future of High Frame Rate is secured and the rest of the PR is stating that compromises no longer have to be made. If history is a guide, the studios allow compromises with specifications until a manufacturer shows that the compromise is no longer required and then sets a date certain for not making prints in that format. MPEG to JPEG, the evolution of security keys and the disappearance of pre-ghostbusted prints all followed that path: one day accepted, one day ‘no mas’.

Resolution agnostic is interesting since it implies 4K, and sure enough – though it isn’t in this press release – if one goes to the LLE website and clicks on the coming event link on

June 11, 2013, 5:00pm
“Laser6P™: A New Laser Illumination System for Premium Dual Projector 3D”
Projection Summit
Orlando, FL

one sees in plain black and white that Mr. Beck of LLE will speak about “LLE was the first to demonstrate laser illuminated, “6 primary”, true 4K 3D with full color and resolution in November of 2012. Both DLP Cinema and LCOS 4K projector platforms have been integrated.”

As exciting as seeing the new RealD screen technologies in action with multiple screens at different angles and light levels, seeing any of the matrix of what that sentence speaks of would be very interesting. The implication is that others have already seen it in private demonstrations,  since the verbiage says ‘already been demonstrated’.

In addition to this major milestone for digital cinema, Beck said LLE will be shipping other new products in the coming months, including both cinema and non-cinema applications such as precision 3D metrology.

“Precision 3D metrology” – We haven’t yet seen anything of the industry’s attempt to create a precision metrology on speckle (or when the distortion goes from bad to unacceptable) and these guys are making products dealing with the measurement of 3D. Wonders never cease.

About Laser Light Engines — Laser Light Engines, Inc. (LLE) is a leader in laser illumination for performance projection, such as 3D cinema; premium large venue and rental/staging. LLE’s laser illumination systems replace traditional, high-pressure gas discharge lamps, producing dramatically brighter and sharper images, with less energy use and lower operating costs. LLE’s universal engine can plug and play with new projection systems or retrofit tens of thousands of installations, worldwide.

Partnerships with key industry players, a portfolio of patented technology and expertise, and a multi-year head start in building laser illumination systems, all combine to make LLE the leader in this large and rapidly emerging market. The venture-funded company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. For additional information visit: http://www.laserlightengines.com Laser Light Engines, LLE, DSG265 and Laser6P are trademarks of Laser Light Engines, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Boilerplate. Wish I had some. But actually, there is data in there. The beauty of boilerplate is that it is all lawyer vetted, so yes Alice, someone is thinking beyond retrofit and those lawyers are sure there is lower operating costs and less energy use in our future all from replacing xenon lamps with laser light.

Tripping Over the Laser Light – Fantastic~!

Voluntary DCinema Documents

The second issue has to do with enforcement of SMPTE/ISO/DCI standards. This author made a presentation to this point in 2008 at the EDCF/IBC final day presentations, illustrating that all three groups (and NATO) created voluntary standards. This author even made the compulsory presentation joke, paraphrasing Stalin concerning the Pope – that none of these groups have any tanks, or even a police department. (Nobody laughed then either.)[See: Training and Compliance]

We then pointed out that any company that signed a VPF deal with a Hollywood studio typically has a clause that mandates that they will follow all SMPTE/ISO and DCI specifications and recommended practices. This puts the studios in the position of being the police. Certainly if a cinema facility were to violate a part of a security specification, there would be no movie sent to that offending machine or perhaps, that party…(even if it were 3D, which doesn’t have any security specs mentioned?) Why would a quality issue be any different than a security issue? [ Cinema owners understand this issue: at every consequential point they ask – as one did during a recent SMPTE HFR webcast, “Will my equipment need another round of DCI Certification if I modify it for HFR?” The presenter danced around the correct answer.]

The reason might be that d-cinema performance issues have always evolved. DCI studios have generally enforced their rules only when one manufacturer can show that there is a way to make equipment, or a workflow, which can be made generally available and which follows the rules. Enforcement of key security, MPEG to JPEG, and other “standards” were migrated to in this fashion, so much so that there is an interim “InterOp” “Standard” that is being migrated from this year. SMPTE Specs and Recommended Practices can be migrated to because, now, finally, the SMPTE Standards and Recommended Practices have all been voted on and stamped and moved to ISO for Internationalization of the standards…and manufacturers make equipment and workflows which have all been laboriously tested and shown to work (thanks ISDCF~!).

Enforceable from Voluntary by virtue of VPF Contract Signature

Allowing 3D movies to be presented at less than 48 candelas/m2 is one more example of studio leniency while the industry works out a technical solution. If RealD were able to productize the Argonne National Laboratory method of Acoustic levitation (- YouTube) to place a screen full of polarizing particles that reflected an evenly spread 48 cd/m2 throughout an auditorium without the arbitrary vagaries of silver screens and the predictable vagaries of high-gain screens, one could bet that there would be a date certain cut off of material to those who didn’t have equipment that complies. (Full disclosure: We know nothing about the scope of RealD’s Acoustic Levitation research deep in the mountains behind their Denver labs.)

Small picture of light abuse at IBC RAI high gain silver hugo screenFinally, just so we can get to the main attraction, we’ll skip further details about silver and high-gain screens. We sat in the center of the house, immediately behind where the room is calibrated from. Pictures and comments about general screen effects can be read about in the earlier article: 
Lasers, Christie, IBC…Silver Screen Why [Update 2]
and also see CineTech Geek’s video of: Demonstration of Silver Screen compromise]

 


There are screen effects specific to lasers, and there were dozens (hundreds?) of people looking for them. Speckle is the most famous, but perhaps the most around-the-corner insidious is metamerism. Both problems are see-able in certain circumstances with Xenon bulb powered projectors. Fortunately or unfortunately, watching a movie like Hugo after a long day of conventioning doesn’t put ones eyes in the best condition for analysing…but that won’t stop the digital illuminati.

 


 

First off, Hugo is just too easy to slip into pure suspension of disbelief. Absolutely gorgeously and inventively shot. Many cool things to watch. Hugo stereographer Demetri Portelli showed some comparison clips at 2 different light levels…everyone should see those clips. Anyone who doesn’t see that much light in their local theater should be asking for a discount instead of an upcharge. Just before the complete film ran, Demetri said he was pleased that the movie at its proper level was “finally seeing the light of day.” — immediately, your author realized he couldn’t recall if there were any daytime shots in the movie.

To that point, long-time digital cinema tech exec Patrick von Sychowski said, it was “almost as if the railway scene had been shot two hours later in the morning.”

What wasn’t there to watch for was any bright clear skys with fields of green grass and trees moving in the wind. In fact, there were no patches of green to be seen. If we had been watching Toy Story or The Incredibles, this would probably have been a medical event, or so some experts have said. As it was, it was a great way to demonstrate a movie with lasers for its projector’s primary source for the first time.

Peter Wilson, Principle at HDDC – famously insightful on testing and objective technical analysis – sent a quite positive, and somewhat complete list of points. The line numbers have been added to make commenting simple:

1) I went and it was awesome, like a different movie. Very engaging – people were laughing at Sacha Baron Cohen as you could actually see the detail of his performance.

2) Rating 10/10 for the public 8/10 for experts.

3) Issues were some temporal axis distortion but the movie was shot by professionals to minimise 24 fps artefacts.

4) Speckle, mostly invisible but in one scene with a flat red field near the end it was very visible. Public would probably think it was an effect.

5) Really noisy fans.

6) Silver screen used to make the 14 ft lambert claim but I cannot comment about this as I was sitting in just about the best place.

7) Allegedly they vibrated the screen to minimise Speckle.

8) Good work in progress but Christie guy said don’t hold your breath for availability and the technology may never be cheaper than Xenon.

9) The demo showed it’s possible to use laser illumination, maybe 3-5 years before it could be a main stream business.

