Tag Archives: open source

Buzzword Compliance at SMPTE/NAB/CinemaCon

The fundamentals of Digital Cinema are built upon Open Source tools, in particular Motion-JPEG (instead of the license troubled MPEG world) and AES-128 encryption (instead of any number of private systems) as well as PCM Wave coding for audio. The combined reasoning of avoiding license fees and allowing the technology to flow by inhibiting the restrictions that proprietary tools bring makes sense.

Now, an adjunct technology iis being held under the same scrutiny and one suspects that the reason is Marketing. Clever marketing, since this is a confused market, but marketing nonetheless. One of the first thing that one learns about standards is that they can be inhibiting and destructive in many circumstances.

The exhibitors want two things. They want to differentiate themselves by keep giving perks and higher quality in special circumstances. This means that they will buy innovation.

But they also want some security that the equipment that they buy won’t turn out to be something that they can’t use in a few years. To many the later translates into “Come On Guys, Can’t You Work Together?” Hey~! Open Source.

Whether Open Source is something the industry wants in its secondary products needs some scrutiny and education. There also has to be some recognition of the enormous amounts of investment that goes into hardware designs and accommodating capabilities not yet dreamed of. 

What is being heard now is Open Something. Open Source is bandied about, then licensing is tied to usage to become something else. 

=-=-=This will be updated as the players find ways to answer to their stockholders…or find another way to announce their firstiness.

Buzzword Compliance at SMPTE/NAB/CinemaCon

The fundamentals of Digital Cinema are built upon Open Source tools, in particular Motion-JPEG (instead of the license troubled MPEG world) and AES-128 encryption (instead of any number of private systems) as well as PCM Wave coding for audio. The combined reasoning of avoiding license fees and allowing the technology to flow by inhibiting the restrictions that proprietary tools bring makes sense.

Now, an adjunct technology iis being held under the same scrutiny and one suspects that the reason is Marketing. Clever marketing, since this is a confused market, but marketing nonetheless. One of the first thing that one learns about standards is that they can be inhibiting and destructive in many circumstances.

The exhibitors want two things. They want to differentiate themselves by keep giving perks and higher quality in special circumstances. This means that they will buy innovation.

But they also want some security that the equipment that they buy won’t turn out to be something that they can’t use in a few years. To many the later translates into “Come On Guys, Can’t You Work Together?” Hey~! Open Source.

Whether Open Source is something the industry wants in its secondary products needs some scrutiny and education. There also has to be some recognition of the enormous amounts of investment that goes into hardware designs and accommodating capabilities not yet dreamed of. 

What is being heard now is Open Something. Open Source is bandied about, then licensing is tied to usage to become something else. 

=-=-=This will be updated as the players find ways to answer to their stockholders…or find another way to announce their firstiness.

Ideas for mastering DCPs

Taken from an article at Knut Erik Evensen’s site: 
Some ideas for best common practices when mastering DCPs

For the very brave, he also has instructions on making your own DCP using free or Open Sourced programs (EasyDCP, for example), but he also has a very reasonably priced service.

If a movie uses a workflow like the movie Inception where there is no Digital Intermediate (DI) and the film is color timed photochemically in a film lab, the color timed print has to be scanned and fine tuned for 2.6 gamma 12 bit linear to make the DCP. Otherwise the 35 mm print has to be screened. In no way can the offline edit or a SD video tape be used to make a DCP for theatrical distribution.

A DCP should be made from the DCDM with correct XYZ colorspace and 2.6 gamma made from the Digital Intermediate (DI) that has been graded on a P3 color space projector with 14 footlambert of light. The DCP is normally made from the emulation of how the 35 mm print will look on a digital projector. This emulation is baked into the DCDM and the DCP is fined tuned for 12 bit linear. The resolution should be 2048×858 or 1998×1080.

Continued at: Some ideas for best common practices when mastering DCPs

Open Source DCP Mastering

There are two threads on the RED User forum:

Digital cinema package – how i, a computer neophyte, made an open source dcp on my ma – REDUSER.net

This one has excellent data on preparing your audio and video materials: Digital Cinema Package – REDUSER.net

Film maker Chris Perry writes the A-Z on his site as well, which he recently updated: crumbs: Making a DCP entirely with open source tools (update)

Clyde has other articles on the site, one that explains Doremi’s CineAssist version 
Doremi’s CineAssist allows for in-house 3D DCP mastering

For a myriad of other DCinema best practices, especially focused on Stereoscopic 3D, see his blog:
http://www.realvision.ae/blog 

There are many restrictions in the open source model at this point. Alternative frame rates (anything other than 24 frames) is not easy…or perhaps not even possible if you don’t have a means of creating a JPEG 2000 version of your output…which is a requirement of the DCP. 

Knut Erik Evensen‘s site promotes his DCP mastering services and he also has an article on the open source capabilities, DCPC, a frontend to open source DCP tools.

Lars Reichel has a front end for DCP creation: Digital Cinema Package Creator

No matter how much reading you do, these techniques are not simple or for those without excellent computer skills. 

Still free, but possibly not open sourced, one cannot neglect the excellent work from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, centering a suite of products around easyDCP, easyDCP Creator, easyDCP Player and easyDCP Workflow Plug-Ins.

The sister company of the  Aussie integrators Digital Cinema Network is the developerment group digitAll, who have introduced the dcpPlayer for the desktop computer and are soon to release dcpEncoder. (digitAll is also a sister group to Cine Tech Geek, a great place to get practical demonstrations of digital cinema equipment and concepts.)