Digital Vision launch Cifer

Digital Vision, a leading developer of advanced digital media applications specialising in film and video solutions, has announced the launch of Cifer, a groundbreaking HD/SD SD/HD standards converter.
Cifer has been developed as part of a technology partnership with Pro-Bel, the premier manufacturer and supplier of routing switchers, signal processing, master control, automation, control and monitoring technologies. Cifer forms part of Pro-Bel's Vistek product line.
Cifer was first announced at IBC last year as a project. This is not the first time that Digital Vision and Vistek have joined forces to break new ground, as their previous SD collaboration - the Vector-VMC - was awarded an Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Cifer is designed to satisfy today's multi-format, multi-resolution requirements and is based on proprietary motion estimation techniques that facilitate pixel-accurate estimations and hence conversion. Cifer is truly universal as it can convert between any SD standard and between the primary HD standards. It can also convert from SD to HD and HD to SD with the resulting pictures virtually indistinguishable from the original.
Digital Vision's long standing expertise is used to calculate the motion vectors while Pro-Bel's established understanding of HD conversion processes produces the resulting converted picture stream.
Cifer is based on a modular - and therefore scalable - architecture in order to satisfy the divergent and expanding needs of today's broadcasters. Different modules can be added to the fundamental video converter in order to support varying demands.
Kim Francis, Product Specialist, Pro-Bel explained: "Audio is a prime example. Nowadays so much of it is embedded that a lot of audio is no longer routed around the converter but through it. If that is the case for a customer then we can satisfy that demand cost-effectively. If other parts of the digital signal stream also need to be converted customers can simply add modules to suit." (CD)