A virtual telecine is a piece of

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

equipment that can play back data files in real time. The colorist-video operator controls the virtual telecine like a normal

telecine Telecine ( or ) is the process of transferring film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process. Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on f ...

, although without controls like focus and framing. The data files can be from a

Spirit DataCine Spirit DataCine is a telecine and a motion picture film scanner. This device is able to transfer 16mm and 35mm motion picture film to NTSC or PAL television standards or one of many High-definition television standards. With the data transfer o ...

motion picture film scanner A motion picture film scanner is a device used in digital filmmaking to scan original film for storage as high-resolution digital intermediate files. A film scanner scans original film stock: negative or positive print or reversal/IP. Units may s ...

(like a

Cineon The Cineon System was one of the first computer based digital film systems, created by Kodak in the early 1990s. It was an integrated suite of components consisting a Motion picture film scanner, a film recorder and workstation hardware with so ...

), CGI

animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

, or an Acquisition

professional video camera A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on film). O ...

. The normal input data file standard is

DPX Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) is a common file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work and is a SMPTE standard (ST 268-1:2014). The file format is most commonly used to represent the density of each colour channel of a scanned n ...

. The output of data files are often used in

digital intermediate Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. Definition and overview A digital intermediate ...

post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. The ...

using a

film recorder A film recorder is a graphical output device for transferring images to photographic film from a digital source. In a typical film recorder, an image is passed from a host computer to a mechanism to expose film through a variety of methods, hi ...

for

film-out Film-out is the process in the computer graphics, video production and filmmaking disciplines of transferring images or animation from videotape or digital files to a traditional film print. ''Film-out'' is a broad term that encompasses the conver ...

. The

control room A control room or operations room is a central space where a large physical facility or physically dispersed service can be monitored and controlled. It is often part of a larger command center. Overview A control room's purpose is produc ...

for the virtual telecine is called the

color suite A color suite (also called a color bay, telecine suite, or color correction bay) is the control room for color grading video in a post-production environment. Technology and specifications The video source could be from: a telecine, a video tape re ...

. *The 2000 movie ''

O Brother, Where Art Thou? ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and C ...

'' was scanned with

, color corrected with a VDC-2000 and a Pandora Int. Pogle Color Corrector with MegaDEF. A

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

Lightning II film recorder was used to output the data back on to film. * Virtual telecines are also used in

film restoration Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the wi ...

. *Another advantage of a virtual telecine is once the film is on the storage array the frames may be played over and over again without damage or dirt to the film. This would be the case for outputting to different TV standards (

NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

) or formats: (

pan and scan Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus ...

letterboxed Letterboxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting videographic image has mattes (black bars) above and below ...

, or other aspect ratio. Restoration,

special effect Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual wor ...

color grading Color grading is a post-production process common to filmmaking and video editing of altering the appearance of an image for presentation in different environments on different devices. Various attributes of an image such as contrast, color, s ...

, and other changes can be applied to the data file frames before

playout In broadcasting, channel playout is the generation of the source signal of a radio or television channel produced by a broadcaster, coupled with the transmission of this signal for primary distribution or direct-to-audience distribution via any ...

. Virtual telecine is like a "

tape to tape A color suite (also called a color bay, telecine suite, or color correction bay) is the control room for color grading video in a post-production environment. Technology and specifications The video source could be from: a telecine, a video tape re ...

" color correction process, but with the difference of: higher resolution (2k or 4k) and the use of film restoration tools with standards- aspect ratio tools.

2k virtual DataCine products

*First virtual telecine by

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

, now

Grass Valley A grass valley (also vega and valle) is a meadow located within a forested and relatively small drainage basin such as a headwater. Grass valleys are common in North America, where they are created and maintained principally by the work of b ...

Thomson SA Thomson may refer to: Names * Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin * Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson Businesses and organizations * SGS-Thomson Mic ...

Brand: **VDC-2000 Virtual DataCine **Specter FS Virtual DataCine These are able to play out 2k data files in non-linear real time. Size, rotation and color correction-

are all able to be done in real time controlled by a telecine color corrector. A

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

-SGI computer, an

Origin 2000 The SGI Origin 2000 is a family of mid-range and high-end Server (computing), server computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics (SGI). They were introduced in 1996 to succeed the SGI Challenge and POWER Challenge. At the time of in ...

, is used to play the

data file A data file is a computer file which stores data to be used by a computer application or system, including input and output data. A data file usually does not contain instructions or code to be executed (that is, a computer program). Most of the ...

s to "Spirit DataCine hardware". The Virtual DataCine can output

SDTV Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...

