Sonic And Digital Vision Team Up For HD Video Mastering

Sonic Solutions and Digital Vision have announced a strategic partnership to integrate Digital Vision Optics (DVO) HD finishing tools with Sonic's CineVisionT HD encoding platform for AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2 stream creation.
Sonic will offer Digital Vision's image enhancement technologies - including tools for managing film grain, reducing unwanted electronic noise, and increasing picture sharpness - with its well known CineVision encoder. The CineVision/Digital Vision combination will enable authoring facilities to efficiently master high-definition titles for the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats with the highest possible image quality. Sonic and Digital Vision demonstrated the integrated solution at NAB.
"We are very excited to be partnering with Sonic to deliver our award-winning image enhancement technology to the packaged media creation market. Our two companies' respective leadership positions in compression and image processing represent a powerful value proposition for professional authoring facilities everywhere," said Lars Taflin, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Vision. "By providing access to Digital Vision image controls at the encoding stage, professional facilities will be able to harness their creative potential to deliver never before achieved high-definition image quality."
Based on 20 years of experience in developing high-performance image enhancement algorithms, Digital Vision Optics (DVO) are a collection of resolution-independent, software-based image enhancement tools for fine-tuning image quality. Included in CineVision will be DVO Grain, which is designed specifically to manage the look of film grain and to reduce unwanted electronic noise in film or video material. Grain allows creative professionals to produce clean, sharp pictures and to match the look of film grain from shot to shot, including grain matching for underexposed film. Also to be included is DVO Aperture, a high-quality spatial filter that increases the apparent sharpness of the picture. Aperture is a great tool for use in conjunction with DVO Grain in order to increase image clarity while still creatively managing the look of film grain. Additional components incorporated from Digital Vision will enable professional authors to effectively remove high-frequency noise and reduce banding. The final component of the suite of tools is DVO Dust that enables automatic removal of film dust, dirt and scratches providing a cost effective route to re-master archive titles that have been damaged in storage.
"While providing a stunning viewing experience for consumers, working with high definition video is an unforgiving process that demands the best possible tools and technologies," said Rolf Hartley, senior vice president and general manager of Sonic's Professional Products Group. "Working with Digital Vision, the industry leader in image enhancement solutions, we've been able to extend the breadth, depth, and value of our CineVision encoder - giving authoring facilities the power to deliver the best looking HD and BD titles possible."
Sonic CineVision is a comprehensive encoding system built to tackle the complex encoding challenges of the next-generation Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD optical disc formats.
Designed to enable complete workflow flexibility, CineVision has been optimized for professionals requiring comprehensive support for a wide range of input types, including QuickTime, AVI, and DPX image sequences, and all three of the next-generation HD video codecs: H.264 (AVC), VC-1, and MPEG-2.
In the latest update, the application takes image quality to a new level for all three next-generation HD format and includes new advanced tools, such as adaptive quantization, to improve the handling of video effects.
In addition, the application improves timeline information, giving the compressionist a clear view of the bit rate and quality metrics for the encoded files.
(SP)