12th Color Imaging Conference - Tutorials

Scottsdale, Ariz., Nov. 10, 2004
4-hour tutorial

Color Science for Digital Cinema

Digital cinema is here. Several movies have been captured entirely in the 1080p24 digital format, without using any film. In post-production, digital intermediates are now used routinely to store entire movies digitally, even if some portions are scanned-in from film. Digitally-produced movies are "filmed-out" (recorded to 35 mm motion picture film) for exhibition, but digital masters are made for exhibition in about 150 commercial cinemas worldwide that are now equipped with digital cinema projectors. Digital movie making presents an important and challenging application of color science and color management. The high contrast ratio and wide gamut of cinema film set goals for image coding and color management that are well beyond the limits of graphics arts. This course details the application of color science to digital cinema. We detail the technologies of D-cinema, from camera and scanner technology, through processing, to digital cinema display equipment and film recorders. We explain the application of color science to each of these steps.

Benefits: This course will enable the attendee to:

• Evaluate the contrast ratio and gamut constraints of various image coding systems
• Understand color image coding for HDTV and digital cinema
• Understand the color signal processing required to process cinema-class imagery

Intended Audience: This course is intended for scientists, engineers, and managers involved in the design, engineering, and evaluation of digital cinema, and more generally, high-quality continuous-tone imaging products, algorithms, or systems. Participants should be familiar with color science and color image coding, and should have no fear of mathematics.

Presenters:

Charles Poynton is an independent contractor specializing in the physics, mathematics, and engineering of digital color imaging systems, including digital video, HDTV, and digital cinema (D-cinema). While at Sun Microsystems, from 1988 to 1995, he initiated Sun's HDTV research project, and introduced color management technology to Sun. In February 2003, Mr. Poynton's book, Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces, was Amazon.com's 3,339-th most popular book.

Brad Walker is a system engineer at Texas Instruments. He is responsible for the development of color signal processing hardware, firmware, and software in TI's DLP Cinema projector systems.

See also, Color Appearance Issues in Digital Cinema Exhibition.

Registration is between USD 200 and USD 280. For details, see the Color Imaging Conference Tutorials page.

Charles Poynton - Courses & seminars
2004-08-29