If you’re in the content mastering or transcoding business, you know AmberFin. If not, let me introduce you to the company.
AmberFin (exhibiting at NAB booth SU4323) is privately held by Advent Venture Partners and is part of the Snell & Wilcox Group, headquartered in Basingstoke, UK. Its solutions focus on enabling content owners to maximize the value of their TV, film and video content and increase those revenues by reducing costs, saving time and eliminating incompatibility issues.
AmberFin iCR uses four-time Snell & Wilcox Emmy award-winning technology in its products. As an open standard, AmberFin products digitize and transform new and archived content, and the company claims to deliver the best quality pictures at smaller file sizes across multiple delivery platforms. iCR is already in use at hundreds of locations throughout the world. Now that you know about the company, let’s look at the products.
The latest upgrades to the iCR software further speed the transition to HD, enable enhanced interoperability and improve workflow. New features in iCR 4.5 software include:
• Native support for Avid DNxHD and Final Cut Pro;
• Extended MXF capabilities;
• Simultaneous ingest and transcoding;
• Motion-compensated SD frame rate conversion as standard; and
• Enhanced preprocessing capabilities.
With iCR’s latest architectural improvements, transcoding to multiple platforms can now begin within seconds of the ingest process being started. This allows multiple, simultaneous transcode processes, each with automated QC, to begin as soon as the master encode process is underway. Users can now streamline and complete operations more quickly, which reduces time to market and significantly improves workflow.
The company’s CTO, Bruce Devlin, recently was interviewed by Broadcast Engineering writer Phil Kurz. The interview provides an insightful background on the importance of maximizing image quality even if your content will be ultimately displayed on a 2in cell phone screen. It also provides company research on viewers’ perceptions of image quality.
