Cooke Optics has announced that Avid Technology has incorporated support for the Cooke-developed /i technology into its editing systems. This will enable them to read digitally-captured camera andlens data, thus dramatically smoothing the vfx process.
/i technology (the ‘i’ stands for ‘intelligence’) enables film and digital cameras to automatically record key lens and camera data for every film frame shot and provide it to post production teams digitally, ready for incorporation into downstream processes without any manual manipulation. The technology streamlines both production and post, saving significant time and costs and eliminating guesswork, while enabling greater creative freedom.
To further streamline and speed film production by tracking metadata from acquisition to post production, Avid has integrated support for the /i protocol recorded by the /i dataLink box from Cooke into its editing systems. Avid editing systems such as Media Composer can therefore read digitally-captured camera/lens data – including time stamp, lens/camera serial number, reel number, continuous readings of focus, iris, and zoom values, close and far focus, horizontal field of view, entrance pupil position, normalise zoom value, camera status and more – and pass it through editorial into visual effects. The implementation enables Avid editors to export any part of a project timeline via Avid FilmScribe along with any or all of the metadata captured by /i, and post it to a web-based workgroup environment, print it out, or export it as a file to be parsed by any downstream process.
“It’s encouraging that leading manufacturers such as Avid are building support for /i into their offerings. By automating data recording processes and passing the metadata across the production and post workflow, we’re helping all of our users to bring their visions to the screen with less pain and better results,” commented Les Zellan, chairman of Cooke Optics.
Michael Phillips, principal product designer at Avid, added: “The metadata captured with /i tells visual effects artists exactly what the lens was seeing for each frame so they can re-create the same look using 3D plates and integrate effects more seamlessly. Ultimately, it results in more realistic-looking effects, done faster.”
Avid joins ARRI, Cinematography Electronics, CMotion, Preston Cinema Systems, The Pixel Farm, and Service Vision in supporting /i technology.
