AMPAS Offers IIF Update

During the afternoon, SMPTE attendees looked at the Image Interchange Framework (IIF), an architecture for advanced motion picture imaging developed by an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences-led committee of industry professionals.

The IIF is essentially a set of components to help facilitate workflows in production and mastering, at a time when film and digital options vary greatly.

“We are done with the science experiment,” said Alexander Forsythe of AMPAS. “The committee of over 50 believe it provides a flexible and robust platform. Feedback has been positive. The goal is to find any bumps in the road.”

A key to the product is encoding the images from all sources using ACES (Academy Color Encoding Spec).

IIF was introduced to the SMPTE community at the 2008 SMPTE Technical Conference. Since that time, IIF's image encoding specifications were published; core transforms and workflows were developed and are now being tested by major motion picture studios, equipment manufacturers and facilities; and standardization efforts were initiated.

“IIF is the workflow of the future,” said Curtis Clark, ASC. “We need to get implementations of this done as soon as possible. This is critical to our future … to produce images that would otherwise be very difficult to achieve.”

Laser Pacific has already implemented the workflow for motion picture production.

Clark reported that the PGA/ASC Camera Assessment Series would go through an IIF/ACES workflow as a test.