London - Tunnel Post, a full-service, all-digital postproduction house based in Santa Monica, Calif., has purchased the Digital Lab system from Codex Digital, a developer of digital media recorders and media management systems for film and television production. Tunnel Post will make Digital Lab the hub of a new digital laboratory service for commercials, television shows, and feature films.
Tunnel Post will use Codex Digital Lab to process digitally acquired media, prepare files for editorial, facilitate color grading, and create archival media files. Used in tandem with Codex recorders and data packs, the system provides a standardized, end-to-end workflow for digitally-acquired media and is compatible with most professional-grade digital cameras, including the new Arri Alexa. The Digital Lab can process camera media at speeds several times faster than real-time and output files in formats required by most editorial systems, including Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD.
“Our new dailies workflow with Codex Digital Lab streamlines the digital production process by eliminating the problem of managing codecs and formats,” says Kyle Jackson, Tunnel Post chief executive officer. “We will be able to provide production companies with fast turnaround for their dailies and greater security for their digital assets. It will also benefit editorial companies by freeing them from the complex task of processing digital media files and allow them to focus on the creative aspects of their work.”
Tunnel Post is the first postproduction facility in Santa Monica to offer a digital dailies solution via Codex Digital Lab, reveals a representative.
Tunnel Post plans to target commercial producers and editors with its digital laboratory service as a fast, reliable, and secure way to prepare digitally-acquired media for editorial. The service is also likely to appeal to those working on episodic television and feature film productions.
The company plans to offer three grades of processing service with one-light, best-light, and DI-graded color treatments applied. Same-day and next-day service are available, depending on the level of applied grading.
“With our Codex workflow, directors, cinematographers, and editors can see their dailies in hours, not days,” says Jeff Brue Tunnel Post chief technology officer. “Additionally, this system makes it possible to preserve camera data and similar information throughout the post production process, maintaining important lines of creative communication between the DP and the colorist, between the editor and the sound mixer, and between the dailies colorist and the final colorist.”
Brue added that Tunnel Post is especially excited about it DI-graded dailies service as it will provide producers, editors and others to work with media with near final color treatments applied at the from the onset of post production. “We can make sure everything looks great in the edit bay,” he said. “And later, when they want to do a final touch up, they can do so with much less time and cost, because a lot of the work will already be done.”