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USA Studios Downconverts "Concert for George" with Snell & Wilcox Ukon In Preparation For DVD

Universal Conversion Platform Creates Pristine Digital Beta Master of Highly Anticipated Feature Film

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14 October 2003 - Long-time Snell & Wilcox customer USA Studios, an industry leader in international tape duplication with two high-volume facilities in New York City, has wrapped work on the downconversion of "Concert For George", a feature film documenting last year's George Harrison tribute concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

USA Studios used a Snell & Wilcox "Ukon" universal format conversion platform to downconvert the HD masters of the concert to Digital Beta. The downconversion was completed in preparation for the film's DVD release in November, which follows a limited theatrical release.

USA Studios, among the world's first to purchase a Ukon following its introduction last year, processed the HD masters through the unit to downconvert the material for standard NTSC television. Ukon's real-time conversions eliminated artifacts associated with HD conversions and provided pristine video for the downconverted masters. USA Studios won the high-profile project because of its internationally respected conversion capabilities.

"Picture artifacts are one of the larger issues associated with any kind of HD conversion, and it's important to minimise these problems as much as possible," said Bill Stephan, Senior Editor and Senior DVD Author, USA Studios. "Ukon far exceeded the competitive units we evaluated in eliminating artifacts because it features a much higher level of intelligence than other converters. It has all the settings we need to obtain optimal quality from a conversion in any direction."

USA Studios has been actively using Ukon since its installation last year. In addition to "Concert For George", the facility also employs Ukon for editing purposes.

The Snell & Wilcox Ukon universal format conversion platform is designed for use in broadcast, post and production environments where pictures need to be converted in all directions between SD and HD environments, and where different frame rates, images sizes and aspect ratios present additional quality challenges. Whatever the input and output requirements, HD or SD, Ukon can be configured to provide up-conversion, down-conversion and cross-conversion, either singly or in any combination.

As well as providing high quality picture output, Ukon offers the added benefits of aspect ratio conversion with tilt, pan and zoom, time-code conversion with precise frame mapping, comprehensive audio handling and 3:2 cadence detection and repair. Unlike other format conversion systems, Ukon carries out all these functions at the same time, in a single pass, thereby freeing up expensive non-linear software tools that would otherwise be necessary.

About USA Studios
For more information about USA Studios, please see www.usastudios.tv