WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—SMPTE, along with Baylor University and NASA, is set to explore what colors lie beyond RGB as part of its new SMPTE + series, “Expanding the Color Universe: The Next Frontier in Imaging.” Offering a mix of interactive events and on-demand content, “Expanding the Color Universe” is set to take place on June 3.

The first of four SMPTE + series events scheduled for 2021, “Expanding the Color Universe” is inspired by astronauts and how the color they experience in space often does not translate back on Earth. The event will offer information on the “colors between the colors” that lie beyond RGB and toward the outer limit of what the eye can see, according to SMPTE. The half-day event will feature live presentations, chats, demos and panel discussions featuring technologists, creatives and NASA experts, as well as a complementary content library.

Dylan Mathis, communication manager for NASA’s International Space Station program, and Baylor University researcher Corey Carbonara, along with other experts, will be on hand for the event to discuss topics like 6P Color innovations and the expanded color gamut.

Baylor and 6P Color Inc. are collaborating to capture, process and display better color images using novel multiprimary technologies that will be explained during the event. Carbonara describes multiprimaries as a box of crayons with thousands of colors to create an image.

SMPTE + subscribers will gain access to a curated content library prior to the event.

“Expanding the Color Universe: The Next Frontier in Imaging” will take place on June 3 at 10 a.m. ET. For more information, or to register for the event, visit plus.smpte.org/2021plus.  

New York City, NY - November 28, 2018 - Global content marketplace Pond5 today released the latest evolution of its industry-leading AI-powered Visual Search for video, with the addition of Color Similarity to its growing suite of proprietary Visual Search tools. The new update adds the ability to search for video based on the color palette of selected imagery, in addition to the composition of the image.

As media professionals increasingly face the challenge of putting visual concepts into words to find content that matches the vision for their projects, Visual Search simplifies the process by taking words out of the equation. Users can search based on the composition or color palette of other video clips from the Pond5 collection; by uploading any video or image from their own computer; or even by taking a photo from their mobile device to search based on what they see in real time.

“Content creators know what they want when they see it, but it is not always possible to express it in a handful of words. Visual Search tools like Color Similarity help them find what they need more intuitively, and evolving these tools is a natural next step for Pond5’s AI-powered search capabilities,” said Jason Teichman, Pond5 CEO. “Additionally, we pride ourselves on having the most comprehensive collection of royalty-free media assets, and our data tells us that people using our Visual Search tools are four times more likely to quickly find the exact content they’re looking for.”

As part of the update, Pond5 Visual Search tools now include two options: Composition Search, which was released in April at NAB 2018, and new Color Search. Using Composition Search, Pond5 produces search results based on the actual objects in the video being used to perform a search. Color Search provides an alternative path, producing results that are visually similar based on the color palette of the video frame.

Stock footage is increasingly serving the dual purposes of creative inspiration and complementing original footage in projects at every level, and the addition of color search to Pond5’s discovery toolset is crucial to helping customers find content that will match the look and feel of their projects. Pond5’s powerful Visual Search tools, combined with keyword searches and dozens of other available filters enable customers to narrow their search results down from the tens of thousands to a select few of the highest quality and best fit.

“By investing in this forward-thinking technology, we’re giving Pond5 customers the tools they need to find better content faster, enabling them to work more efficiently and focus on their craft,” said Teichman. “As the world becomes more visual, our customers can remain assured that Pond5 tools are keeping pace with emerging technologies.”

To learn more about Pond5’s Visual Search tools or to schedule a one-on-one briefing with an AI search expert, please contact Megan Linebarger at megan@zazilmediagroup.com to schedule a briefing.

