Scene from “Rommel” image courtesy of Bavaria FilmCategory: Production Post-Production Products Services
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Publicity Release Posted: May 09, 2013 05:00:06 EST

SCRATCH Site License Significantly Enhances Efficiency, Productivity and Creativity

MUNICH, May 09, 2013 | SHOOT Publicity Wire | — ASSIMILATE^®, a leading global provider of dailies and post-production tools for digital cinema and broadcast workflows, today announced that one of Europe’s largest production houses, Bavaria Film and D-Facto Motion, the creative house of Bavaria Film, have purchased a company-wide site license for ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH^® finishing software and SCRATCH Lab^®, an advanced production dailies and VFX tool.

The goal of the SCRATCH purchase is for Bavaria Films and D-Facto Motion to standardize all their facilities on a single, streamlined and efficient data workflow throughout its production and post-production processes, from dailies to data management, conforming, and then through the entire post-production workflow, including conform, color grading, compositing, finishing and final output to a variety of formats. Together Bavaria Film and D-Facto Motion are predicting to finish over 125 TV movies, TV episodes, and feature films in 2013.

Founded in 1919, Bavaria Films is known for its big blockbuster movies and film classics, such as “The Sound of Music” (1965), “Cabaret” (1972), “Das Boot” (1981) and “Never Ending Story” (1983), among numerous others.

Most recently, Bavaria Films and D-Facto employed SCRATCH Lab and SCRATCH for the dailies and full post-production of feature film “Nils Holgersson,” TV short series/episodes “Tatort” (distributed in over 40 countries), and TV movie “Rommel” (production for ‘Rommel’ by teamWorx).

Waheed Zamani, managing director / senior colorist @ D-Facto Motion Munich, stated, “SCRATCH is an amazing system with many functionalities – absolutely everything a colorist needs and beyond. SCRATCH is highly customizable, which gives us the freedom and flexibility to make changes at every stage of the entire post-production process, and enabling us to achieve the highest level of results for the content and look of each project.”

Being Europe’s number one producer of TV movies and shows, Bavaria Films and D-Facto Motion faced the challenge of producing a huge number of projects simultaneously. Over the years, the companies had used a variety of systems for film and digital projects. To support their high-growth ventures for TV and features, it became apparent that standardizing and streamlining processes with powerful and robust end-to-end workflow tools would avoid transcoding, which helps to ensure higher quality results, and would enable consistent quality and faster time to market, all while saving time, reducing maintenance costs, and lowering training costs for personnel.

Günther Farrenkopf, lead technical manager at Bavaria Film Munich, commented, “Since 1919 we have rarely experienced products that have catapulted us into the future. SCRATCH is such a product. SCRATCH streamlines the workflow, beginning with dailies, and it also integrates easily into every existing pipeline. The ability to use off-the-shelf hardware makes maintenance and in-house support for SCRATCH viable, quick, and cost-effective.” SCRATCH tools have been so cost-effective and efficient for D-Facto that they are considered to be the number one creative house for movie and TV production in the German market.

Bavaria Films and D-Facto closely reviewed and considered nearly all the workflow tools on the market. With a robust data toolset, SCRATCH emerged as the most complete dailies-to-finishing solution, as well as the most cost effective, with a superior price/performance ratio. Additionally many competitive products required costly proprietary hardware, which contributes to high cost of maintenance, whereas SCRATCH runs on high-performance off-the-shelf computers running on Windows and Mac OS X.

Tim Lücker, colorist / head of post-production @ D-Facto Motion Berlin, noted, “SCRATCH delivers the speed and flexibility for working creatively – even when more than just grading is needed. It’s more than just a superb grading solution – it’s one rocket of a workflow backbone!”

“Years of experience and know-how has given Bavaria Production Services GmbH their strong, well-known name in the post market. The combination of their knowledge and skills to produce high-end features, TV movies and episodes with ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH products, enables the looks and high-quality results that have garnered many awards and that are highly valued by the German viewing audience,” said Patric Breuer, CEO of Dreamwalks GmbH. “Dreamwalks is proud to be the only ASSIMILATE reseller in DACH, working closely with high-end post production customers like Bavaria Production Services GmbH to provide the products and support they need to achieve their desired results.”

SCRATCH Digital Workflow Tools
ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH powerful end-to-end data-workflow tools — from conform, color-grading, compositing, and through to finishing — and SCRATCH Lab, a robust dailies or VFX review digital pipeline, deliver the industry’s most efficient and cost-effective toolset for data-centric digital cinema and episodic television productions for 2D and 3D stereo projects. Both products support multiple formats, including ARRI RAW, Sony F65 and F55, Phantom, and Canon 5D, as well as enhanced support for RED ONE, RED ONE MX, SCARLET, and EPIC at all resolutions. All versions of SCRATCH and Lab software, running on Mac OS X and Windows 7, feature SDI and 3G output via AJA Kona 3G graphics cards, fast dailies rendering, and improved metadata, time-code handling, and ACES. For the latest feature film and TV credits, pricing and sales, visit www.assimilateinc.com.

About Bavaria Film GmbH
Bavaria Film GmbH is one of the most venerable media companies in Europe. A traditional film studio founded in 1919 in Geiselgasteig on the outskirts of Munich, Bavaria Film and its subsidiaries and partner companies have developed into an international service provider for film and television productions, with branches in the important media locations in German-speaking countries and providing services for all segments of the audio-visual industry. Learn more at www.bavaria-film.de.

About Dreamwalks
Dreamwalks Solutions for Moving Pictures is the leading reseller of high-end post-production systems, covering every stage from On-Set, Storage, SAN-Solutions up to editing and complete Finishing turnkey systems. Established in 2002, Dreamwalks has the leading competence from recommending and configuring individual solutions up to setting up whole post-facilities for a broad range of postproduction houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Learn more at www.dreamwalks.com.

About ASSIMILATE
ASSIMILATE is the premier provider of digital workflow and post-production tools that have proven essential to the successful creation of thousands of studio and independent features, television shows, music videos and corporate video productions. The company’s SCRATCH products, running on Windows and Mac OS X, are the heartbeat of today’s most demanding digital post-production and dailies workflows for 2D and stereo 3D productions. They equip directors, DPs, on-set professionals and artists with the state-of-the-art, intuitive, data-centric solutions they need to meet the continual challenges of increased creativity and productivity amid ever-shrinking budgets. ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH data-centric DI system, is the most comprehensive, end-to-end cinema and broadcast imaging tool for conform, versioning, color grading, playback, compositing and finishing for nearly all popular digital workflows, including, RED, ARRI, Sony F65 and F55, Canon 5D, Phantom, Go Pro and many more. SCRATCH Lab delivers a comprehensive toolset for the review, versioning, color correction, conform and output of on-set or VFX dailies. ASSIMILATE is a privately held company, with headquarters in Santa Clara, California, USA, with offices in London, UK, Groningen, NL and Beijing City, CN and markets its products worldwide via a global reseller network. To learn more, visit www.assimilateinc.com.

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