Cinnafilm Press Releases and Announcements

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July 31, 2008 | Press Release
Cinnafilm Ships Cinnafilm HD1, the Industry's First All-in-One Format Conversion Platform

Advanced System Sets New Standard for Real-Time Film Simulation and Unlimited Frame Rate Conversion from Any Digitized Video Source

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Albuquerque, New Mexico - July 31, 2008 - Cinnafilm Inc. (www.cinnafilm.com), a pioneering developer of advanced film and video production tools, today announced the immediate availability of Cinnafilm™ HD1, the industry's first all-in-one format conversion platform designed specifically for film simulation and unlimited frame rate conversion of digital video. The unique combined hardware and software platform leverages the power of graphics card parallel processing to deliver unmatched quality format conversions and celluloid simulations quickly, easily, cost effectively and most significantly, in real-time. HD1 places complete and instantaneous control of the artistic process directly into the hands of creative professionals without sacrificing production quality or visual integrity.

The Cinnafilm HD1 format conversion platform delivers the advanced editing capabilities film and video production professionals require to address the most common aesthetic problems encountered today. HD1's purpose is to instantly alleviate difficulties associated with digital content production and delivery by solving cadence, resolution, frame rate, frame format, and film simulation problems in real-time. Cinnafilm HD1 is the only solution that enables creative and technical adjustments to be applied and instantly visualized from a single workstation, avoiding the need for expensive render farms and racks of power-hungry equipment.

Cinnafilm has garnered high praise for the HD1 format conversion platform since its debut in April, 2008, with especially strong accolades coming from independent filmmakers and film studio executives. Peter R. J. Deyell, president of American Biograph Films and HandCranked Pictures, and an award winning writer, producer and director--whose film, The Three Amigas, was a recent contender at the Cannes Film Festival--was truly astounded by the cinema-quality film simulation made possible with HD1, stating, "If I didn't see it with my own eyes I would have thought it was a magic trick, but it's not. As a film lover it was exciting to see Cinnafilm more than deliver on its promise of enabling real-time, high-quality film simulation. Finally, digital looks like film and the digital magic behind the curtain is HD1."

Core capabilities of Cinnafilm HD1 include celluloid-quality film simulation and bi-directional unlimited frame rate conversion. The HD1 process quickly converts any video source or digitized film source into formats compatible with multiple platforms, including HD television, mobile devices, and the Internet. HD1 is ideal for today's film studio professionals seeking to transfer archived film content and simplify the process of converting content to international frame rate and resolution standards. Cinnafilm HD1's enhanced digital production workflow enables users to immediately verify the consumer audience experience will be an authentic, believable film simulation – all without the need for any rendering.

"The gap between digital video and the polished look of celluloid film has become a confusing realm of individual techniques, lengthy rendering sessions, monotonous tweaks, expensive transfer costs, and often a loss of quality and focus on the project at hand," said Lance Maurer, CEO and president of Cinnafilm. "Cinnafilm's real-time, all-in-one approach with the HD1 platform reflects a paradigm shift in digital video processing, making format conversion and film simulation cost-effective, efficient, easy, and instantaneous. There is simply no other product available on the market today that can take any digital video source footage, regardless of frame rate, resolution or capture style, and instantly present a flawless finished product that looks and flows like real celluloid film."

Cinnafilm HD1 Highlights
Powering the Cinnafilm HD1 format conversion platform is a sophisticated, patent-pending, parallel processing engine that minimizes the time it takes to process digital video. By harnessing the power of modern 3D graphics hardware, HD1 delivers a 30x to 100x performance improvement on computational video tasks as compared with a modern CPU. Cinnafilm HD1 packs all of its power into a small desk-side or rack-mountable unit that can be quickly incorporated into any creative environment, allowing filmmakers and studios to immediately reap the benefits of its advanced format conversion capabilities.

