A Codec for Content Masters

Codecs continue to improve in efficiency and capability. It is now possible to compress original digital negative film (as printing density data), camera original linear data (gamma 1.0 scene-referred), and output-referred (distribution, with gamma 2.22 or 2.6) moving images in a common codec. The two key ingredients which enable this are 1) the ability to automatically adapt to the increased dynamic range and varying gamma, and 2) the ability to emulate the process of print emulation to yield output referred images for any presentation media from a wide variety of original image formats. Print emulation can further include modest alteration to gamma and gamut for output-referred (high gamma) images. The automatic adaptation to a variety of material types and gamma is enabled via the use of a high dynamic range regional quantization scale. The print emulation process is easily accomplished with current computation, and is a natural task for graphics processing units (GPU's). The use of layering in resolution and signal-to-noise (SNR), including up to bit-exact, further improves the integrity and range of usefulness of the codec.

Published

2010-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M001355

ISBN

978-1-61482-944-7