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SECTION: 6.10 is for an overview of the subject of Digital Cinema. See also the program files in the current distribution of my programs, the other parts of this HTML documentation, and the current On-Line version of this Web site for information more specifically about my programs. Any comparisons of my programs or methods to some others is only given as a vague generality of my opinion and is not intended as a recommendation or reference to any particular products, always make your own evaluations and comparisons before taking any action.
Workflow is the system of steps used to take the images shot with a movie film camera or Digital Cinema camera through all the steps required to get those images ready for projection in a movie cinema theatre.
A DI or Digital Intermediate is the use of high resolution frame image files as a substitute for film rolls of frame images in the post production steps of making a motion picture. Rather than store frame images on long rolls of film images are stored on large TB computer storage such as harddrives etc. Computer programs are used to alter and organize the frame image files on one or more computer systems. When many computers are used at one time they may be referred to as a Render Farm. Using many computers at once of different frame files can speed the processing of the work load to complete a feature film, which at un-compressed 4K resolution can take a year or more on a few computers. The highest quality DI is made using un-compressed image files with about 48bpp color resolution at 4K resolution. Lower resolutions such as 2K are also used and some systems may use compressed files to reduce the cost and increase the speed at the expense of full high quality un-compressed 4K DI results.
My programs are designed to work at a wide range of resolutions, but if you chose to make a 4K or higher resolution un-compressed DI you should be able to use my programs if you cannot afford the high cost of having someone else do the work for you.
The Major steps for cinema DI workflow are:
Acquire images with any type of camera, or generate CG images.
If images are on film, then scan the film to make files, if not skip this step.
Convert Bayer filter images into TIF frame images if needed, or skip this step.
Place the TIF frames and the sound WAV files that go with them into the folders used by the DI software so it can find the frames etc.
Create lower resolution frames from the high resolution camera frames so that you can playback the images on the computer running the editing software. Most normal home computers cannot playback 4K frames at sync speeds 24/25/30fps, so you need to make smaller "proxy" frames to look at with the sync sound playing. Some editing programs can make the smaller frames "on-the- fly" rather than having to make them in advance.
Edit your shots to together in order and trim the head and tail of the shots as you like with the editing software. You then pick keyframes from the edited shots to use for making adjustments to the color correction for each shot in your movie.
Use the color correction software to assign adjustments for each shot in your movie using the keyframe from each shot as an example of how the color should be adjusted for all the other frames in that shot. This process of color correction is called Grading or Timing from the terms used in motion picture film labs that involved doing test prints and picking the prints that had the color filter settings that produced the results the director wanted to use. The person in a film lab that helped the director pick the right filter settings was titled a Colorist. Doing color correction was a job for an expert with experience since film color correction requires some abilities to forecast what direction the filter changes would push the color in a film print two or more print generations away, not an easy or directly predictable task, more experience and luck based. Since film had a long scale, and only the director knew if the color came out as he wanted, the results were only within a broad range of the directors expectations. The same is still true since you cannot know what kind of TV or projector, Digital or Film your movie will be watched with, so it is best to aim for a middle of the road goal in color correction so that the end user can see something not too far out on the screen. With color correction software used to alter the frames used in your DI, or copies of them, you have much finer control of the colors than could be done before with optical filters and selection of film types and processing times.
Once the final edit has been reviewed by playback on the computer screen a set of output frames can be made in the resolution required for the display device, that is 2K for a film recorder, 1920x1080 for Blu-Ray (tm), and 720x480 for making a DVD version, etc. In some cases such as output to a film recorder you may just make a shoot list of the frames needed for the final result, this saves the time of making and storing output frames since you just access the frames in your editing structure at the time the film recorder needs to display them for transfer to 35mm movie film.
So a DI is a digital way to do every thing that was once done using movie film without the dust, scratches, finger prints, generational loss of resolution, and contrast gains and errors that working with film added to your movie.
Because 2K resolution is a little lower in quality than what 35mm movie film could obtain under good conditions, the best DI are done at 4K resolution, but when you pick one or the other resolution you should keep in mind that 4K will take more than four times as long to finish and cost more than for times as much for harddrives or tapes to store the files on. If you keep the RAW data files from the camera (or scanner, CG, etc.) shot at better than 2K you can do a 2K DI, then later if you need to go back and regenerate all the frames at 4K resolution if needed to get a better version for theatre projection.
You can find more information about using my programs for Digital Cinema tasks by looking in the sections that have the text from the program and update documentation files corresponding to the documentation files in the ZIP archive files for the program executables from the Download sections. See SECTION: 3.80.0.0 for information about using DANCINEL.EXE (tm) in a DIY film recorder, see SECTION: 3.85.0.0 for information about using DANCINES.EXE (tm) in a DIY film scanner, and see SECTION: 3.3.7.34 for information about using DANCAD3D.EXE (tm) and DANCAD87.EXE v3.7N+(tm) for motion picture post production and DI (Digital Intermediate) to edit, color correct, and sound mix a feature motion picture. See also any later Update files relating to the programs, and look in the Downloads sub-sections for additional utilities and or programs that may be added that relate to Digital Cinema.