In July ’05, Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI)–a joint venture of Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. Studios–made big news when after three years of hard work, it completed and released its final Digital Cinema system requirements and specifications, which are designed to help theatrical projector and equipment manufacturers create a uniform and compatible digital cinema system in the United States.
Since then, the spec became a target for technology manufacturers, as well as postproduction facilities that prepare content for theatrical release. Some believe that a time will come where cinema commercial deliverables will also be required to follow these guidelines.
Since the release of the specification, the term “DCI compliant” has been used quite a lot, but in truth a compliance test was viewed as needed.
To address this requirement, DCI recently signed an agreement with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany, to collaborate and jointly produce a certification test plan comprised of test procedures and data to validate compliance. The Fraunhofer Institute is a nonprofit R&D organization whose work has included the creation of the MP3 codec, and contributions to the development of the Arri D-20 digital cinematography camera.
“We are proud to be collaborating with DCI on such a fundamental project,” said Siegfried Foessel, project manager for digital cinema at the Fraunhofer IIS, in a released statement. “The certification test plan shall promote the worldwide interchangeability of movies which was one of the great advantages of film over the last hundred years.”
Development of the test procedures and data is expected to take place over a four-month span, followed by a three-month period of testing and validation. Once complete, the procedures and data will enable equipment manufacturers to validate their compliance with the specification and promote interoperability between key digital cinema equipment components. DCI hopes to encourage an established process to test specification compliancy in order to gain certification of digital cinema equipment.
SHOOT senior editor, technology and postproduction, Carolyn Giardina can be reached at 310-822-0211 or at cgiardina@shootonline.com.
