HPA Tech Retreat Report By Patrick Gregston

The Hollywood Post Alliance held its Ninth Annual Technology Retreat Feb. 4-6 at La Quinta Resort. The program presented updates on broadcasting, Digital Cinema, Digital Content Protection and Consumer Electronics, as well as a look at displays, content protection, MPEG-21, legislative update and emerging consumer disk formats.

Relevant to the Guild’s membership, the news surrounding the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) standards, finalized at the end of March, was that the proposal would be voluntary. A lack of consensus among the seven companies participating in the initiative made the standards voluntary.

Walt Ordway, DCI's chief technology officer, explained that even after this voluntary proposal, a viable Digital Cinema will need a single release file format (MXF currently shows the most promise) and exhibitor friendly hardware and software, such as redundancy and a support infrastructure. But, most important, it should have a business model for both the studios and exhibitors.

Doug Darrow of Texas Instruments, noted that the company’s 2k projector was the most significant development in Digital Cinema in 2003. Several panelists agreed and also felt that “breakthroughs in the deployment of digital distribution for Digital Cinema needed to happen in 2004 or the investment in this space will disappear.”

As to the reality of working day-to-day, discussions of current workflow focused on what is currently missing – standards for frame numbering, leader conventions and data translation, as well as putting the current chaos into perspective.

Leon Silverman of Laser Pacific, noted that the industry is in the beginning of a
transition to digital intermediate just as there was a beginning in 1983 to tape-based non-linear, or in 1992 to digital nonlinear. A similar five-year window of refining and ordering the process is to be expected.

Part of that ordering would be the further expansion and refinement of metadata. Current efforts spearheaded by a coalition of companies involved in the Star Wars productions have integrated lens and camera head data into the picture signal stream, thus improving accuracy and speed in the integration of motion control and CGI elements. A parallel effort at Sony Pictures Television to capture all the information created during production into an automated external database for use in both production management and post was also discussed. In both examples, the needs of production make practical testing difficult. While there is clearly a larger goal of organic complete and flexible metadata harvest and processing, so that the creative conversation can be embedded into the database of a production, such a goal currently has no funding or champion, although all panelists present endorsed such an idea.

Also promising was a panel featuring five members of the ASC technical
committee. This is the first panel that has featured exclusively creative collaborators at this event. Digital Acquisition put the cinematographers in the difficult position, similar to writers, of finding ways to maintain the integrity of their creative intentions through the mastering process.

The strategy, adopted by the ASC, is to emphasize creative collaboration,
participate in the process throughout and develop methods and tools by which to
communicate, particularly facilities.

Patrick Gregston serves as the committee leader of the Editors Guild Magazine Editorial Committee. He is an assistant editor. Reach him at patrick@pictureworks.net

Discreet Ships Lustre 2 System

Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc, is now shipping lustre™ 2 worldwide.
The lustre 2 system is the next version of Discreet's award-winning real-time color grading system for digital media and digital intermediate workflows. The lustre system has been used in numerous feature films, including “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” “X2: X-Men United” and “ Goldmember.”

“lustre 2 allows colorists and film makers to more closely match their film output with their creative vision,” explained Martin Vann, Discreet’s vp of worldwide sales and marketing.

www.discreet.com/lustre

Todd-AO Opens Stage 7

Todd-AO's flagship westside audio postproduction facility has opened Stage 7 - a third stage in this facility, located at 3000 Olympic Blvd., Bldg. 1, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Phone is 310.315.5000.

The new facility features a dual-engine Euphonix System 5 console (other key equipment includes MMR, MMP and Pro Tools).

The stage is already rolling for “The Sopranos” - and has seen action in support of other high-profile projects, such as “Van Helsing” and “Kill Bill, Vol. 2.”

www.todd-ao.com

Digidesign® Wins Award For Pro Tools System

Digidesign®, the audio division of Avid Technology, Inc., received an Oscar® from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Valentine’s Day 2004 during the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards for the design, development, and implementation of the Pro Tools® digital audio workstation.

David LeBolt

“Winning an Oscar for Pro Tools is an incredible honor for us,” said David Lebolt, Avid vice president and Digidesign general manager. “We’ve come this far thanks to the amazing dedication and hard work of our entire staff and third-party developers, and the incredibly valuable input we’ve received from the post community. It feels extremely gratifying to everyone on the Digidesign and Avid team to see the Academy recognize how Pro Tools has profoundly changed the creative process for audio postproduction, allowing increasingly innovative and inventive use of sound in motion pictures. This recognition further demonstrates how committed we are to making the best possible tools for enabling and inspiring the creative audio artist.”

This award marks the second time the Academy has honored Avid Technology. Avid received its first Oscar statuette five years ago for the Film Composer® system.

www.avid.com

NT Video Opens in Hollywood

NT Video’s new Hollywood facility, located at 1400 Cahuenga Blvd., is now in full operation with two telecine bays, increased dubbing facilities and 22 editorial suites.

The move allows more customers to take advantage of the time-saving process of digitizing dailies direct to NT’s UNITY Server, thus eliminating the generation loss of digitizing from tape, and allowing editing to begin in less than a third of the time.

Edit suites come in a wide range of sizes and can accommodate a customer’s own or rented equipment.

Each suite is wired with Fibre Channel, IG electrical, access to DSL, and individual temperature control.

The new facility also has a full kitchen, lounges and on-site secured parking.

www.ntvideo.com

Pinnacle Debuts Liquid 5.6

Pinnacle Systems, Inc., has introduced Liquid 5.6, an update to the Liquid chrome video editing system and an extensive upgrade to Liquid blue and Liquid silver video editing systems. With numerous exceptional enhancements for DVD authoring efficient workflow and support for networked environments, Liquid 5.6 delivers significant advantages for professional editors in both broadcast and postproduction.

Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager of advanced editing solutions at Pinnacle Systems, says, “The theme of Liquid 5.6 is efficient workflow. Whether you are in post or broadcast, Liquid 5.6 streamlines many of the activities that you don’t realize rob you of creative time.”

Liquid 5.6 integrates more functionality directly within a single application, Guerard explained, so “…users can create, edit and distribute projects into multiple formats and media types without moving between applications.”

www.pinnaclesys.com

NVIDIA BOWS NEW UNIT, GELATO

NVIDIA has established a new business unit, known as the Digital Film Group (DFG) to bring solutions to market enabling an interactive visual production pipeline. DFG’s first product, the Gelato 1.0 renderer, debuted recently at the NAB in Las Vegas.

Gelato is the firm’s first hardware-accelerated film renderer. It takes advantage of the programmability, precision and performance of NVIDIA Quadro FX pro graphics solutions to render quality images rapidly.

Gelato has a full suite of features that filmmakers need, such as: both scanline rendering and raytracing; the full range of geometric primitives, including NURBs; programmable shading; antialiasing without artifacts; global illumination with ray-traced reflections and shadows, caustics and subsurface scattering; and a flexible API that allows Gelato’s use in existing production pipelines; and a support infrastructure.

www.nvidia.com