The Most Amazing Device at the Show
This item had me swooning like a 14 year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. Actually it wasn’t even at the show. It was near the show. I had the good fortune to rub elbows with the CEO of Cinnafilm, Lance Maurer, who chose to play by different rules and skip actually attending SIGGRAPH. This provided a chance to see a relatively quiet, one-on-one demonstration of their newly released Cinnafilm HD1 with the able assistance of their senior software engineer, Dillon Sharlet who could answer real picky, nerd-esque questions.
What is Cinnafilm HD1 (CHD1)? It’s the first and only real-time editing/converting/time shift/resizing solution on the market. CHD1 is a black box running a proprietary software that let’s you convert digital video to film quality output complete with organic film effects, changed frame rates, output sizes, re-cadence and more in REAL-TIME. As it runs through the box, you can target output to your format of choice for editing in your standard programs. Currently, the CHD1 has four terabytes of storage capacity enabling you to stuff a full length project into it.
We all have solutions in our studios to do the retiming, pseudo film look resolution change thing, but it involves a little issue called render time. That’s a little issue that takes hours or days. It’s why overnight and weekend rendering was invented. CHD1 does it right in front of your face, right now.
So how does CHD1 do its black magic? Sorry, I tried but they wouldn’t tell me. However, they’ve labeled the process TME (True Motion Estimation) and it essentially reconstructs your digital video data streams into new frame solutions on a near pixel by pixel level. It doesn’t care if you’re using SD or HD video up to 10-bit uncompressed.
What can I do with CHD1? For starters, retiming and reformatting source video into SD, HD, web or 16:9 film quality, compensated deinterlacing, up/down conversion between any progressive or interlaced frame rate - all while you watch. You can use processed celluloid if you want, but video-to-film-look is really what this is all about. Super slow motion to hyper speed - all without waiting or blurring and weird stutter artifacts. CHD1 also has the ability to add completely realistic film grain in popular film choices (this also lets you re-grain special effects segments), organic imperfections that never repeat with all parameters controlled by the user, adjustable letterbox, and accurate motion blur modeling. There are color/brightness/saturation/hue and contrast adjustments to give you the power to quickly dial in your favorite film look saturation and density.
Cost? This should be about the time that the jaded microfilm producer asks, “Ok, cool. How much does this digital trickery cost?” Well, you can’t buy it - it’s only leased. The shortest lease is one month which currently will hit your wallet for $8000. Longer leases have more favorable rates, dropping down to $4K a month. While $8K is a chunk of change, imagine what you could do to your entire production in hyper productive editing sessions that require no render time. And, if you work with a producer that just has to see-it-to-feel-it, need I say more? They require a two week lead when requesting a specific delivery date. The leasing fee covers all maintenance and updates. [Editor’s Note: At NAB, the estimated lease rate was announced at $10K a month for extended leases, so this is definitely movement in the right direction.]
Future improvements. Now that Cinnafilm can do the real-time thing, there are some obvious segues slated like motion tracking data output, “super resolution”, removal of objects from scenes with motion, and even integration with recognition software in airports or satellite applications. Yes, it’s not just for Hollywood anymore.
Caution and danger. Now, if you made a high dollar purchase of a RED ONE™ or a good film camera, you don’t need to worry that you wasted your money. You are not suddenly out-of-date nor could you really do the same thing with an $800 hand held. Quality in, quality out. For you tekkie types, the CHD1 solution cannot correct shutter issues that consumer grade CMOS shutter HD cameras introduce. The CMOS digital shutter scheme progressively moves across your image instead of capturing a single frame at a time. For camera swings and motion, this creates a very disturbing bending of objects in your view frame. Not a big deal for consumers video taping aunt Betty’s birthday, but a deal breaker for folks like us or people needing to use motion tracking data in special effect or 3D solutions.
You can find out more here: www.cinnafilm.com
