Reprinted from a Discreet press release:
Building on more than a decade of leadership in the broadcast and film industries, Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK), is defining a new era of leadership that spans the advanced systems, desktop software and animation markets at NAB 2003-the world’s leading conference and exhibition for broadcast, post-production and media communications industries. At NAB, Discreet is unveiling the industry’s first real-time, non-proprietary digital color grading system-and showcasing new advancements for its effects, nonlinear editing, desktop video and animation products.
Discreet demonstrates its leadership in delivering solutions for finishing at the highest resolutions-HD, 2K and above. With more than 1000 hours of groundbreaking HD content created and finished on Discreet systems around the world-more than any other manufacturer-Discreet remains at the forefront of HD programming.
“At NAB, Discreet continues its leadership in bringing powerful, industrial-strength solutions to our customers on tuned systems, advanced animation and the rapidly emerging desktop market,” said Paul Lypaczewski, Discreet general manager and executive vice president, Autodesk, Inc. “Whether for creative control over the ‘look’ of digitally graded feature films, advanced animation, broadcast content finished in HD-or breaking news, encoded and delivered from anywhere in the world-Discreet solutions touch every facet of the NAB audience.”
Systems
Discreet is unveiling lustre, the world’s first non-proprietary real-time 2K digital color grading system for Digital Intermediates. It is based on highly advanced technology from Colorfront (Hungary) following the January 2003 announcement of an exclusive partnership between the two companies. Optimized for maximum performance on an Intel architecture, the lustre system offers colorists and color timers an intuitive environment for highly interactive color correction sessions that will enable them to collaborate directly with directors of photography, cinematographers and filmmakers to perfectly adjust the colors and ‘look’ of a film-from the most subtle of adjustments to extravagant color and lighting effects.
The lustre color correction program will add to Discreet’s complete range of fully-integrated digital cinema solutions and workflows-including its Academy Award-winning inferno 5
For greater management and extension of its creative solutions, Discreet is launching its new infrastructure direction-with new products, decreased pricing, new partners such as Maximum Throughput and SGI, and a compelling new infrastructure sparks plug-in program-all designed to deliver greater choice and flexibility to clients, and lower cost of ownership.
Desktop Software
With a legacy in advanced systems technology leadership, Discreet is aggressively extending its expertise to the desktop market. Leading the charge to deliver professional media mastering and encoding tools for the desktop, Discreet is presenting cleaner XL for Microsoft Windows. Shipping since March 2003, Discreet cleaner XL
Discreet will showcase combustion 2.1
3D Animation
At NAB, Discreet will showcase 3ds max 5 and character studio 4 modeling, character animation and rendering software used for film and video CG and visual effects, short animated films, and broadcast graphic design. This year, the animation presentations will highlight new character studio 4 software capabilities for nonlinear animation; a 3ds max technology demonstration of new particle flow tools, and new 2D/3D workflow capabilities with the industry’s best implementation of the FBX file format. Support for this well-regarded format in 3ds max and the inferno and flame systems allow a more comprehensive exchange of objects, lighting, texturing and animation data between animators and effects or graphic artists.
