SpectSoft's RaveHD helps bring Tippett Studio's "Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation" to life!
Oakdale, Ca. - April 6, 2004 -- SpectSoft, LLC today revealed that the upcoming film, "Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation", used the SpectSoft RaveHD system in the production pipeline at the famed Tippett Studio. "Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation" is a sequel to the original "Starship Troopers" and is the first film directed by Tippett Studio founder and visual effects legend Phil Tippett -- a man who has won Best Visual Effects Oscars for films like Jurassic Park and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
Early during the planning phase of the movie, it was decided to shoot the movie completely digital - yet another first for Tippett. It was at this point that Tippett Studio decided to utilize RaveHD to capture all the visual effects plates for the entire film. One major concern was the fact that, since the movie was shot with both the Sony Cinealta and Panasonic Varicam HD cameras, Tippett would need a system that worked in both 1080p24 and 720p60 formats used in each of the differing cameras. RaveHD was able to fulfill this requirement as it has complete HD (1080p24/25/30 and 720p60) and Varicam (Active Frame Flagging) support.
Over the course of the eight month post production process, visual effects plates were captured as sequential images onto the local disk array and exported via NFS, the standard Unix file sharing method, into the Tippett workflow. The images were then converted from the native Rec.709 Y'CbCr HD color space into a floating point RGB color space designed by Tippett for use by their artists.
Since the plan for the film was a direct-to-video route, Tippett decided to final the visual effects shots as high definition video with the RaveHD box. This process consisted of rendering out at 1080p24 and converting back from the Tippett floating point format back down to Rec. 709 Y'CbCr. Again, the frames were moved onto the box via NFS onto the disk array. Once on the array the clips were immediately playable.
"Taking on Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation was a challenge for Tippett Studio. We had no infrastructure to deal with HD plates and the production was going to use both the Sony CineAlta and the Panasonic Varicam systems.", comments Dan McNamara, Head or Operations at Tippett Studio, "Because the project was low budget we needed a HD DDR system that was flexible and cost effective. After evaluating the existing DDRs and looking into building something in-house we decided that going with the SpectSoft RaveHD system was the way to go".
RaveHD is a second generation, open source, Linux based, hybrid digital disk drive recorder and video editor geared toward the high end film and graphics industries. It utilizes open standards and protocols to achieve a products that is elegant, easy to integrate, and totally customizable. It features a data agnostic core that allows it to work with today's uncompressed standard and high definition video as well as tomorrow's super high datarate video!
With features like frame oriented, standard file system storage and centralized database asset tracking, RaveHD is the first DDR to really focus on the problems faced in working with film. Other features like RP188 (embedded timecode), Varicam support, real time color correction, programmable cadence (2:3, 3:2:3, 2:3:3:2, etc), and RS422 machine control are standard as well. For more information on RaveHD, visit:
http://www.rave-hd.com
About Tippett Studio: Located in Berkeley, Calif., Tippett Studio was founded in 1983 by Phil Tippett and his partner, Tippett Studio President, Jules Roman. The studio employs more than 225 artists, craftsmen and engineers. A visual effects and animation studio for feature films and award-winning television commercials, Tippett Studio has received Academy Award nominations in visual effects for Starship Troopers, Dragonheart, Willow, Dragonslayer, and Hollow Man, and won numerous awards for its "Carl & Ray Pet Shop Campaign" for Blockbuster Entertainment. Tippett Studio has also received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for the development of a Digital-Input Device for motion capture. Phil Tippett won two Academy Awards for visual effects on Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park and two Emmys for Dinosaur! and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. The studio is also preparing to expand into producing full-length animated feature films and mixed live-action and CGI features. For more information on Tippett Studio, visit:
http://www.tippett.com
About SpectSoft, LLC: Founded in 1997 to specialize in Linux-based software for use in the film, media, and broadcast industries, SpectSoft has quickly become a leading industry innovator. Since it's inception, SpectSoft has worked on technical projects with some of the industries biggest and brightest companies like Dreamworks Animation (Glendale, CA) and Tippett Studio (Berkeley, CA) that both pushed the envelope and furthered the state of the art in the film pipeline process. Throughout the years, SpectSoft has been able to maintain a relatively small footprint, the family values, and ownership that make it so unique. For more information on SpectSoft, visit:
http://www.spectsoft.com
Media Contact: Ramona Howard [ramona-at-spectsoft-dot-com] Phone: +1.209.847.7812
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