10) So I made sure I sat in what I thought was the best place… A good effort I think but I cannot comment on other seating areas.

11) In reality It was good enough to concentrate on the story not the technology.

Number 11 really is the kicker. When we were sitting waiting for the show to get under way the fan noise was gruesome. Once the movie started, I forgot to notice. Compared to the miserably dark, sparkly-at-the-edges-of-objects movie that I had seen with the cheap passive glasses in the past…well, there can be no comparison.

Number 7 – There were devices mounted on the back of the screen. Whether or not they were on and used cannot be verified at this time, but they were seen and documented. They were mounted in 3 rows across the screen (4 pipes tied together to make one long one), somewhat in this fashion:

position of shakers on laser screen What is known is that silver screens should be worse for laser projection. But the choices that Christie had at IBC were 2 screens; one flat white screen, said to have a 1.4 gain (which Dolby showed Promethus on two nights before), and a 2.4 gain silver screen.

For all that they had 6 x 10k+ lumen Necsel laser units feeding into the projector, they didn’t have that much coming out. General guesses are that they had about a third that at the lens…which is really quite good for this unproductized system.

The hype machine had pressed forward the idea that they were going to show 14 foot Lamberts, so they didn’t have a lot of leeway. There were rumors of late nights pushing to get 12 ft-L. In the end, without being there at the time of the final tweak, there was no way to know except to trust. (Details about current expensive test tools not being able to work accurately with laser light presentations is yet another white paper to write.)

The reality was that in the center of the room it seemed a little over-bright, but that could have been because the movie wasn’t mastered for that brightness, but for something more like the average of the room. (While the hype machine would get very specific about some things, they left the “Was Hugo re-mastered (color timed) for 48 candela/m2 (14 ft./lamberts)?” question with a “…yes, this version was specially colour-timed for higher brightness projection.” which left the answer to the question open to interpretation.)

Nonetheless, early thoughts that the silver screen was used because combining the randomness of shakers with the unpredictable silver surface may be clever or may be bollocks. Perhaps the silver was choosen because it was the choice that they had for “high enough gain” to get to 14. Details about shakers seem known in the community, so we’ll have to dig into a special article for that later as well. It is said that this will be the only way to get Necsel devices to work, for a number of reasons. Another projector manufacturer is said to be trying this for their IMAX development.

Necsel was one of the celebrity hot California companies for a while, hoping that rear-view laser projection would catch on at the home. They went through hundreds of millions of dollars and didn’t come up with a commercially viable product. They did provide enough of a product to allow Kodak to make a laser projector demo, which many people at the time thought was a pure stock play, a tool to help them appear to still be alive. Necsel weren’t bought outright by Ushio, Christie’s parent company, but Ushio did buy 51% of them.

Despite all that work, there was speckle, and the big RED patch that appeared for a few second wasn’t the only hit. The scrolling titles at the end exhibited it as well. As the Christie spokesman of the evening pointed out, there are several manufacturers going several different ways right now. Most are fighting the wrong technology because they think it might be easier in the end (“Why go for a high tech solution when a low tech one will work,” is what one engineer quip’d.)

What this says is that there is a need for an objective metrology to give everyone a language to speak with and a guide to what is acceptable and what isn’t. While watching the latest ASC camera test results on the same afternoon, it also occurred to us slow ones in the room that a piece of StEM-like content – specifically designed for laser projection – would be excellent.

In fact, there were two technical groups in the laser field working on “big topics”. The first is well known as LIPA, Laser Illuminated Projector Association, and is active. This group is attempting to show that laser illuminated projectors can be certified safe on the federal level rather than requiring each system to get a permit from local, state and federal groups. Good effort, but not improving the science.

It seems that there is no bandwidth for the group that is required to create the metrology and help the science of identifying and quantizing speckle and metamerism. There was a proposal document for measuring speckle distributed at the SID conference 2 and a half years ago, but nothing seems to have happened since. At a Hollywood SMPTE meeting we learned that Laser Light Engines had reduced Speckle Contrast Ratio to below 1% (not to 1% of that of a fully coherent laser.) It would be great to learn about what measurements besides the marquee “14 foot Lamberts” that the PR people flaunted so well.

To be continued…because we must..have to…challenge the metamerism discussion…which is difficult since the usual web-search suspects all spin too many complications into the discussion. Perhaps a color and eye scientist can get something out of the far too complicated Wikipedia article, but like so many articles, if you know the subject already you can find the errors but don’t have time to fix them.

The other reason that searching the web doesn’t work for this topic is that most approach it from too general of a direction. The majority of articles speak to buying a carpet that you think is grey in the store and it is a shade of brown in the office…or vice-versa or a dress or something from your printer. Then they’ll point to the bandwidth of the light being more or less yellow in one place or the other. Which is fine, as far as they go.

But the difference in this discussion is not only in the difference in how people see but the difference in the way projectors manipulate light before it hits the chip and the famous entendue.

When we think of color science we think of the CIE, and spectral sensitivity curves, and 2 or 10 degree horseshoes. What we don’t think of is that the 1931 curves were derived from tests of less than 20 people and the 1964 derivations came from a few dozen Londoners (including perhaps 2 foreign students.) Yet our act of seeing involves millions of cones that are sensitive to varied colors and many more millions of rods and a matrix of purposeful cells in front of and behind them all (including for some bizarre reason, our eye’s blood vessels.) There are chemical reactions that these fire off, which can affect small changes or large (who hasn’t felt the bleaching effect that protects the mechanism when we foolishly look at a super-bright light?) And then these bundles of nerves get sent to many different fast and slow processing sectors of the brain.

End result: We all see differently. Generally, this isn’t a problem. We usually are tasked with processing fairly wide bands of wavelengths of light. The two CIE horseshoes derived from 50 people does a fairly good job of typifying billions of us.

Cutting a long story short though, lasers are nano-small. Like other sciences at those small sizes, things be different. A patch of color illuminated by a laser can look bright green to me while perhaps bright yellow to you. (If I understand it right, the differences follow along the line from the primary through the white point to the secondary. So: blue to yellow, green to magenta, red to cyan. That this provokes a complete discussion – in a separate article – of the opponent theory of color…)

Matt Cowen spoke briefly to this issue while d-cinema was still in primordial soup. Others have mentioned it since then, but it wasn’t an issue to study. Now it can be seen and any group putting up a picture with tightly focused laser colors (anyone but Laser Light Engines at this point, which broadens the laser light away from just one frequency) will run into this issue.

Did we see it last night with Hugo? I spoke to people who thought that they saw it. When I said, “The blue in Sasha-Cohen’s uniform?” they said, “Exactly~!” But there is no way to tell. That could have been a directors choice and we were seeing the exact proper color.

Or, we may have been seated in the bright seats with a movie color timed (mastered) at 8. All we know from the Chistie hype-machine is “specially colour-timed for higher brightness projection”. How to make that decision? Statistically there were maybe only 10 seats in the room that received as much light as the radiospectrometer that set up the room in advance of the screening. The fall off of light from a 2.4 gain screen is pretty steep. It would take a good algorithm to figure the deviation down to scotopic light levels. But looking at the width of the room one would guess that more saw it at 6 or 8 and below than at 10 and above. If it was mastered for 8 and we in the center of the room saw it at 14, that’s a prety big disparity and would make the blue of the uniform somewhat washed out and looking ‘different’.

Ultimately, we saw a science experiement without the benefit of knowing the science. Perhaps we will in the future. Certainly there isn’t any secret sauce here. If it is true that Barco is also trying to use shaking devices to reduce speckle, they already know what Christie knows. They are probably wondering what went wrong to make that big field of red go glisten just like everyone is.

What we heard – Several people comment about the high level of the fans and electronics which most presume is the cooling system for the rather impressive tower housing the laser system. We understand that that section alone was fed with 60 amps, 3 phase. But I swear that if tortured I would say that I never heard them once I got into the movie.

