Axis Post, based at Shepperton Studios in the U.K., has purchased a Quantel Pablo DI grading system. Axis Post is based on the Shepperton Studios lot, which enables the company to offer a complete shoot and post package right through to grade and delivery.
Bluefish Technologies (Booth SL-9405 at NAB) will introduce the 2K|Lust video card, which features I/O support for 2K resolution via HSDL (High Speed Data Link) for integration with telecine and film scanning devices, real-time hardware scaling, cropping and color processing and real-time SDI monitoring of HSDL output. 2K|Lust is a free software upgrade to HD|Lust. Symmetry, Bluefish Technologies’ DI, acquisition, review and playout software, which is bundled free with Bluefish444 hardware, will be upgraded to support the new features of 2K|Lust.

Shooters Post & Transfer, a Philadelphia-based VFX, design and post-production facility, launched DIVE (http://www.the-dive.net/), a new VFX and film finishing house. Led by veteran VFX Supervisor Mark Forker, DIVE will focus on providing visual effects, DIs and titles.

Signiant introduced its Digital Media Distribution Management Suite, which can simultaneously manage, secure, automate and accelerate digital media workflows, letting users easily share, repurpose and move digital files to more places in a shorter period of time. Signiant’s digital media distribution management solutions include encryption, authorization and user authentication to protect digital assets in-transit from piracy and corruption, and is also optimized for file transfers on and off the enterprise’s central backbone, with guarantee of origin and certified delivery features. Industry veteran Tom Ohanian is Signiant’s vice president of product management.

The Foundry (Booth SL14413) will debut Furnace 4 for Shake, and launch Tinderbox for Combustion. The team that developed Furnace was honored with a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on February 10.

da Vinci Systems (Booth SL2615) will debut its Resolve Conform Station, which moves the conforming, proxy generating, and QC processes out of the DI suite. The Resolve Conform Station can quickly generate lower resolution files using da Vinci’s Transformer technology, saving time in the more-expensive DI suites. Also new is Resolve’s PowerMastering feature, which provides real-time generation of multiple deliverables from a color-corrected 2K resolution master without rendering back to storage, each with uniquely applied color and sizing settings. Resolve now supports 2K to Resolve Grading Exchange, which allows import of basic da Vinci 2K grades and color decisions directly into Resolve, allowing the dailies grade to be a starting point in the DI suite.

Sohonet upgraded its London network for greater capacity and flexibility, and began to supply 10Gbit/s Ethernet services as well as offering upgrades to 1Gbit/sec Sohonet service at a competitive cost. Also launched was a new “freeway” service between London and Los Angeles, available immediately to all Sohonet clients in these two cities at no additional cost.

Rhythm & Hues purchased three seats of Iridas‘ FrameCycler DI, which combines uncompressed playback of 2K content, conform, primary color correction, and ReviewLink, a new remote-collaboration system.

Stockholm-based Chimney Pot has purchased a Digital Vision Nucoda Film Master grading system for its recently launched Moscow facility. The new facility will join existing ones in Stockholm, Oslo, Kiev and Warsaw, each of which uses the Film Master as its primary grading tool.

Four new staff members have joined Digital Vision’s London office: Product Marketing Director Sandra Squire; Product Specialist Eliot Milbourne; Field Application Engineer Rob Wall; and Quality Assurance Engineer Seth Arora. Andrea Korpita joins the Los Angeles sales organization as post-production account manager, teaming up with Schel Kuehnert.

Kodak has introduced an enhanced version of its proprietary Digital Ice Technology. Version 2.0 incorporates an option for providing “untouched” image data along with the output defect matte generated by the software. The Digital Ice tri-level output defect matte and dirt/scratch utilities are included in Version 2.0. It is available to current licensed scanner partners during Q1 2007.

FilmLight reported 14 new installations at European studios and facilities, a number of which include the pin-registered scanner Northlight and the recently launched Northlight 2. Infrared scanning capabilities support an automatic dust-bust pipeline. Clients included Evasion (Spain), Georgian Film (Georgia), Galaxy Studios (Belgium), Das Werk (Dusseldorf & Munich), FotoCinema (Italy), Egli Swiss Effects (Switzerland), ACE (Prague), Cinepostproduction Bavaria Film (Germany), Scanline (Germany), DFF (Finland), UMP (Russia) and Big Bang (UK).

Digital Vision (Booth SL3205) will show DCI-compliant solutions at NAB: the latest version of the DVNR image processing workstation and the Nucoda Film Master DI color grading system, which provides 12-bit-per-component monitoring from the timeline and XYZ colorspace export to the DCI TIFF file format. In collaboration with Avid Technology, Digital Vision will integrate the Avid DNxHD codec into Film Master.