28 CFR Part 36 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Movie Captioning and Video Description ANPRM

C. Movie Basics

The very first movies were silent films. "Talkies" added sound as a separate component. Although many technological advances have been made since the advent of the "talkie," the practice of exhibiting the visual portion of the movie separate from the sound is still common. Today, the cinematography portion of many movies is exhibited in an analog (i.e. film) format, and the aural portion is exhibited in a digital format. Five to six reels of film are used for a typical two-hour long movie. These reels must be physically delivered to each movie theater exhibiting the movie. Digital sound is captured on CD-roms or optically or digitally on the film itself. Digital sound is synchronized to the visual images on the screen by a mechanism, called a reader head, that reads a timecode track printed on the film.

Digital cinema, by contrast, captures images, data, and sound on data files as a digital "package" that is stored on a hard drive or a flash drive. Digital movies are physically delivered to movie theaters on high resolution DVDs or removable or external hard drives, or to movie theaters´ servers via Internet, fiberoptic, or satellite networks. The movie industry recently has begun transitioning to digital cinema and it is the Department's understanding that, in the industry's view, this transition is one of the most profound advances in motion picture production and technology of the last 100 years and will provide numerous advantages both for the industry and the audience.