What we saw –

The Hype – There were several companies in competition for the Buzzword Compliance Award 2012 at IBC this year. The wording of the press releases for this event was typical of the Christie and Barco tit-for-tat hyperbole festival whenever thay world-first something.

The Reality – What level of lumens were coming out of the lens? hitting the screen? getting to the glasses? though the glasses?

– There was a reason that Necsel spent 200 million and sold for dimes…long story perhaps best left for later.

– Shaking – Want. More. Data.

Different Reactions – More to come

Different Science – There is some fear that by the time lasers are ready to play that 1) everyone in the cinema world will have bought their projector-for-life and all we will get is laser-retrofits and/or a new screen of OLEDs will be presented at huge contrast/huge light/huge size/ small price. Laser retrofits don’t have the best features of lasers. Get rid of all of the light pipes and prism and reflector this and that and toss the light straight on the chip and out of an F6 lens for ultimate of inexpensive and green. Christie’s comment at the beginning of the show reminds some of the statements from IBM in the mid-80’s about computers that would hold the market in suspence while they got their act together. Some say that lasers will invade the field in one or two years, though people said that one or two years ago. As far as an emmisive technology, I think we need a buzzword for self-growing crystals that suspend themselves in the screen position, adapting to holo-metadata (and blocking the EXIT lights until needed.)

Future – Regardless of every torture or flaw, Christie stuck their necks out and performed excellently. The perfect picture, great technology that didn’t really hiccup once going. They provoked discussion that the industry will have to come to grips with while it is distracted with high frame rates. And they moved the bar up. Until someone can show a productizable, no speckle system, no one will be able hit Hyperbole: Plaid :11 anymore, which is a good thing.

Lonks:

Minimizing Observer Metamerism in Display Systems Rajeev Ramanath, 7 March 2008

Tripping Over the Laser Light – Fantastic~!

Voluntary DCinema Documents

The second issue has to do with enforcement of SMPTE/ISO/DCI standards. This author made a presentation to this point in 2008 at the EDCF/IBC final day presentations, illustrating that all three groups (and NATO) created voluntary standards. This author even made the compulsory presentation joke, paraphrasing Stalin concerning the Pope – that none of these groups have any tanks, or even a police department. (Nobody laughed then either.)[See: Training and Compliance]

We then pointed out that any company that signed a VPF deal with a Hollywood studio typically has a clause that mandates that they will follow all SMPTE/ISO and DCI specifications and recommended practices. This puts the studios in the position of being the police. Certainly if a cinema facility were to violate a part of a security specification, there would be no movie sent to that offending machine or perhaps, that party…(even if it were 3D, which doesn’t have any security specs mentioned?) Why would a quality issue be any different than a security issue? [ Cinema owners understand this issue: at every consequential point they ask – as one did during a recent SMPTE HFR webcast, “Will my equipment need another round of DCI Certification if I modify it for HFR?” The presenter danced around the correct answer.]

The reason might be that d-cinema performance issues have always evolved. DCI studios have generally enforced their rules only when one manufacturer can show that there is a way to make equipment, or a workflow, which can be made generally available and which follows the rules. Enforcement of key security, MPEG to JPEG, and other “standards” were migrated to in this fashion, so much so that there is an interim “InterOp” “Standard” that is being migrated from this year. SMPTE Specs and Recommended Practices can be migrated to because, now, finally, the SMPTE Standards and Recommended Practices have all been voted on and stamped and moved to ISO for Internationalization of the standards…and manufacturers make equipment and workflows which have all been laboriously tested and shown to work (thanks ISDCF~!).

Enforceable from Voluntary by virtue of VPF Contract Signature

Allowing 3D movies to be presented at less than 48 candelas/m2 is one more example of studio leniency while the industry works out a technical solution. If RealD were able to productize the Argonne National Laboratory method of Acoustic levitation (- YouTube) to place a screen full of polarizing particles that reflected an evenly spread 48 cd/m2 throughout an auditorium without the arbitrary vagaries of silver screens and the predictable vagaries of high-gain screens, one could bet that there would be a date certain cut off of material to those who didn’t have equipment that complies. (Full disclosure: We know nothing about the scope of RealD’s Acoustic Levitation research deep in the mountains behind their Denver labs.)

Small picture of light abuse at IBC RAI high gain silver hugo screenFinally, just so we can get to the main attraction, we’ll skip further details about silver and high-gain screens. We sat in the center of the house, immediately behind where the room is calibrated from. Pictures and comments about general screen effects can be read about in the earlier article: 
Lasers, Christie, IBC…Silver Screen Why [Update 2]
and also see CineTech Geek’s video of: Demonstration of Silver Screen compromise]

 


There are screen effects specific to lasers, and there were dozens (hundreds?) of people looking for them. Speckle is the most famous, but perhaps the most around-the-corner insidious is metamerism. Both problems are see-able in certain circumstances with Xenon bulb powered projectors. Fortunately or unfortunately, watching a movie like Hugo after a long day of conventioning doesn’t put ones eyes in the best condition for analysing…but that won’t stop the digital illuminati.

 


 

First off, Hugo is just too easy to slip into pure suspension of disbelief. Absolutely gorgeously and inventively shot. Many cool things to watch. Hugo stereographer Demetri Portelli showed some comparison clips at 2 different light levels…everyone should see those clips. Anyone who doesn’t see that much light in their local theater should be asking for a discount instead of an upcharge. Just before the complete film ran, Demetri said he was pleased that the movie at its proper level was “finally seeing the light of day.” — immediately, your author realized he couldn’t recall if there were any daytime shots in the movie.

To that point, long-time digital cinema tech exec Patrick von Sychowski said, it was “almost as if the railway scene had been shot two hours later in the morning.”

What wasn’t there to watch for was any bright clear skys with fields of green grass and trees moving in the wind. In fact, there were no patches of green to be seen. If we had been watching Toy Story or The Incredibles, this would probably have been a medical event, or so some experts have said. As it was, it was a great way to demonstrate a movie with lasers for its projector’s primary source for the first time.

Peter Wilson, Principle at HDDC – famously insightful on testing and objective technical analysis – sent a quite positive, and somewhat complete list of points. The line numbers have been added to make commenting simple:

1) I went and it was awesome, like a different movie. Very engaging – people were laughing at Sacha Baron Cohen as you could actually see the detail of his performance.

2) Rating 10/10 for the public 8/10 for experts.

3) Issues were some temporal axis distortion but the movie was shot by professionals to minimise 24 fps artefacts.

4) Speckle, mostly invisible but in one scene with a flat red field near the end it was very visible. Public would probably think it was an effect.

5) Really noisy fans.

6) Silver screen used to make the 14 ft lambert claim but I cannot comment about this as I was sitting in just about the best place.

7) Allegedly they vibrated the screen to minimise Speckle.

8) Good work in progress but Christie guy said don’t hold your breath for availability and the technology may never be cheaper than Xenon.

9) The demo showed it’s possible to use laser illumination, maybe 3-5 years before it could be a main stream business.

10) So I made sure I sat in what I thought was the best place… A good effort I think but I cannot comment on other seating areas.

11) In reality It was good enough to concentrate on the story not the technology.

Number 11 really is the kicker. When we were sitting waiting for the show to get under way the fan noise was gruesome. Once the movie started, I forgot to notice. Compared to the miserably dark, sparkly-at-the-edges-of-objects movie that I had seen with the cheap passive glasses in the past…well, there can be no comparison.

Number 7 – There were devices mounted on the back of the screen. Whether or not they were on and used cannot be verified at this time, but they were seen and documented. They were mounted in 3 rows across the screen (4 pipes tied together to make one long one), somewhat in this fashion:

position of shakers on laser screen What is known is that silver screens should be worse for laser projection. But the choices that Christie had at IBC were 2 screens; one flat white screen, said to have a 1.4 gain (which Dolby showed Promethus on two nights before), and a 2.4 gain silver screen.

