I've been a DVinfo member for a while now, and I'm excited to finally be able to let the DVinfo community know what we've been working on. Colorspace (the company I'm a part of), has been working for a while now to develop a series of digital cinema cameras and recorders that reproduce the quality of (35mm / 16mm) film but leverage the advantages of digital acquisition. The closest parallel I can draw, is comparing D-SLR photography cameras to traditional film-based SLRs. Digital SLR cameras have the sensor size, dynamic range, and resolution to produce images very similar to film, yet they can also shoot many more images without changing recording media, and these images are instantly previewable.
Of course, we have several important technical focuses, with respect to resolution, dynamic range, frame rate, etc.. but in addition to reproducing the aesthetic quality of film, to be successful, our products must be straightforward in their use, and the workflow should be intuitive. Workflow is a big issue for us, and we've been working to simplify the process of filmmaking, so that our users can focus on capturing beautiful images, not on babysitting their equipment.
I'm very happy to publicly announce the details of our partnership with post-production software manufacturer, Assimilate. Assimilate makes a very powerful 2k/4k post-production suite known as SCRATCH. SCRATCH is normally used for a film DI workflow, and because our footage is essentially the same as scanned film, that makes it a natural choice for us. SCRATCH includes realtime multi-res playback, editorial, color correction, etc.. everything but the kitchen sink! We've been working with Assimilate for a while now, to directly integrate SCRATCH into our hard-disk recorders. Yes, you read that correctly, our hard-disk recorders will natively be running SCRATCH. Obviously the simplest use of SCRATCH will simply be for monitoring and dailies functionality, but the fact that SCRATCH has built-in color correction means you can perform immediate color adjustment for preview, as well as load premade LUTs, organize clips, edit meta data, etc.
On the subject of LUTs, we're going to include LUTs (for free) that will emulate popular film stocks. This all goes back to our aspiration of letting the cinematographer focus on making beautiful images, not worrying that his monitor preview doesnt look like the film preview he is used to. With SCRATCH and our LUT's, the difference between film and digital will be transparent.
For more info about our partnership with Assimilate, you can visit:
http://www.assimilateinc.com/press/0...Colorspace.pdf
...and for more info about SCRATCH, checkout:
http://www.assimilateinc.com
Also, i'd like to point out that even though we talk about digital "cinema," we're putting forth a lot of effort to focus on all aspects of motion-capture, not just traditional cinema. Documentaries, snowboard films, etc.. we're trying to keep a broad variety of users in mind. Ultimately, I believe that modular and flexible cameras will benefit every user, even those within the realm of traditional cinema.
There are many more exciting developments on the horizon, but for the moment I wanted to give you guys a taste of what we've been working on. We'll be at NAB next week, and if you're reading this, then consider yourself invited to come by the booth (#C11331). For those who can't make it to NAB, but still want to talk about our products, you can inquire to info (AT) truecolorspace.com.