Issue: HD - Jul 21, 2003

MATCHFRAME INVESTS IN HD POST

SAN ANTONIO, TX - MatchFrame (www.matchframe.com) has strengthened its commitment to HD post for its Austin and San Antonio locations.

"We felt the time had come to take the leap of faith and round out our post production capabilities in HD," says Match Frame CEO Don White, who is based in San Antonio. "We want to be working in that format and now have the flexibility to do it in both of our facilities." Match Frame Austin becomes the first post house in the state capital to offer HD post capabilities. Match Frame San Antonio has upgraded its Avid|DS nonlinear editing system to Avid|DS HD. Both facilities are outfitted with complete HD monitoring and playback.

"We're hoping to attract business we haven't seen before while marketing our HD services to our current client base," says White. "We've already seen increased client interest in HD post production. The flexibility we now have in both facilities allows us to promote HD finishing even more."

At MatchFrame Austin, the Discreet Fire HD and Inferno HD - running on an SGI Onyx 2 engine - share a suite. MatchFrame Austin can also perform HD downconversions for those who will not finish on HD at this time but are still acquiring on HD for quality and archival purposes. In addition to its HD roster, MatchFrame Austin also offers editorial with three Avid systems and a Quantel Editbox and film-to-tape transfer with a Cintel Rank Turbo 3 telecine. Ron Pippin heads Revolve, the in-house design team equipped with Mac workstations running Adobe After Effects and Discreet Smoke, Combustion, Fire and Inferno.

MatchFrame San Antonio upgraded one of its two Avid|DS systems to Avid|DS HD with four hours of uncompressed storage. Avid|DS HD offers comprehensive editing, conforming and finishing of uncompressed SD and HD formats. It provides full access to a complete range of integrated picture and audio editing, compositing, paint, animation, character generation and media management tools.

The facility plans to step up to Avid|DS Nitris hardware when it becomes available this fall. DS Nitris will allow them to deliver realtime effects for up to two streams of 10-bit HD media. The Match Frame San Antonio facility also includes three Avid Media Composers, SD Avid|DS and a Discreet Inferno. Its graphics and animation department, headed by Stephanie Schneider, features Softimage|XSI, a renderfarm, Adobe After Effects and Discreet Combustion.