Digital Cinema Initiatives

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Digital Cinema Initiatives or DCI is a consortium of studios and vendors formed to establish a standard architecture for digital cinema systems. The idea for DCI was originally mooted late 1999 by Tom McGrath, then COO of Paramount Pictures, who applied to the U.S. Department of Justice for anti-trust waivers to allow the unprecedented joint cooperation of all seven major motion picture studios. The organization was formed in March 2002 by the following studios:

DCI's primary purpose is to develop a specificiation that describes a common, open standard for digital cinema that can be adopted by all distributors, studios and vendors.

Because of the relationship of DCI to many of Hollywood's key studios, conformance to DCI's specifications is considered a requirement by any software developer or equipment manufacturer targeting the digital cinema market.

[edit] Specification

On July 20, 2005, DCI released its first version of the final overall system requirements and specifications for digital cinema and made it available for download.

Based on many SMPTE and ISO standards, such as JPEG 2000-compressed image and "Broadcast wave" PCM/WAV sound, it explains the route to create an entire Digital Cinema Package (DCP) from a raw collection of files known as the Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM), as well as the specifics of its content protection, encryption, and forensic marking.

The specification also establishes standards for the decoder requirements and the presentation environment itself, such as ambient light levels, pixel aspect and shape, image luminance, white point chromaticity, and those tolerances in which it should be kept.

Universal Pictures used their film Serenity as the first DCP to be delivered shown to an audience at a remote theater, although it was not distributed this way to the public. Inside Man was their first DCP release, and was transmitted to 20 theatres in the United States along with two trailers.

Even though it specifies what kind of information is required, the DCI specification does not include specific information about how data within a distribution package is to be formatted. Formatting of this information is part of the DC28 specification, which has not yet been ratified.

[edit] Audio/video capability overview

Video:
- 2048x1080 (2K) at 24Hz or 48Hz, or 4096x2160 (4K) at 24Hz; 36 bits per pixel XYZ
- JPEG 2000 compression
  - 5 or 6 wavelet decomposition levels for 2K or 4K resolutions, respectively
  - Compression rate of 4.71 bits/pixel (2K @ 24 fps), 2.35 bits/pixel (2K @ 48 fps), 1.17 bits/pixel (4K @ 24 fps)
- 250 Mbit/s maximum video bit rate
Audio:
- 24-bits per sample, 48Khz or 96Khz uncompressed PCM
- Up to 16 channels (most currently unused/undefined)