Cinafilm

"The second product that struck me came from a new company Cinnafilm could be revolutionary (and I hate to even use that word). Cinafilm was started by former aerospace engineer Lance Maurer and has as its technical advisor Brad Carvey, who won a technical Emmy as part of the team that developed the Video Toaster. The Cinnafilm HD1 is a black box that provides realtime film look to video. Since more and more people are shooting on video and not going out to film, providing a film look in realtime at a fraction of the cost should be extremely appealing. Users will be able to select from a menu of common film stocks or can start from scratch and create an entirely unique “stock” from a plethora of controls.

The system will be leased for $10,000 a month, and there will be more on the pricing to be relased soon so that the cost goes down over time. Seeing is believing as starting in May Cinnafilm will accept 30-second video clips which they will apply a look to and send if back to you as proof of what they can add to your film. Cinnafilm has its own studio in Albuquerque New Mexico for film finishing.

But that alone is not the revolutionary part. Soon after the June release of HD1 Cinnafilm will be adding the InfiniFRame and InfiniPlane modules to the systems. Infiniframe allows you to create an infinite number of frames between regular 24-frame footage, the new slow-mo footage plays back absolutely smooth with no artifacting. They’d told me about this over the phone before NAB but seeing is believing. And infinite, means infinite. During the demo they played back a 6 second clip that took 20 minutes to play back. InfiniFrame will allow you to create depth-of-field: going into a shot where a lot of the image is in focus, selecting the point to remain in focus and then throwing everything else out of focus in a natural gradual manner. Again not a bad tool to have for HD production and it is all realtime.

Combining these modules Cinnafilm will be developing a third module which will allow for simple 2D to 3D creation. They are working with Los Alamos National Laboratories, which worked on a little thing called the Manhattan Project, on this and also to accurately access their color replication and processor response."

By Matt Armstrong, StudioDaily