Colorfront, the Academy and Emmy Award-winning developer of high-performance, on-set dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, high-end episodic TV and commercials, announced that Colorfront Transkoder, its automated, standalone system for high-quality digital file conversion, has been certified by Dolby Laboratories for the creation of Dolby Atmos Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs).
With the expansion of Transkoder’s toolset to include support for Dolby’s object-based audio format, postproduction studios can leverage Transkoder’s extreme performance to create Dolby Atmos DCPs at up to ten-times faster-than-realtime, making Transkoder a reliable, cost-effective and feature-rich alternative to other systems.
Using Dolby Atmos object-based audio, sound experts have the creative freedom to place sound anywhere in the movie theatre–not just where there happen to be speakers–to deliver an immersive listening experience. Sound mixers can tag each sound “object” with precise directions as to where it should appear or move in the room. Dolby Atmos takes into account the unique configuration of each venue, to ensure a consistent, high-quality audio experience regardless of the size and shape. Thanks to an intelligent decoder box, sound objects are rendered and distributed to the required number of speakers.
“Dolby Atmos is a remarkable technology that brings an exciting dynamic to the cinema-going experience,” said Aron Jaszberenyi, managing director of Colorfront. “The official certification of Colorfront Transkoder for Dolby Atmos further expands Transkoder’s comprehensive capabilities, gives DCP mastering facilities new levels of performance and productivity, and establishes Colorfront as the premier provider of mastering solutions for high-end digital cinema.”
Soundfirm, Australia’s largest independent picture and sound post production company, with facilities in Melbourne, on the Fox Studios’ lot in Sydney and in central Beijing, recently purchased Transkoder for digital cinema mastering at its newly constructed Melbourne headquarters. Soundfirm recently completed picture and sound post, including a Dolby Atmos mix, for the feature film The Dressmaker, starring Liam Hemsworth, Kate Winslet, Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving.
Soundfirm CEO Roger Savage said, “In Melbourne we offer Australia’s only Dolby Atmos Mixing and Mastering stage. Now with Colorfront’s Dolby-certified Transkoder in the workflow, we can power our way to final 2K and 4K DCPs, including a full Dolby Atmos sound mix and subtitles. This continues our tradition of working at the vanguard of cinema innovation.”
Transkoder runs on cost-effective Supermicro, HP Z840 and new Mac Pro platforms. It has unique, GPU-accelerated, faster-than-real-time capabilities, and a comprehensive toolset which combine make it the ultimate tool for HFR UHDTV and 4K-6K-8K digital cinema applications.
Along with object-based audio technology support, Transkoder’s features include 240FPS JPEG2000 encode-decode, DCP/DCI-compliant mastering, IMF/IMP authoring, packaging, verification and QC. Harnessing Colorfront Transkoder, Dolby Atmos mixes can be easily integrated into DCI and SMPTE DCP mastering processes, with the DCP created at up to ten times faster than realtime.
Colorfront will demonstrate Transkoder, along with its Express Dailies and On-Set Dailies systems, at SMPTE 2015 in Sydney, Australia from July 14-17.
