CineForm for Fusion: Cost effective green post production solution

For immediate release.

Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Monday April 11^th, 2011.

Magna Mana Production Bildbearbeitung GmbH, Germany, is proud to release the first version of the CineForm file format plugins for eyeon Fusion, originally developed for optimizing in-house pipelines, it is now a must-have product for every visual effects artist and studio.

Developed in close cooperation with CineForm, the plugins bridges an important workflow gap and enable, for the first time, a start-to-finish post production pipeline. Using one common realtime enabled codec, the plugins allow the file size to decrease without visual degradation from acquisition through editing, compositing, farm rendering, grading, client review, mastering, and archiving.

With CineForm’s visually lossless wavelet compression you can enable 4K workflows via standard SATA disks or gigabit ethernet shares. You can play and edit 4K files in realtime without additional hardware. CineForm files are supported on all major editing systems from Adobe, Apple, Avid, Sony, and many other finishing and grading applications such as Clipster, Mistika, SpeedGradeDI and DaVinci, just to name a few. The compression works so fluidly that you can perform thousands of iterative generations without any visual loss.

With the new DPX-C single frame format, based on standard SMPTE DPX file format and enhanced to transport compressed data, it is possible to distribute rendering onto render farms. DPX-C sequences can be rewrapped into standard CineForm AVI or MOV files and vice versa without any transcoding, it is a direct stream copy of the actual compressed data. All CineForm formats are supported, including RAW (various deBayer algorithms available), YUV, RGB, RGBA, up to 12 bits log (good for 16+ bits linear data), including 3D stereo (all display modes available), active metadata, and render farm compatible GUID creation. As the only software in the market it can even convert from RGB to RAW (kind of “artificial” RAW). Any corrections made in First Light can be enabled and used in DPX-C and Fusion as well, it is non destructive. Enhance your RAW workflow to its maximum flexibility.

The plugins work for both Fusion 5.x and 6.x in 32 and 64 bit versions. These overcome the inherent 8 bit challenge of Fusion’s AVI and MOV support. With the plugins, you can now read and write native CineForm AVI and MOV files at true 12 bits, even on Windows 64 bit, without the need of having QuickTime installed. You can also control file options completely impossible to reach via normal AVI or Quicktime interfaces.

Using the CineForm format, you can reduce your infrastructure need for disk space and network bandwidth from 1/5 to 1/10 on average, up to 1/30 when working in RAW. While uncompressed 4K needs approximately 1.5 Gbyte/s data rate, you can do realtime 4K RAW at about 30-50 MByte/s. Furthermore, you can reduce transmission cost and time, for example such as for remote facilities, freelancers, and global work groups, dramatically, allowing clients to review original files using the free CineForm Neo Player available for MAC and PC. This will reduce time and cost for archive as well. CineForm files are a valid alternative to traditional tape based formats such as HD CAM SR and can be stored inexpensively on any digital media.

CineForm compression is a green technology, reducing the energy and cost footprint of your production pipeline dramatically and matching today’s reduced budgets. Using CineForm allows you to improve your service and stay competitive in a globalised world. Instead of buying energy hungry hardware with a high TCO, you pay far less for clever software – the intelligent choice.

If you are using Fusion’s cache feature and plan to invest in SSD’s or a RAID, you can save more than the cost of the plugins or Neo products by working with CineForm files instead of uncompressed files. You can multiply the capacity and throughput of your existing infrastructure. The more files you can cache locally, the less network access is required. That again offloads network traffic, pushing your network to unseen speeds.

Neo or Neo3D licenses are not needed to work with CineForm files in Fusion. The plugins contain the required CineForm license.

CineForm for Fusion is being developed strictly with a focus on real market needs. As a spin-off from the production and post production company Magna Mana, the software development, lead by the software engineering and workflow design team of Timm Baier and CTO Axel Mertes, shares the real knowledge from users every day problems.

CineForm for Fusion cost Euro 300,00 per license. Users who have already a GoPro CineForm Studio or CineForm Neo license in place may buy the workstation plugin for only Euro 225,00 when running both on the same machine. All prices are excluding VAT. All versions come with 1 year free updates. Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions are included. Demo versions and test licenses are available upon request. Please visit our website or contact us via Sales@MagnaMana.com for more details. Additional info will be available in the coming weeks.

About Magna Mana
Magna Mana is a production and post production company founded in 1996 with its headquarter in Frankfurt am Main and daughter companies in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg (all Germany). Magna Mana provides full service from production to post production, 3D animation, compositing, grading, film recording, mastering etc. Living on the bleeding edge of technology, people at Magna Mana always pushed the boundaries to new levels and had been involved in many industry firsts during the past, working closely with other manufactures on development and testing of new products.
www.MagnaMana.com/products/

About CineForm
CineForm develops compression-based workflow solutions for film and video acquisition, post production, and archive applications. Offering the industry’s highest-fidelity compression, CineForm software products are used by discerning film studios, television producers, and digital media artists to enhance their filebased workflows. CineForm products are available for both end users and OEM integrators, offer crossplatform compatibility, support most camera and file-based sources, and enable 2D and 3D editorial workflows with spatial resolutions up to 8K.
www.CineForm.com

About eyeon Software
eyeon Software Inc. develops applications for the VFX and postproduction communities. eyeon products include Fusion™, an award-winning compositing application used on thousands of feature film and broadcast projects over the past 21 years; Rotation®, a rotoscoping system and Vision®, a suite of tools designed for broadcast. Fusion artists have contributed significant work to recent box office successes such as The Social Network, Gnomeo & Juliet, The Mechanic, Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Treader, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Avatar, 2012, Clash Of The Titans, Alice in Wonderland, Kick Ass, New Moon, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, G.I. Joe, X-Men Origins, Twilight, Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3D, 300, Spiderman 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Happy Feet, Sin City, and many others.
www.eyeonline.com

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Copyright © 2010-2011 Magna Mana Production Bildbearbeitung GmbH. All rights reserved.