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5 unusual facts about Digital intermediate


Digital intermediate

2000: Chicken Run was the first feature film in Europe to use the Digital Intermediate process, digitally storing and manipulating every frame of the film before recording back to film.

This project based studio was the first feature film to use Discreet Logic's (now Autodesk) Flame and Inferno systems, which enjoyed early dominance as high resolution / high performance digital compositing systems.

Sorted premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2000.

2000: Sorted - The first feature length, color 35mm motion picture to fully utilize the digital intermediate process in its entirety from inception to completion.

The first Hollywood film to utilize a digital intermediate process from beginning to end was O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000 and in Europe it was Chicken Run released that same year.


File sequence

Consider that a single frame in a DI project is currently from 9MB to 48MB large (depending upon resolution and colour-depth), whereas video refresh rate is commonly 24 or 25 frames per second (if not faster); any storage required for real-time playing such contents thus needs a minimum overall throughput of 220MB/s to 1.2GB/s, respectively.


see also