Tapeless, digital intermediate (DI)-style workflow with emphasis on color correction continued to play a key role in industry discussions at the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Convention, which was held last week in Las Vegas.
Many of the hero systems in this space have already been shipping and are in use, so the dialogue centered on such issues as interoperability, communication and workflow–starting on set and continuing throughout the postproduction process.
From this reason, it appears that the American Society of Cinematographers’ (ASC) initiative to establish an open Color Decision List (CDL) is occurring at the right time.
The effort–spearheaded by the ASC Technology Committee’s DI subcommittee–began when ASC cinematographers identified a need for a common interchange format for color. The CDL is an open system designed to facilitate color correction data interchange between color correction systems from different vendors.
According to the ASC’s DI subcommittee chair Lou Levinson, who is senior colorist at bicoastal Post Logic Studios, the open CDL is essentially a set of nine numbers representing parameters similar to lift, gamma and gain–and each with red, green and blue.
Levinson and DI subcomittee vice chair Joshua Pines, who is VP of imaging at Burbank-based Technicolor Digital Intermediates, quietly conducted CDL tests during NAB; Levinson added that they received significant help from Thomson Grass Valley and its post marketing manager Joachin Zell.
According to Levinson, the team generated some test frames on the day before the show opened. Then they hand delivered the source frames, the nine number CDL information, and finished frames for comparison, to many of the major manufacturers collaborating with the ASC. “It will take us a couple of weeks to get the results back,” Levinson reported.
The last hurdle, he said, is to establish an exchange mechanism to move the set of numbers between platforms, since for the NAB test, the information was hand delivered. “I would love to see the exchange mechanism being tested around [the time of] IBC [this September in Amsterdam],” Levinson said, adding that hopefully the CDL would be ready soon thereafter.
The developing CDL was generating positive interest at NAB. Red Car CEO Larry Bridges–who is a director, editor, and cinematographer–identified the CDL as among the most important developments on his NAB list. “The ASC’s [work] in this area should be congratulated,” he said. “In my opinion the cinematographer should remain the author of the look.”
“It’s all about interoperability,” said Rainer Knebel, VP of DI services for Ascent Media Creative Services (encompassing businesses including Company 3 and RIOT). “It is important that manufacturers are supporting it.”
“The CDL is a positive move to create a consistent workflow for customers,” added Bill Roberts, director of product management at Montreal-based Autodesk Media & Entertainment.
Meanwhile, in the Autodesk booth, company representatives showed a prototype of a new control panel with a custom ergonomic design for the Discreet Lustre color correction software.
Other DI/color correction technologies that generated interest at NAB included Coral Springs, Fla-based da Vinci Systems’s new Splice, which creates what the company refers to as a “virtual telecine” for the da Vinci 2K and da Vinci 2K Plus, giving users the real-time benefits of traditional telecine control (pan, tilt, zoom, and rotate) in a nonlinear workflow.
“Splice gives 2K colorists the benefits of a nonlinear workflow and revitalizes their existing investment, ensuring they can continue using their 2K system for many years to come,” said Jim Mackrell, senior product manager at da Vinci. “It is the ideal solution for colorists who want nonlinear access to material and also need to control the devices commonly found in the telecine suite. Splice offers the best of both worlds and promotes an environment conducive to creativity.” Splice is scheduled to ship in June, as is da Vinci’s next version 3.2 of its Resolve color correction software system.
Da Vinci also announced that its ColorTrace tool for the 2K Plus color enhancement system has recently been deployed at Technicolor Digital Intermediates and Burbank-based Modern VideoFilm. The company said that ColorTrace–designed for both long-form and commercial work–enables colorists to update 2K color sessions to match editorial changes as they occur within program material, essentially doing in seconds what would typically involve manual copying and list-manipulation time. ColorTrace also links metadata to each event and allows colorists to access images while keeping their original color grades in place.
On its NAB stand, da Vinci also presented its annual Master Colorist Awards to the following winners in four categories: Kelly Armstrong, Avenue Edit, Chicago, Rotary Club’s “Peace”-commercials; Dave Hussey, Company 3, Santa Monica, Audioslave’s “Don’t Remind Me”-music videos; Siggy Ferstl, RIOT Santa Monica, Underworld–theatrical release category; Paul Westerbeck, The Post Group, Hollywood, C.S.I.-television and long form.
London’s Filmlight launched a new product in the Baselight color correction family–Baselight HD, which offers the Baselight color correction system with HD and SD video I/O specifically designed for video grading and the Baselight Blackboard control surface. It is scheduled to ship in June for $231,000.
It also showed the Northlight 2 film scanner, which the company reported has a scanning speed of faster than two frames/second at 2k. It is scheduled to ship later this year for $518,000.
