da Vinci has teamed up with S.two Corp. and Grass Valley to develop a color enhancement and monitoring system for Grass's Viper Filmstream digital cinematography camera.
The new system allows directors of photography and colorists to share image enhancement ideas on-set without changing or compromising the recorded image.
"The combination of the Grass Valley Viper FilmStream Digital Cinematography Camera system from Thomson, S.two's D.MAG recording system, and our on-set color corrector signals a new standard in the production workflow by bringing critical review and visualization capabilities right to the set," said da Vinci VP of Marketing Matthew Straeb. "Traditionally, film negatives have been checked on a next-day basis using rush prints or a telecine. Now, during shooting, the director of photography can provide the director or producers with an immediate visual demonstration of his or her creative intent and preserve those decisions for subsequent implementation by the colorist."
The Viper camera system records a viewable "digital negative" to S.two's DFR field recorder as uncompressed 10-bit RGB data, which is monitored with an on-set version of da Vinci's color corrector. To lessen the difficulty of judging material in its raw state, the integrated solution from da Vinci and Thomson allows the director, cinematographer, and others on-set to pre-visualize the ultimate look of a scene by applying basic color enhancement tools from da Vinci's well-known 2K toolset.
With the integrated system, a color decision list (CDL) is generated by the da Vinci on-set color corrector and stored as metadata with the material or exported via floppy disk or Ethernet for later use on a da Vinci 2K or 2K Plus system at a post-production facility.