For all that they had 6 x 10k+ lumen Necsel laser units feeding into the projector, they didn’t have that much coming out. General guesses are that they had about a third that at the lens…which is really quite good for this unproductized system.

The hype machine had pressed forward the idea that they were going to show 14 foot Lamberts, so they didn’t have a lot of leeway. There were rumors of late nights pushing to get 12 ft-L. In the end, without being there at the time of the final tweak, there was no way to know except to trust. (Details about current expensive test tools not being able to work accurately with laser light presentations is yet another white paper to write.)

The reality was that in the center of the room it seemed a little over-bright, but that could have been because the movie wasn’t mastered for that brightness, but for something more like the average of the room. (While the hype machine would get very specific about some things, they left the “Was Hugo re-mastered (color timed) for 48 candela/m2 (14 ft./lamberts)?” question with a “…yes, this version was specially colour-timed for higher brightness projection.” which left the answer to the question open to interpretation.)

Nonetheless, early thoughts that the silver screen was used because combining the randomness of shakers with the unpredictable silver surface may be clever or may be bollocks. Perhaps the silver was choosen because it was the choice that they had for “high enough gain” to get to 14. Details about shakers seem known in the community, so we’ll have to dig into a special article for that later as well. It is said that this will be the only way to get Necsel devices to work, for a number of reasons. Another projector manufacturer is said to be trying this for their IMAX development.

Necsel was one of the celebrity hot California companies for a while, hoping that rear-view laser projection would catch on at the home. They went through hundreds of millions of dollars and didn’t come up with a commercially viable product. They did provide enough of a product to allow Kodak to make a laser projector demo, which many people at the time thought was a pure stock play, a tool to help them appear to still be alive. Necsel weren’t bought outright by Ushio, Christie’s parent company, but Ushio did buy 51% of them.

Despite all that work, there was speckle, and the big RED patch that appeared for a few second wasn’t the only hit. The scrolling titles at the end exhibited it as well. As the Christie spokesman of the evening pointed out, there are several manufacturers going several different ways right now. Most are fighting the wrong technology because they think it might be easier in the end (“Why go for a high tech solution when a low tech one will work,” is what one engineer quip’d.)

What this says is that there is a need for an objective metrology to give everyone a language to speak with and a guide to what is acceptable and what isn’t. While watching the latest ASC camera test results on the same afternoon, it also occurred to us slow ones in the room that a piece of StEM-like content – specifically designed for laser projection – would be excellent.

In fact, there were two technical groups in the laser field working on “big topics”. The first is well known as LIPA, Laser Illuminated Projector Association, and is active. This group is attempting to show that laser illuminated projectors can be certified safe on the federal level rather than requiring each system to get a permit from local, state and federal groups. Good effort, but not improving the science.

It seems that there is no bandwidth for the group that is required to create the metrology and help the science of identifying and quantizing speckle and metamerism. There was a proposal document for measuring speckle distributed at the SID conference 2 and a half years ago, but nothing seems to have happened since. At a Hollywood SMPTE meeting we learned that Laser Light Engines had reduced Speckle Contrast Ratio to below 1% (not to 1% of that of a fully coherent laser.) It would be great to learn about what measurements besides the marquee “14 foot Lamberts” that the PR people flaunted so well.

To be continued…because we must..have to…challenge the metamerism discussion…which is difficult since the usual web-search suspects all spin too many complications into the discussion. Perhaps a color and eye scientist can get something out of the far too complicated Wikipedia article, but like so many articles, if you know the subject already you can find the errors but don’t have time to fix them.

The other reason that searching the web doesn’t work for this topic is that most approach it from too general of a direction. The majority of articles speak to buying a carpet that you think is grey in the store and it is a shade of brown in the office…or vice-versa or a dress or something from your printer. Then they’ll point to the bandwidth of the light being more or less yellow in one place or the other. Which is fine, as far as they go.

But the difference in this discussion is not only in the difference in how people see but the difference in the way projectors manipulate light before it hits the chip and the famous entendue.

When we think of color science we think of the CIE, and spectral sensitivity curves, and 2 or 10 degree horseshoes. What we don’t think of is that the 1931 curves were derived from tests of less than 20 people and the 1964 derivations came from a few dozen Londoners (including perhaps 2 foreign students.) Yet our act of seeing involves millions of cones that are sensitive to varied colors and many more millions of rods and a matrix of purposeful cells in front of and behind them all (including for some bizarre reason, our eye’s blood vessels.) There are chemical reactions that these fire off, which can affect small changes or large (who hasn’t felt the bleaching effect that protects the mechanism when we foolishly look at a super-bright light?) And then these bundles of nerves get sent to many different fast and slow processing sectors of the brain.

End result: We all see differently. Generally, this isn’t a problem. We usually are tasked with processing fairly wide bands of wavelengths of light. The two CIE horseshoes derived from 50 people does a fairly good job of typifying billions of us.

Cutting a long story short though, lasers are nano-small. Like other sciences at those small sizes, things be different. A patch of color illuminated by a laser can look bright green to me while perhaps bright yellow to you. (If I understand it right, the differences follow along the line from the primary through the white point to the secondary. So: blue to yellow, green to magenta, red to cyan. That this provokes a complete discussion – in a separate article – of the opponent theory of color…)

Matt Cowen spoke briefly to this issue while d-cinema was still in primordial soup. Others have mentioned it since then, but it wasn’t an issue to study. Now it can be seen and any group putting up a picture with tightly focused laser colors (anyone but Laser Light Engines at this point, which broadens the laser light away from just one frequency) will run into this issue.

Did we see it last night with Hugo? I spoke to people who thought that they saw it. When I said, “The blue in Sasha-Cohen’s uniform?” they said, “Exactly~!” But there is no way to tell. That could have been a directors choice and we were seeing the exact proper color.

Or, we may have been seated in the bright seats with a movie color timed (mastered) at 8. All we know from the Chistie hype-machine is “specially colour-timed for higher brightness projection”. How to make that decision? Statistically there were maybe only 10 seats in the room that received as much light as the radiospectrometer that set up the room in advance of the screening. The fall off of light from a 2.4 gain screen is pretty steep. It would take a good algorithm to figure the deviation down to scotopic light levels. But looking at the width of the room one would guess that more saw it at 6 or 8 and below than at 10 and above. If it was mastered for 8 and we in the center of the room saw it at 14, that’s a prety big disparity and would make the blue of the uniform somewhat washed out and looking ‘different’.

Ultimately, we saw a science experiement without the benefit of knowing the science. Perhaps we will in the future. Certainly there isn’t any secret sauce here. If it is true that Barco is also trying to use shaking devices to reduce speckle, they already know what Christie knows. They are probably wondering what went wrong to make that big field of red go glisten just like everyone is.

What we heard – Several people comment about the high level of the fans and electronics which most presume is the cooling system for the rather impressive tower housing the laser system. We understand that that section alone was fed with 60 amps, 3 phase. But I swear that if tortured I would say that I never heard them once I got into the movie.

What we saw –

The Hype – There were several companies in competition for the Buzzword Compliance Award 2012 at IBC this year. The wording of the press releases for this event was typical of the Christie and Barco tit-for-tat hyperbole festival whenever thay world-first something.

The Reality – What level of lumens were coming out of the lens? hitting the screen? getting to the glasses? though the glasses?

– There was a reason that Necsel spent 200 million and sold for dimes…long story perhaps best left for later.

– Shaking – Want. More. Data.

