TECHNOZONE January 2003 Page4 "Hollywood movies lead the way: movie industry heads toward digital content"

OLYMPUS TECHNOZONE Vol.56 2003-01

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Hollywood movies lead the way: movie industry heads toward digital content



	Prototype of the eight-megapixel high-fidelity digital camera developed by Olympus The pixel count is about four times greater than in HDTV. It can shoot and record in real time at up to 30 fps. This makes it a promising technology for the following fields: 1) Digital cinema, which aims at total digital movie production from shooting, recording, data processing, all the way down to distribution 2) Preservation of valuable artworks and materials employing high quality image capturing (digital archiving) 3) Scenarios in which high-quality real-time projection is highly desirable include live event broadcasting, medical education/training, and distant learning.

Saito:

I think it'll be a while before we get used to watching movies on home theater, systems, but what about the future of digital cinema? I am interested to hear what you have to say about it since you are also the chairman of the Digital Cinema Consortium...

Aoyama:

When talking about digital cinema, there are four points to consider first.

1) Movies can be created digitally. In other words, movies are made by digital production methods. George Lucas has already done this. You shoot with video cameras, do the digital post-processing with computers, and finally make film prints.

2) Film-less projection, in which the movie can be projected without using film at all.

3) Digital archiving to preserve the movies of the past by digital conversion.

4) Distribution of movies over digital networks.

Progress in each of these four areas has varied. When referring to digital cinema, we must be aware of which area we are talking about.
For nearly 100 years, right up to the present, 35-mm film has set the standard for movies. If film is shot and distributed in this format, it can be screened in any movie theater anywhere in the world. The same thing must be applied for digital movies, if we were to eliminate the film medium. To achieve this, an alternative standard to 35-mm film is required. If there is no standard, the movie theater infrastructure cannot convert to digital. Vigorous discussions about drawing up standards for digital cinema have been occurring in Hollywood of all places.

Used by George Lucas and others, a digital cinema system based on HDTV technology (high-definition TV aka Hi-Vision) has already been put to practical use. These have been shown with Texas Instruments DLP and other projectors capable of scanning in the 1000-line class. But I can't say whether this should be made the standard or not. On the other hand, movies like "STAR WARS: EPISODEII-ATTACK OF THE CLONES

" show a world created almost entirely by computer graphics. Although the quality may be good enough for science fiction movies and animations, I doubt whether the quality is good enough for romantic scenes or images full of natural scenery.

In the Digital Cinema Consortium, we basically argue that quality issues cannot be resolved by digitizing all movies to HDTV standards. It is necessary to set up digital cinema quality standards that are equal to or better than 35mm film.

In order to accomplish this, we believe that super high-definition (SHD) digital cinema technology is required. This has eight-megapixels per frame, four times the resolution of HDTV. Eight-megapixel SHD digital cinema technology has reached a certain level using the SHD imaging system that the NTT Network Innovation Laboratories have been developing for more than ten years. A primary goal of the Digital Cinema Consortium is to actively promote such technology to the world. We also want to make people aware of the four aspects of digital cinema that I mentioned earlier and to support standardization.

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