A STEP CLOSER TO LENS
METADATA STANDARDIZATION
By LES ZELLAN, CHAIRMAN AND OWNER, COOKE OPTICS
At NAB this year, a milestone in lens tech-
nology was reached when, together with our
friends at Panavision, RED Digital Cinema, Canon,
Blackmagic Design, CW Sonderoptic and Sony,
Cooke Optics announced the industry-defining
project to standardize the collection of lens
metadata from PL and selected Panavision mount
lenses on the /i Technology protocol.
The value of metadata is now completely accept-
ed for archiving and in many areas of production,
particularly news, where it is crucial for enabling
people to search, find and manage content quick-
ly and easily. However, it is still largely overlooked
at the acquisition stage. Although some metadata
from the lens is being used on set for monitor-
ing levels, there is so much more it could do that
could save significant time and money during
production and post production.
At Cooke Optics – which has over 130 years of
experience in lens development and a Scientific
and Technical Academy Award® among many
other industry accolades – we recognized this
deficit in lens metadata capture around 18 years
ago, and set out to create a metadata pro-
tocol that would provide the industry with a
digital open standard to gather and share lens
data, ensuring compatibility from acquisition to
post-production. The result was /i (Intelligent)
Technology.
The /i project was started with just the idea of
delivering basic information (as a continuous
58 • Broadcast Beat Magazine • www.broadcastbeat.com
remote readout), such as iris; focus; depth of
field; hyperfocal distance; and circles of confu-
sion (which is related to the film or camera sensor
format - and can be user selectable or potentially
could be set by the camera). The information can
be digitally recorded for every frame and stored
as metadata, accessible via cable connector near
the lens mount and/or contacts in the PL mount
that sync with /i compatible cameras and other
equipment.
As lens manufacturers, all of this had to be car-
ried out in the lens. We couldn’t farm it out to the
camera, because we didn’t make them. The lens
contains various encoders and sensors, as well
as the computational power to calculate what is
happening, and deliver meaningful results.
With persistence and determination (and a very
reasonable £1 licence fee) we’ve been promot-
ing /i across the production technology industry,
and today there are over 30 /i Technology part-
ners - including many of the industry’s leading
camera, lens, monitoring, data recording and
post-production manufacturers, which support /i
Technology in their products. The open nature of
the protocol means that manufacturers can inte-
grate it to work with their technology, and not the
other way around – so we have a standard way
to collect this data, while manufacturers can still
maintain the unique nature and design of their
lenses or cameras.
Digital cameras that are /i compatible can talk