Different Reactions – More to come

Different Science – There is some fear that by the time lasers are ready to play that 1) everyone in the cinema world will have bought their projector-for-life and all we will get is laser-retrofits and/or a new screen of OLEDs will be presented at huge contrast/huge light/huge size/ small price. Laser retrofits don’t have the best features of lasers. Get rid of all of the light pipes and prism and reflector this and that and toss the light straight on the chip and out of an F6 lens for ultimate of inexpensive and green. Christie’s comment at the beginning of the show reminds some of the statements from IBM in the mid-80’s about computers that would hold the market in suspence while they got their act together. Some say that lasers will invade the field in one or two years, though people said that one or two years ago. As far as an emmisive technology, I think we need a buzzword for self-growing crystals that suspend themselves in the screen position, adapting to holo-metadata (and blocking the EXIT lights until needed.)

Future – Regardless of every torture or flaw, Christie stuck their necks out and performed excellently. The perfect picture, great technology that didn’t really hiccup once going. They provoked discussion that the industry will have to come to grips with while it is distracted with high frame rates. And they moved the bar up. Until someone can show a productizable, no speckle system, no one will be able hit Hyperbole: Plaid :11 anymore, which is a good thing.

Lonks:

Minimizing Observer Metamerism in Display Systems Rajeev Ramanath, 7 March 2008

Superb Future Technology Article

The official IMF site is at: Interoperable Mastering Format Forum (IMFF)

Thunderbolt – This is taking off with 

Post-IBC: Six Things to Watch

Written by Carolyn Giardina

Thunderbolt, IMF, UltraViolet, and Cloud technologies generate buzz.

The 2011 IBC conference, held September 8-13 in Amsterdam, generated news and discussion about all areas of production, post and content distribution. Here is a sampling of just some of the developments to watch for in the coming months.

DVS-ClipsterIMF

The Interoperable Master Format, or IMF, has been a big topic in the US, and at IBC word was spreading in the international community.

“The purpose of IMF is to create a high-quality, standardized and interoperable file framework for finished content,” explained SMPTE’s IMF Working Group chair Annie Chang, who is Disney’s VP Post-Production Technology. “IMF allows for flexible versioning so that multiple language versions and edits can be put together without the need to create full linear versions of each language/edit. IMF can store only the different pieces (audio, image and subtitles) and uses a Composition Play List to ‘mix and match’ and create the various versions needed.”

According to Chang, some of the IMF draft documents should start rolling out this Fall.

Chang encourages involvement in the SMPTE effort from hardware and software manufacturers that have systems that edit, play out and/or transcode files.

DVS has already stepped up to the plate, introducing version 4.3 of its Clipster, which debuted at IBC with new features including mezzanine format mastering for IMF workflows with extended JPEG2000 support.

Clipster’s batchlist function enables independent and automated processing of IMF, as well DCI and other distribution jobs.

Also during IBC, the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), the European Broadcast Union (EBU), and SMPTE agreed to work together to accelerate their respective efforts at driving interoperability and delivering efficient media workflows.

This will include meeting regularly and collecting input from users.

Said SMPTE President Pete Ludé: “As more media organizations rely on rapidly developed software-based tools, it is particularly important that standards-development processes meet these fast-paced needs.”

AJA-Io-XTTHUNDERBOLT

Numerous manufacturers introduced Thunderbolt-enabled devices at IBC, demonstrating the promise of the technology.

“Thunderbolt is important because it’s incredibly fast, supporting standard protocols, which means we can create devices to work all the way up to uncompressed 4:4:4 HD on systems that before could not handle it, such as a MacBook Pro,” said AJA President Nick Rashby. “We’re very excited to see how new Thunderbolt-enabled technologies help evolve workflows.”

AJA introduced Io XT, an I/O device with two Thunderbolt ports. Said Rashby: “Io XT won’t be your ‘endpoint’ on your setup, because we support daisy-chaining connectivity of multiple Thunderbolt-enabled devices.”

This is the developing I/O device that was first exhibited as a technology demonstration at NAB. The product is slated for availability in Q4 for $1495.

At IBC, Matrox and Promise Technology hosted a demonstration of multi-layer realtime editing of uncompressed HD projects using Matrox’s MXO2 LE MAX video I/O devices and Promise Pegasus RAID storage connected to the Apple iMac via Thunderbolt technology.

Pricing for Thunderbolt-enabled Matrox MXO2 devices starts at $549, and Matrox Thunderbolt adapters for MXO2 devices are available for $199.

Blackmagic Design also made Thunderbolt-supported products a big part of its IBC exhibit.

Now available for $995, Thunderbolt-enabled UltraStudio 3D offers portable capture and playback with full resolution dual stream 3D support, as well as full SD, HD and 2K support.

Blackmagic’s second Thunderbolt-supported product, Intensity Extreme, will be available later this year. The $299 video capture and playback product is designed for professional videographers with HDMI and analog video. “We think the combination of HDMI and analog on an extremely compact Thunderbolt bus powered design combined with an affordable price will change the lives of thousands of professional videographers,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic.

cs55_productionpremium_boxshotCHANGE IN THE PROFESSIONAL FINISHING SPACE

Following news that Adobe acquired Iridas for an undisclosed sum, there was plenty of talk about what that might mean in the professional finishing space.

Adobe’s announcement of the deal suggested that Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection “are expected to gain a comprehensive set of tools so video editors can manipulate color and light for any type of content, including professional film and television.”

Bill Roberts, Adobe’s director of video product management, did not discuss specifics, but said of Adobe’s vision: “We think that the tasks of audio, effects, finishing, editing should all have dedicated interfaces and the workflow should be simple and seamless and lossless between the applications. Historically that is what we have done and that should not change going forward as we start to integrate this technology.”

Adobe was not the only company making acquisition news at IBC. In late August, 3ality Digital bought Element Technica, renaming the company 3ality Technica and making IBC its first trade show under the new brand name. The company had a booth and also hosted a reception during IBC. Plans are to beef up its R&D, while continuing to offer products from both companies with emphasis on integration. That includes integration with Element Technica rigs and 3ality’s Stereo Image Processor (SIP).

DaVinciResolveSoftware-2IIF ACES

In Hollywood, momentum has been building around the Image Interchange Framework, or IIF, an architecture developed by an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences-led committee of industry professionals, coupled with ACES (Academy Color Encoding Spec). The goal is to create a way to manage color consistency throughout production.

IIF ACES has already started to find its way into production, including at Encore, where colorist Pankaj Bajpai used a workflow on FX series Justified, shot by Francis Kenny, ASC.

At IBC, Blackmagic Design featured the new DaVinci Resolve 8.1 software update, which now includes ACES color space support.

In related news, Blackmagic announced that DaVinci Resolve for Microsoft Windows will be accompanied by the Mac OS X version, meaning that when a customer purchases DaVinci Resolve, he or she can choose which operating system to use.

Digital-Rapids-Transcode-Manager-20ULTRAVIOLET

Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) – an industry consortium of more than 70 stakeholders including Hollywood studios and manufacturers – are getting ready to launch UltraViolet, a DRM system that effectively would allow each customer to create a content library in the cloud that could be accessed on any supported device.

At IBC, preparations for the launch were evident at the DTS booth, which was demoing its MediaPlayer using UltraViolet Common File Format (CFF) files created with upcoming version 2.0 of the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager automated transcoding software (which was demoed at the Digital Rapids booth).

“From mobile phones and tablets to PCs and connected TVs, multi-screen viewing and the increasing volume of digital content are driving fundamental shifts in the way media is distributed and consumed,” said Brick Eksten, president of Digital Rapids. “UltraViolet will play a crucial role in unlocking the potential of multi-screen media consumption, and we’re excited to be continuing our successful partnership with DTS by working together in support of the standard.”

Just after IBC came the earliest content announcements. Upcoming home entertainment releases of Horrible Bosses, Green Lantern, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Warner Bros.), as well as The Smurfsand Friends With Benefits (Sony) will support UltraViolet.

DECE members include Fox, Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., Deluxe, Technicolor, LG, Samsung, Microsoft, Netflix, and Best Buy.

