ARRI, Cinnafilm, Digital Film Central Bring Texture Control to DI Suite
April 23, 2009

ARRI, Cinnafilm, Digital Film Central Bring Texture Control to DI Suite

NAB 2009, Las Vegas - ARRI has entered into a letter of intent to develop and sell a new Texture Control software tool for digital intermediate (DI) and mastering facilities. Powered by Pixel Strings, a high-performance GPU-based motion estimation engine developed by Cinnafilm Inc., this tool set adds interactive control of grain and noise levels to the creative palette, according to a company representative. The software is designed to run on a dedicated workstation with Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet connections to a DI facility’s storage area network (SAN), extending the capabilities of the DI suite.
This software product adds interactive manipulation of image texture to the DI process, with motion-compensated grain and noise reduction technology. Using the tool, cinematographers can control image texture, mixing, and matching the grain of film and digital media in an integrated and visualized DI environment. It leverages Cinnafilm’s patent-pending Pixel Strings technology with a high-speed GPU implementation.

ARRI is working with Cinnafilm on a software development and licensing agreement.

This technology was originally developed by Cinnafilm and Digital Film Central, a DI facility in Vancouver, California. As a film mastering facility, DFC had developed a host of image processing applications over the years, unearthing ways to remove grain from film images while retaining detail. Their initial success with the service led to the opportunity to create a product, and Cinnafilm provided the software development on the GPU-enabled Pixel Strings platform.