About Pond5

Pond5 is the world’s largest, most vibrant video-first content marketplace, providing filmmakers, creators, and producers of all kinds with the content, inspiration, and tools they need to improve their projects. As the only content marketplace that meaningfully shares licensing revenue with its contributing artists, Pond5 is driven by a commitment to its passionate and growing global community of more than 60,000 professional visual and audio creators, providing a platform where their creative work can flourish, and helping them to make a sustainable living. With groundbreaking features like the visual search for video and integrations into all major video-editing software, Pond5 is innovating daily, making it easier to find and use the content that creatives need to bring their vision to life. Pond5 is a venture-backed company funded by Accel Partners and Stripes Group with offices in New York, Dublin, Prague, London, and LA.

For more information, please visit https://www.pond5.com.

Press Contact:

Megan Linebarger

Zazil Media Group

(e) megan@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 480-3674

Manchester, United Kingdom - July 12, 2018 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Goldcrest Post completed the final DI for Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment’s global blockbuster “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” using DaVinci Resolve Studio, together with the DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel.

With all of the wonder, adventure and thrills synonymous with one of the most popular and successful series in cinema history, this all new motion picture event sees the return of favorite characters and dinosaurs along with new breeds more awe inspiring and terrifying than ever before. “Welcome to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.”

“Our aim with Fallen Kingdom was to achieve a lush, vibrant look whilst retaining natural contrast levels,” begins supervising digital colorist, Adam Glasman. “The DP Oscar Faura worked with the DIT on set to grade dailies and provided us with looks for each scene as CDL files. These gave us great visual references to use as a starting point, which we were then able to enhance and adjust in DaVinci Resolve”

With such a visual effects heavy production, it was essential that Glasman, Faura and the ILM VFX team were all on the same page with the color palette of the film as significant changes to the look could affect the lighting of the computer graphics (CG) involved.

“Faura came over to the UK a few months before DI began, and spent a week with us at Goldcrest. Together, we completed a rough grade of the film and screened it to the director, editor and VFX team to ensure all were comfortable with the direction of the grade,” Glasman explains.

There was a lot of communication required. CDL files were shared with the VFX team allowing ILM to work on the CG whilst seeing something close to the final look of the film. Goldcrest also had access to mattes for every single dinosaur during the grade, giving Glasman more flexibility to adjust the grade while ensuring the CG still fitted into the background plate.

Filming for the island scenes in which the volcano erupts took place in strong sun in Hawaii. “All the shots were really bright and cheerful when they first came in,” Adam remembers.

“However, we needed to create a grade that would reflect the idea that this volcano is erupting and causing a huge ash cloud across the island, under which the action takes place. It’s a critical sequence in the film, and one of the scenes where we decided to diverge significantly from the CDLs from set,” he concludes.

“The final look was dark and subdued to illustrate the fact that the sun is being blocked out as our protagonists and the dinosaurs flee from the erupting volcano.”

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve Studio, DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

LONDON—Camera technology is driving and exploiting a demand for ever higher resolution and high dynamic range, expanding creativity on the acquisition side. However the opportunities, and challenges, at the finishing end are also growing.

“We see a lot of grading now in standard television programs, and there is a very clear push towards more artistic, more filmic look to it,” says Wolfgang Lempp, CEO of FilmLight. “It’s also fed of course by the modern cameras which have fantastic dynamic range, that allow you to play with lighting and grading in a way that wasn’t possible before. And anyone who has seen HDR realizes very quickly that is more of a pull for the consumer than Ultra HD.”

“More and more mastering at 4K is taking place outside of DI for theatrical features,” says Simon Bartlett, marketing and business development EMEA for Post Production at SAM. “The main driver for this is the new breed of broadcasters such as Netflix and Amazon commissioning 4K work. 4K HDR will be a natural extension of this and will help up-sell 4K or Ultra HD consumer displays from HD.”

“Although there are challenges, mainly the cost investment and client education, the benefit of both 4K and HDR is increased viewer enjoyment as well as revenue for the post house,” says senior colorist and MD of The Look, Thomas Urbye. “As a colorist, I relish the opportunity to grade in HDR as the contrast range, and in some instances saturation, in REC709 can be restrictive. It’s not all about super sharp, super bright and highly saturated colors, but a more immersive viewing experience by creating visually stunning images. 4K and HDR helps to do that.”

