The Pixel Farm and Cooke Optics Launch First Collaborative Product Resulting in Enhanced Post-production, Speed and Accuracy
The Pixel Farm - a company focused on innovation in the field of high-end digital post-production, and Cooke Optics Ltd. - a premier manufacturer of precision lenses for the motion picture industry, are pleased to jointly announce the launch of the first product to come out of the companies' collaboration. The Pixel Farm's renowned PFTrack software has been programmed to work in conjunction with the in-camera data acquired via Cooke's revolutionary /i Technology. Using this development, post-production professionals will save numerous hours and therefore, significant amounts of money.
Les Zellan, chairman of Cooke Optics, explains, "Cooke developed the revolutionary /i Technology in response to the production community's need to streamline the production process and to better and more accurately interface with their post-production colleagues to achieve cost and labour savings, while ensuring enhanced quality control and greater creative freedom. Working with Pixel Farm allows our /i Technology to better achieve this potential."
The Pixel Farm, Cooke and film director, Devon Dickson, have been working together over the last 12 months to develop tools that are designed to be used throughout the entire production process and thus help the production community to further enhance its post-production capabilities.
Dickson continues, "The Pixel Farm has done a fair amount of modification to its application to provide better overall handling of the data right through and out of the other side. This means that when we export all the tracking data we can also include all the lens data synced to the 3D camera data, which can be used elsewhere in the VFX pipeline. The big deal here is the fact that allassets can be easily managed and searched. This is a huge step in bringing together production and post."
Michael Lancaster, product director, The Pixel Farm concludes, "As a developer of products for the post market we view it as our responsibility to try to alleviate the issues that teams face in the management of data within the entire production process. And Cooke has developed a product that can greatly help this process. Having accurate lens parameters for each frame of action makes some aspects of post production considerably easier as the operator is no longer dependent on the production team to pass forward that information - a process that can fall prey to human error. In essence, they would be able to easily work on many, many more shots of far greater complexity without the guess work."
The Cooke S4/i system works via a /i data link that seamlessly and effortlessly records all camera and lens settings, including focal length, on a per-frame basis, all synced to time code. This unique collaboration will also enable users of The Pixel Farm's applications to further beenfit from vital data such as this. The information is recorded as meta data filming and given to the facility, guaranteeing that the relevant lens data will be available and ensuring even more accurate calibration of shots in post. Initially, this is available in PFTrack with plans to include the system in other PF products at a later date.
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