Modern VideoFilm Exec Urges More Flexibility

Expressing frustration with some of the digital-cinema-related hoops that post houses have to jump through, Modern VideoFilm VP Marvin Hall told attendees at the pre-NAB Digital Cinema Summit this weekend in Las Vegas that he hoped SMPTE might “open up the spec” determined in mid-2005 by the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI). Speaking on the “Digital Intermediates: Process and Progress” panel, Hall said the industry is developing hardware and software specifically to comply with DCI 1.0 requirements, but complained that the spec “only addresses the needs of those who wrote it” ‘ not the post facilities that have to work with a myriad of delivered formats on a case-by-case basis.
DCI, a joint venture of the major Hollywood studios, was formed to establish an industry-wide digital cinema specification. Hall said Modern VideoFilm has created more than 150 digital cinema packages, but noted that only about half of the studio features he’s handled have conformed to the DCI spec for picture. (The track record is even worse, he suggested, for audio.) Modern has actually added an extra step to its digital cinema workflow, bringing the source elements into a Quantel iQ4K machine for an extra qualification step. “That wouldn’t be necessary if people paid attention to the delivery spec,” he said.

The process of assembling a digital cinema package (DCP) from a digital cinema distribution master (DCDM) remains fairly onerous even when all the pieces are in exactly the right place. The whole process to create a DCP – about 100 GB in size, give or take – takes about 40 hours at 2K and 130 hours at 4K, Hall explained. “The slightest [technical] issue can cause a 24-hour delay in delivery and significant additional cost,” he said, then noted that while the costs can be haggled over, the lost time can never be recovered.

So if studios and indies aren’t giving post houses elements that conform to DCI’s delivery spec, what are they providing? Hall said about half the materials he gets in house are DPX files at either 2K or HD resolution. The second most common are 4:4:4 RGB HDCAM SR tapes in P3 color space. After that, he sees a lot of 4:2:2 YUV HDCAM and D-5 tapes, particularly from indies, in the 709 color space. (Converting those to the wide-gamut XYZ color space of the DCI spec takes 6 hours at 2K and 24 hours at 4K, Hall said.) Beyond that, Modern often sees so-called “alternative content” ‘ non feature-film material that’s destined for the same digital cinema projectors as features ‘ come in as DigiBeta tapes or QuickTime files, at a variety of frame rates and sometimes interlaced. And that’s where the complications really set in.

As an example, Hall cites a recent concert featuring Meat Loaf performing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Shot at 1080/50i, the project had to be: deinterlaced to 25p; slowed down to 24 frames per second; and finally re-pitched using Dolby hardware so that the effect of the time stretch wouldn’t be apparent in the audio. All of this work didn’t improve the presentation ‘ it just altered the content to bring it into line with feature-film standards. “If there were [digital cinema] standards that accommodated 25 frames per second, most of this would not have been needed,” he said.

During a post-panel Q&A, Michael Most of Cineworks Digital Studios in Miami, FL, suggested that filmmakers may one day demand that multiple frame rates be allowable in a single digital cinema feature. (He may have been half-joking.) And David Reisner of D-Cinema Consulting, the secretary of SMPTE’s ad hoc committee on digital cinema mastering, said a study group considering alternate frame rates is active and considering how best to deal with non-24fps material.