Steve Canepa rolls film on Kodak and Digital Movies
July 2002
At the end of June, Eastman Kodak Company announced it has selected IBM as the key supplier of computer servers, storage units and other peripherals for its new Kodak Digital Cinema Operating System (COS), the heart of the company’s Digital Cinema System (DCS). The DCS holds the promise of "disintermediating" the old film-in-the-can celluloid distribution system that's been around since the days of Thomas Edison. We caught up with Steve Canepa, Vice President, Global Media & Entertainment Industry to ask him about he technology and IBM's role in it. Here's what he had to say.
Question: What exactly is a Cinema Operating System? What problem does it solve?
The Kodak Digital Cinema system is an end-to-end solution that involves the preparation, distribution, protection, and projection of images in ways that preserve and extend the uniqueness of the cinema experience. The system includes a high quality, high resolution, and high brightness Kodak Digital Cinema projector to put superior images on the screen. The Kodak system also includes a highly flexible and capable Cinema Operating System to receive and store content safely—to distribute it reliably and easily—and eventually to automate a lot of functions that are very labor-intensive today.
Question: Could you give us an overview of the architecture of the COS for our audience?
Kodak is creating a next-generation digital cinema infrastructure, and has chosen IBM as its strategic technology partner in this endeavor. The system runs on xSeries servers and Red Hat 7.2 Linux, and is highly scalable. Kodak is buying IBM xSeries x342 servers today, and will be utilizing our latest servers in August.
The Kodak Cinema Operating System is really a highly capable digital backbone for theatres. It enables cinema managers to move images with the same ease that they move data today. With a main server networked to content players and projectors – and all controlled with proprietary Kodak software – the system allows theatre owners and managers to schedule all content for a multiplex theatre using an office computer. They can receive, load, store, assemble, and schedule all digital content, including movies, advertising, trailers and other pre-show entertainment. They can send the content to play in the various projection rooms in the theatre complex over a fiber network. The COS can also automate a variety of theatre functions, including lighting, audio, drapes, and so forth.
Question: I understand that the "beta app" for this system will be centrally-distributed pre-show advertising, to be followed by the distribution of complete digital movies. As you note, movie producers have had a gleam in their eye for this technology for some time as a way to virtually eliminate the cost of film distribution. Star Wars creator George Lucas comes to mind, for one. Could you walk us through the process of how the advertising, and later movies, get from the studio and production to the theatres?
The Kodak Digital Cinema Operating System will provide a ‘digital backbone’ through which cinema managers will be able to move and playback digital images (like advertising or movies). Initially, the system will include projectors that can cost-effectively be used to play advertising and other content. This will enable exhibitors to gain experience with using digital imaging technology to create new sources of revenue and may also expand the relationship they have with content distributors. As their experience grows, and studios release more and more movies in a digital format, exhibitors can add a Kodak Digital Cinema projector to the Kodak Digital Cinema Operating System and show first-run movies.
Digital cinema holds the promise of sharper, brighter, more engaging motion pictures. Some Digital films are being shot using digital cameras, but most still start by being shot on Film and then mastered digitally -- scanning the film and digitizing its content so the cinematographer has more creative options to manipulate images on a scene-by-scene or even frame-by-frame basis. Because the film is scanned only once for all uses, the completed movie in digital form can be written back onto film, or on any other media format for any purpose. Therefore, film prints and digital prints can be made from the same master.
Question: In the past, film has been a tough visual standard for digital movies to compete against. Will there be any discernible difference in the digitally projected movies as compared to film?
The Kodak solution is capable of putting a very high resolution picture on the screen. The current digital cinema benchmark is the DLP chips that are 1280 by 1024 pixels. That’s about 1.2 million pixels. The new JVC D-ILA chips Kodak is using in their prototype projector have an on-screen resolution of 2048 by 1536, which is about three million pixels. Kodak has designed and built a projector especially for cinema applications. It has a Kodak processing unit with decryption, decompression, and our Color Management Technology—which is ‘key’ because it guarantees that creative decisions around ‘look’ and ‘color’ are delivered faithfully to every screen.
For long-term acceptance, digital cinema must make technical, creative, financial and operational sense, which means it must meet the needs and expectations of all those involved in creating, showing, and enjoying content in the cinema. This will most likely start with image quality standards that are higher than high-definition television, standards that will continue to evolve over time. The process must also protect against content piracy and technological obsolescence. The goal is to make it easy for theater owners to get involved with digital cinema systems they find intuitive, and don’t require large capital investments.
Question: Can you tell us anything about how these very valuable digital assets will be protected?
Security and anti-piracy measures are absolutely essential. With the Kodak Digital Cinema system, data files are to be stored in encrypted form with decryption keys delivered for use in the Kodak Digital Cinema projectors. Once the movie is ‘unlocked,' it can be shown on the screen. Watermarking technology’ may make ‘camcorder copies’easier to trace.
Question: Where is Kodak in deploying this solution?
Kodak is in the late stages of stress testing the operating system at a six-screen multiplex in Hollywood. Kodak loaded test content onto the main server, and every morning they enter a schedule. That content is distributed to each of the six screens over the fiber network. Kodak is testing and simulating every disruption and every potential problem they can think of to see how the system reacts. Digital Cinema is on its way....
Question: Thanks, Steve, for taking the time to talk to us.
Note: All trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
