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MillimeterDI Tech: QuickTime for DI
Apr 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Dan Ochiva
Digital intermediate production garners growing interest; by keeping images in the highest possible resolution for post work, DI helps speed effects and editing. But if it's so useful, why aren't more productions taking advantage of DI post? Some think that DI is just another leading-edge technology that only the best-budgeted features and commercials can afford.
Irvine, Calif.-based Lasergraphics, which builds the Producer Plus and Producer 2 cine film recorders, now claims that a typical feature-length production might save up to 100 hours in processing time on film output when using its gear. How's that? The hardware film recorder market, small as it is, remains fiercely competitive, enough so that comparative recorders from each company — Lasergraphics, Celco, and Arri — print out frames within a second or two of the others' top offerings. You might think that Lasergraphics devised a breakthrough hardware innovation, one that speeds its recorders throughput orders of magnitude beyond any others.
Nothing so dramatic. Instead of a unique hardware twist, Lasergraphics touts that the QuickTime codec — now incorporated into its CineProducer software — saves time during final print-outs to film by cutting out a step in the process.
Why would that deliver such an important time saver? Users gain fast and simple output directly from popular QuickTime-based post software, such as Final Cut Pro or After Effects. “Normally, if you're working in a QuickTime environment and you plan to go out to film, you first have to generate a TIF, Targa, or Cineon file,” says Dan Balentine, senior design engineer at Lasergraphics. “You're talking about translating thousands and thousands of frames. We eliminate that entire step. We import a QuickTime movie directly into the GUI of the film recorder, read each frame as a computer file, saving hundreds and hundreds of hours in processing the imagery.”
That's a competitive advantage, says Balentine, because no other film recorder currently prints out directly from QuickTime. Lasergraphics, which employs a standard Windows-based PC to control the film recorder, offers a simple software update to deliver this capability to its film recorder users. Top DI projects, of course, will work entirely in DPX or Cineon file formats for the final mastering, so that extra saved step isn't a consideration.
CineProducer software also offers another benefit for SD or 720p productions; it scales that material up to 1920x1080 resolution on the fly.
Current users of the QuickTime-enabled software include Match Intermediate (formerly Hollywood Intermediate) and E3 Media. Hollywood-based E3 Media recently completed post on Fish Without a Bicycle. The indie feature, directed by Bryan Austin Green, was shot on Sony's HDW-F900 HDCAM and edited on a Final Cut Pro/CinéWave system.
“One of the things we always hated to do in the past was that additional render to DPX, Cineon, or whatever we were going to render out to,” says John Ryan, partner at E3 Media and producer on the project. “We were amazed that by using (the Lasergraphics Producer's) Windows interface, we could log on to our (Macintosh) Xserve RAID via Ethernet, pull the QuickTime files over, and start printing the files directly. This saves a ton of time on the final render, which can typically take three days to render out to DPX. We were even able to do an overall look on the reels — crush the blacks a little bit, as we didn't need to do much color correcting — all realtime, and through our little 10/100 Ethernet in the office.”
Ryan also mentions another cost-savings approach that another new technology allows: he is now encouraging producers to print out from Sony's new HDCAM SR format, introduced at NAB 2004. Because it uses less compression than standard HDCAM, the SR delivers a better result when rendering out to 35mm stock. “We want to do the online directly from the SR, and then print directly from that online, as opposed to doing (another telecine) scan. We've done a couple of tests, and I can't see a $250,000 difference when you compare it to a full-blown, proper scan. … Why not just do a film-out for 45 or 50 grand, instead of 300 grand for a full DI?”
