Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/283421
24 Post • March 2014 www.postmagazine.com titles in 4K in the first year in order to front- load Sony's 4K Video Unlimited service, and to generally help feed 4K content into the con- sumer marketplace now that hardware manu- facturers are pushing ahead with production of UHD consumer televisions, has led Color- works to improve its technological foundation and workflow methods for mastering assets not just in 4K, but as 4K IMF (Interoperable Mastering Format) data. So far, the company has delivered over 150 feature and TV epi- sodes mastered as 4K IMF product. Baggelaar views this as an important development that strengthens the company's digital intermediate capabilities generally, and its color management tools specifically. That's because as the industry moves toward mak- ing 4K mastering commonplace, Colorworks will have a stable IMF path for all metadata, including color, to travel for new DI projects, in addition to its remastered projects, for features and broadcast alike — data that can safely take up less storage space due to the efficiencies of the new IMF architecture for neatly packaging content together. "We are looking at a 90-plus percent reduction in storage space for delivering an IMF project, versus uncompressed," Baggelaar says. "That is obviously a tremendous amount of savings, with a high quality bit rate for the files and a high-quality picture. I'm excited about this development, because the frame- work we are establishing with IMF can accommodate all other changes for the long- term, like higher frame rates, high dynamic range, and much more. "And with this kind of workflow, we are using the same tools for television that we are using for finishing work on new features and remasters, because we always have a way to keep everything safe in the central repository. And that is what a digital interme- diate really is today — a way of assembling and coloring pictures, finishing sound, putting it all together, delivering it, and keeping everything safe. That is what we now mean when we say 'digital intermediate' — we mean it is the digital process that creates a color-corrected, finished intermediate master, and we can create all of the necessary deliv- erables from there, whether it is a DCP, a film element, or a video package to go to IMF — it will all come from the same system." MTI FILM Hollywood-based MTI is a different kind of post production company, having spun its post services unit just over three years ago out of its long-standing, core R&D business that yielded software products such as Con- trol Dailies, an innovative data-centric dailies workflow technology when it was released in 2003, and Correct DRS, a digital film restora- tion tool widely used by facilities across the globe. With both sides of its related busi- nesses combined, the company is pursuing an agenda based on the belief that the mod- ern, file-based, post environment requires filmmakers to find stable and comprehensive solutions for "the avalanche of media" com- ing their way during the production, editorial, and mastering processes, in the words of industry veteran Larry Chernoff, CEO of MTI Film. And so, MTI has been working on tools and methodologies for "institutionaliz- ing the process" to give artists hope for cor- ralling and controlling these daily avalanches. He says the strategy is built around the notion of "bringing coherence from produc- tion to post production," and therefore, the company has focused on doing this with the addition of its Cortex Dailies software prod- uct that contains copying, color correction, sound synchronization, transcoding, and asset management tools that MTI rolled out over the last two and a half years. This year, at NAB, MTI will debut a new variation on this theme with its CarryOn appliance — an even more portable form of the Cortex Dailies platform, designed to manufacture dailies and track media assets and color on- set, and then allow filmmakers to plug that data into any number of post workflows. At Colorworks, DI services can include color work, finishing and creating deliverables. MTI will show its new and portable CarryOn solution at NAB in April. Under the DI Umbrella