Today, if there are less than a handful of companies across the world that are working to fulfill the exacting needs of DCI, there are fewer still who look beyond. Qube Cinema is committed to creating a seamless world of Digital Cinema with products that are innovative, powerful, reliable and cost-effective.

Qube Cinema’s end-to-end solutions for Digital Cinema provide the ultimate combination of quality, reliability, ease-of-use, security and flexibility. Designed from the ground up to operate in mission-critical applications, the architecture of the Qube product family has been conceived with the future in mind and provides an integrated workflow, from mastering to distribution to playback to reporting to archival. Being largely software based allows the Qube system to leverage developments in the computer industry and bring to market format-independent, powerful and flexible products.

Qube Cinema has an entire suite of products required for a practical, commercially viable, end-to-end implementation of Digital Cinema. Qube Cinema is a company that has proven expertise in managing complex technology transformations in traditional workflows; a company with a passion for cinema and a thorough understanding of film, video, audio and computer technology as well as the production, post-production and exhibition industries.

The Qube XP Digital Cinema Server is the core component of the Qube system that plays picture and sound, and provides theatre-automation support. Redundant power supplies and RAID hard drives bring a high level of reliability to the system while a detachable Qube Remote Panel provides familiar operational controls such as Play, Pause and Stop along with an LCD Display and Menu Keys. Unlike more complex interfaces such as touch-screens or the mouse and keyboard, the Qube Remote Panel is a simple, familiar hardware interface that makes projectionists instantly comfortable with the system.

The second generation Qube software is database driven and has a flexible core media architecture that closely follows the DCI Object Model. The Qube XP Server is based on the modular Microsoft Windows Embedded^™ Operating System to maximize reliability and security while deriving benefit from Microsoft’s powerful DirectShow^™ architecture.

The Qube XP-D is a DCI compliant product and has two dual-link HD-SDI outputs with CineLink^™ 2 encryption, 16 channels of AES3 audio output, optional 8 channels of analog audio output as well as automation support through Serial, IP and optional GPIO.

The Qube XP-D server is standards-based and designed for DCI compliance and interoperability. It has been certified to conform to the MXF and JPEG2000 Interop Specifications and utilizes DCI specified MXF containers with 128-bit AES encryption for media, and xml for compositions and shows. 2048-bit RSA encryption is utilized for keys. Forensic watermarking support is standard on all Qube XP-D systems with Civolution NexGuard^™. The system works with both TI Series I and Series II DLP Cinema^™ projectors.

The base system handles DCI JPEG2000 in both 24 fps and 48 fps frame rates, high bit-rate MPEG 2 and VC1 picture while also being expandable with additional software codecs. Audio is uncompressed 16 bit or 24 bit at 48 KHz and 96 KHz. Whether for pre-show or feature playback, the Qube XP server has the flexibility to support it all in the same box.

Qube XP-D servers also support multiple stereoscopic 3D systems. Dual Projectors with dual-link 12-bit 4:4:4 output to both projectors, Master Image and XpanD support is standard while Dolby 3D^™ and Real-D^™ support is optional. Subtitling is supported in the CineCanvas^™ file format. Subtitles can be internally rendered or can be sent along with timing information to a DLP Cinema^™ projector over Ethernet.

Media transport is possible using portable USB-2 hard drives, high-speed data lines and optionally, satellite multicast transmissions. An included CRU DataPort^™ receiver allows easy ingest from standard removable drives currently in use worldwide for digital cinema content distribution.

Qube XP Servers can manage media completely automatically by deleting older, unused media when additional space is required to ingest new media. This again makes the system entirely automatic in operation for the projectionist and manager and considerably simplifies their lives while reducing the possibility of human error.

Qube XP systems can be managed and operated locally and remotely via a powerful, highly interactive web-based UI which shows status and, with the proper login credentials, allows transport control, scheduling, content ingest, key management, media management as well as setup and maintenance. System logs can also be viewed over the web interface and downloaded as xml files that are signed for verification of authenticity.