News

ARRI Digital Systems and Autodesk Partner to Provide Seamless End-to-End Digital Intermediate Workflow (15/4/2005)

World Leaders in Digital Film Technology Provide Integrated Solutions for Scanning, Conform, Visual Effects, Colour Grading and Printing of Film

Autodesk, Inc. and ARRI Digital Systems today announced that film studios and post-production facilities that are using digital film tools from both Autodesk and ARRI will be able to significantly improve the colour fidelity and quality of their digital film workflows. Effective immediately, customers who have either an ARRISCANTM or ARRILASER system and a Discreet(r) Inferno(r) visual effects system, Discreet(r) Fire(r) editing system or Discreet(r) Lustre(r) digital colour grading system can receive custom-generated 3D mesh look-up tables (LUTs) for their specific workflows.

These complimentary 3D mesh LUTs are able to reflect the individual characteristics of each customer's pipeline, enabling customers with integrated ARRI-Autodesk workflows to view film data in digital environments with higher levels of precision. Autodesk's Discreet systems and enterprise software all share a common set of film visualisation tools for improved consistency with ARRI's colour management system. In addition, new innovations in ARRI scanning technology ensures consistency of film scanning across multiple ARRI scanners; such that the same piece of film scanned twice on two different scanners, or even on the same scanner at two different types will produce a matching digital file.

"Quality in digital film pipelines is about being able to accurately profile the subtle nuances of each step of the process and create the correct visualisation tools to see how the digital film files will look when they're eventually printed back to the distribution medium of film," said Dr Peter Geissler, head of Image Processing Systems for ARRI. "ARRI is able to not only provide accurate tools to profile our own industry leading ARRISCAN and ARRILASER ingest and output tools, but also to provide accurate analysis of variation in visualisation introduced by different film stocks and the devices used to view the digital film."

"Digital Intermediate film finishing has grown beyond first-mover status. Post-production professionals want the consistency in quality, reliability, performance and creative innovation that best-of-breed tools bring to every stage of the process," added Bill Roberts, director of Product Management at Autodesk Media and Entertainment. "ARRI has worked in the medium of film since 1917 and remains an innovator. From the first Kinarri camera to the ARRISCAN, ARRI offers our customers the highest level of expertise in film science."

Autodesk and ARRI are committed to providing customers with the highest quality open workflows for the mastering of digital film content. The companies plan to continue working together to offer enhanced workflows and capabilities to customers that embrace their industry leading solutions. One area of active research between the two companies is the future use of infrared data from the ARRI scanner to assist in the digital removal of dirt, dust and scratch damage from film scans.

Customers can contact their Autodesk or ARRI partner for further details on the custom-generated 3D mesh LUTs.

www.autodesk.com