COLORFRONT TRANSKODER DELIVERS THE CUTTING-EDGE AT SMPTE 2014

Colorfront continues leadership in UHDTV and IMF/DCP mastering capabilities

Budapest, Oct 17, 2014 – Colorfront (www.colorfront.com), the Academy and Emmy Award-winning developer of high-performance dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, high-end episodic TV and commercials, will set new performance standards and demonstrate a host of cutting-edge features for Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) post production, plus IMF authoring and DCP digital cinema mastering, during SMPTE 2014, Hollywood, CA, 20-23 October (Colorfront booth #311).

These industry-first developments – available in OSD Transkoder 2014, Colorfront’s automated, standalone system for high-quality digital file conversion, and its On-Set Dailies and Express Dailies systems – continue to underscore Colorfront’s reputation as a leading technology innovator for elite Hollywood productions, blockbuster motion pictures and high-end episodic TV shows.

At SMPTE 2014, Colorfront will show OSD Transkoder 2014 running on cost-effective Supermicro, HP Z840 and new Mac Pro platforms, performing the real-time playback of High Dynamic Range 4K, 60FPS UHD material to Sony’s new, 65 inch, flagship X950B 4K UHD monitor.

Colorfront OSD Transkoder 2014 features unique, GPU-accelerated, faster-than-real-time capabilities, which make it the ultimate tool for UHDTV and 4K digital cinema applications. These include 240FPS JPEG2000 encode-decode, DCP/DCI mastering, IMF/IMP authoring, packaging, verification and QC. It also supports calibrated HD-SDI and HDMI video output for a wide range of displays.

OSD Transkoder 2014 works with a growing list of codecs, including AVC-Ultra and Apple licensed ProRes XQ in any resolution, as well as DNxHD, XDCAM and DVCPRO. Supported formats also include MXF OP-Atom, OP-1a, QuickTime, plus AS-02 and AS-11 DPP broadcast deliverables standard, allowing for seamless integration into any file-based broadcast workflow. Helping to streamline post production, OSD Transkoder allows the writing of Avid DNxHD MXF media directly to Avid ISIS shared storage, which is then checked into the Avid Interplay database enabling Avid Media Composer users to locate clips in a familiar way.

Also during SMPTE 2014, Colorfront will show the latest versions of its On-Set Dailies and Express Dailies systems. Both feature the very latest ARRIRAW De-Bayer capabilities, delivering the industry’s highest-quality real-time De-Bayering of ARRI ALEXA OpenGate and ARRI ALEXA 65 formats at 4K and beyond.

Additionally, Colorfront has supplemented the renowned look-design toolsets in On-Set Dailies and Express Dailies – which already include Master Look™ library, Camera Color™, and Look Blender™ – with the new Skin Modifier™, enabling the easy handling and adjustment of skin tones and colors, plus a unique set of highlight/shadow control design tools. Both of these features enable creative artists to non-destructively create and control vital aspects of the look on-set, and pass the results into post production and VFX via metadata and 3D LUTs.

At the core of all Colorfront products is Colorfront Engine™, a full 32-bit, floating point, high-performance, Academy Aces-based image pipe, addressing current and future needs with support for wide gamut, high dynamic range, high framerate, and high-resolution processing.

"We are always optimizing the quality and performance of our software, so customers really are getting the very fastest technology supporting the very latest high-end cameras and deliverable formats," said Aron Jaszberenyi, Managing Director of Colorfront. "4K is here today, and Colorfront systems can support handling RAW footage from the latest generation of digital cinematography cameras, processing on the fly, at full resolution, in high dynamic range even at high framerates. All of this on cost effective off-the-shelf workstations, without the need for custom hardware, bringing state-of-the-art UHD production and post, plus IMF and DCP mastering, within easy reach."

Colorfront OSD Transkoder 2014 recently shipped and has already been purchased by customers worldwide, including Deluxe Digital Cinema in London, Fotokem in Los Angeles and Park Road Post in New Zealand.

Deluxe's Director of Digital Cinema, Andy Scade, said, "Deluxe Digital Cinema (DDC) has a global reputation for incomparable service, the strongest production values and a continual commitment to technical investment and innovation. These are central to our business philosophy, allowing us to excel in an industry that rarely demands anything less than perfection. That is why we are working with Colorfront for 2D/3D stereo subtitling and mastering, with outstanding support for HFR, 4K and stereo. Deluxe Digital Cinema relies on Colorfront's flexible development, powerful APIs, and quick engineering response. Colorfront provides an extremely high performance solution that we can depend on in our production environment."

About Colorfront: Budapest-based Colorfront has been developing high performance media software since 2000. Colorfront dailies systems have been used on hundreds of motion picture productions worldwide. Recent and forthcoming productions processed on Colorfront dailies systems include: Hercules: The Thracian Wars, Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Fault In Our Stars, X-Men: Days Of Future Past and Unbroken. Colorfront's pioneering technology developments have earned the company Academy and Emmy Awards. For further information please visit www.colorfront.com.