UltraViolet’s rollout begins next week in North America.

Quantel-Qtube-UpdateTHE CLOUD

The entertainment technology community continues to explore ways that the cloud can be incorporated into workflows to create efficiencies. The models that were featured this year at IBC primarily surrounded broadcast applications.

Quantel, for instance, showed the next stage of its QTube cloud-based broadcast production workflow at IBC, which now includes the ability to integrate files held on generic IT storage, and well as to access and combine content from multiple sites.

Rogers Media in Canada is already using QTube for coverage of live events including MLB and NHL games. Said Frank Bruno, VP Engineering for Rogers Media: “For us, QTube is a problem solver; we have so many stations across the country and also camera people going to multiple venues and events. As long as you are near a connection, you have contact back and forth. We don’t have to worry about shipping disks or hard drives.”

At IBC, Chyron offered a look at its AXIS World Graphics cloud-based graphics creation system. Also aimed at broadcasters, the system is designed for reporters, production assistants, and news producers who would have access to prebuilt templates via a web browser to quickly create graphics for outlets including websites and mobile devices.

Avid Technology released a white paper outlining its view of the media cloud. It explained: “Avid strongly believes that the successful media enterprise will focus on delivering new consumer experiences via distribution platforms that create new revenue models.

“Forward-looking digital media strategies must include cloud-based services in addition to traditional intranet and internet-based solutions. Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise (IME) framework provides a blueprint for organizations to confidently embark on this journey and take full advantage of the opportunities presented by cloud computing – now.”

Superb Future Technology Article

The official IMF site is at: Interoperable Mastering Format Forum (IMFF)

Thunderbolt – This is taking off with 

Post-IBC: Six Things to Watch

Written by Carolyn Giardina

Thunderbolt, IMF, UltraViolet, and Cloud technologies generate buzz.

The 2011 IBC conference, held September 8-13 in Amsterdam, generated news and discussion about all areas of production, post and content distribution. Here is a sampling of just some of the developments to watch for in the coming months.

DVS-ClipsterIMF

The Interoperable Master Format, or IMF, has been a big topic in the US, and at IBC word was spreading in the international community.

“The purpose of IMF is to create a high-quality, standardized and interoperable file framework for finished content,” explained SMPTE’s IMF Working Group chair Annie Chang, who is Disney’s VP Post-Production Technology. “IMF allows for flexible versioning so that multiple language versions and edits can be put together without the need to create full linear versions of each language/edit. IMF can store only the different pieces (audio, image and subtitles) and uses a Composition Play List to ‘mix and match’ and create the various versions needed.”

According to Chang, some of the IMF draft documents should start rolling out this Fall.

Chang encourages involvement in the SMPTE effort from hardware and software manufacturers that have systems that edit, play out and/or transcode files.

DVS has already stepped up to the plate, introducing version 4.3 of its Clipster, which debuted at IBC with new features including mezzanine format mastering for IMF workflows with extended JPEG2000 support.

Clipster’s batchlist function enables independent and automated processing of IMF, as well DCI and other distribution jobs.

Also during IBC, the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), the European Broadcast Union (EBU), and SMPTE agreed to work together to accelerate their respective efforts at driving interoperability and delivering efficient media workflows.

This will include meeting regularly and collecting input from users.

Said SMPTE President Pete Ludé: “As more media organizations rely on rapidly developed software-based tools, it is particularly important that standards-development processes meet these fast-paced needs.”

AJA-Io-XTTHUNDERBOLT

Numerous manufacturers introduced Thunderbolt-enabled devices at IBC, demonstrating the promise of the technology.

“Thunderbolt is important because it’s incredibly fast, supporting standard protocols, which means we can create devices to work all the way up to uncompressed 4:4:4 HD on systems that before could not handle it, such as a MacBook Pro,” said AJA President Nick Rashby. “We’re very excited to see how new Thunderbolt-enabled technologies help evolve workflows.”

AJA introduced Io XT, an I/O device with two Thunderbolt ports. Said Rashby: “Io XT won’t be your ‘endpoint’ on your setup, because we support daisy-chaining connectivity of multiple Thunderbolt-enabled devices.”

This is the developing I/O device that was first exhibited as a technology demonstration at NAB. The product is slated for availability in Q4 for $1495.

At IBC, Matrox and Promise Technology hosted a demonstration of multi-layer realtime editing of uncompressed HD projects using Matrox’s MXO2 LE MAX video I/O devices and Promise Pegasus RAID storage connected to the Apple iMac via Thunderbolt technology.

Pricing for Thunderbolt-enabled Matrox MXO2 devices starts at $549, and Matrox Thunderbolt adapters for MXO2 devices are available for $199.

Blackmagic Design also made Thunderbolt-supported products a big part of its IBC exhibit.

Now available for $995, Thunderbolt-enabled UltraStudio 3D offers portable capture and playback with full resolution dual stream 3D support, as well as full SD, HD and 2K support.

Blackmagic’s second Thunderbolt-supported product, Intensity Extreme, will be available later this year. The $299 video capture and playback product is designed for professional videographers with HDMI and analog video. “We think the combination of HDMI and analog on an extremely compact Thunderbolt bus powered design combined with an affordable price will change the lives of thousands of professional videographers,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic.

cs55_productionpremium_boxshotCHANGE IN THE PROFESSIONAL FINISHING SPACE

Following news that Adobe acquired Iridas for an undisclosed sum, there was plenty of talk about what that might mean in the professional finishing space.

Adobe’s announcement of the deal suggested that Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection “are expected to gain a comprehensive set of tools so video editors can manipulate color and light for any type of content, including professional film and television.”

Bill Roberts, Adobe’s director of video product management, did not discuss specifics, but said of Adobe’s vision: “We think that the tasks of audio, effects, finishing, editing should all have dedicated interfaces and the workflow should be simple and seamless and lossless between the applications. Historically that is what we have done and that should not change going forward as we start to integrate this technology.”

Adobe was not the only company making acquisition news at IBC. In late August, 3ality Digital bought Element Technica, renaming the company 3ality Technica and making IBC its first trade show under the new brand name. The company had a booth and also hosted a reception during IBC. Plans are to beef up its R&D, while continuing to offer products from both companies with emphasis on integration. That includes integration with Element Technica rigs and 3ality’s Stereo Image Processor (SIP).

DaVinciResolveSoftware-2IIF ACES

In Hollywood, momentum has been building around the Image Interchange Framework, or IIF, an architecture developed by an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences-led committee of industry professionals, coupled with ACES (Academy Color Encoding Spec). The goal is to create a way to manage color consistency throughout production.

IIF ACES has already started to find its way into production, including at Encore, where colorist Pankaj Bajpai used a workflow on FX series Justified, shot by Francis Kenny, ASC.

At IBC, Blackmagic Design featured the new DaVinci Resolve 8.1 software update, which now includes ACES color space support.

In related news, Blackmagic announced that DaVinci Resolve for Microsoft Windows will be accompanied by the Mac OS X version, meaning that when a customer purchases DaVinci Resolve, he or she can choose which operating system to use.

Digital-Rapids-Transcode-Manager-20ULTRAVIOLET

Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) – an industry consortium of more than 70 stakeholders including Hollywood studios and manufacturers – are getting ready to launch UltraViolet, a DRM system that effectively would allow each customer to create a content library in the cloud that could be accessed on any supported device.

At IBC, preparations for the launch were evident at the DTS booth, which was demoing its MediaPlayer using UltraViolet Common File Format (CFF) files created with upcoming version 2.0 of the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager automated transcoding software (which was demoed at the Digital Rapids booth).

“From mobile phones and tablets to PCs and connected TVs, multi-screen viewing and the increasing volume of digital content are driving fundamental shifts in the way media is distributed and consumed,” said Brick Eksten, president of Digital Rapids. “UltraViolet will play a crucial role in unlocking the potential of multi-screen media consumption, and we’re excited to be continuing our successful partnership with DTS by working together in support of the standard.”

