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Snell & Wilcox Unveils NIAGRA

High-Resolution Grain Management System Eliminates Artifacts in Virtual Telecine Environments

HAMPSHIRE, England, April 14, 2004 -- Snell & Wilcox today announced the launch of NIAGRA, a grain management and artifact suppression system designed for virtual telecine environments. Priced at half the cost of the nearest competing solution, NIAGRA provides users with powerful real-time tools for improving the quality of film-originated material and delivering superior picture fidelity during electronic assembly.

Designed for operation in the virtual telecine environment via integration with the da Vinci Systems 2K control surface, NIAGRA works with all high-definition and standard definition video standards and supports AES, AC3, and Dolby E audio. It provides automatic gamut legalization as well as a primary color corrector.

“With nearly all episodic television programs being finished in high definition, excessive film grain, noise, and other artifacts need to be carefully controlled—since now they’re that much more obvious to viewers,” said Andy Major, Snell & Wilcox product manager for conversion and restoration products. “NIAGRA delivers clean, high-resolution images at a much lower cost than traditional approaches to grain management, and avoids the picture softness and smearing that conventional noise reduction techniques so often leave behind.”

To eliminate the smears and image softening that can result when conventional noise reduction methods are used on film-based HD material, NIAGRA utilizes real-time multi-dimensional non-linear wavelet-based picture analysis tools. This results in stunning picture quality with none of the artifacts associated with traditional techniques.
“Image quality is a differentiating factor for post production houses” said Matthew Straeb, vice-president of marketing and product management for da Vinci Systems. “With the integration of NIAGRA into the 2K, now these facilities have a tool to eliminate noise and grain problems as a seamless part of their da Vinci-based workflow.”

Among its other features, NIAGRA’s enhancement controls allow the sharpness of output images to be improved, while a combination of linear and non-linear processes generate edge connection and peaking signals to ensure that overshoots and ringing are minimized. Spatial multi-dimensional processing controls allow for horizontal, vertical, and diagonal enhancements. YRGB processing provides primary controls of gain, chroma gain, and phase (hue). In addition, control is provided over YRGB, black stretch and white stretch.

As part of the Snell & Wilcox commitment to open IT standards, NIAGRA also detects 3:2 cadence, tracks all cuts, and inserts this information as metadata into the video signal. This provides tremendous benefits for products downstream in the production flow that can take advantage of this information.

Packaged in a 2-RU case, Niagra will be demonstrated at NAB2004 on Snell & Wilcox booth C.6421.

SNELL & WILCOX is a world-leading electronics design, manufacture and engineering group with an international reputation for the development of advanced image communications technologies for the world’s broadcast television, video, satellite, cable, film and image communications industries. The company is dedicated to preserving the true content of the moving video image. Snell & Wilcox Inc. has offices throughout the United States and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Snell & Wilcox Ltd. is based in Hampshire, England with offices all over the world. www.snellwilcox.com

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