The company also reported that aforementioned Post Logic has made a significant investment in FilmLight technology to build a datacentric workflow that can accommodate resolutions up to 4k. The purchase includes a Northlight, Baselight Four and Eight, and Truelight color management system.
Alongside its Spirits, Paris-headquartered Thomson’s Grass Valley showed the latest additions to its modular Bones digital intermediate platform. Bones is now fully compatible with the SGI CXFS file system In addition to new primary and secondary color correction tools, the latest version of Bones has new matte generation capabilities.
In the core Bones software, now at version 2.6, other improvements streamline the integration with Grass Valley’s Spirit Datacines and Spirit 2K and 4K film scanners, automating many previously manual set-up routines. Improvements to the user interface have also been made in response to customer requests.
Digital Vision–headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with two wholly owned subsidiaries, Digital Vision in Los Angeles, and Nucoda in London–unveiled its 17-processor Nucoda Workstation based around Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) AMD64 multi core technology and designed for significant increases in processing speed. The new workstation is designed to support the full range of Nucoda software, including Nucoda Film Master, Nucoda Film Cutter, Nucoda Data Conform and Nucoda DVO Image Processing tools.
The multi-processor has already been ordered by a number of facilities including Foto-Kem in Burbank, The Chimney Pot in Sweden, iO Film in Hollywood, and i-Cubed in Chicago. It is expected to ship later this month.
Hanover, Germany-headquartered DVS demonstrated its new Clipster feature package, which includes a new content management system Spycer in the workstation’s software. Spycer manages, searches and views content and metadata, and also browses directories within the context of the current project. Also, Clipster now provides scene detection in real time and supports 2k at 30p for commercial production.
And, in cooperation with Munich-heaquartered ARRI, DVS introduced a dailies workflow by combining Clipster with ARRISCAN.
Bright Systems presented its new BrightDrive family of high performance, resolution-independent, DDR-grade shared media systems. BrightDrive provides media sharing capabilities across Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks allowing teams to work on the same files at the same time. The system is designed for datacentric applications including: disk-to-disk grading, uncompressed SD/HD collaborative editing and finishing, film scanning, dust bust/dirt removal and quality control, conforming, color correction and mastering.
Rochester, N.Y.-headquartered Eastman Kodak demonstrated an enhanced version of the Kodak Vision2 HD system, a hybrid system designed to provide filmmakers with a flexible and cost-effective option for producing content airing in HD or SD formats. The system consists of a new type of negative film, software and a digital image processor that is used by the colorist at the postproduction facility.
“This system gives cinematographers the flexibility of using a single emulsion that can be manipulated in postproduction to emulate the imaging characteristics of any current and some previous Kodak negative films,” explained James Minno, television segment manager for Kodak’s Entertainment Imaging Division.
The upgrade includes a new hardware platform, the Kodak Vision2 HD Digital Processor Version 2.0, which the company said could emulate the look of any Kodak stock.
NAB Convention coverage will continue next week in SHOOT with more on color correction and DI, as well as nonlinear editing and other topics.
Directors Amy+Pilar and Jose Antonio Prat Join Reform School
Boutique content production company Reform has added comedy directing duo Amy+Pilar (Amy York Rubin and Pilar Boehm) and award-winning multicultural director Jose Antonio Prat to its roster for U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded entertainment.
Partners in both life and art, Amy+Pilar are know for their sharp wit and comedic timing. Their synchronicity is evident in a body of work across TV, film and commercials. Prior to joining Reform School, Amy+Pilar had been repped in the ad market by production company Knucklehead.
Amy has directed high-profile comedy sketches featuring stars like Amy Schumer, Kate McKinnon, and Sarah Silverman. On the episodic front, Amy has helmed for series such as Fresh Off the Boat, Casual, Superstore and Angie Tribeca--as well as the pilot for the hit Netflix comedy Dead to Me.
Before joining forces with Amy behind the camera, Pilar was a psychotherapist, a background that informs her ability to create fascinating characters and stage irresistible, nuanced performances. Amy and Pilar’s shared passion for comedy brought them together. Their collaboration began with a Synchrony Bank campaign, starring cult-comedy favorite Maribeth Monroe (Workaholics), and they went on to direct the pilot of the Hulu series Love, Victor. Amy+Pilar’s ad fare also includes spots for Uber’s “Go-Get” campaign and “Shift,” starring Martin Starr.
“We have been fans of Amy and Pilar for a long time,” said Ryan Ennis, executive director at Reform School. “They excel at capturing comedic performances and dialogue. Coming from the TV and L.A. comedy scenes, they’ve built a strong following and collaborated with some of our favorite funny people.... Read More