MONTREAL, May 7, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq:ADSK), announced today the European debut of lustre(TM), its new and award-winning digital grading and color timing system for motion pictures, at the Cannes International Film Festival 2003. The lustre system provides directors, cinematographers and colorists with the industry's most powerful digital color correction technology, and Discreet is inviting visitors with interest in motion picture Digital Intermediates to see the technology in action at Stand 26.01, Le Palais 01 in Cannes.

Discreet's lustre system was developed in conjunction with Colorfront (Hungary), the software manufacturer responsible for the groundbreaking digital color grading technologies deployed on The Lord Of The Rings (New Line) trilogy and Stuart Little 2 (Sony Pictures Entertainment). Discreet's new system has been received to industry acclaim since its announcement this April and recently won the Digital Cinema Premiere Product Award for Advancement in the Art and Science of Digital Cinema at NAB 2003. One of the first European sites to install lustre is Eclair Laboratories in Paris.

The Discreet lustre system provides an intuitive environment for highly interactive color correction sessions. Colorists and color timers can collaborate with cinematographers and filmmakers to maintain and enhance the colors and overall look of a feature film -- from the most subtle of adjustments to extravagant color and lighting effects.

"As the motion-picture industry is rapidly adopting digital technologies for all phases of filmmaking and exhibition, a product like the lustre system will play a pivotal role in making motion picture Digital Intermediate post production more creative, cost efficient and productive," said Patrick Jocelyn, director of EMEA at Discreet. "We are extremely pleased to present this powerful filmmaker's tool at the prestigious Cannes festival."

Creative focus

The lustre product features a wide range of advanced creative tools that facilitate the complex color manipulation and image enhancement tasks becoming inherent in digital motion picture post production today. Designed to work in both linear and logarithmic color spaces, lustre provides familiar tools and techniques to cinematographers and film laboratory color timers, as well as tools for colorists more familiar with video processes. The lustre system features a high-quality tactile control surface designed to provide a more intuitive color correction interface than is generally afforded by a stylus and mouse.

"Discreet's lustre system is a lot more than just a simple color correction system," says Eclair Laboratories' Philippe Reinaudo. "It is more of a 'look-design' system that allows filmmakers to creatively control the entire look, mood, and color detail of their work -- from a single scene to the full length feature."

Ultra High Performance

The lustre system features a highly-tuned software architecture capable of delivering real-time primary color correction on 2K film scans with 16-bit/component color processing. As with Discreet's fire(R) and inferno(R) online systems, lustre delivers its real-time capabilities through rigorous software optimization.

A key benefit of this approach is the elimination of the resolution and feature constraints generally inherent in most custom hardware designs. As a result, the lustre system will process images at any resolution -- including 2K, 4K and higher.

Improved workflow

The lustre system provides a unique parallel grading pipeline where multiple tasks can be accomplished simultaneously on centralized data -- offering clients better flexibility, productivity and speed. lustre has been designed to deploy efficiently into film production pipelines and be modular (master and assistant stations) and non-linear -- so it can be used at any point in the process -- not just when scanning and printing.

Key lustre features

    --  A turnkey solution that features Discreet's intuitive user
        interface and an interactive hardware control surface for
        enhanced ergonomic use

    --  Offers a resolution-independent environment capable of
        processing images of any resolution (2K, 4K and above) and a
        high-performance color grading environment with real-time
        primary color correction and playback of up to 2K 10-bit RGB
        data

    --  Delivers powerful secondary color correction tools and
        advanced proxy management for real-time preview of complex
        effects

    --  Includes features: advanced tracking, keying, dust busting and
        rotoscoping tools

    --  Provides logarithmic and linear color manipulation and
        management, tools calibrated in printer lights, accurate
        monitor calibration and can simultaneously drive a calibrated
        DLP projector

    --  Offers SD and HD video I/O capabilities including pan & scan.
        Ideal for data-to-video and video-to-film workflows

    --  Includes a new plug in architecture for application of image
        processing tools

        --  Designed to integrate with visual effects and digital
            editing solutions and will offer support for standard film
            scans (Cineon and DPX)

Pricing and availability

Discreet plans to release the lustre system in the summer of 2003. For pricing and configuration details, please contact Discreet Sales at 800/869-3504 or 514/393-1616, or visit www.discreet.com.

About Discreet

Discreet empowers media professionals to realize the visual experience and transform their most evocative and ambitious visions into reality. Discreet's award-winning solutions are designed for digital media creation, management and delivery -- across all disciplines from film and television visual effects, color grading and editing to animation, game development, web/interactive, and design visualization. Discreet is based in Montreal, Quebec and is a division of Autodesk, Inc, the world's leading design and digital media creation, management, and distribution company. Product and corporate information: www.discreet.com.

Note to Editors: Discreet is a division of Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk, Discreet, fire, inferno and lustre are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc./ Autodesk Canada Inc. in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

SOURCE: Discreet

Discreet Public Relations
Kevin G Clark, 415/547-2457
kevin.g.clark@autodesk.com
or
Prince PR, UK
Ron Prince, +44 1225 789 200
ronny@dircon.co.uk

http://www.businesswire.com

Today's News On The Net - Business Wire's full file on the Internet
with Hyperlinks to your home page.