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Subject:
D-Cinema/ E-Cinema, an overview
by: Percy Fung, i-Magic/
Digital Magic
Member and current
Chairman, AMP4/ Association of Motion Pictures Post
Production Professionals
Follow, SMPTE/ Society
of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers
In the last 100 years, movies were distributed to the cinemas in the form of 35mm film and have been shown with film projectors. A 90 minutes film is a 22Kg of non-environmental friendly plastic colloid. 
 Digital Cinema, or D-Cinema, delivers movies to cinema digitally, in form of DCP Digital Cinema package. DCI, Digital Cinema Initiative, has made recommended standards and practices for D-Cinema operations, with great attentions to both quality and security to the release Hollywood movies' content.
The movies are prep
under DI process and re-master in Jpeg 2000, under a DCDM
master will create DCP for cinema distributions. Currently
DCP are mostly distributed physically on hard drives, and
with plans to distribute via real-timed satellite broadcast,
and high-speed secured network. The movies in form DCP are
then decoded for display with DCI approved digital cinema
servers and digital projectors. Projected image are encoded
with invisible watermarked.
DCI recommendations are more tailored for Hollywood contents. However, the SMPTE's 21DC, been working for years on a parallel track as to bring a world engineering standard for Digital Cinema. Tests and recommended practices are always published by SMPTE. Other regional organizations have their own D-Cinema enhanced development, like in Europe, China, and India. D-Cinema started with MpegII 1.3K in early 2000 which China was one of early investors, and been moved onto current Jpeg2000 2K 2048 x 1080, with an understood near future DCI's ultimate goal at 4K 4096 x 2160 pixeled images. All aiming at 14 foot-Lambert screen brightness.
With movies prep under
DI process, the D-Cinema DCDM's Jpeg2000 mastering are
under 12-bit X'Y'Z' color space, with MXF packaging and 16
channels audio. The X'Y'Z' color space could present a
better Gamut for quality cinema grade digital projections.
DCPs are then produced with keys to facilitate content
encryption and distributions.
 The additional 3D stereo capabilities for DCI's D-Cinema operations, with 4 major 3D stereo screening systems available. They are Xpand, Dolby, RealD, and Master Images. With different investment and operational choices on screen and eyewear. ¡@
i-Magic in Hong Kong is
a D-Cinema and New Media specialist, project integrator, and
production service provider. We have 3x in-house D-Cinema
production studios, DI services and DCDM/DCP facilities.
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Digital cinema upgrade
could starts from US$60,000, and 3D stereo add-on starts
from US$20,000.
Digital Cinema applications have expanded to large venues' digital productions and exhibitions' needs. Like visitors' centers/halls, theme parks, Dome theaters, Panorama theaters, Planetariums, and Auditoriums. Electronic cinema, or E-cinema, application are used in many countries, too. There are no formal world standard yet, a few informal agreements been created in certain area of operations.
E-cinema accept lower
resolution then D-Cinema specification, which generally HDTV
1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 standards are the usual formats,
special 0.8K format are also used in Chinese E-Cinemas. They
may work on each owns enhanced specific propriety security
formats.
Besides current cinema's pre-show, and advertising usage, E-cinema formats are also developed for to use for as an alternate Movie distribution format in China and India for their local movie and acquisitions, and we see more plans are developing for Asian and African countries, too. The E-cinema content display servers, projectors, security and encryption systems are not DCI or Hollywood approved. These low cost and small digital content size distribution master encouraged digital distribution through Satellite and high-speed fiber networks In case of India, the application has been used for to encourage more 1st run movies distributions to 2nd and 3rd level cities. In case of China, under her national 11th 5-year plan, this has help satellite distribution of movie contents to the planned 35,000 rural villages level cinemas, for their low cost entertainment needs. Simultaneous encrypted Satellite broadcast for E-Cinema screening release is under testing. E-cinema has encouraged many low-cost regional digital movie productions in Asia. For more info please contact, percy@i-magic.com.hk, or alex@i-magic.com.hk  ¡@ |
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