NAB News 2017
Published: April 12th 2017
Cinnafilm’s OpEx Cloud Conversion “Start-Up”
Renowned image processing software company, Cinnafilm® Inc., has developed a game-changing OpEx Cloud PaaS called PixelStrings®. The company expects it to democratize the technical art of image optimization and video conversions, while making these necessary and complex processes more affordable.
Although PixelStrings is new, the technology behind it is not. Beginning in 2004, Cinnafilm began leveraging the only affordable, fast and high-scale computing technology available at the time, namely, GPUs from Nvidia®.
“Our code has always evolved to saturate the complete potential of the current generation Nvidia cards at any given time,” says Lance Maurer, Cinnafilm co-founder and CEO. “We’ve been programming on GPUs for almost fourteen years, so we have vast experience in extreme high-performance image processing.”
Cinnafilm’s product line has included three distinct technologies; Dark Energy® (noise reduction, texture optimization and up-converts); Tachyon® (faster than real time, broadcast-quality de-interlacing, inverse telecine, challenging frame rate conversions, and varispeeds); and Wormhole (high quality runtime conversions for commercials, programs and movies). These powerful tools are primarily marketed and sold through Cinnafilm’s OEM partners Telestream, Imagine, Dalet, Root6, SDVI, HS Art, and Ortana Media Group.
Now comes Cinnafilm’s next product, PixelStrings.
PixelStrings is a cloud-based image processing Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Currently in Beta, PixelStrings delivers the highest-quality, automated video conversion and frame optimization results for mezzanine-grade content. It allows the user to control the format, frame rate, and grain levels for image sequences. Among all the obvious use cases, Cinnafilm also expects PixelStrings capabilities to be useful for camera content normalization; pre-edit, and for remastered conversions, to ensure the best-possible device and OTT playback experience. PixelStrings’ features include: motion-compensated frame rate conversion, high-quality de-interlacing, texture-aware scaling, degrain/regrain to any film look, denoise/retexture to limit banding, reverse telecine/pulldown pattern correction, interlace artifact and dust removal, and runtime retiming, all in a single pass using a robust, mezzanine-grade transcoder. CineCert’s IMF wrapping solution will be added to the backend as a secondary service. Cinnafilm’s goal is to offer creative personnel the power to tune their captured content and to deliver the best-looking IMF packages possible. Other PixelStrings partners include Vidispine and MPMI.
“PixelStrings is the culmination of many years of hard work in the niche field of high-grade image processing,” says Maurer. “Cinnafilm’s goal is to bring all of the tools and knowledge we have gained by working in both theatrical and broadcast settings to provide a total, simple, cloud-based solution anyone can use to fix, convert or optimize their content. High end conversions ensure the best possible playback experience for viewers on any platform. We believe that quality is and always will remain a differentiator for our customers.”
General B2B availability of PixelStrings is planned for Q3, 2017.