It was one of those days when I am sitting in front of the screen waiting for the renders to complete so that I can continue compositing and finally upload the deliverables. And pray for no more changes, of course.
I came across this interesting stuff, I am not into any of it as of now but definitely useful information for anyone working in film production, especially 'film'.
Adobe Labs is a hub of activities, I visit it religiously once in a while to be surprised and get my dose of preview technology. And indeed, the people at Adobe Labs have been quite busy and here's another reason to justify that. The following is a blurb from CinemaDNG page from Adobe Labs site.
CinemaDNG
When film is used as the capture medium, cinematographers take great care when handling source film footage. Developed in response to the move to digital capture by many cinematographers, CinemaDNG is a digital replacement for film negatives that helps cinematographers ensure that their digitally captured scenes retain their pristine quality so they can be used to deliver the film’s artistic vision. CinemaDNG is similar to the popular DNG format used for digital still photography but adds elements to specifically support digital cinema workflows.
The CinemaDNG format offers numerous benefits:
- In many digital cinematography workflows, captured content is processed by software and hardware in the camera before it is saved to a storage device—and assumptions made during this processing could irrevocably damage the original imagery. Cinema DNG avoids these problems by capturing raw digital data directly from the camera’s sensor, giving artists the power to make qualitative judgments after imagery has been saved to disk.
- RAW image workflows are popular with many cinema camera vendors, but the RAW file formats they use are usually proprietary. CinemaDNG offers camera and software vendors an open, standards-based RAW format that can be widely understood across workflows. There are no licensing fees for its use.
- CinemaDNG integrates easily into visual effects workflows. Because CinemaDNG data has not been processed into common, gamma-encoded RGB or YUV formats, digital values are still related to the colors and lighting present at the scene. (These values are typically encoded using a linear tone response). Because of this, files can be processed and saved into linear-light formats like OpenEXR.
- The CinemaDNG format is standards-based. The image encoding is based on the DNG specification, compliant with current DNG readers, and compatible with the TIFF6 and TIFF/EP specifications, using published TIFF6, TIFF/EP and DNG tags.
- For a high level of compatibility with existing tools, CinemaDNG images can be stored in a directory structure, in an MXF wrapper, or transformed between these wrapping formats.
- Camera sensor output can be stored directly into the CinemaDNG format with minimal in-camera pixel processing and no repackaging of the raw image data. For 16 or 32 bits, the byte ordering of the CinemaDNG data can be big-endian or little-endian as needed, to match the sensor output.
- The CinemaDNG format typically adds less than 1 KB overhead per image. CinemaDNG files typically require half the storage space of corresponding DPX files.
- There are no known intellectual property encumbrances or license requirements for CinemaDNG or its underlying formats DNG, TIFF, XMP, or MXF. SDKs are available from several parties for DNG, TIFF, XMP, and MXF.
Industry Support for CinemaDNG
A broad range of industry-leading companies are supportive of the CinemaDNG effort, including:
* Fraunhofer
* Gamma & Density
* Ikonoskop
* Indiecam
* Iridas
* MXF4mac
* RadiantGrid
* Synthetic Aperture
* The Foundry
* Vision Research
* Weisscam
Read more here
Thanks max, great info,
still i believe it cant be the holy grail :(
few questions :
-is it an image format or a vector that needs to get into a conversion pipeline for view ?
- how good is its viewing on generic players/devices.. or adobe has a catch on it with its own unwrappers?
-
On the sidelines, check this great article by Mike Lehman at creative cow.
"Shooting high-resolution video is becoming simple enough, but turning that into high-quality 35mm film prints still is not. It can also be quite time-consuming.
The most common digital film printer, the ARRILaser, will complete a typical 2K resolution, 20-minute film reel negative on intermediate stock, an ultra-fine grain, low-speed emulsion, in about 20 hours. ARRI has announced the ARRILaser2, which is twice as fast: the 20-minute same reel, printed in 10 hours.
This is a far cry from when a single 35mm cine FRAME could take upwards of one hour to expose on the first generation of film recording devices, using 100 speed camera emulsion. However, in a typical film lab, a single reel might be completed in five minutes or less. So much for "antique" analog equipment.
The digital world is now catching up. The Cinevator Five from Norway's Cinevation can shoot 2K material in real time, at 24 frames per second. It exposes a 20-minute reel in 20 minutes - rather than 20 hours, as with the ArriLaser - to traditional intermediate negative for a digital negative or interpositive; or to release print stock as "direct to print."
Here is the link to the full article
http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/film-really-yes-really