Full-service postproduction company Global Entertainment Partners (GEP) has integrated a Snell & Wilcox Ukon universal conversion platform into its Sherman Oaks, California, high-definition facility, which specialises in providing HD and SD mastering, dailies, and ancillary services to postproduction and digital mastering operations at major studios.
Installed in a Spirit Datacine telecine bay, the Ukon from Snell & Wilcox interfaces seamlessly with da Vinci's 2K colour correction system to give GEP colourists maximum flexibility in digital panning and scanning. GEP is also using the Ukon system as an additional downconverter.
"We selected the Ukon system over competing products because we were impressed by how easily it integrated with our existing systems and because it offered a very robust feature set in a single device," said Juan Carlos Astoquillca, GEP's director of engineering and technology. "The Ukon has opened up new business avenues for our company by enabling us to provide services for customers whose source elements are native 16:9 in either HD or SD format. Our colourists now can use all the panning tools available in the telecine bay to create first-rate pan/scan masters with excellent technical and aesthetic quality."
Ukon can be configured to provide upconversion, downconversion, and crossconversion (SD to SD or HD to HD) either singly or in any combination. The system handles the different frame rates, image sizes and aspect ratios, as well as AES and compressed audio formats. Because it also carries out time-code conversion from any SD or HD format to any HD or SD format with exact frame mapping, the Ukon is ideally suited for applications in which precise lip-sync and time-code integrity are important considerations.
"The integration of the Ukon is a win-win situation for us," concluded Astoquillca. "The impressive performance, integration, and options of the Ukon meet our present operational demands and allow us to offer a greater number of services to our clients at an appealing price point."
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