Lucifer takes residence at ITFC

Independent Television Facilities (ITFC), one of Britain's largest postproduction companies, have ordered the new Lucifer-equipped Edifis Scratchbox image restoration system for their headquarters in Acton, West London.
The combination of interactive and automatic picture enhancement tools provided by this system will be used to ensure that programmes produced by ITFC clients meet UK transmission requirements in terms of signal quality and content.
Lucifer augments the interactive tools in Scratchbox with a group of automated processes that can be implemented before, during or after manual image enhancement. The toolset includes tramline filters, dust filters, damage masking, statistically matched fills and adjacent-frame fragment superimposition.
Grain reduction can be achieved by applying filters to areas of the image containing low detail; image areas with high detail, such as faces and titles, are left intact.
Automated processing is performed on a scene-by-scene basis. The familiar Scratchbox interface remains available for interactive removal of any remaining damage.
Eight hours of uncompressed disk-based video and audio storage, integral to Scratchbox. reduces dependence on external VTRs for sourcing and post-enhancement signal playout. This can be translated into reduced VTR use, lower maintenance costs, lower tape costs and improved productivity.
Scratchbox and Lucifer are compatible with all standard-definition VTRs, colour correctors and telecines. EDL/cut list entry and work log extraction are supervised via an external PC which can be supplied either by Edifis or the client. A printable record of all changes is kept in the form of an edit list. This can be used as to generate multiple versions for broadcast, DVD and internet-based delivery.
David Willis, ITFC Director of Video Operations, said: "The combination of Scratchbox and Lucifer provides a powerful and versatile image enhancement system which can be implemented to correct image defects and even to mask offensive programme content. The integral disk storage reduces the VTR maintenance cost overhead and increases the efficiency of the enhancement process."
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