European HDR and colour management consultancy Cromorama has provided details of its collaboration with AJA.
Aiming to enable crews to ensure a consistent look when converting between HDR and SDR cameras and equipment, and provide simplified access colour management for users, Cromorama developed its ORION-CONVERT colour pipeline, which is built into AJA’s ColorBox and OG-ColorBox solutions.
Featuring a unique two-stage compression process, ORION-CONVERT provides full-colour management between displays, SDR to/from HLG and PQ. Supporting film production, broadcast and R&D, the Cromorama team regularly deploys the solution to serve clients around the world. It is also a core technology behind NBCU LUTs, said the company.
Explaining his vision to enhance creative and technical control of colour management capabilities for professionals, Cromorama CEO and CTO Pablo Garcia said, “We’re a company that’s all about improving colour iteration, and the ORION-CONVERT algorithm originated out of a need we saw amongst clients. Before Cromorama, there wasn’t an easy way to execute high quality conversions between HDR and SDR with the level of control we wanted. This gap in the toolset was especially noticeable when we were preparing for a major 2020 international sporting event on behalf of a client, so we envisioned a piece of code and started fine tuning it.”
“The colour management learning curve used to be steep, especially in broadcast, but we’ve reached an inflection point. ORION-CONVERT in AJA ColorBox and OG-ColorBox, a platform that’s well targeted to live production demands, provides more control over SDR and HDR transforms, so it’s easier to adapt to various scenarios in the field.”
The solutions also provide users with enhanced quality control, said the company. Broadcasters encountering issues with feeds can run them through ColorBox or OG-ColorBox to quickly identify and resolve problems with the signal.
Cromorama has worked to provide HDR and colour management consultancy services to sports organisations, and in its work to support the UEFA EURO 2024, benchmark tested a range of solutions, leading to UEFA’s certification of ColorBox as an approved production device.
The solution was leveraged across tournament venues for colour conversion, QC and testing needs. Garcia oversaw two QC operators and the entire production, able to quickly troubleshoot any signal issues that arose. “ColorBox was a natural fit for a project like this because it’s such an intuitive device that makes colour management and QC simpler and more accessible,” he added. “With ColorBox, you can easily complete SDR and HDR transforms and make adjustments. When we’re working with clients, ColorBox also has such a fast protocol, especially when combined with tools like our Ennio Desktop application, which is great. I can see it processing video in near-real time, and the dynamic LUT mode in ColorBox is bonkers fast! I’m also excited to test out the latest ColorBox ACES implementation.”
Cromorama has continued to advance its solutions with ease of use at the forefront of its strategy. Recent innovations include an ORION-CONVERT plugin for an application for nonlinear editing in TV production and its Ennio desktop colour management orchestration desktop application.
