Pinkau was the first German company to gain international notoriety for their 3D usage in the entertainment sector and is one of the few companies in Germany to provide specialized 3D underwater equipment. Recently the company added Iridas SpeedGrade NX to its post-production suites to grade and finish Ocean 3D. Ocean 3D's unique underwater scenes were filmed on location from the Red Sea the Gulf of Aquaba Egyptian National Parks and include amazing images of swarming tuna around Malta. A prime example of how effective 3D story telling can significantly enhance a storyline in Oceans 3D the audience becomes a virtual crew on the expedition; experiencing the excitement of sailing in storms watching dolphins playing at the bow or setting up equipment for amazing dives. Thomas Pinkau says Our workflow for Ocean 3D relied on a variety of cameras and formats including Canon HF100 and Canon 5D MKII. We originally planned on using our established Premiere and After Effects pipeline for selecting and fixing shots but SpeedGrade NX quickly became part of the early post-production stages as well. With SpeedGrade NX's wide range of tools for analyzing and fixing Stereo 3D material we quickly got addicted to bringing the material directly into the SpeedGrade suite. We even used it for creating the rough cut in S3D as it was significantly faster and more convenient than any other editorial solution we used before.” “One thing we enjoyed in particular ” Pinkau says “was the file loading mechanism of SpeedGrade NX: after creating a file structure for the project it simply loads left and right eye automatically. While we didn't rely on the auto correction for the geometry (the tools for manually correcting geometry allow for very fast and precise correction we prefer to keep full control) the auto matching for left/right colorimetry saved us a huge amount of time. It made color grading a breeze as we could focus on creating stunning underwater pictures like the examples you see here. SpeedGrade NX brings refined stereo tools a breakthrough in support for the latest RAW cameras increased render speed and improved color management. SpeedGrade NX includes a major update to the award-winning DualStream stereo toolset native Arri Alexa RAW workflows and beta support for the Epic camera from Red Digital Cinema. Iridas' industry-leading Universal RAW architecture which supports virtually all RAW cameras used in production today has been updated to include native support for the Arri Alexa V3 color science. V3 RAW files can be reviewed and graded instantly in real time and high fidelity. This is especially important for stereo workflows where 3K review in render quality previously required lengthy transcoding processes. In addition to systems from Red and Arri Iridas continues to support virtually all other RAW-based cameras in the market including cameras from Phantom Weisscam Silicon Imaging Ikonoskop Indiecam and others. Iridas www.iridas.com
