At NAB next week, MTI Film will introduce a new feature of its CORTEX line of dailies systems designed to address the persistent problem of dead pixels in digital cinematography.
All CORTEX v 2.0 products will include Dead Pixel Detection, a tool for identifying dead pixels in camera media or in later rough cuts or assemblies. On set, this can give early warning about faults in the sensors of digital cinema cameras. Information about dead pixels can then be stored, along with corresponding timecode information and other metadata, in a CORTEX Manifest file so that it can be passed on to post production. Facilities with CORTEX Enterprise, a full featured dailies and postproduction system, will be able to use the Dead Pixel Correction feature to automatically repair dead pixels in footage, either based on reports sent from set or by running a detection pass.
Dead pixels, sometimes referred to as “stuck” or “hot” pixels, are a frequent problem in digital cinematography, the result of pixels in a camera’s sensor malfunctioning. “It’s very common,” said MTI film product director Amy Hawthorne. “All cameras have some number of dead pixels and the problem worsens with usage, age and travel.”
“Some cameras include the ability to ‘map out’ dead or stuck pixels so they aren’t visible on the actual footage,” Hawthorne added. “But at a certain point in a camera’s life, there may be too many or they may be located in positions such that mapping no longer works.”
Current methods for identifying and correcting for dead pixels are time-consuming and expensive. The new Dead Pixel Correction feature of CORTEX Dailies Enterprise solves such problems quickly and automatically. MTI’s Dead Pixel Correction is based on proprietary technology developed through MTI Film’s expertise in digital film restoration.
At NAB, MTI Film will introduce a number of other new CORTEX features including a basic edit tool. It will also launch a free CORTEX product, CORTEX D.I.T., and a low-cost transcoding-only edition, CORTEX Transcode.
