The company behind this chip has upon request received original renderers of Elephants Dream from the Blender Foundation. These were used to test the 2K video screening capabilities of their new JPEG 2000 decoder chip.
Digital Cinema Today writes:
Tests, which comprised of a 2K screening of the demanding animated short movie ‘Elephants Dream' produced by the Open Orange Movie Project, were first made to confirm the absence of any visible artifacts on the screen.
11 Comments
ED is gaining some notoriety at being a test movie :)
Which other movies would let you borrow scene after scene and rework the image and stuff :D ?
Well it just shows the true impact and strengths of using open source. Well done to the ED team, and to ton for masterminding this amazing first for the world to share!
Heads Up: The link that says 'Continue reading...' links to http://www.blendernation.com/2007/04/12/elephants-dream-used-to-test-jpeg-2000-decoder-chip/#more-2348 and tries to load an Image Loader Box (at least in Firefox), instead of linking to just http://www.blendernation.com/2007/04/12/elephants-dream-used-to-test-jpeg-2000-decoder-chip/
Anyway: It's interesting that Elephants Dream is used so often for testing and firsts - The first European HD-DVD (http://www.blendernation.com/2006/08/14/elephants-dream-is-the-first-hd-dvd-title-in-europe/), The testing of large high def screens (http://www.blendernation.com/2007/02/14/4k-digital-cinema-technology-with-blender/) and now this! It's absolutely amazing, and a testament to Open Source that tells us 'Never Say Die!'
@rpgsimmaster: thanks. I think the word 'jpeg' in the title made the image loader script go crazy. It should be fine now.
Techmeology:
Another equally good question: Which other movie has the entire set of full HD frames in lossless format for testing? How would you DRM that?
Well you could use the Philips digital watermarking solution.
"About intoPIX s.a.
intoPIX develops and markets handling tools for large data stream with intrinsic high value with special regard to pictures having value in their quality, security and authoring rights. "
Hey there you go, using open source material with a liberal reuse licence to test DRM technology to take away the very rights that intoPIX is enjoying with the ED stuff.
"These were then followed by a recording of the projected image using a consumer grade camcorder to successfully identify the server, projector, location and date codes using Philips CineFence watermarking detector. "
wow ....
this is realy scary use of free and opensource content ! and it's 35km from my home .... brrrr
yes, great for blender, but philips is a company that is on my personal "to boycott" list as a consumer: the watermarking system is indeed scary and this is not all - about a year ago philips came out with an invention that prevents users from skipping tv ads on their new personal digital video recorder: http://news.com.com/Philips+device+could+force+TV+viewers+to+watch+ads/2100-1041_3-6062861.html ("philips invents for you" = "philips invents against you"). the creative commons licences by the way do not allow to drm a cc licensed file. so there is some kind of protection for elephant's dream. but using an open-source movie to test drm technology is really a bit cynical...
To play the devil's advocate...
"Hey there you go, using open source material with a liberal reuse licence to test DRM technology to take away the very rights that intoPIX is enjoying with the ED stuff."
I doubt that the fact a DRM scheme exists will prevent in any way individuals from licensing their own work freely without restrictions. DRM is there for those who want it, but I'd be shocked if everyone was forced to use it whether they like it or not.
"the creative commons licences by the way do not allow to drm a cc licensed file. so there is some kind of protection for elephant's dream. but using an open-source movie to test drm technology is really a bit cynical…"
That might be the case if ED used a CC-sharealike license, but it's doesn't, it's CC-Attribution, one of the more liberal versions. They can do whatever they like to it, as long as they attribute the original creators.
I think. They'd better to use some ready made plot. A science fiction or something like that. I have an Idea about creating an amazing movie based on the novel of the french writer Mopasant. It would be really interesting movie. But I have no technical possibility to create something as well rendered as ED
@ matt: hmm... i never thought of it this way, but i looks like a cc attribution license really does allow to drm a derivative work: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#What_happens_if_someone_tries_to_protect_a_CC-licensed_work_with_digital_rights_management_.28DRM.29_tools.3F
but i also had another look at the text of an attribution license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ and there it says: "For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page." and somehow i tend to think that you could only make clear "the license terms of this work" in such a case by mentioning that the original content did not have drm on it, only the derivative work has - at least there has to be that link to the original file so that people should find out about the drm side of things sooner or later...
First of all, I work for intopix so my opinion might be biased ;) But it's still my personal opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect the official position of my employer.
I'd like to express several points :
- Watermarking is not really DRM because it doesn't by itself limit what you can do with the output ... All it means it that we'll be able to trace it back to this exhibition and that's it ...
- I'm a strong fan of the opensource, free content and I really don't like drm scheme like css, the blue-ray equivalent, play-fair & co ... But here the context is completely different because we don't deal at all with consumer products ... While I think it's wrong for a company to sell me a disc I can't read how I want, I think it's normal to prevent someone to sneak in a digital cinema and copy the data out of the server ...
- We never intended to 'restrict' the distribution of ED in any way, It's just a technology demo. We actually never did any distribution, just exhibition ... And if you consider exhibition as distribution, even then, nothing prevents you from filming it ...
If someone from the Blender Foundation disagree with our use, and think we're not complying with the license, they can contact me but we obtained the content from them directly and they're afaik aware of our use of it.