Online imaging database serves film and television industries
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045417 |
| Date | 01 May 1995 |
| Published date | 01 May 1995 |
| Pages | 489-491 |
| Author | Chuck Hearst |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
Online imaging database serves film
and television industries
Chuck Hearst
Eastman
Exchange,
Motion Picture and Television
Imaging,
Eastman Kodak Company
As well as making products that come in little yellow
boxes,
Eastman Kodak is also
a software developer. One of its software products is the Eastman Exchange, a
database that lets film and television professionals access remotely images and
information that they need
to
plan
shoots.
The Eastman Exchange presently consists
of location images and data provided by US and international film commissions,
but will soon be expanded to include images and information about props, cos-
tumes, talent, audio recordings, photo stills and video clips. The database engine
and interface have been designed to be highly adaptable: they can
be
customised to
support any application involving the cataloguing of images for remote access and
display.
The link between film and the East-
man Exchange, of
course,
is imaging.
Eastman Kodak, by virtue of its his-
tory and participation in film and other
photographic industries, has an under-
standing of how people and businesses
need to capture, produce and use im-
ages.
With new tools for managing
digital data, Eastman Kodak's move to
digital imaging was natural.
One of the primary digital imaging
technologies that Eastman Kodak has
developed is the Photo-CD format for
capturing and managing still images.
Photo-CD technology is an adaptation
of CD-Recordable (CD-R, or writable
CD technology), specific to the man-
agement of stills. Prints or negatives
are converted into digital format and
stored on Photo-CD discs —
CDROM discs that have been format-
ted to support
a
data structure called an
Image Pac.
The Image Pac data structure al-
lows images at multiple resolutions to
be
stored.
Lower resolution images are
useful for applications where com-
puter or datacommunications re-
sources might be overtaxed by the
large files required to store or transmit
high resolution images; high resolu-
tion images allow near-photographic
quality prints or colour separations to
be produced.
Photo-CD technology also sup-
ports a device-independent colour
management format. Photo-CD im-
ages originate as Photo YCC format
files, which with the proper software
can be converted either to RGB (for
display on computer monitor-type de-
vices) or CMYK (for printing) images.
Left as YCC images, they can be dis-
played on television screens.
Because Photo-CD technology is
so well-suited to the digital manage-
ment of still images, Eastman Kodak
believes it is becoming a de facto
standard for computer-based image
applications. The Photo-CD format is
supported, for
example,
in many popu-
lar graphics software applications and
operating systems, and this year East-
man Kodak opened a Photo-CD li-
censing strategy to make it easier for
vendors to incorporate the Photo-CD
format into their software applica-
tions.
Finally, Photo-CD technology
is
an
inexpensive way to digitise images.
Service bureaux, for example, convert
prints or negatives to Photo-CD
for-
mat for about $1.00 per image in the
US,
at a quality comparable to that
produced by high resolution drum
scans but at far less cost.
From Photo-CD to an imaging
database
The first generations of Photo-CD ap-
plications were directed at consumers
and businesses that needed a way to
digitise and store still photographs.
Eastman Kodak then saw a need for
broader digital imaging technologies.
In 1994, Eastman Kodak intro-
duced a product called the Kodak Pic-
ture Exchange, which combines
Photo-CD image technology with a
database system and is designed to let
stock photographic agencies put im-
ages of their photographs online. Pro-
spective customers dial up the data-
base,
perform searches and browse
through selections of images. If they
find images they would like to use,
they contact the respective agencies
and negotiate use rights.
At the same time, Eastman Kodak
was engaged in a dialogue with the six
major Hollywood film studios (Dis-
ney, MCA, Paramount, Sony Pictures,
Twentieth Century Fox and Warner
Bros.) to understand better how stu-
dios might use digital imaging. Begin-
ning in late 1993, pilot programmes
were set up at the studios which were
provided with Photo-CD equipment,
including PCD Workstation Model
2400s for digitising images, 100-disc
jukebox image managers and XL 7700
thermal printers. Eastman Kodak sup-
plied technical liaisons to help the stu-
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 5, October 1995 489
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