ROOT6 ContentAgent is a Traffic Cop For High-Res Data

Automatically Transcode 2K/4K DPX Files to Usable Post Formats

Judging from recent North American sales, London's Root6 Technology has made inroads in Hollywood and elsewhere with its ContentAgent XR "universal encoding platform." Creative Bridge has purchased an XR system for its mobile DI lab, where it transcodes DPX files to whatever formats are necessary for dailies and other critical-viewing applications like on-set color-correction, eFilm uses the system as part of its digital-dailies workflow, and Turner Studios in Atlanta puts it to work authoring one-off DVDs for presentation and approvals.

ContentAgent is designed to take the pain out of repetitive tasks in production and post. Whether you're recording data from a film scanner or a digital camera, ContentAgent will pull the data off your storage and manipulate it according to parameters you've set up in software. At NAB, Root6 showed the system transcoding 2K and 4K DPX files into commonly used file formats, such as Avid MXF, with data burn-in from the DPX header as an option. That means it can be used as an efficient way to get data out of, say, the Dalsa Origin, and into a facility's systems in a format that those systems understand.

The XR can make high-definition DVDs using Windows Media encoding and — here's a cool trick — can also be set up to deliver files via an RSS feed — log on to a secure Web site and download H.264-encoded dailies directly to your iPod automatically, as soon as they're ready.