Let me also expand a bit on the various CinemaScape modes.
We should start by thinking about how 2.35 systems work when they
don't have a Kaleidescape system. In systems that have an anamorphic lens, when viewing regular 16:9 content or non-2.35 movies, the lens is usually moved away from the front of the projector, so that the projector fills the
height of the screen, but not the full width.
When it's time to watch a 2.35 movie, two things happen. First, an "Anamorphic" mode is engaged on the projector, which takes the incoming video signal and stretches it vertically. The effect of this is to eliminate the black bars, and fill the full height of the image with the content that was originally in the letterboxed area in the middle. Everybody at this point looks very tall and skinny.
Then, the lens is moved into position. That stretches the image horizontally, filling the screen, and restoring everybody to their average height and portly build. ;-)
In these systems, the viewer typically presses a button of some kind on a remote control to engage the projector's stretch feature and the motorized sled that moves the lens.
Alternatively, if somebody does not have an anamorphic lens, then they can simply zoom the projector's lens so that the image gets bigger. The black bars are projected onto the area above and below the screen, and the actual image fills the 2.35 screen. Again, this is usually done manually (typically with a lens memory on the projector).
We wanted to eliminate this manual stuff, so the Kaleidescape system has long included a feature where we send an event to the user's control system, saying "Aspect ratio is now 2.35" or "Aspect ratio is now 1.78". The control system programmer could program the system to engage the lens sled and projector stretch, or to select a different lens memory.
We weren't really satisfied with that solution either, because especially when you do something like playing a scene, it can be a lot of back and forth. So that's where CinemaScape comes in.
In the main CinemaScape mode -- CinemaScape Anamorphic -- you configure the system so that the anamorphic lens is
always in front of the projector when the Kaleidescape source is selected, but the projector's vertical stretch mode is
not engaged. The Kaleidescape player draws all of the onscreen display graphics, and renders all of the video content, so that it will always look correct when projected through the lens. We still emit the aspect ratio triggers, so that motorized screen masking systems can adjust accordingly.
CinemaScape Letterbox is designed for situations where there's no way to engage the anamorphic lens without also engaging the projector's vertical stretch feature. The player draws everything within the 2.35 letterboxed region in the frame, so that (again) everything looks correct on screen. This mode produces somewhat reduced video quality compared to CinemaScape Anamorphic, because it doesn't use the full 1080 pixels of vertical resolution. (Or, eventually, 2160 on Strato.)
Finally, CinemaScape Native 2.35 Display mode is intended for "21:9" televisions, or 2.35 projectors like the Projection Design Avielo projectors, which are native 2.35 devices that look for letterboxed content and automatically stretch the image when they see it. In this mode, the onscreen display is drawn in 2.35 letterbox format, 2.35 video is displayed letterbox, but 1.78 and 1.85 content is displayed normally. This allows the sensing functions in the display to adjust automatically.
How does this shake out for somebody who is using projector zooming? CinemaScape Anamorphic is not the right setting for projector zooming. You could elect to use CinemaScape Letterbox, which would basically allow you to always zoom out to 2.35 while using the Kaleidescape. Or, you could select CinemaScape Native 2.35, which will draw the onscreen display as a 2.35 letterbox (suitable for zooming), and 2.35 content suitable for zooming. But you'd zoom the picture back down to normal size for 1.78. You could automate this with lens memories and the aspect ratio triggers.
If you haven't run screaming from the room at this point, you can check out our detailed
CinemaScape white paper, which explains all of this in more detail, with pretty pictures.
To reiterate, CinemaScape is not available on Strato yet, but it is planned for the April kOS release.
Feel free to ask more questions if you'd like! CinemaScape was sort of my baby, so I know it pretty well.