Qube Cinema continues to see high volume sales of the QubeMaster Pro digital cinema package (DCP) encoding software to postproduction facilities throughout Europe. These sales consolidate Qube’s position in the DCP encoding and packaging market on the continent. Post houses, from the UK to Moscow, and from the Baltic to Romania, now have a fast, easy-to-use way to master DCPs for feature film and other digital content.
Visitors to IBC this week can see how QubeMaster Pro works with a wide range of source material to pre-process, encode, encrypt and package content in one step, using a software-only solution that allows for faster encoding speeds. With ever cheaper and faster hardware available in the market, there is no need to constantly upgrade the product to achieve faster encoding. QubeMaster Pro is database-driven software with a familiar user interface.
“Encoding with QubeMaster Pro has been 100% reliable for us,” said Paul Wright, director of technology at Dragon DI. “This has given us the confidence we need for our digital cinema deliveries.” Located near Cardiff, Wales, Dragon DI is dedicated to services for digital intermediates and restoration, as well as working on postproduction for feature film and TV content. “The feature set is rich and flexible and has been able to tackle everything we’ve thrown at it so far, from commercials to feature films,” explained Wright. “We’re extremely impressed with Qube.”
The architecture of QubeMaster Pro is based on the DCI Object Model with a hierarchy of Shows, Compositions, Reels and Track files, and reveals profound flexibility as users delve into the system. It is ideal for the conversion of a Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM) to a DCP. QubeMaster Pro offers flexible color space conversion between XYZ, RGB and YCbCr color spaces alongside a variety of useful preprocessing tools. It produces JPEG2000 Interop and SMPTE packages, with optional MPEG-2 Interop packages.
QubeMaster Pro allows real-time previews of JPEG2000 and MPEG 2 files to any display device from its Clip Editor or Preview Window. These two ways of previewing material support industry standard 3D LUTs for viewing XYZ and Log material with accurate color rendition on computer monitors.
“We had a positive experience working with Qube right from the start,” said Angel Angelescu, CEO of Mercenar Networks Ltd. “We were very satisfied with their useful demo version and were able to upgrade to the full version without any further installation after purchase.” Mercenar Networks, in Bucharest, Romania, works with production houses around the world. “We find that the QubeMaster Pro software is user-friendly, complies with our workflow needs and has an intuitive interface. We like its design and its powerful MS SQL database.”
Flexible Source File Formats
Picture and audio elements can be brought into QubeMaster Pro using a variety of methods, including digitizing tape-based sources, file import and image sequence import.
“It’s great for us that QubeMaster Pro is able to work with different types of file formats,” said Anatoly Kuzmenko, CEO at DCP24 Lab in Moscow. The Russian post facility uses QubeMaster Pro to master feature film, commercial video and 3D digital cinema content. “We no longer have to turn to different software when we change file formats. QubeMaster Pro saves us time and has improved our post processes. We’re very satisfied with QubeMaster Pro.”
Facilitating DCP Preview and Uncompressed 4K Workflow
Qube Cinema will also be showing QubeMaster Preview at IBC. QubeMaster Preview is the standalone software application that allows DCPs, mastered from any source, to be viewed on a PC. This offers postproduction studios, independent filmmakers and mastering facilities an affordable way to preview and QC their mastered DCPs.
“QubeMaster Preview gives our European clients a proven professional DCP QC player without having to purchase a complete mastering package or expensive DCI equipment,” said Nigel Dennis, director of marketing and sales for Qube Cinema in Europe. “With Preview, QubeMaster Pro and last year’s development of our uncompressed 4K Xi IMB, this really is a dream come true for post houses in Europe.”
Visitors to IBC can visit Qube Cinema at stand 7.F45 in Hall 7. To schedule a demo of QubeMaster Pro at IBC, contact Nigel Dennis at
[email protected] or
+44 208 1445661.