Telestream®, the leading provider of video transcoding and workflow automation solutions, today announced an extension to its strategic collaboration with Cinnafilm®, a global leader in innovative video optimization solutions for television, film and multimedia delivery. As a result of a joint development initiative, Telestream’s Vantage media processing platform now supports Cinnafilm’s Dark Energy® plug-in running on Lightspeed servers. The addition of Cinnafilm’s motion compensation based noise reduction and image scaling solution strengthens a relationship which has seen Cinnafilm’s Tachyon® frame mechanics and standards conversion system supported on Telestream’s Vantage media processing platform for some time.
The companies report that this development is timely, especially for broadcasters seeking content for distribution over newly introduced 4K services and channels. With many broadcasters worldwide launching 4K services there is a high demand for 4K content, however there is a shortage of native 4K content so one efficient solution is to upscale existing HD content to create believable 4K images.
Cinnafilm technology is entirely GPU based, allowing the decoding, encoding and workflow functions of Vantage to occupy CPU resources while the computationally intensive features provided in Dark Energy and Tachyon are processed using the GPU. As a result, Vantage users experience a quantum progression in their ability to upscale content, especially from HD to UHD (4k), as well as optimizing high resolution moving images for low bit-rate delivery over standard internet distribution networks.
“Up conversion of content – initially from SD to HD and now from HD to UHD – is something that has been possible with Vantage for a long time,” explained Paul Turner, VP of Enterprise Product Management at Telestream. “It is something that Telestream does well and Dark Energy does superbly well. The integration of Cinnafilm’s technology provides Vantage customers with the very best resources at a time when there is a real demand for 4K content up-scaling.”
Cinnafilm’s Tachyon is a global “gold standard” for frame mechanics and standards conversion. It possesses automated intelligence, capable of making decisions on how to process video like a precision operator on a scene by scene basis. Tachyon’s fourth generation motion compensation engine is the most accurate, automated motion estimator ever created, providing a significant reduction in low frame-rate artifacts over previous versions of Tachyon.
Dark Energy is Cinnafilm’s motion compensation based noise reduction and image scaling solution. In addition to providing the strongest HD-UHD solution on the market, Dark Energy optimizes images for low bitrate delivery over standard internet-based distribution networks. Dark Energy can achieve a 20-40% reduction in bitrate requirements for equivalent quality images. This capability can translate into significant cost savings where content owners are paying on a per megabit basis to distribute content. Equally, it is valuable in regions where bandwidth provision is an issue.
“The texture-aware up-res in Dark Energy creates believable UHD images from HD sources” said Lance Maurer, CEO of Cinnafilm. “A combination of Telestream and Cinnafilm provides users with the best of both worlds. Initial customer reaction is strongly positive – we are very optimistic about the impact this collaboration will have on the market.”
More information is available at www.telestream.net.
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