ciniMatrix

It is the final creative adjustment done on a motion picture before presenting to the audience. The process involves digitizing a movie and manupulating the colour and image characteristics to create the final desired mood

Digital intermediate is also used to describe colour grading and final mastering even when a digital camera is used as the image source and/or when the final movie is not output to film. This is due to recent advances in digital filmmaking.

In traditional photochemical film finishing, an intermediate is produced by exposing film to the original camera negative. The intermediate is then used to mass-produce the films that get distributed to theaters. Colour grading is done by varying the amount of red, green, and blue light used to expose it. One of the key technical achievements that make the DI possible is the visually predicts how the digital image will look once it's printed onto normal release print stock. DI facilities generally allow comparing the digital image directly to a print on the same screen, ensuring precise calibration of the process.

The digital intermediate process uses digital tools to color grade, which allows for much finer control of individual colors and areas of the image, and allows for the adjustment of image structure (grain, sharpness, etc). The intermediate for film reproduction is then produced by means of a film recorder. The physical intermediate film that is a result of the recording process is sometimes also called a digital intermediate, and is usually done using internegative (IN) stock, which is inherently finer-grain than camera negative (OCN).

The digital master, created during the Digital Intermediate process, is recorded to very stable yellow-cyan-magenta (YCM) separations on black-and-white film with an expected 100-year or longer life.