The History of Digital Cinema

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Digital cinema has quickly created a huge impression in the worlds of film and television. The progression from traditional film to digitized software has brought upon a myriad of new methods and processes to create and transport film more easily than ever before. 2K Resolution is one of many forms of digital cinema that has long been used in the history of film and is still the most popular format to use during screenings of feature films at a movie cinema.
The history of 2K Resolution begins from the beginning of digital cinematography. First starting in the late 1980’s, Sony had started making a marketing push into a new system known as ‘electronic cinematography’. They had attempted to begin this new system by utilizing traditional analogue HDTV cameras and it was not very successful. Later in 1998, HDCAM recorders had just been released alongside digital video cameras which were the first to shoot with a 1920 x 1080 pixel range on CCD technology. The entire system was revamped and become known as ‘digital cinematography’. This paved the way for a new benchmark in cinema history and digital cinema was already at the helm.
2K Resolution is related to digital cinema; it is a primary method of storing video as an electronic copy contained inside a storage device. Computer severs and hard drives are used to store the contents of the video. Digital cinema creates an electronic projection onto a large screen instead of projecting hard light like in traditional cinema projection. Although digital cameras are not exactly new, along with post production houses that have used digital technology for many years, there has been a big push for all-digital distribution which will eventually lead to the fall of motion picture film productio...

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...on has long been used during most peoples’ experiences at the cinema and it is likely that it will continue to be used more often into the future. Many cinemas around the world are now switching towards digital projection with 2K Resolution taking the helm; 96% of all cinemas utilize 2K digital projection and regardless of a film’s original format, be it film, digital, HD or 4K, it is more likely that movie-goers will view a feature film in 2K Resolution.
Images that are projected in 2K Resolution can be used in a variety of bit forms; 10 bit is usually the most commonly used form. In terms of RGB formatting, this allows for 1,024 graduations of red, green and blue. When it comes to the actual images sizes of 2K, which are both 2,048 x 1556 and 2,048 x 1080, they are allocated into two file formats: Cineon or DPX (also known as Digital Picture Exchange Format).

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