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Digital Cinema Initiatives
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Digital Cinema Initiatives or DCI is a consortium of studios formed to establish a standard architecture for digital cinema systems. The idea for DCI was originally mooted late 1999 by Tom McGrath, then COO of Paramount Pictures, who applied to the U.S. Department of Justice for anti-trust waivers to allow the unprecedented joint cooperation of all seven major motion picture studios. The organization was formed in March 2002 by the following studios:
DCI's primary purpose is to develop a specification that describes a common, open standard for digital cinema that can be adopted by all distributors, studios and vendors.
Because of the relationship of DCI to many of Hollywood's key studios, conformance to DCI's specifications is considered a requirement by any software developer or equipment manufacturer targeting the digital cinema market.
Specification
On July 20, 2005, DCI released its first version of the final overall system requirements and specifications for digital cinema and made it available for download from the archives. On April 12, 2007, DCI released an updated version of this spec, v1.1 available for download.
Based on many SMPTE and ISO standards, such as JPEG 2000-compressed image and "Broadcast wave" PCM/WAV sound, it explains the route to create an entire Digital Cinema Package (DCP) from a raw collection of files known as the Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM), as well as the specifics of its content protection, encryption, and forensic marking.
The specification also establishes standards for the decoder requirements and the presentation environment itself, such as ambient light levels, pixel aspect and shape, image luminance, white point chromaticity, and those tolerances in which it should be kept.
Universal Pictures made one of the first feature-length DCPs created to DCI specifications, using their film Serenity. Although it was not distributed theatrically, it had one public screening at the USC Entertainment Technology Center's Digital Cinema Laboratory in the Pacific Theatre, Hollywood. Inside Man was Universal's first DCP release, and was delivered via hard drive to 20 theatres in the United States along with two trailers.
Even though it specifies what kind of information is required, the DCI specification does not include specific information about how data within a distribution package is to be formatted. Formatting of this information is part of the DC28 specification, which has not yet been ratified.
On April 12, 2007, DCI released version 1.1 of their specification, available on dcimovies.com, which compiles the many errata that have come up since the original release. On April 15, DCI announced the new version, as well as future plans. They released "Stereoscopic Digital Cinema Addendum, Version 0.9", available on dcimovies.com, to begin to establish 3-D technical specifications in response to the popularity of 3-D stereoscopic films. It was also announced "which studios would take over the leadership roles in DCI after the current leadership term expires at the end of September."[1] In March 07, 2008, DCI released a second version 1.2 of the Digital Cinema System Specifications, available at the website.
Audio/video capability overview
- Video:
- 2048x1080 (2K) at 24Hz or 48Hz, or 4096x2160 (4K) at 24Hz; 36 bits per pixel XYZ
- Motion JPEG 2000 compression
- from 0 to 5 or from 1 to 6 wavelet decomposition levels for 2K or 4K resolutions, respectively
- Compression rate of 4.71 bits/pixel (2K @ 24 fps), 2.35 bits/pixel (2K @ 48 fps), 1.17 bits/pixel (4K @ 24 fps)
- 250 Mbit/s maximum video bit rate
- Audio:
- 24-bits per sample, 48Khz or 96Khz uncompressed PCM
- Up to 16 channels (most currently unused/undefined)
References
- ^ David S. Cohen (2007-04-15). "DCI announces digital, 3-D specs". Variety. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.
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