COLORFRONT REMOTE/CLOUD WORKING INITIATIVE ENABLES NEW ERA FOR TV & FILM POST WORKFLOWS

Budapest, July 1, 2020 – Colorfront (www.colorfront.com), the Academy, Emmy and HPA Award-winning developer of high-performance dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, broadcast, OTT and commercials – today launched a high-performance, cost-effective, remote working/cloud initiative enabling customers to continue working safely and efficiently as they seek to fulfill the growing global demand for content during the worldwide Covid-19 crisis.

Colorfront has pioneered remote working practices, particularly cloud-based operations, over many years. Now, inspired and encouraged by the determined spirit of its customers to keep the wheels of industry moving, the company has fast-tracked these capabilities to deliver direct, remote interactive operation of either their existing in-facility Transkoder systems, or the use of high-performance, interactive Transkoders in the cloud. It means that studio and post companies can continue to QC, render, package and deliver their wide variety of UHD/4K, IMF/DCP, SDR/HDR projects safely and productively.

Colorfront’s remote working/cloud initiative has been trialed and beta-tested by some of the company’s leading US clients, and is now being rolled-out with new licensing options to select Colorfront Transkoder and QC Player customers with a minimum of five licenses on a valid subscription contract.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically increased demand for content, but it also poses acute challenges to the commercial operations and revenues of professional media companies globally, who need and want to keep delivering content,” said Aron Jaszberenyi, MD of Colorfront. “With our remote working/cloud initiative they can keep working safely and maintain crucial business continuity. These unprecedented times may also prove to be a new era for effective, remote/cloud-based TV and filmmaking workflows.”

For customers with in-facility Transkoders, Colorfront has enabled high-quality and low-latency remote-access that gives them access to the full-functionality of their systems. For cloud-based workflows, Colorfront has leveraged its many years of practical experience with Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud services, to offer multi-GPU Transkoder instances in the cloud for fast and efficient rendering, available by the hour.

Colorfront has harnessed the power of AJA’s Io 4K Plus and Kona5 video card for the remote streaming client to output 12G SDI to professional 4K HDR broadcast monitors, plus UHD HDR via HDMI with HDR signaling. Colorfront is also enabling Dolby Vision metadata in the video stream, which is output via Kona5 on HDMI.

Now users can: easily access interactive Transkoders, in-facility or in the cloud, with professional, reference quality remote video output, up to 10-bit 444 UHD HDR, on broadcast monitors or consumer OLED HDR displays; submit renders to Transkoder Engines; and securely deliver multiple packaged version files to cloud-based storage or directly to OTT vendors.

Working with media in cloud storage, such as Amazon S3, Colorfront’s initiative offers real-time playback of IMF and DCP packages, as well as post and camera formats including OpenEXR, Alexa LF ARRIRAW ARX, Sony Venice RAW and Red 8K R3D RAW.

Colorfront’s new remote working/cloud initiative comes with brand new licensing options allowing customers on subscription to "burst" their licenses in the cloud for 90 days. For qualifying customers, who own a minimum of five Colorfront Transkoder, Transkoder Engine or Colorfront QCPlayer hardware dongles, Colorfront will allow them to burst up to the same number of licenses in AWS EC2 or Microsoft Azure with no license charges for 90 days. After 90 days they can renew their Colorfront cloud licenses quarterly or yearly. Usage charges for the hardware, storage and other cloud services, are billed separately by the respective cloud-service providers.

“At Colorfront, we will continue to work closely with our customers and partners, and focus our resources on doing everything we possibly can to help the industry keep moving forwards,” added Jaszberenyi. “We wish everyone in our community worldwide the very best, and look forward to the time when the crisis is over.”

More details about how to take advantage of Colorfront’s remote/cloud initiative can be found at colorfront.cloud.

About Colorfront: Colorfront is headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, with offices in Los Angeles, plus sales partners worldwide. The company's popular, award-winning on-set dailies and transcoding systems are utilized by small, medium and large companies alike, to process and deliver media for Hollywood blockbusters, high-end episodic TV and OTT internet entertainment. The firm was founded in 2000 by Mark and Aron Jaszberenyi, who were instrumental in the advent of non-linear DI color grading. 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 in 2010 for Lustre, Autodesk's DI grading system, and a Primetime Engineering Emmy in 2012 for Colorfront On-Set Dailies. Colorfront has since become renowned for the innovation, excellence and performance of its camera-to-post products, which include On-Set Dailies, Express Dailies and Transkoder. The company has leveraged its technology to successfully offer Colorfront Cloud Services, and also owns and operates a state-of-the-art DI and post-production facility, of the same name, in Budapest. www.colorfront.com.