Thomson's Film Grain technology adopted by major manufacturers
Thomson's Film Grain technology specification has been around since 2004, when it was approved by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), but a recent press release gives a progress report on the manufacturers who have adopted the standard.
But first, for the uninitiated, a brief word about this technology.
Generally, when movies shot on film are compressed and decompressed in order to be recorded and played back as standard and high-def DVDs, some of the characteristics and details of the film are lost.
Thomson's technology simulates this film grain when the movie is played back on DVD. So, rather than trying to minimise the compression of film, and thus taking up valuable disc space and bandwidth, Film Grain technology captures the essence of the original film as embedded code on the DVD, ready to be restored on playback by compatible equipment.
Jeff Cooper, general manager of Thomson's Princeton Research Lab explains: "Rather than compress the film grain by increasing the bit rate to very high levels, because you then have bandwidth or disc capacity issues, it's much better to model the signal and send the parameters, which is just a few bits. The HD DVD player then decodes the specs, so you get the film grain effect."
The buzz is such that most HD equipment should have it covered. It's already a mandatory specification for HD DVD players, and offerings from the likes of Toshiba, RCA and Microsoft's Xbox, will also contain the technology.
It could also be used to pack more detail into the same download when applied to films streamed over IPTV.
The Film Grain Technology specification is for sale on the SMPTE website: www.smpte.org/smpte_store/standards/index.cfm, and Thomson is offering reference design software to help companies understand and implement the technology.
Need more info?
- Press release
- "The Film Look" - an article by Ed Milbourn, formerly of RCA, covering aspects of film grain with some interesting motion picture history.
(Via Information Week)
