First Post

I've been asked to start this blog many times to cover the technical happenings at CineForm. But it is the recent post-production work for Lbs (Pounds) from CAVU Pictures that has led me to start this blog. Many other technical players behind this new film will be writing their stories, so I will be linking over when I find them. For information on Lbs the film : check out imdb and indiewire.com.

It is in the technical aspects where CineForm is getting involved. This feature will be running a variation of Prospect HD, the same editing engine used with Premiere Pro to complete the Dust To Glory project. This time we are using Prospect 2K -- the soon to be released big brother of Prospect HD. The Lbs project differs in many ways from Dust To Glory : here are some technical comparisons.

Dust To Glory	Lbs
HD workflow : telecined and scanned Post res. 1920x1080 input : 35mm, 16mm, HDCAM & DV BT709 color space 2.2 gamma 10-bit	Film workflow : Scanned at 3K post res. 2048 x 1276 input : Super 16mm Cineon log 10-bit

For the D2G project, data was entered into the Prospect HD workstation via standard HD-SDI from HDCAM or QBit servers, so ingesting of data was very simple. Export was also a simple matter of playback from the timeline back out HD-SDI. Lbs is a different beast. We are working with a film scanning company (Pixel Harvest) to convert scanned frames directly into CineForm Intermediate (CI) and then using FireWire drives as the deliverable. Export will be to Cineon files for output to the film recorder. It is everything that happens in-between the scanning and the output to the film recorder that I hope to discuss here -- this is an interesting project, and just like D2G, we will be breaking new ground in film post-production.