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Compression for Digital Cinema

Peter Symes

Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions

Compression is one of the enabling technologies for Digital Cinema in that it makes storage and distribution of the cinema-ready product practical and economically feasible. Used appropriately, compression has little—ideally nothing—to do with the quality of the final cinematic experience; it is just one of the technologies used in taking the image to the projector.

Given this, compression has probably received far more than its fair share of attention in Digital Cinema discussions and in the standardization processes. It is an emotional subject in the Digital Cinema community. Some purists believe that compression is, by its very nature, something that should ...

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