Just after IBC came the earliest content announcements. Upcoming home entertainment releases of Horrible Bosses, Green Lantern, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Warner Bros.), as well as The Smurfsand Friends With Benefits (Sony) will support UltraViolet.

DECE members include Fox, Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., Deluxe, Technicolor, LG, Samsung, Microsoft, Netflix, and Best Buy.

UltraViolet’s rollout begins next week in North America.

Quantel-Qtube-UpdateTHE CLOUD

The entertainment technology community continues to explore ways that the cloud can be incorporated into workflows to create efficiencies. The models that were featured this year at IBC primarily surrounded broadcast applications.

Quantel, for instance, showed the next stage of its QTube cloud-based broadcast production workflow at IBC, which now includes the ability to integrate files held on generic IT storage, and well as to access and combine content from multiple sites.

Rogers Media in Canada is already using QTube for coverage of live events including MLB and NHL games. Said Frank Bruno, VP Engineering for Rogers Media: “For us, QTube is a problem solver; we have so many stations across the country and also camera people going to multiple venues and events. As long as you are near a connection, you have contact back and forth. We don’t have to worry about shipping disks or hard drives.”

At IBC, Chyron offered a look at its AXIS World Graphics cloud-based graphics creation system. Also aimed at broadcasters, the system is designed for reporters, production assistants, and news producers who would have access to prebuilt templates via a web browser to quickly create graphics for outlets including websites and mobile devices.

Avid Technology released a white paper outlining its view of the media cloud. It explained: “Avid strongly believes that the successful media enterprise will focus on delivering new consumer experiences via distribution platforms that create new revenue models.

“Forward-looking digital media strategies must include cloud-based services in addition to traditional intranet and internet-based solutions. Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise (IME) framework provides a blueprint for organizations to confidently embark on this journey and take full advantage of the opportunities presented by cloud computing – now.”

Apres IBC 2011

IBC was conferences for your editor, with only a few minutes on the floor. We were really only there for digital cinema oriented things, and since we were at the RAI just a few months previously at CineEurope, the conferences and the data available was all pushed together. 

There were two excellent presentations on the science of the eye to kick off the DCinema conferences, again excellently organized by David Monk and John Graham for the EDCF.

See Yasmin Hashmi’s page for some interesting 3D info. 

See the Creative Cow wrap up, which has its usual good coverage.

See the following attachment, which was my presentation on the doings of the ISDCF in 2011 – actually a follow-up since the last report in 2010. 

EDCF DCinema Yearly Review for IBC

The EDCF annual review of progress in D-Cinema will be on the last day of IBC, Tuesday September 13th at 10:00 in Room E102 of the RAI Conference Centre.

There will be 13 speakers covering a wide range of topics including:-

Dave Monk                  – the tipping point for D-Cinema

Peter Wilson                 – recommendations for screening Alternative Content

Siegfried Foessel          – the Prime 3D project

Reiner Doetzkies          – an update from TI

John Hurst                    – DCI testing & 21DC activity

David Hancock            – current status of worldwide deployment

CJ Flynn                       – ISDCF activity

Kommer Kleijn             – screening quality concerns amongst cinematographers

Tim Sinnaeve                – 4k from Barco

Benoit Michel               – XDC & delivery of Alternative Content

Francois Helt                – Screen Measurement

Nigel Dennis                 – latest developments from Qube

Laurence Claydon        – current issues in post-production

Entry to this session is free but you will need to be registered to enter the RAI

Also please note that the EDCF/SMPTE Post-Production Workshop at 16:00 on Sunday 11th is also a free entry session.

European Digital Cinema Forum is a great organization to support.

[Ongoing Update] IBC 2011 – EDCF LineUp Announced

The EDCF annual review of progress in D-Cinema will be on the last day of IBC, Tuesday September 13th at 10:00 in Room E102 of the RAI Conference Centre.

There will be 13 speakers covering a wide range of topics including:-

  • Dave Monk                  – the tipping point for D-Cinema
  • Peter Wilson                 – recommendations for screening Alternative Content
  • Siegfried Foessel          – the Prime 3D project
  • Reiner Doetzkies          – an update from TI
  • John Hurst                    – DCI testing & 21DC activity
  • David Hancock            – current status of worldwide deployment
  • CJ Flynn                       – ISDCF activity
  • Kommer Kleijn             – screening quality concerns amongst cinematographers
  • Tim Sinnaeve                – 4k from Barco
  • Benoit Michel               – XDC & delivery of Alternative Content
  • Francois Helt                – Screen Measurement
  • Nigel Dennis                 – latest developments from Qube
  • Laurence Claydon        – current issues in post-production

Entry to this session is free but you will need to be registered to enter the RAI

Also please note that the EDCF/SMPTE Post-Production Workshop at 16:00 on Sunday 11th is also a free entry session.


Win an iPad: Cabletime to hold iPad prize draw Stand:13.373

Here’s some friends or things that I want to see (none of which have offered me an iPad):

The new GefenPRO 3GSDI to 3GSDI Scaler, 3GSDI Fiber Optics Extender and 16x 3GSDI Rack Tray all make their first appearance at IBC. A plug and play methodology with support for high definition resolutions up to 1080p full HD makes each solution ideal for professionals who want support for the most current formats and a true high definition performance.

GefenPRO 3GSDI to 3GSDI Scaler

This new scaler will automatically adjust incoming video to the maximum resolution supported on the connected display using all SDI formats including SD, HD and 3G SDI. This is important when multiple displays do not support the same native resolution in a system. If two displays are connected with 3GSDI capability, and a third is connected with HDSDI  capability, the GefenPRO 3GSDI to 3GSDI Scaler will allow the HDSDI display to show video in its native resolution, while the other displays show 1080p full HD in the 3GSDI format. This scaler can also be manually scaled to all SDI formats up to 1080p full HD.

GefenPRO 3GSDI Fiber Optic Extender Short Range

This short-range extender offers another option for integrators that need to extend 3G SDI up to 100 meters (330 feet). It uses uses small, dongle-type sender and receiver units to extend a source using 3GSDI to its display over one single-mode fiber optic cable terminated in ST connectors.

GefenPRO 16X 3GSDI Rack Tray

This companion product to the GefenPRO 16×16 3GSDI Matrix works in concert with Gefen’s 3GSDI Fiber Optic Extenders to centralize all audio/video equipment. It is a flexible accessory that can hold up to 16 3GSDI Fiber Optic Extender sender units in a single rack space, giving installers an easy way to access all audio/video equipment in the rack. The modular tray can be scaled to fit any combination of Gefen’s fiber optics extenders, up to a total of 16, using removable mounting brackets. Comprised of die-cast metal, this rack tray offers an open top design for easy access to insert or remove individual sender units. Cable brackets on the rear of the tray streamline cables out the back in an orderly fashion. Dual power supplies  strengthen performance.

 


 

Qube is really pushing their new faster, more of everything, cheaper DCP creation platform for digital cinema. Booth 7.F45

This should be of great interest to everyone. QubeMaster Xpress 2 is a Windows platform tool.

Nick Dagger has a piece up about QubeMaster Xport on a Mac working with Compressor 4


2d-to-s3d-conversion-process011

YUV Soft 3D Video 11.F74

Just because they kind of look interesting and they are stuck in the hinterlands.

