Digital film - Definition and Overview

Digital film refers to cinema production and performance systems which work by using a digital representation of the brightness and colour of each pixel of the image.

This allows much more flexible post-production in the digital domain than would be possible using analog techniques such as traditional film opticals.

Digital film systems have much higher resolution than digital video systems, both in the spatial dimension (number of pixels) and the tonal dimension (representation of brightness). They also tend to have much finer control over colorimetry throughout the production process.

Early digital film systems scanned images that were shot on film, and transferred the output images to film for projection.

Modern systems now allow both the use of digital cameras and digital projection. A theater using digital projection is known as a digital cinema.

Digital film is typically used in conjunction with a digital audio soundtrack.

A common format for digital film post-production work is the DPX file format which represents scanned negative density in a "10-bit log" format. There is typically a different file for each frame, often 20 to 50 megabytes in size.

See also:

• Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem
• Digital intermediate

External links:

• CFC digital lab website (http://www.framestore-cfc.com/digital_lab/index.html)
• EFilm website (http://www.efilm.com)