Cinnafilm’s Dark Energy Professional Noise Management Technology Fools the Experts
Published: July 7th 2012
Using Cinnafilm’s Dark Energy Professional Noise Management Technology on Poirot
Please forgive the title of this news article. We don’t like to say we fooled anyone, but I will say that we love creating images that critics believe were never digitally manipulated!
Cinnafilm’s Dark Energy Professional noise management technology and film simulation was recently used to re-master the popular British television mainstay Poirot to Blu-ray for international consumer distribution.
Many times during the restoration of archived material, directors, cinematographers, and even critics will complain about “plasticized” faces, lowered “filmic” appearance, or “loss of details,” and rightfully so! Most technologies before Dark Energy are guilty of all of those issues and then some. What sets Dark Energy apart from all other noise management technologies available on the market today (besides rendering speed that leaves everyone else far, far behind) is the ability to deliver the DESIRED results, not just try to make it look as good as the application will allow.
Quoting Blu-ray.com’s review of Poirot Series 5: “Film grain is readily evident, but almost never obvious, and there are no indications of grain reduction, detail filtering or artificial sharpening. The image remains natural and film-like, and of course there are no compression artifacts.”
Continuing with Blu-ray.com’s comments on Poirot Series 3: “…the detail remains remarkable and the sharpness is a testament to both the quality of which 16mm photography is capable and the degree to which careful image harvesting can produce a superior Blu-ray from such sources. Black and contrast levels continue to be spot on, and grain is generally well controlled without evidence of any inappropriate digital tampering.”
We happen to know a little bit about the process that was used to arrive at these highly praised results. Cinnafilm UK client JCA (www.jca.tv) first degrained the images using Dark Energy Professional, completely removing all traces of the original Super16mm film grain. Then JCA used Cinnafilm’s virtual film development capabilities in Dark Energy Professional to create a very authentic, simulated 35mm grain. This gave the warmth, presence, and detail enhancement which Blu-ray.com lauded about above. Dark Energy Professional’s image cropping and scaling were also used to fit the full raster scans to the correct frame size.
When we read critical comments like “…there are no indications of grain reduction, detail filtering or artificial sharpening…” when, in fact, Dark Energy technology completely ripped every ounce of grain from the images and recreated the images from scratch, then that is the best compliment we can ask for.
JCA’s Matt Bowman had this to say about Dark Energy technology: “Effectively what we do is remove the 16 mm grain and put in 35 mm grain, which makes it gentler on the eye and maintains detail. Some of the POIROT Blu-ray reviews have been outstanding in terms of feedback from viewers about how they found the experience compared to other restoration processes.”
Cinnafilm technology is capable of amazing images and we are changing expectations on what can be achieved with archive material. Thank you to all Cinnafilm clients out there that are achieving results like this on a regular basis – you are certainly making a positive impact in the archive restoration market. If you are not a Cinnafilm client, then ask yourself, “What am I waiting for?”
Sources:
http://www.arri.com/news.html?article=936&cHash=4959da1516dc8aff18dc30722f913d83
http://www.arri.com/news.html?article=936&cHash=4959da1516dc8aff18dc30722f913d83
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Poirot-Series-3-Blu-ray/34949/
Cinnafilm®, Dark Energy® and Tachyon™ are registered trademarks of Cinnafilm, Inc. All copyrights and trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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About Cinnafilm Inc.
Cinnafilm is a specialty engineering company dedicated to the creation of powerful, reliable, and simple to use visual-effects tools for the digital film and video media industry. Cinnafilm’s innovative approach to image processing solutions is aimed at creative professionals working in the film, broadcast, post production, industrial video and education markets. Additional information about the company and its products can be found www.cinnafilm.com
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