 

 


 

See Big Pic at IBC – Booth 7.K01
Big Pic Media is bringing a full lineup of production and postproduction technologies to IBC. This year, the UK-based systems integrator will be presenting Cintel, YoYotta, MARVIN and Pandora.
“The exciting thing for Big Pic at this year’s IBC is the fact that the worlds of production and postproduction are actually merging,” said Adam Welsh, director of Big Pic Media. “It’s interesting to present products that cross those boundaries.”
1. CINTEL
Cintel will be at booth 7.B35 showing the new user interfaces for the ImageMill 2 GRACE, STEADY and ORIGIN. FLOW provides a full timeline user interface enabling GRACE, STEADY and ORIGIN to be adjusted on a scene-by-scene basis. The price for FLOW will be £995.
COLOURFLOW adds zoom pan and rotate effects PLUS additional real time data primary colour correction. The price for COLOURFLOW is £3,995.
Cintel will also announce new upgrades to diTTo evolution at IBC, including a capstan drive and a true 4K camera.
In addition to this, Cintel is using IBC to announce three new Film2Film Image Restoration packages. These all feature diTTo evolution, imageMill2 and the CCG DEFINITY Film Recorder (which will be on the stand at IBC).
2. MARVIN
MARVIN Technologies will introduce its new MARVIN 2.0 on-set camera data management system in Hall 7 booth 7.K01e. Along with support for all common digital cinema cameras, including RED, ARRI Alexa, Silicon Imaging SI 2K, and others, IBC attendees will get a sneak peek at MARVIN’s new stereoscopic 3D support.
MARVIN automates the creation of backups, LTO tape masters, QuickTime proxies for offline editing and DVD dailies as well as shot logging. Now, with MARVIN 2.0, filmmakers have a choice of three models, ensuring data safety and efficient transcoding for any size of project.
The new stereo 3D support in MARVIN 2.0 allows the system to ingest left- and right-eye images simultaneously, archiving to two LTO tapes – one for each eye. MARVIN 2.0 will render stereoscopic content to side-by-side, interleaved or checkerboard QuickTimes for Final Cut Pro or MXF files for fast import into Avid systems.
3. Pandora
Widely recognized for its industry-leading line of colour grading systems, Pandora International will be introducing a new product at IBC 2011 at booth 7.K01b.  PLUTO is a new image processing system that is designed to run various applications for postproduction and production workflows.
PLUTO hardware allows for HDSDi 4:2:2, 4:4:4 dual link and 3G I/O with options for HDMi and display port to follow.
PLUTO currently has three optional applications that can run standalone or simultaneously, Display Colour Management, Cursor and Blanking Generator and 3D Stereoscopic processing.
PLUTO supports the main colour management software solution for the profiling of displays and applying the calibration and creative LUT’s created.
Pandora will also be presenting the highly acclaimed  REVOLUTION real-time file-based colour correction system, the PILOT machine controller and the Spirit Classic update to real-time 2k scanning PSi.
4. YoYotta
YoYotta will be showing the latest version of the YoYo postproduction workflow system at IBC 2011. Already deployed around the world at major postproduction facilities, the new YoDailies application now has multiple seats in use at a major LA-based studio for file-based digital dailies workflows. The YoYo suite of products can this year be seen in two locations.
You can also see YoYotta at the Tangent stand (7.B16) where YoYo will be running as a portable setup known as YoMobile. The latest Apple MacBook Pro, Mac Mini or iMac models include Thunderbolt, which is a fast data connection running over a single cable.
YoYo can use Thunderbolt to connect to RAID and HD monitoring which makes YoDailies even more portable for on set use.
At IBC YoYo will be using the latest Tangent element panels which are very compact and modular. YoYo continues to support the Tangent Wave panel.
At the Sony stand (12.A10) Big Pic will be showing the development of new YoYo workflows for the F65 camera and SRMASTER format.


 

Qube is really pushing their new faster, more of everything, cheaper DCP creation platform for digital cinema. Booth 7.F45 

This should be of great interest to everyone. QubeMaster Xpress 2 is a Windows platform tool.


 

Blue George the world’s first professional HDSDI Multi-format BD recorder will be available for demonstration at IBC 2011
Picture of Frontniche Bluray recorder
IBCBlue George Features:

  • Near Real-Time Direct Record to BD
  • HDSDI Input & O/P with embedded Audio
  • Multi-Channel versions
  • New 1 TB HDD version
  • Burn further copies with new HDD version
  • 56 hrs of video Storage at 40MB/s
  • Multi standard and therefore will record US and European Broadcast / Film formats
  • 1080i, 720p at 50/60/59.94Hz, 1080 24p or 23.98PsF, 1080p 30Hz, 1080p 25Hz, 1080p 29.97Hz, 576i, 480i
  • Data record rate is up 40Mbit/s
  • VDCP remote control for integration with NLE systems
  • Control via network TCP/IP sockets, RS422, 7″ Touch Screen and Web Server is standard
  • Disc finalisation process duration: less than 5 minutes
For further Information please visit our new look web site www.frontniche.com

Stand 10.F35 The manufacturer of compact, cost-effective equipment for live production and post-production will demonstrate Video Ghost, its award-winning phantom power modules developed as a low-cost, reliable alternative to traditional batteries.  BHV will also exhibit its full range of rack-mount and portable hybrid digital/analogue switchers, rate/standards and up/cross conversion products.
Stand 10.A49 The designer and manufacturer of VTR and video server remote control panels is demonstrating its newly launched andaward-winning AVITA live production control system at IBC 2011. AVITA is a unique hybrid control system designed to easily and quickly capture, edit and play out media from multiple sources. The system uses the very latest touch screen technology and modular hardware panels to allow multiple users access to multiple server ports over a network.
Stand 8.A94 The manufacturer of award-winning 3G/HD/SD conversion gear will conduct technology demonstrations of loudness processing over IP, debut its 9257 1×9 MADI card-based audio distribution amplifier, introduce +LM virtual loudness metering options, and present a new MPEG-4 signal delivery source. The Company also plans to highlight solutions and enhancements to their Fusion3G® and COMPASS® series of multi-functional, multi-featured cards.
Stand # 8.B96 The oldest antenna company in the USA will turn the spotlight on its broadband products, including its JAT-U UHF broadband super turnstile antenna, JUHD UHF broadband panel antenna, Prostar JA/MS-BB broadband UHF slot antenna, and the new RCEC .2 meter (8”) affordable mask filter.  Jampro will also showcase its RCCC constant impedance combiner along with economical and flexible antennas, combiners & filters, towers, and RF components for every application in the broadcast industry including DTV, DVB-T, FM and HD Radio solutions.
Stand 11.G30 A well-established leader in manual and robotic camera support and virtual reality tracking, Shotoku’s manual highlights will include a new 2-stage pneumatic pedestal and perfect counter-balance pan & tilt head. On the robotic side, enhancements that further ease-of-use and please the most budget conscious will be demonstrated.

Gefen 7.B30
Frontniche 10.F32

LTO-5 Basics

 

LTO 5 Evolution Chart

Questions remain about usability for small and medium sized businesses who wish to maintain their own back-up systems. Maintaining a library of tapes doesn’t have the same drag and drop ease as hard-disks. It is absolutely mandatory, for example, that the tapes must not be allowed to just sit on the shelf for long lengths of time, but rather must be run through the hardware on a regular basis (which also has the advantage of finding repairable errors.) On the other hand, 1 x 1017 error rates are enticing.

Researchers are developing systems to assist with making tape an easy part of the workflow: The Linear Tape File System (LTFS). LTFS is available to LTO-5 because if its new method of streaming data to the tape in a manner that allows partitioning. This is an evolving issue that should be monitored, or better yet, brought up in industry association meetings to share experiences and problems. See: LTO-5 and LTFS: Shaking the Pillars of Heaven

This is a good place to also mention the Pergamum project, which attempts to build an archive system from low-cost drives. They have exhibited at the last 2 NAB conventions. UCSC computer scientists develop solutions for long-term storage of digital data – UC Santa Cruz

Previous articles on the subject of Archiving:

IEEE (MSST2010) Symposium on Massive Storage Systems Papers Available

IVC/Point.360 Archive Development

Editshare Storage At IBC

Attached are some basic white papers and datasheets.