Film-based motion picture digitizing system for super-high-definition images

This paper describes the configuration of a super high definition (SHD) motion picture film digitizing system and performance evaluation results. A still/motion picture film digitizing system is developed using a CCD line image digitizer, which can capture images at a maximum resolution of 4096 X 4096 pixels, 12 bits/pixel. Motion picture sequences are obtained on a frame by frame basis from a 70 mm motion picture film with the aperture size of 57 X 57 mm. Several versions of SHD motion picture test sequences were so digitized and the frame to frame positioning error was within +/- 1 pixel/2048 pixels. An SHD image processing software environment was newly developed to provide all of the image processing functions needed in the digitizing system and a comfortable user interface. A color matching method, which is based on direct color measurement/approximation between the original image and the reproduced image, was proposed for the digitizing system. A color matching experiment was performed between a film projector and a CRT display. The improvement ratio of mean squared color distance was 1.30. Although the improvement ratio is relatively small, a noticeable improvement in color reproduction accuracy was observed.