Nucoda Film Master

For this Johnson Family Vacation trailer, Karma Bank used Film Master's DPX file auto-conforming capabilities to simplify and accelerate project workflow.

Karma Bank is an established postproduction company located in the heart of the Hollywood film scene. Most of its work involves finishing movie trailers for companies including Fox Searchlight, Newmarket Films, and Paramount Classics.

Trailers are always needed in double-quick time; having the correct equipment is essential in making that happen. Last year, Karma Bank became the first company to purchase Nucoda Film Master. This resolution-independent, PC-based film-finishing solution lets users grade and perform multi-format mastering directly from 2K 10-bit log data.

At Karma, because most of our work involves finishing the trailer, we spend our time scanning, conforming, grading, and mastering. Before we installed Film Master, we had worked a lot with 10-bit log scans and After Effects in 16-bit colorspace. The results were good, but the throughput was poor. We didn't have a big budget, so we had to stick to our tried-and-tested methods. That was OK for our existing, loyal client base, but because we didn't have realtime capability, we found it difficult to attract new business.

A couple of years ago I wanted to autoconform with DPX files. This would save time while delivering great results, but I drew a blank as nobody could do it. Then we hooked up with the Nucoda team, which showed us a new, data-centric way approach to workflow. We became a beta tester for its Film Master product.

What convinced us? The benefits came from working with data, not video files. Simon Cuff, CEO for London-based Nucoda, explained the technology behind Film Master to us. Using data to represent media, we learned, brings tremendous benefits to content production, particularly in the area of film digital intermediates and HD long-form productions. It seems that far more information can be attached to frames than just video timecode or film keycode. This means information from the various postproduction processes, such as digital color timing, visual effects versioning, and subsequent delivery formatting, can be stored as metadata.

This has a great effect on the whole finishing process. Dropping the emphasis on storing information separately to closed framestores allows for a more open process. This allows artists, editors, and engineers to work on a project simultaneously. Enormous cost savings are possible, we learned, compared to a traditional linear approach to digital workflow.

Nucoda bases all of its solutions for film, including Film Master, on Postcode. The company designed this new software architecture around an open, ASCII-based metadata structure.

Film Master is based upon Nucoda's Postcode, a software architecture with an open, ASCII-based metadata structure.

Film Master allows us to conform from a standard EDL or AAF-based metadata. We use the turnkey system as a realtime trailer conform box, but we find it useful on digital intermediate work, too. Because it works with multiple-resolution source and output material up to 6K, Film Master has also been used for previewing graphics and main title sequences for film.

Its realtime color-correction capabilities really speed up the finishing process. Clients love being able to see things immediately, like a realtime 2K pan-and-scan or a realtime flop shot. They also like its ability to compare offline with online using split screen. When you stop and think that all this is all happening on a PC, it's very impressive stuff.

By using the Color Management API, we can check out the final color on the Film Master workstation. That means we don't have to do a film-out — which adds hundreds of dollars each time — or wait around to get in front of the big screen. Our clients see the results as they will appear in the cinema.

It's flexible too. With the Film Master API, we have direct access to our choice of third-party color management cubes from within the Postcode realtime viewing pipeline.

Karma Bank recently used Film Master to color grade, dust-bust, and conform the trailer for the new Christopher Erskin movie Johnson Family Vacation for Fox Searchlight. On that film, we made use of Film Master's DPX file auto-conforming capabilities, which allowed us to greatly simplify and accelerate our workflow. With our proprietary software, we are able to embed sequential timecode into full-resolution 10-bit Cineon log files, which are then converted to DPX files. These files are auto conformed using a 24fps EDL. This way we can conform the entire trailer in about 6 seconds, which means we get more time to be creative with color correction, effects, and title adjustments.

Being able to perform these tasks on one workstation saves huge amounts of time while making big reductions in costs. With the improved workflow and realtime functions now in place, we are attracting a broader customer base.

Karma Bank's CEO Preston Kuntz worked as a film editor and post supervisor at Hammer Creative before starting his Los Angeles-based company in 2002. Karma Bank, which specializes in movie trailer postproduction, also supports DI projects and film finishing. The company's client list includes Fox Searchlight, Newmarket Films, and Paramount Classics. For more information, contact Karma Bank at (323) 428-1057, email
preston@karmabank.biz, or visit
www.karmabank.biz.