IMAX 101 Series: DMR (Digital Re-Mastering)—The Secret Sauce Behind The IMAX Experience®

For more than 40 years, IMAX has been in the business of creating experiences that take you beyond the edge of your seats to a world you’ve never imagined.

We started out as a large-format documentary maker focused on museums and science centers - taking audiences on adventures from the depths of the ocean to the outer limits of space.

While our documentary roots continue to be a key part of our business, we started to wonder what would happen if we brought The IMAX Experience to Hollywood?

Challenge accepted!

We put our top scientists, mathematicians, programmers, engineers and artists on the case. Fast-forward past the grueling hours, months, even years that it took to create the revolutionary new solution and you get the enhancement process that can turn an already powerful Hollywood movie into a breathtaking IMAX blockbuster. Today, we call this process IMAX DMR or digital re-mastering.

Now, nearly 10 years later – IMAX has become a sought-after partner for the best in Hollywood with an extensive catalogue of movies that have undergone the IMAX DMR process and have been brought to you in IMAX theatres across the globe.

So what exactly is DMR you ask?

Simply put (although not simply done):

Watching a movie in IMAX is like seeing a different movie. That’s because the content being shown in an IMAX theatre is significantly better than the content playing down the hall.

The secret sauce in the IMAX mix is IMAX DMR. It’s the transformative process we use  to enhance and optimize the image and sound of Hollywood and local-language feature films for our format.

During this process, IMAX spends hours, weeks and months working directly with the filmmakers and technical teams of each film on dozens of ways to enhance the movie, including improvements to the clarity, detail, contrast and brightness, re-mixing the soundtrack, and a bunch of other variables in virtually every scene.

The result delivers an unparalleled image and sound quality that is designed specifically for IMAX theatres.

When did all of this happen?

Our first Hollywood DMR title was the re-release of Apollo 13 in 2002. Apollo 13 was a great fit for an IMAX presentation and a great transition from our space documentaries to a space feature film. Check back for an upcoming post where we’ll demonstrate the difference our DMR process made to Apollo 13.  

Stay tuned as the love story between IMAX and blockbuster movies unfolds where we’ll give an in-depth look into how the process is done as well as the history of our DMR titles.