Express Dailies 2013

Colorfront unveiled Express Dailies 2013, a new version of its high-performance on-set dailies creation system, at this weekend’s Cine Gear Expo.

Express Dailies is based on the imaging technology and tools integrated in On-Set Dailies, another Colorfront software also renewed during NAB. Its creators have tried to meet the needs of this area by designing a high-performance system in set, compact, easy to use and that combines the tools for creating looks and data wrangler with others for metadata management, synchronization, audio and quality control.

With the new version, the interface has become simpler and more elegant, based on drag and drop. A waveform monitor and histograms have been integrated for quality control analysis, along with PDF reports of the same.

There are two new star features:

On-Set Live!

Through SDI, multiple cameras can be connected and allows the DIT, or colorist on set, to preview the material, correct it from a live RAW camera signal, create and manage looks. Thus, thanks to On-Set Live! a more complete and streamlined color correction workflow is achieved.

It is possible to work with IIF/ACES and use external devices such as Pandora Pluto, Blackmagic Desgn HDLink Pro and T-Cube Fic for color space conversion, calibration and correction.

In addition, with this function the metadata provided by the camera and lenses, such as color temperature, ISO, focus and zoom parameters, can be captured and recorded or “burned” onto the image.

Copy Central

This new capability speeds up the production of dailies and deliveries thanks to the simultaneous verification of multiple destinations, including the LTO file and the creation of PDF reports of the jobs. Users can easily manage media and metadata thanks to the new Bin tool, which allows the creation of bins and timelines, advanced search and sort based on metadata, and export of files for easier project management.

With Colorfront’s EMD metadata support, which enables the transfer of project, color and data throughout the entire production chain, further integration into the color correction and finishing processes is provided.

Like its companion On-Set Dailies, this update achieves 64-bit performance, to run on Mac Pro towers and MacBook Pro Retina notebooks.

New third-party media have also been included, such as Tangent Element controllers, AJA Kona3 and IoXT cards, which provide real-time RAW playback and debayering (including ARRIRAW and F55RAW).

Camera format support has also been extended, adding the latest for digital cinematography from Sony, ARRI, Canon, RED, Phantom and Go Pro, as well as DSLRs.

Once all the necessary tasks have been completed, the material is quickly delivered in formats commonly required for dailies review, post-production and archiving, such as DNxHD 444, the ProRes family, DPX, TIFF, OpenEXR, QT and H.264.

If you would like to learn more about these functions performed on set, don’t hesitate to take a look at the next DIT course. And if you would like to be able to create your own looks you might be more interested in the advanced DaVinci Resolve course, with look creation and color correction techniques.