A Review of the Digital Cinema Chain: From Production to Distribution

Abstract

This chapter deals with digital cinema chain as digital cinema (DC) offers an enhanced viewing experience for audiences, content flexibility, and distribution cost savings. Taking into account that the transition from physical media to electronic one represents a paradigm shift in video compression techniques and applications, archival requirements have been analyzed. A brief overview of the DC specification has been provided as was also discussed how JPEG 2000 was utilized within this specification. The current status of digital cinema was surveyed with a focus on the compression part of the DC system. To make the system practical and economic, various coding techniques have been applied to compress DC data for archive and distribution purposes. Standardization process for archival applications is considered. Features used for shot cut detection that are robust against the artifacts in film material have also been presented.