Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 19, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.Like Arri, the Thomson subsidiary Grass Valley also sees a strong trend towards HD. The French company is therefore now offering the Spirit HD as an entry-level machine for video and data, complementing the Spirit 4K and 2K film scanners.
At NAB, Grass Valley is presenting the Spirit HD to the public for the first time. The device works in all common HD resolutions, including 1920 x 1080/50, 60 and 59.94 interlaced, 1920 x 1080/25, 24 and 23.98 progressive as well as 1280 x 720/60 and 59.94 progressive.
The machine costs 550,000 euros in the video version and 650,000 euros in the data version. The price includes the 35 mm optics. All options available for the higher-quality machines, such as 16 mm optics, grain reducer, secondary colour correction and auto focus, are also available for the HD version. The Spirit HD can also be upgraded to the Spirit 2K or Spirit 4K.
Another Grass Valley innovation is Bones Dailies: with this processing system, the company is offering a new approach to creating dailies. The idea is to scan film material by the day following the shooting day, carry out a colour correction, connect it with the sound on the basis of the keycodes and then output it to tape. An elaborate process in which qualified personnel and expensive machines are tied up for a long time and which is carried out to give filmmakers a first look at the material shot.
With Bones Dailies, the team feeds image and sound data into a computer system that stores them on hard disks, partly synchronises image and sound data automatically and, after colour correction, outputs them to HD, SD or as data. This makes the work process substantially simpler and less expensive.
A beta version of Bones Dailies can be seen at NAB. The product is expected to be ready by IBC. It has a modular design, and the price of the basic version for a 1- to 4-seat system is around 95,000 euros.
Further Links:
- Thomson Grass Valley
