NAB 2015 - MTI Film Focuses On Dead Pixels, Flicker

Amy Hawthorne, Film Product Director at MTI Film, was on hand at NAB 2015 to discuss the company’s recent advancements in color correction software. Its leading product, DRS, has been an industry standard for over twenty years, and its list of users includes Criterion and national libraries across the US. At the NAB 2015 Show, MTI presented an update to its color correction software entitled DRS NOVA, In addition to improving on workflow efficiency, DRS NOVA has an intuitive setting that corrects color fading.

“You can understand color breathing by thinking of Technicolor film, where the components of color were split over three tracks,” said Hawthorne. “As film ages and the color channels degrade, one channel may dominate another over, presenting a pulsing effect, or as it is more commonly known, breathing.”

Color breathing issues that formerly required time-consuming manual correction can now be fixed automatically. Additionally, the same tool can be used to automatically correct flicker caused by variations in density or luminance.

“Flicker is one of the most frustrating and persistent problems in restoration,” said Hawthorne. “This new tool represents a big step forward.”

DRS NOVA will also include the ability to apply and undo corrections in a multi-layered fashion, called version-on-version. Applied corrections such as dust removal can be undone individually without affecting other corrections that have been completed, such as flicker removal or de-warp and stabilization.

In addition to DRS NOVA, MTI also introduced two new CORTEX products, CORTEX D.I.T. and CORTEX Transcode. CORTEX v 2.0 encompasses a first-of-its-kind feature for detecting and correcting dead pixels, a common problem in digital cinematography. Dead Pixel Detection can automatically identify dead pixels in the sensors of digital cinema cameras. Information about dead pixels is stored in the CORTEX Manifest file for delivery to post production. Dead Pixel Correction, included CORTEX Enterprise, automatically repairs dead pixel artifacts.

Additionally, CORTEX v 2.0 features an editing tool that offers a simple way to produce review media and other types of custom compositions for delivery. The edit tool includes overwrite, insert and extract functions, allowing the operator to carry out basic editing tasks without tying up a separate editing system and expensive Editor.

“As CORTEX has been adopted by more studio and facility clients, our customers are finding they want to use it in ways that go beyond its role as a comprehensive dailies solution,” said Hawthorne. “We’re responding by adding features that resolve common issues or fill gaps in the digital post workflow. CORTEX is becoming the Swiss Army knife of post-production.”

To learn more about MTI Film, please visit: www.mtifilm.com