Talk about big bandwidth! Using systems from Silicon Graphics, the world’s first international real-time collaborative 4K digital dailies workflow was recently demonstrated in San Diego at iGrid 2005.
iGrid is a symposium that brings together the world’s leading experts in grid computing and high-bandwidth networking. Their goal is to reduce your HD workflow to less time than it takes to read email.
For the test, super-high-definition 4K digital content was encoded with an experimental JPEG 2000 encoder from NTT Network Innovation Labs at 250 to 400 Mbps. It was transmitted from the digital cinema laboratory at Keio University in Japan through about 9,000 miles of gigabit optical-fiber networks to the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) in San Diego.
Already used to create digital intermediates for color-timing, effects and other creative processes on a growing number of major films, 4K is a particularly significant new image format because it will be widely used for future digital cinema theatrical distribution under new specifications proposed by Digital Cinema Initiatives, a consortium of the seven major Hollywood studios.
The global demonstration was designed to simulate typical film dailies intended for review by the producer, director and cinematographer. It emulated a multi-site production digital-dailies scenario, where the cinematographer is on one continent, the colorist on another and the director on his laptop in a screening room in his East Hampton summer house (nice touch!) or in a DI suite in Hollywood. After reviewing the initial playlist at full 4K resolution, the director, located in San Diego, was able to share control of the visualization system located in Japan, modify the playlist, and review the new 4K results as the changes were made – all without moving the 4K content data back and forth between the sites. As a result of this long-distance, collaborative editing session, the remote director and production staff were able to leverage interactive post-production processes at resolutions never available before.