DI theatre calibration at Cineworks Digital Studios

29 March, 2008

We spoke with Mike Most, Chief Technologist at Cineworks Digital Studios in Miami, Florida, about how cineSpace has eliminated any guessing about what their prints will look like after colour correction.

What colour calibration/management issues were you facing before adopting cineSpace?
The ability to color correct in an electronic environment, using projection, and get predictable, accurate results from film output. Also the ability to generate video deliverables that reflected essentially the same color palette as the film print.

How did you solve or work around these issues prior to using cineSpace?
We found through experience that when sending video material to our film recorder, we could make certain "tweaks" to the video signal, primarily in terms of saturation and overall levels, that would better optimize it for film recording. However, the film results were usually a "facsimile" of the video, in part because much of the video color pallette is not reproducible on print film. So there was always a different look to the film print when compared to the color corrected video

What other alternatives did you consider before choosing cineSpace?
Kodak Display Manager and hardware solutions, like Truelight.

Which components of the cineSpace suite are you using at your facility?
cineProfiler and cineCube.

What other tools do you use (in conjunction with cineSpace) in your workflow?
Assimilate Scratch, an NEC iS8-2K projector, an Eye One Beamer probe, and the Bluefish Lust card (outputting to HDCam SR).

What benefits have you seen in your colour workflow since adopting cineSpace?
It has allowed us to develop a truly accurate, calibrated path. During color correction (done from log DPX files), we can see an accurate preview of the film print on the projection screen, and at the same time, we can see an equally accurate preview of the video version on a separate video screen (thanks to Scratch's ability to load two different view LUTs at the same time). Even though they are being displayed via two completely different signal paths, on completely different display technologies, they look essentially identical. This gives both us and our clients confidence that the process works. The prints we have made have proven to be accurate and true to what we see in electronic projection, and the video deliverables retain the same look and feel. In general, it has made it all quite simple, and we never have to think about the answer when a client asks "what will the print look like."

Any other comments?
The ability to build cubes of different resolutions has proven to be very useful. During color correction, we can use a print preview LUT for the projector that is of a lower resolution, allowing real time performance even though we're using a software based system. When rendering for the video deliverable, we can build a cube that is a higher resolution and get more accuracy without any quantizing or color artifacts, since real time performance is not an issue in a rendering pipeline. This has proven very useful and flexible, and allowed us to generate more accurate video deliverables, both in terms of their color accuracy and lack of artifacts.


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