Colorfront, the Academy, Emmy and HPA Award-winning developer of high-performance, on-set dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, broadcast, OTT and commercials, is trailblazing new UHD/HDR color workflows–from the set through post into cinemas and the home–at NAB 2018. Offering a variety of new features, Colorfront products enable productions, post and studio facilities, OTTs and TV-set manufacturers, to execute critical quality control (QC), mastering, delivery and display tasks across an enormous range of Ultra High Definition (UHD), High Dynamic Range (HDR), Wide Color Gamut (WCG) content.
For almost a decade, Colorfront On-Set Dailies and Express Dailies have been prevalent in motion picture and high-end episodic TV production, due to their powerhouse dailies turnaround capabilities.
New at NAB 2018, On-Set Dailies and Express Dailies now feature support for the latest large format, full-frame cameras, including Sony Venice, ARRI Alexa LF, Panavision DXL2, RED Gemini 5K and Monstro 8K. To further facilitate UHD/HDR production on-set, both also feature second-head HDR analyzers.
Recent productions deploying Colorfront Dailies systems include: Atomic Blonde (Universal Pictures), Blade Runner 2049 (Warner Bros.), Red Sparrow (20th Century Fox), The Spy Who Dumped Me (Lionsgate), Robin Hood: Origins (Lionsgate) and Terror (AMC).
New Colorfront partnership with AJA
Following Colorfront’s fruitful collaboration with AJA Video Systems in 2017, which saw the integration of Colorfront Engine™ into AJA’s FS-HDR, Colorfront is licensing its Colorfront HDR Image Analyzer software to AJA for AJA’s HDR Image Analyzer. Shown as a technology preview at NAB 2018, the new solution comprises critical waveform, histogram, vectorscope and Nit-level HDR monitoring, and simplifies analysis of 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD, HDR and WCG content in production, post, QC and mastering processes. The product will be sold worldwide via AJA’s established marketing channels.
Colorfront ships QC Player at NAB 2018
Shipping at NAB 2018, Colorfront QC Player delivers highly-affordable UHD quality control. Priced at $10,000 USD, it supports realtime playback of JPEG 2000 content, including DCPs (2K/4K, 2D/3D, encrypted, with dynamic subtitles) and IMF packages. These include lossless/high-bit-rate (1,600 Mbps) UHD Dolby Vision mezzanine masters, such as Netflix Main Level 7, Sub-level 4 IMFs of 4096×2160, at up to 59.94fps, with integrated Dolby Vision remapping, plus simultaneous SDR (Soft CMU) and HDR output. Colorfront QC Player also provides real-time support for the latest RAW UHD HDR formats from the latest digital cinematography cameras.
QC Player includes waveform, vectorscope, histogram, split-screen, second head analyzer, color gamut and Nit light-level metering tools. Other key features encompass framing guide overlays for title/text/logos/graphics safe areas, plus image reframing and burn-in/watermarking tools. QC Player comes with audio tools supporting embedded audio, WAV files and up to 24-channel audio output.
Colorfront announces Transkoder 2018
Colorfront Transkoder has become the ultimate post workflow tool for handling the vast range of UHD, HDR camera, color, editorial and deliverables formats – with customers including Sony, HBO, Warner Bros., Disney, Fox, Dolby, Samsung, Netflix, Amazon, Vubiquity, Deluxe, Pixelogic, Technicolor, Light Iron, Éclair, BBC and NHK.
Previewed at NAB 2018, Transkoder 2018 is powered by a re-engineered version of Colorfront Engine™, at the heart of which are new parametric tools enabling infinitely variable light level output control. Additionally, a new perceptual engine delivers improved color rendition in dynamic extremities, plus better matching between HDR/SDR levels. Colorfront has enhanced Transkoder’s WCG mapping and added new user-selectable color constrain/legalizing tools.
Along with second-head analysis, newly expanded toolsets perform an even larger range of UHD/HDR/WCG processing tasks. These include industry-leading JPEG2000 encode-decode, support for the latest Cinema Mezzanine and ProRes IMF Apps, IMF/IMP authoring/naming, transwrapping, packaging, verification and QC, multi-channel audio (MCA) labeling, metadata sidecar files, and EIDR, the universal unique identifier system for movie and television assets.
Transkoder is already certified by Dolby Laboratories for the creation of Dolby Atmos Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs), and Dolby Vision Mastering/Mezzanine packaging. Transkoder 2018 additionally offers Dolby Vision metadata tunneling via HDMI and integrated GPU-based light-level remapping or external Dolby CMU control.
Colorfront and the HDR10+ home viewing experience
Colorfront has collaborated with Amazon, Fox, Samsung and Panasonic to ensure the readiness of Dynamic Tone Mapping – with dynamic metadata – for the latest HDR10+ standard in Trankoder 2018. This enables Amazon to deliver content in HDR10+, assuring unsurpassed HDR home viewing experiences across the latest ranges of Samsung and Panasonic UHD TV sets.
Improved Colorfront Dailies on AWS
Colorfront is also showing enhanced processing for UHD/HDR dailies in the cloud. These include automatic sound-sync, rendering and delivery, for dailies, editorial and VFX, with streamlined upload to services such as PIX.
At NAB, Colorfront products can been seen at: AJA Video Systems (#SL2505); Dolby (#SU1702), and Panasonic (#C3607).