Highlights of the Cinnafilm HD1 format conversion platform include:

• High quality, believable simulation of celluloid film for DV: Unlike other film simulation solutions that rely on synthetic overlays, Cinnafilm HD1 literally reconstructs digital video data streams into new frame solutions to appear as if the source were originally shot on organic film. The patent-pending process handles any SD or HD video up to 10-bit uncompressed 4:4:4, enabling filmmakers, videographers and editors to fine-tune the look of film to their own exacting standards.


• Unlimited frame rate conversion: Create high quality frames – whether the source video was progressive or interlaced – and add appropriate, synthetic motion blur--a great option for exporting high-end solutions for film prints. Additionally, Cinnafilm's InfiniFrame feature harnesses per-pixel, motion compensating vector fields to both de-interlace and recadence digital video on-the-fly enabling scene cut detection that is both extremely accurate and reliable. Even the most troubling cadence issues are easily handled with HD1's ability to instantly create frames where the "missing" frames should have been.


• Super slow motion: A robust example of HD1's Infiniframe feature is the ability to create an infinite number of frames; allowing the simulation of high speed cameras for seamless, fluid, super slow motion previously unavailable at standard capture rates. HD1 offers a slow down of as much as 1000 times the original speed.


• Intelligent /collaborative timeline user interface: A single-click timeline interface allows users to navigate an entire clip in seconds. All effects can be keyframed/animated, and the small keyframe files associated with the framestores (edits) are easily shared between multiple users. Users at opposite ends of the globe can edit, save, and instantly ship the finished product to another studio equipped with the original source footage and a Cinnafilm HD1 system.


• High quality Up Res and Down Res: Web quality to 4K uncompressed lets users adapt video to the correct resolution for any media delivery standard.


• Real-time effects engine: Leverages Cinnafilm's pioneering, patent pending work in GPU parallel processing--enabling the application of all effects, including re-cadencing, in real- time on uncompressed video while avoiding artifacts and data loss. 


• Color enhancement and fully adjustable organic film effects: Perform linear and non-linear color spline adjustments for accurate simulation of film stock response, in addition to brightness, saturation, hue and contrast adjust.  Unparalleled film grain simulation allows weight, ISO size, and granular pigment correlations to be modeled, in addition to other organics such as fibers, dust, and scratches. Cinnafilm engineers invoked chaotic math theories to ensure no two organic film effects ever repeat themselves.

Additionally, Cinnafilm HD1 features film simulation presets for three of the most commonly used Kodak™ Vision™ Series film stocks. These presets are the result of the company's joint development efforts with Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL). Future collaborations may include motion tracking and super resolution capabilities, scheduled for debut in the Q1, 2009 timeframe.

Pricing and Availability
Lease and rental arrangements for the HD1 platform are available starting at under $4,000 U.S. per month. For more information about acquiring the Cinnafilm HD1 format conversion platform, email: sales@cinnafilm.com.

The company is coordinating the advancement of technology used to transform 2D films into 3D, and is currently in discussion with Los Alamos National Laboratories regarding associated research partnerships.

Availability
Cinnafilm presently offers the Cinnafilm HD1 process as an in-house service that supports HD and any standard definition digital video format at its in-house production facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Remote transfers can also be accommodated. Rack-mounted and portable Cinnafilm HD1 units will be available for lease in July 2008. For additional details about the Cinnafilm HD1 leasing process, or to request a demo reel, please contact info@cinnafilm.com.

About Cinnafilm Inc.
Cinnafilm Inc. is an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based developer of powerful, reliable and intuitive film and video production tools for creative professionals in the film, broadcast, post production, industrial video and education markets. The company's patent-pending Cinnafilm HD1 format conversion platform is the result of over four years of dedicated research to harness parallel processing to enable real-time film simulation and unlimited frame rate conversion.

Privately held Cinnafilm, Inc. was founded by President and CEO Lance Maurer in 2003, and is operated by a board of directors that includes Brad Carvey, an Emmy award winner in technical achievement and special effects.

For additional information on Cinnafilm, please visit www.cinnafilm.com.

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