Colorist and color scientist Dado Valentic is the founder of Mytherapy, and after working on Netflix’s HDR production of "Marco Polo," is very well placed to talk about the opportunities and challenges offered by cameras and monitors supporting higher dynamic range and wider color gamuts.

“HDR is giving us incredible precision in shadows that we didn’t have before,” he says. “HDR screens offer a very high contrast and a larger amount of color. You can also use much more available light on set. Because we have screens that are now able to display that light sensitivity, we can actually work [on set] more naturally. You don’t have to limit yourself by not being able to display what’s interior and exterior. You can see what’s out through the window.”

“We are able to expose more detail, but also sometimes unwanted detail, and problems that the camera might have captured,” he continues. “Any grading tricks that we were able to get away with in the past are becoming more visible. We have to work with much higher precision.”

The coloorist also advises moderation in HDR. “I don’t want people to have their eyes fall out just because of how bright I can make something on the screen. Or skin to look like a cherry, because it can be as red as you want it. It’s more about creating beautiful images, using all the available data.”

TALKING SPECIFICALLY ABOUT COLOR

“Before 4K HDR Television, colorists graded in Rec 709 with a 2.2 Gamma curve – it was pretty simple, but now there is more choice and more deliverables.” says Bartlett. “Therefore, the main challenge is not in the grading itself, but understanding the choices you have when working in a specific color space with an appropriate transfer curve that is required by the different deliverable formats. Otherwise clipping and other artifacts might appear when colors can’t be reproduced on a particular display device. Post production pipelines will also probably need to gear up to efficiently service an increase in 4K demand and also to handle the increased number of deliverables from a 4K HDR master.”

“A lot of customers are playing with HDR, but shy away from it in the end,” says Patrick Morgan, product marketing manager for Digital Vision. “One of the big issues is standardization – there’s no real [display] standard. The BBC and NHK pushing their Hybrid Log Gamma curve, and you’ve got Dolby pushing PQ [SMPTE 2084].”

“We’ve kind of future proofed ourselves [with Nucoda],” he says. “We’ve been working with DolbyVision for a long time, such as on Pixar’s "Inside Out" and Disney’s "Tomorrowland." We changed our keyer, so that you can key on value as opposed to luminance. We changed our color curves to be able to work in extended range. We changed our clipping tool, so we can tell it at what level to clip. We’ve got the PQ curve in our matrix. So we did a lot of stuff that people can now use to work in HDR. Standards will make it easier for the customer.”

Thomas Urbye says he has concerns about going from a committed REC709 project to REC2020: “To offer a truly great visual experience I think its necessary to grade for both, grading within the same system and using a special set of highly specialized grading transforms to get from the grade for REC709 to P3 or REC2020 – all signed off by myself and my clients. To just use a simple linear transform seems an unsophisticated and poor approach to the true visual opportunities offered by HDR.”

“Originally when we first started working with HDR, we would receive an SDR grade and repurpose the grade and make it HDR,” recalls Valentic. “I found that was not really giving me the best results. HDR images can look absolutely stunning and beautiful, and just taking an SDR master and stretching it to be HDR is not the way to do it. The best way for me was actually to grade in HDR and create a SDR master in parallel.”

Valentic developed his own tools for this, which he integrated into Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve. It addressed practical concerns too.

“Just because we are delivering in HDR, it doesn’t mean we get extra time to do it,” he says. “Productions are not necessarily going to bankroll the upgrade to HDR. They want it delivered in the same time frame, and the same budget.”

KEEPING UP WITH COLORISTS

Among the pre-NAB news we’ve seen is the new release of a toolset in Colorfront’s Transkoder 2016, which the company claims offers a way to output simultaneous, real-time grades on 4K 60p material to HDR 2084 PQ Rec2020 and Rec709 for SDR.

