Real-time control systems (e.g., drone telemetry, industrial PLCs, automotive CAN-FD) require data exchange that is:
| Field | Size (bytes) | Description | |--------------|--------------|--------------------------------------| | MAGIC | 2 | 0xHDTC (0x48445443) | | VERSION | 1 | Major.minor (nibbles) | | FLAGS | 1 | Compression, endianness, checksum type | | NODE_COUNT | 2 | Number of tree nodes | | RESERVED | 2 | For future use | | DATA_SEGMENT | variable | Serialized node table + values | | CHECKSUM | 2 or 4 | CRC-16 or CRC-32 |
TR-DATAFMT-2025-04 Date: April 14, 2026 Author: Systems Architecture Group Version: 1.0 hdtc format
The quality tiering of pre-retail video files is often confusing. Because HDTC utilizes a direct master source (the film reel), it occupies a vastly superior quality tier than theater recordings.
To understand HDTC, it is essential to look at standard . For decades, movies were recorded on physical celluloid film reels (typically 35mm). Telecine refers to both the specialized machinery and the mechanical process used to transfer analog film into digital or television broadcast signals. The Frame Rate Challenge Real-time control systems (e
| Value | Type | Size (bytes) | |-------|---------------|--------------| | 0x01 | INT8 | 1 | | 0x02 | INT16 | 2 | | 0x04 | INT32 | 4 | | 0x08 | INT64 | 8 | | 0x0A | FLOAT32 | 4 | | 0x0B | FLOAT64 | 8 | | 0x10 | STRING_UTF8 | variable | | 0x11 | BLOB | variable | | 0x12 | NODE_REF | 2 (node ID) |
A telecine machine pulls the physical film through an internal optical scanner. For decades, movies were recorded on physical celluloid
HDTc stands for High-Definition Technical Cinema, a digital cinematography format used for capturing and storing high-resolution images. Here are some interesting facts about the HDTc format:
The HDTC format fills a niche between extremely low-level protocols (CAN, Modbus) and flexible but heavy serialization formats (JSON, XML, Protobuf). By providing deterministic parsing, hierarchical addressing, and integrated control semantics, HDTC is well-suited for real-time embedded systems that require both data exchange and remote procedure capabilities under tight resource constraints. A reference implementation (C99, MIT licensed) is available for evaluation.
HDTc is a digital cinematography format developed by Dalsa, a leading provider of digital imaging solutions. It's designed to meet the demands of high-end cinematography, offering exceptional image quality, high dynamic range, and precise color reproduction.
