COLORFRONT ENGINE PRESERVES CREATIVE INTENT FROM CAMERA-TO-DELIVERY AT IBC 2019

IBC 2019, Amsterdam, September 12th – Colorfront (www.colorfront.com), the Academy, Emmy, HPA and Cine Gear Expo Award-winning developer of high-performance dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, broadcast, OTT and commercials, is focusing on the power of Colorfront Engine™, and its newly-released Colorfront Engine SDK, to enable faithful color management and preserve creative intent at all workflow stages from camera-to-delivery, during IBC 2019 in Amsterdam. The company has also announced new technology collaborations that see Colorfront Engine SDK licensed by additional industry-leading partners, plus successful motion picture uses of Colorfront-powered kit, including Paramount Picture’s Top Gun: Maverick.

Colorfront Engine is a state-of-the-art perceptual color-processing pipeline tool, featuring in Colorfront’s On-Set Dailies/Express Dailies and Transkoder products, and third-party products such as AJA HDR Image Analyzer and AJA FS-HDR real-time HDR/WCG converter and frame synchronizer.

It is now also available to third-party host applications, as an easy-to-integrate, lightweight, C++ Software Development Kit (SDK) on Windows, MacOS, iOS and Linux. As such, it brings plug-and-play simplicity to complex multi-source, multi-deliverable workflows across feature film/TV production, plus broadcast applications such as sports.

Given today's array of digital cameras and myriad SDR/HDR delivery options, Colorfront Engine solves the immense challenge of maintaining 'creative intent’ as materials journey from camera dailies to editorial/VFX and final delivery. Its unique, proprietary color-processing pipeline utilizes knowledge of the human visual system to accurately reproduce images on different displays and in different viewing conditions.

Colorfront Engine can map the many and varied input formats – including camera original (scene-referred) and graded (display-referred) images – to a wide range of SDR/HDR output formats at user-definable brightness/nit levels and gamuts, harnessing the power of propriatery perceptual color volume remapping to underscore its distinct ability to maintain the original creative intent.

Using the new SDK, host applications can harness a limited set of parameters, or the full range of controls which include: mapping any nit level to any other nit level; SDR-to-HDR/HDR-to-SDR conversions; processing of camera original files; ACES 1.1 and ACES LMT support; a Look Module, incorporating shading tools for user-configurable looks; and support for current/future monitoring and projection technologies. Optimized, 32-bit, floating point processing can be easily multi-threaded to minimize rendering cycles.

Colorfront Engine & SDK – Technology Collaborations & implementations:
At IBC 2019, visitors can see Colorfront Express Dailies working with AJA FS-HDR and Pomfort LiveGrade Pro, revealing how CDL live grading within Colorfront Engine delivers accurate SDR/HDR previews at any nit level as the start of a color-managed workflow from on-set to post.

Colorfront Engine SDK has been licensed by Telestream for its Vantage® media-processing platform that manages media services from the camera to distribution. Scott Matics, director of product planning at Telestream, said, “In today’s market, it has become essential for broadcasters and OTT service providers to be able to stream HDR and SDR content concurrently and at scale. Telestream's enterprise partners include the broadcast industry's leading technology brands. When we looked around for the best, most-used color conversion technology, it became quickly evident that Colorfront is the gold standard. Combining Vantage with Colorfront Engine, best-in-class HDR video processing is now possible, ensuring creative intent is maintained when performing any conversions.”

Colorfront Engine’s color pipeline was used successfully during principal photography on Paramount Pictures’ Terminator: Dark Fate, one of the first movies to shoot using ARRI Alexa LF, and also on Top Gun: Maverick one of the first movies to shoot with the Sony Venice full frame camera and the Colorfront-powered AJA FS-HDR.

Top Gun: Maverick cinematographer Claudio Miranda ASC, said, "I have used AJA FS-HDR in production for over a year now. With the built-in color science provided by Colorfront, it allows me to see beautiful and pleasing images out of the camera while monitoring on-set. I also enjoy additional features that FS-HDR provides, such as re-sizing for achieving custom formats or frame lines, as well as the ability to feed multiple signals and monitor both SDR and HDR simultaneously on the same reference monitor. Because of this, the AJA FS-HDR has become a very valuable tool for most of the projects I work on."

Via Colorfront Engine OpenFX plug-ins, Colorfront products can also be combined with post-production color grading systems such as DaVinci Resolve by Blackmagic Design, plus VFX systems such as The Foundry’s Nuke, for fully-integrated ACES-compliant color workflows. Creative looks and CDL grades can be passed into the post-production pipeline with crucial metadata references about where they are to be applied and viewed at any nit level.

During IBC 2019, Colorfront systems will be shown at AJA Video Systems’ stand 7.C25, as well as in scheduled demonstrations at The Okura Hotel, Amsterdam.

About Colorfront: Colorfront is headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, with offices in Los Angeles, and sales partners worldwide. The company’s popular, award-winning on-set dailies and transcoding systems are utilized to process and deliver media for Hollywood blockbusters, high-end episodic TV and OTT internet entertainment. Combining in-depth expertise in image color science with a pedigree in cutting-edge software development, the company's R&D team earned an Academy Award, a Primetime Engineering Emmy award and HPA Engineering Excellence Award. Colorfront has become renowned for the innovation, excellence and performance of its camera-to-post products, which include On-Set Dailies and Express Dailies, Transkoder and QC Player and in collaboration with AJA the FS-HDR and HDR Image Analyzer. www.colorfront.com