(NTSC or PAL) and

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

-high definition or Data files DPX (or TIF), the same as the Datacine. First generation input/output interface for data files as the

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

HIPPI cables (up to 6 frame/s at 2k), the next generation interface is GSN-

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use i ...

fibre Optic (up to 30 frame/s at 2k). GSN is also called HIPPI-6400 and was later renamed GSN (for Gigabyte System Network). The SAN hard disk are interfaces to the Virtual DataCine by dual FC-

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...

, cables. Real time 2k Color Correction is done by a

Pandora International Pandora International is a maker of hardware and software systems for video editing, Telecine Control and Colour Correction. Pandora was founded in 1985 By Steve Brett and Martin Greenwood, later Aine Marsland joined the team and took over the admi ...

's Pogle with a MegaDEF. Input and output 3D LUT-Look up tables are also used to control the look and standard of the clips. *On a Spirit Datacine Phantom TransferEngine software running on an SGI computer or Bones Linux-based software is used to record the DPX files from the Spirit DataCine. These files are stored in the virtual telecine or on a SAN

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

storage array. The end product was accomplished by playing the DPX files back through the Spirit Datacine's process electronics and a

MegaDef ''Megadef'' is the second album by Los Angeles underground rap group Styles of Beyond, which was released on Spytech Records on September 9, 2003 after their 1998 installment '' 2000 Fold''. The album's title is a reference to the Hebrew term ''m ...

Colour Correction system. VDC-2000 Specter and Specter FS are made in

Weiterstadt Weiterstadt () is a town in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, in Hesse, Germany. It is situated directly northwest of Darmstadt. Twin towns – sister cities Weiterstadt is twinned with: * Bagno a Ripoli, Italy * Kiens, Italy * Verneuil-sur-Seine ...

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

Germany by Grass Valley - a Thomson SA brand, former names see

Broadcast and

Robert Bosch GmbH Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch and stylized as BOSCH, is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosch is 9 ...

Fernseh The Fernseh AG television company was registered in Berlin on July 3, 1929, by John Logie Baird, Robert Bosch, Zeiss Ikon and D.S. Loewe as partners. John Baird owned Baird Television Ltd. in London, Zeiss Ikon was a camera company in Dresden, D.S ...

Division.

Real-time virtual telecines

4:2:2 and better 4:4:4 RGB can be used as a Virtual Telecine. In this case, standard HDTV video products can be used in a

work flow. *As faster computers and SAN-Storage area network came on the market, more Real time 2k Virtual Telecine came on to the market.

is easier to output in real time than HDTV or 2k or 4k

display resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is ...

files. *Limitation to speed are: color correction, resizing aspect ratio, dirt removal,

motion picture credits Two types of credits are traditionally used in films, television programs, and video games, all of which provide attribution to the staff involved in their productions. While opening credits will usually display only the major positions in a pr ...

, and other

restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration * Restoration ecology ...

. Also bandwidth speed of the hardware limits real time playout: CPU, interface, SAN, memory, software and hardware. Some Current virtual telecines are: *

Da Vinci Systems da Vinci Systems was an American digital cinema company founded in 1984 in Coral Springs, Florida as a spinoff of Video Tape Associates. It was known for its hardware-based color correction products, GPU-based color grading, digital mastering s ...

Splice *

Bones A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, an ...

by DFT Digital Film Technology in

, Germany. * Filmlight Baselight * Marquise Technologies MIST prime and MIST i/o * SpectSoft RaveHD and Rave2K * DFT Flexxity

Non-real-time virtual telecines

A number of products are on the market that can output frames in less than real time. These can be used to output DPX data file, but are too slow for HDTV. For some digital intermediate work 4k data is needed. These large 4k display resolution files cannot be transferred in real time.

External links

A Brief History for Colorists, History of TelecinesPhoto of a VDC Specter in three 19 inch rackes

* ttp://www.efilm.com/publish/2004/09/03/Am.+Cinematographer+04.2003.pdf American Cinematographer A flex Finish

Thomson Grassvalley Home Page

Ascent Media's Virtual Telecine

- Pogle

Pandora International Home Page

Marquise Technologies Home Page

Grande Vitesse Systems Home Page
theasc.com, © 2003 American Cinematographer, DI by Debra KaufmanAmerican Cinematographer A flex Finishkodak.com "Restoration of an impeccably preserved old negative"
NAB 20000: Choose Your Weapons, March 1, 2000, By Dan Ochiva, Michael Goldman, Barry Braverman, Audrey Doyle, Philip De Lancie, Matt Cheplic, and Pete Film production Film and video technology Television technology Video hardware

2k virtual DataCine products

Real-time virtual telecines

Non-real-time virtual telecines

See also

External links