Re: Why film is cool

From: Scott Janush (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2006 - 23:35:37 PST


On Mar 5, 2006, at 4:29 PM, Ed Inman wrote:
> I do question Scott's claim that it will offer the studios more
> "security" though. It seems to me that releasing first-run features
> digitally is only going to further facilitate high-quality bootlegs at
> a faster pace

You may be correct.
I'm just going on the little I know about the planned encryption that
the DCI spec includes.
Part of this may have to do with the method of distribution /
transmission and part has to do with being able to strip the
image / sound out of the encrypted data stream.

http://www.google.com/search?
client=safari&rls=en&q=digital+cinema+initiative&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://www.dcimovies.com/DCI_Digital_Cinema_System_Spec_v1.pdf

A large amount of the piracy occurs during the telecine / dub phase of
turning films over for sound & music work.
Recently some employees of Lightning Dubbs were arrested for making and
distributing copies of features.
This will not be resolved by digital cinema, and it is a situation that
the studios have taken a long time to address,
The other common theft is where a print mysteriously disappears from a
shipping depot, only to show up at a later time, or when a print
disappears from a projection booth overnite, so it can be telecined.

The end result may be that someone sitting in a theatre with a decent
camera pointed at a screen may get a better image than shooting a
projected film.

-Scott

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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.