EVS-OpenCube, a provider of turnkey MXF digitization servers and software, has signed an agreement with Fox studios to supply OpenCubeHD units for MXF-file format ingest and production management.
Twentieth Century Fox is one of the six main U.S. film studios located at Century City in Los Angeles. Film studios and post houses are currently facing a major challenge: The volume of generated video material is increasing dramatically, especially in cases where production is based on an uncompressed format.
The result is a significant increase in the needs for storage capability in production facilities. There is also the challenge of developing an HD tapeless workflow that is scalable and delivers optimal performance. This aspect is critical as the HD workflow ensures a smooth video file exchange with full interoperability, adding substantial value to the production chain.
Twentieth Century Fox Studios needed a compressed production file format with no concessions as to video content quality and the actual fabrication process. The Studio finally opted for JPEG 2000 as a master format.
Based on OpenCubeHD servers, staff at 20th Century Fox generate mezzanine files in HD with JPEG 2000 (mathematically-lossless) compression for encoding. The files are encapsulated in the appropriate MXF wrapper for audio/video aggregation, offering complete and reliable interoperability with third-party file exchange.
OpenCubeHD servers were integrated in the existing production workflow, controlled by a SOAP web services API for automatic ingest and conversion.