SAM has redesigned Quantel Rio to take advantage of 4K HDR. According to Simon Bartlett, this entails “wide color gamut support, native color space on disk , high dynamic range transfer curve support and 32-bit full float/16-bit half float processing.”

Baselight 5.0, released by Filmlight for NAB, introduces a host of tools, including Base Grade, a set of controls which mimic the way the eye appreciates color, via exposure, temperature and balance.

“It’s specifically there to deal with high dynamic range images in a natural ways,” says Wolfgang Lempp. “It’s a more photographic approach, rather than the conventional video based approach of Lift, Gamma, Gain. There’s also a lot of work that we’ve done behind the scenes in terms of color management.”

Baselight 5.0 provides gamut optimization to provide natural gamut mapping for deliverables and avoid clipping, as well as color space ‘families’ – which aims to simplify the deliverables process for distinct viewing environments such as television, 4K projection and handheld devices.

HOLISTIC THINKING IN COLOR

“One of the really important things for us, and it’s particularly true for television, is productivity,” says Lempp. “That’s why we’ve always pushed this idea that we should start grading early. There’s a lot you can do on set, or as part of post production and visual effects, if there is consistent way of viewing color.”

Mytherapy follows a color managed workflow, working with the DoP before shooting starts.

“We develop what we call a show LUT,” says Valentic. “We can track the metadata for the looks that were implemented on set to the grading suite, so when I conform, I don’t just conform the picture and sound, I also conform the color metadata as well. I’m not inventing and creating a look at the end of the job.”

“I wouldn’t do HDR in any other way,” he adds. “I really do not want to do a job where it’s just shot and given to me for grading – that’s almost like rescuing something. In HDR we have to know what we’re getting, when they shoot it.”

Confirming Lempp’s observation, Valentic says his biggest bugbear is time: “To the producers, if you’re going to be working in HDR, give us more time. It’s not necessarily that we are slow in working with HDR, it’s just that we need to be more precise in what we’re doing, and that needs more attention to detail.”

This story originally appeared on TV Technology's sister publication TVB Europe.

ALPHARETTA, GA—Flanders Scientific has announced that its range of color management devices, BoxIO, is now available shipping. The company is also making the BoxIO Utility application available for free download for Mac and PC users.

BoxIO is a color management device that can operate in a single- or dual-channel mode. In a single-channel mode BoxIO can load 16 separate 33 side cubes; in dual-channel mode the unit operates like two LUT devices, allowing users to load 32 independent 17 side cubes, 16 per channel. BoxIO also supports 10 and 12-bit 1D LUTs in combination with any active 3D LUTs.

The BoxIO Utility allows users to load 1D and 3D LUTs, control mode and input settings, set network preferences, and grab full resolution stills from BoxIO with or without LUT applied. Reference stills can be saved as jpg or BMP files.

Additional features of the BoxIO application include compatibility with Pomfort’s LiveGrade Pro for dual-channel operation; a four-pin mini-XLR connector with a 100-240V power supply; and support for 17 side and 33 side cubes generated by LightIllusion’s LightSpace CMS and SpectraCal’s CalMAN.

BERLIN—TCL and QD Vision, in collaboration with TCL subsidiary CSTO, have developed a television that produces more than 90 percent of the Rec. 2020 color gamut standard for UHD displays. This technology, which will be on display at the upcoming IFA show in Berlin, was achieved with QD Vision’s Color IQ quantum dot technology.

The Rec. 2020 standard includes a color gamut nearly twice the size of the current industry standard. Rec. 2020 is expected to increase the color gamut by approximately 90 percent and specifies a 10-bit and 12-bit color bit depth.

QD Vision’s edge-lit approach offers a combination of efficiency, reliability and spectral purity to accommodate the Rec. 2020 standard. The Color IQ quantum dot technology is spectrally pure and tunable.

The TCL booth at IFA is booth 102, in hall 21. IFA runs from Sept. 4-9 in Berlin.