Rainmaker Adds More
FrameCycler to the Pipeline

Leading Visual Effects and Animation House
Relies on IRIDAS for Review

Vancouver: December 18, 2007 ... IRIDAS, the industry leader in uncompressed playback technologies, has completed the sale of another seat of FrameCycler DDS 2007 to Rainmaker Entertainment. The award-winning visual effects and animation house with facilities in Vancouver and London now owns site licenses of FrameCycler Professional 2007 at each location and four review stations with FrameCycler DDS.

"We use FrameCycler DDS in our theater for 10-bit 2K playback," says Jason Dowdeswell, Head of Digital Studio at Rainmaker. "We also have viewing stations for our artists on each floor of the facility. FrameCycler is a great tool for our workflow. It's easy to use and our artists can move between FrameCycler applications without skipping a beat since they know the controls."

The zoom controls are critical, allowing Rainmaker's artists to check the details, such as wire removal on a shot with absolute precision. "For quality control, being able to view 10-bits is absolutely essential for us," explains Dowdeswell. "Graphics cards only offer 8-bit color which creates issues such as stepping and gradations. FrameCycler solves that by offering 10-bit color depth via the SDI-out."

"We like the XML support in FrameCycler, as it allows for seamless integration into our pipeline," Martin Kumor, Head of Production Technology at Rainmaker explains. "FrameCycler allows basic compositing operations (A over B...etc) along with the advanced timeline options. Our tools generate dynamic XML playlists which incorporate all of these features to create a very robust multi-element playback solution."

Rainmaker Entertainment, which has become a driving force in the Vancouver industry, is doing an increasing amount of high profile feature film work, both in animation and visual effects. Currently production is underway on their first digital feature, Escape From Planet Earth. Visual effects work was recently seen in Blades of Glory and Golden Compass. Current visual effects projects include Vantage Point, Inkheart, Case 39 and Tropic Thunder.

FrameCycler Digital Daily System (DDS) is a part of the FrameCycler family of uncompressed playback applications. DualStream is an optional module from IRIDAS which adds stereoscopic playback capabilities to FrameCycler and SpeedGrade. For more information, contact IRIDAS at +49 89 330 35 142, IRIDAS USA at (818) 951-8927, or visit www.framecycler.com.

About IRIDAS
IRIDAS pioneered desktop film-resolution playback in 2001. Its FrameCycler products are now the industry standard for frame-based image review. In 2003 IRIDAS introduced the first non-destructive color correction application. Today SpeedGrade and FrameCycler provide the critical links in an end-to-end pipeline for uncompressed content and color metadata. IRIDAS' applications are used by filmmakers around the world and most major animation and postproduction houses. IRIDAS is an independent, privately held company headquartered in Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.iridas.com.