Discreet Leads in Digital Intermediate

Montreal, Canada—September 8, 2004—Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. today announced new sales of its lustre^® digital grading and colour correction system to film studios and post-production facilities in Europe and Asia. Installed in more than 20 locations across five continents, Discreet's lustre system was recently purchased by ARRI FILM & TV SERVICES GmbH (Germany), Prasad EFX (India), The Video Lab (South Africa), Atlab (Australia), Buf Compagnie (France), and Omnibus Japan (Japan).

"Using the lustre system, our digital artists, colourists and cameramen have the best premises for interactive colour grading in real movie-quality," said Henning Rädlein, head of ARRI's Digital Intermediate and VFX department.

ARRI FILM & TV SERVICES is one of the leading post-production facilities in Germany, providing complete services for image and sound work on feature films, industrial films, TV commercials and TV movies. The company has already used Discreet's lustre system within its own post-production facility for the digital intermediate (DI) process of editing film footage.  The lustre system will be used to build a DI pipeline between its ARRISCAN film scanner and ARRILASER film printer for the editing, grading and finishing of movies up to 4K resolution.

ARRI has been an industry leader in film technology since 1917, providing some of the highest-quality products and services to top film-makers around the world. The ARRILASER film printer is one of the most popular digital film printers on the market. With ARRI's new initiatives in digital film scanners and cameras, Discreet has been collaborating with ARRI to deliver a high-quality, end-to-end calibrated DI pipeline from the scanner to the printer.

Martin Vann, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Discreet, said, "To build a successful DI business, Discreet's clients are looking beyond simple conforming and data serving. The whole point of going digital is to exercise the creative potential it unleashes, and facilities today are looking for the ultimate creative tools. This is why Discreet's lustre system has rapidly become the de facto DI standard in high-end film production, thanks to its fast-evolving creative toolset that remains unmatched in the industry." 

Sai Prasad, CEO at Prasad EFX, said, "The lustre system is a very reliable product with a strong track record for handling prestigious projects. Prasad EFX selected the lustre system for its excellent digital colour correction abilities, high quality grain and noise reduction tools, user friendly interface, and its ability to easily and efficiently fit into our existing DI workflow. Another reason for selecting the lustre system was our satisfaction with other Discreet products."
 
Prasad EFX is part of India's media entertainment giant, The Prasad Group. The post house anticipates using the lustre system on 10 DI projects in the next year, and has already used the system for digital colour grading on Indian and foreign feature films Lakshaya, Sri Anjaneyam, Dreaming Lhasa and Hari Om.

Johannesburg-based The Video Lab has been in the feature-film, feature effects and commercials post-production business for 22 years, and has worked on films such as The Flight of The Phoenix, In Desert and Wilderness, Critical Assignment, Merlin, and The Little Unicorn, amongst others.

"We looked at tape-to-tape systems but we really wanted a disc-based solution and we were particularly impressed with the features offered by the lustre system and the way it fit in with our existing workflow," said Dave Keet, MD, The Video Lab. "We've definitely seen an increase in demand for HD and 2K DI work, largely from international clients but increasingly from local clients. A few years ago there was a surge in demand because of our weak exchange rate, but now that clients have seen the high quality of our work, demand has continued to increase even though the Rand has strengthened." The Video Lab's first project using the lustre system will be Totsi, a South African film about gangsters.

Other customers using Discreet's lustre system include: Universal Production Partners (Czech Republic), Éclair Laboratories (France), Mikros Image (France), Sylicone TV (France),  Fotofilm (Madrid), Pixar Animation Studios (Emeryville, CA), Pacific Title & Art Studio (Los Angeles, CA), Sony Pictures Imageworks (Los Angeles, CA) and Technicolor Creative Services Hollywood (Los Angeles, CA).

Introduced in April 2003, Discreet's lustre system has been used on blockbuster feature films Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and X2: X-Men United, as well as on upcoming feature films The Polar Express (starring Tom Hanks), A Different Loyalty (starring Sharon Stone), The Phantom of the Opera (starring Minnie Driver) and National Treasure (starring Nicolas Cage and Harvey Keitel).

Discreet's lustre system requires no proprietary hardware and represents the state of the art in high-performance software design, capable of delivering real-time 2K RGB playback with 32-bit/component colour correction on both 10- and 16-bit scans, making it the ideal solution for the most demanding in DI standards.

DI is a process that converts film to high-resolution digital files and then back to film, providing greater control over colour manipulation and visual effects. Whereas before, only select shots requiring visual effects were digitised, today, many films are being digitised from start to finish to allow for more creativity. Discreet's lustre system is used to digitally create consistent colouring and grading, and was developed in conjunction with Colorfront, a Budapest-based software development company.  

About Discreet
Discreet empowers media professionals to realise the visual experience and transform their most evocative and ambitious visions into reality. Discreet's award-winning solutions are designed for digital media creation, management and delivery—across all disciplines from film and television visual effects, colour grading and editing to animation, game development, web/interactive, and design visualisation.  Discreet is based in Montréal, Québec and is a division of Autodesk, Inc, the world's leading design and digital media creation, management, and distribution company.  Product and corporate information: www.discreet.com.