CineForm First Light Enables Real-Time Color Correction with No Rendering; Powerful Active Metadata Technology Separates Images from Color ‘Layers’ While Always Preserving Original Imagery

CineForm®, Inc. creators of high-fidelity compression-based workflow solutions for the post production marketplace, today announced a powerful new real-time, renderless color correction tool – CineForm First Light™ – which will become part of its professional Neo and Prospect product families on both Windows and Mac. First Light uses CineForm’s innovative Active Metadata™ architecture to add or adjust color information such as white balance, saturation controls, and even 3D LUTs (Look Up Tables), as metadata “layers” on top of the base image without flattening or rendering the file. Carrying color adjustments as metadata preserves fidelity of the source images while maintaining compatibility with all AVI and QuickTime applications on Windows and Mac. First Light enables unique capabilities for an editor, including the ability to toggle between several versions of advanced color correction in real-time while in consultation with a client, yet in a nondestructive way that does not modify the source content. CineForm will debut and demonstrate First Light at its booth #SL11605 at NAB 2009 in Las Vegas.

“CineForm is constantly working to eliminate pain points that plague the editorial workflow - anything that stands between the editor and the creative process,” said David Taylor, CEO and co-founder of CineForm, Inc. “First Light embodies the flexibility of our Active Metadata architecture applied to the color correction process. By eliminating image-degrading operations like rendering, and replacing them with real-time color adjustments that intelligently protects original imagery, we enable editors to experiment more freely and confidently with color, to find the right mood and tone for a scene without disturbing image fidelity.”

CineForm First Light Under the Hood

First Light is designed to work on both Windows and Mac alongside traditional post-production software tools such as Premiere® Pro, Final Cut Pro, After Effects®, Vegas, and most other AVI or QuickTime applications. As color adjustments are made to CineForm files through First Light, color changes immediately appear when the CineForm file is played or scrubbed within the editing or compositing application – no rendering, importing, or other processing is required.

Color information is stored in CineForm files as “active” metadata which operates as a non-destructive “layer” above the base image. When color adjustments are performed in First Light, only the metadata layers are modified, never disturbing the base image underneath. When a CineForm file is played within a calling application, CineForm’s decoder subsystem first decodes the base image then applies Active Metadata to the image before passing the decoded image to the calling application. Supported nondestructive color adjustments include white balance, gain/offset, gamma, and individual RGB color controls. Additionally, Active Metadata supports 64x64x64 3D LUTs compatible with the Iridas .Look format, also processed in real time, for essentially infinite mapping of one color to another.

Pricing and Availability

CineForm First Light will be available shortly as a public beta release within Neo HD/4K on Windows and Mac, and Prospect HD/4K v4 on Windows. First Light will be included at no additional charge within CineForm products.