Strategic Cooperation Offers Compressed Workflow Up to 4K

IRIDAS and CineForm, Inc. have
established a strategic cooperation to advance compressed workflow
technologies for movie acquisition and postproduction. IRIDAS has
incorporated support for the CineForm RAW and CineForm Intermediate file
formats into all its products, including FrameCycler, the industry standard
for postproduction playback since 2001, and SpeedGrade, the company's
non-destructive color correction application family. CineForm has integrated
the SpeedGrade .Look file format in the CineForm metadata architecture. For
filmmakers, this means substantially leaner production and postproduction
workflows with non-destructive grading embedded as metadata.
"CineForm has created the first real time compression algorithm which is
effectively indistinguishable from uncompressed footage," said IRIDAS CEO
Lin Kayser. "Adding to this the advantages of RAW processing allows artists
to review, edit, grade, and finish their work without 'developing' their
material until final rendering. For the first time, we have a real-time
workflow with regular hard disks instead of RAID subsystems."

CineForm played a key role in realizing a non-destructive color metadata
workflow for the Silicon Imaging camera earlier this year. The ability to
store SpeedGrade .Looks from the camera in the compressed file meant that
complete color and image data were available to everyone in post – within
manageable file sizes. Around the same time IRIDAS was turning heads at NAB
2007 with the industry ¹s first real time de-mosaic of uncompressed RAW
formats from cameras such as the Phantom 4K and the ARRI D20.

These developments have now come together. CineForm RAW – designed for the
new generation of digital cinema cameras – allows filmmakers to retain all
of the sensor data from the camera. CineForm ¹s new Prospect 2K software
fills the last gap in the RAW workflow by enabling artists to access, apply,
and exchange the embedded .Look metadata non-destructively within editing
applications such as Adobe Premiere Pro. CineForm RAW can even be played in
Windows Media Player with the SpeedGrade color profile applied.

"IRIDAS has been pushing the envelope for digital workflows since
introducing the first software solution for uncompressed playback seven
years ago," said David Taylor, CEO of CineForm. "By showing them a
considerable amount of test data, we were able to convince IRIDAS that a
compressed workflow is a viable alternative even for high-end postproduction
pipelines. With CineForm support now available in both FrameCycler and
SpeedGrade, facilities can work with compressed CineForm files just like
they would with DPX or other formats, with the advantage of having live
color metadata included directly in the file."