SCRATCH Delivers the 4K Finish at i/o post

Case Study: Page (1) of 1 - 07/16/09

Companies in eastern and central Europe have been quick to adopt new technologies that mirror the ever-evolving world of production and post. And i/o post in Prague is a prime example of utilizing the new digital workflow, with ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) Digital Process Solution proving its worth as a nimble finishing system.

Jordi Niubó, i/o post's co-founder and financial director states that the range of SCRATCH features are extremely powerful, and especially for finishing. He notes, "We are proud owners of SCRATCH, which has helped us to expand our business in ways that we didn't originally imagine."

Niubó, CTO Jaromir Pesr, and Michal Cerny, DP, colorist and scanning supervisor, established i/o post in 2005 as the post-production wing of their own independent feature film production company. By the winter of 2007, it became the first post house in central Europe with SCRATCH.

Word about the company's capabilities soon spread and i/o post quickly became a destination for other Czech filmmakers, as well as producers of documentaries, TV commercials and music videos. Business has since been strong, enabling the company to co-produce several Czech films. i/o post recently became the first facility in the Czech Republic to offer rental packages for the RED ONE(tm) 4K Digital Camera.

Today, as the name implies, i/o post provides end-to-end post production services to all areas of visual media, encompassing 35mm film scanning, RED 4K cameras, editing, visual effects, and 4K DI finishing, plus film-outs to 35mm.

"The Little Foxes"; Color grading with SCRATCH. Image courtesy of i/o post, Samson Films, Cineart TV Prague, MIRAS.

"Although we are a small company, we have accomplished a huge amount of work in a short period. It's a fascinating journey, and a lot of that success is due to having SCRATCH in our DI pipeline," says Niubó.

Business Growth
On average i/o post finishes five features and more than 30 commercials every year, with no sign of projects abating. During the first half of 2009 alone, i/o post will deliver four feature films finished in SCRATCH, with all the shoots using the RED cameras: The Foxes, a Czech-Irish co-production, directed by Mira Fornay; The Granddaughter, directed by Lenka Kny; Zemsky Raj To Na Pohled (Like As Earthly Paradise), directed by well-known Czech director Irena Pavlaskova; and Mamas and Papas, directed by another equally well-known Czech director, Alice Nelis.

"Since we purchased SCRATCH, and then the RED cameras, we have been pleasantly surprised at the demand from other Czech filmmakers for our technology and services. Now the entry-level point for them is lower, but the quality level is high. We purchased SCRATCH because we felt it had the best toolset for color grading both RED and DPX files, as well as providing a good path for ingest and finishing," says Niubó.

SCRATCH Digital Workflow
"The stability and speed of our SCRATCH system are excellent, even when we're working on several big feature projects simultaneously and the RAID is getting full," says Niubó.

"Although we know we can handle VFX-oriented work on SCRATCH, we use it primarily as a conforming, color grading and finishing suite. We usually import DPX files from our film scanner or, more often these days, RED R3D footage. We then load SCRATCH with an EDL from Avid or FCP. Conforming with SCRATCH has always been fast and easy, but it's even better since the new EDL manager appeared in the most recent release."

"The Little Foxes"; Color grading with SCRATCH. Image courtesy of i/o post, Samson Films, Cineart TV Prague, MIRAS.

To smooth the workflow for RED footage, Niubó says that i/o post has also developed a proprietary software aggregator, which copies to the SCRATCH RAID only those R3D files that are needed, and which also modifies an EDL by adding whole R3D file-names to comment lines.

Niubó explains, "The great thing is that we do not need to struggle with any unnecessary rendering. We can conform a whole feature film within a few hours now, including the visual double-check we do between the QuickTime off-line reference and the conform using the dual view facility in SCRATCH."

In terms of grading, i/o post uses several different set-ups according to the material coming in and the delivery format. Niubó explains, "Normally we work in SCRATCH at 4K for RED-originated material, and select either Linear or Log space depending on the required output. We use RED SPACE for TV work, or the RED RAW interpreter with our custom-built Log-to-Lin LUT on work that will go to film out. This emulates on our big screen the look of the film prints that will come out of the local film labs with whom we cooperate."

Describing the typical practice i/o post adopts on its DI grading work, Niubó says, "Michal really loves being able to work with unlimited secondaries in SCRATCH Scaffolds. They are his daily bread. Being able to stack any number of Scaffolds over a shot is really important, because directors, producers and especially cinematographers, tend to want to really polish and refine the look on their productions.

"In a DI grading session clients will ask questions like, 'How many masks can we do on this shot?', and 'Can we really track those masks?' And they really like the answers we give them. This in turn provokes new creative thought waves, and often clients will experiment with a look," says Niubó. "What's really good with SCRATCH is that we can store different versions, and then show clients the differences between each of their decisions. I have to say, the more work we do of this sort, the more word spreads that you really can finish a project to the highest level on SCRATCH."

SCRATCH System
i/o post's SCRATCH runs on a dual quad-core Xeon-based PC, under a Windows 2003 server, with 12TB RAID5 attached storage, plus an nVidia Quadro 4600 card enabling real-time playback of 2K DPX files and "half-high" RED footage. SCRATCH is controlled via an A4 Wacom pen and tablet, and an MCS Spectrum control surface, with grading taking place in a 2K digital projection theater. i/o post's system was purchased and tuned by ASSIMILATE's European reseller systems4u.com, based in The Netherlands.

Extra Advantages of SCRATCH
SCRATCH's abilities to ingest, export and keep material live until the very last moment before mastering, have also proven valuable to i/o post.

In the event of any VFX or retouch/painting work, ungraded frames or sequences are exported from SCRATCH as DPX log files to an appropriate workstation. They are then re-imported to SCRATCH as 2K proxies that can be played in real-time. The file resolution is then upped to 4K, slotted back into the timeline and color graded. When the job is approved by the client, they are rendered-out from SCRATCH as 4K DPX files, with the grades copied and pasted from the 2K proxies.

Niubó says that being able to make the necessary deliverables for collaborating sound studios is one of SCRATCH's biggest assets. Typically this might be QuickTime references exported from SCRATCH in DV resolution for the sound department to start work, or a 720p/1080p master for the final audio mix.

"But perhaps a key factor is that we can react really fast to last-minute editorial changes, even after the off-line lock, using SCRATCH's marvelous editing features," says Niubó. "Every director who comes to work here uses this feature when they realize they can see their work on our big calibrated screen. And another great thing is that we can then do any output or lay-out to tape from SCRATCH very fast, normally overnight, to calm down the frustrated sound mixer."

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