Adobe Moves for Open Digital Cinema File Format

April 13th, 2008 at 3:00 PM - Conferences by Jeff Gamet

LAS VEGAS - Adobe is spearheading a move for an industry-wide open digital cinema file format called CinemaDNG. The company announced the news on Monday at NAB in Las Vegas and hopes the proposed standard will help streamline digital workflows and make archiving and exchanging files easier.

Adobe will use its DNG, or Digital Negative Specification, file format as the foundation for CinemaDNG. DNG is a file format commonly used by digital photographers to archive images that were shot in Raw format.

Several camera manufacturers are already on board with CinemaDNG including Panavision, Silicon Imaging, Dalsa Weisscam and ARRI. Application developers, like CineForm and The Foundry, are working to help flesh out the file specification, too.

Should CinemaDNG prove to be popular, it could change how companies across the entertainment industry manage and maintain their digital video files. It may also make it easier for post production companies to collaborate with other companies.

Adobe will publish the CinemaDNG specification for any company to use once the format has been finalized.