Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 18, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Filmlight had already announced the Truelight Projector Probe at the previous IBC. After this year’s NAB, the measuring and calibration device that calibrates projectors for color accuracy is now to become available. Externally, Projector Probe resembles a telescope that turned out too short. The device has a “viewing angle” of less than 3 degrees. The point that the sensor sees is marked by a laser pointer. This allows several test points to be read in quickly. A spectrometer is also built into the probe. It enables color and brightness to be measured simultaneously.
The associated CubeBuilder software can be used to generate the corresponding cubes (3D lookup tables) from the measurement data. This makes it possible to achieve uniform color representations on all Filmlight devices. The price of the device including software is around 24,000 US dollars.
Filmlight has announced Baselight 3.3 for the end of the second quarter. However, some features of the new version are already integrated into version 3.2 as a preliminary update.
Baselight 3.3 is able to remotely control the Spirit Telecine from Thomson Grass Valley: It supports the complete range of functions, as was previously possible with only a few devices (for example da Vinci).
The new version can also handle the new CDL (Color Decision List) color grading standard. This standard, initiated by the American Society of Cinematographers, enables color grading data to be stored independently of the system and thus allows straightforward data exchange with other color grading systems.
Baselight is now also available as a software-only version for existing customers to download. It is a fully functional Baselight that lacks the control panel. The software runs only under Mac OS X and is intended to introduce and train new Operators on the system. A further aim is to develop the software-only version so that it can be used to work directly on set with a laptop and begin defining the looks on location. Since Baselight was originally programmed for Linux, the small version is available only for Mac OS X, because porting it to Windows would have required too much effort.
A 10-GBit Ethernet connection is also now available for all Filmlight systems. This allows users to work in real time over the network with 4K data located on another system.
Further links:
- Filmlight
