NVIDIA CUDA Drives Innovation in Broadcast and Film Production

NVIDIA CUDA Drives Innovation in Broadcast and Film Production

Technology Innovators da Vinci, Lowry Digital, ASSIMILATE and GIC Deliver Significant Performance and Cost Benefits Using NVIDIA CUDA Parallel Computing Architecture

AMSTERDAM, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBC 2009 -- NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual computing, is making it possible for production houses to work faster and easier with the immense quantity of high-resolution data generated for HDTV, Blu-Ray and 4K digital cinema.

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Innovative companies such as da Vinci Systems, Lowry Digital, ASSIMILATE and GIC are leveraging the CUDA(TM) parallel computing architecture of NVIDIA processors to solve a variety of critical challenges facing broadcast and film professionals, including color balancing, film restoration, visual effects creation and video format encoding.

CUDA Architecture Accelerates Color Grading

da Vinci Systems, a leading provider of color-enhancement products used in post-production facilities worldwide, recently announced a powerful new version of its da Vinci Resolve digital mastering suite, based on da Vinci's C.O.R.E. (CUDA Optimized Resolve Engine). The new solution harnesses the massively parallel processing capabilities of the NVIDIA Quadro graphics processing unit (GPU) to deliver high-resolution, real-time color grading and image processing, and was utilized on recent big screen blockbusters, such as "Star Trek" and "Terminator Salvation".

"The performance benefits of CUDA-enabled GPUs are remarkable, offering processing power that's up to 20-times faster than our previous generation solution," said Gary Adams, da Vinci product manager. "Post production facilities running Resolve can now ingest, color grade and adjust the resolution of 4k digital motion picture images or stereoscopic 3D images in real-time, without loss of quality. Resolve unleashes the power of NVIDIA GPUs, providing colorists throughout the world with more creative immediacy and the ability to set a broader range of compelling looks for film and video."

CUDA Architecture Accelerates Moving Image Processing

Lowry Digital, a market leader in digital restoration and image quality improvement for classic films and contemporary motion pictures, utilizes NVIDIA GPUs and the CUDA parallel computing architecture to improve productivity by five times. Lowry's recent projects include image restoration for the classic 20th Century Fox film, "The Robe", and digital image sweetening for the Oscar-winning Paramount/Warner Bros. feature, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". In addition, Lowry relied on NVIDIA GPUs when contracted by NASA to restore footage transmitted back to Earth of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.

"NVIDIA CUDA has enabled Lowry Digital to provide more value for our customers by reducing the time and expense to perform digital restoration," said John D. Lowry, founder, Lowry Digital. "Now we are pushing the technology even further, delivering solutions that have never been attempted before. Utilizing GPUs to perform complex imaging processing, we can take a variety of video and film sources, shot on different types of cameras, with different lighting, and normalize them so that it appears everything was all shot under the same conditions."

CUDA Architecture Accelerates Post Production

ASSIMILATE is transforming the creation of visually complex imagery with its SCRATCH Digital Process Solution, a CUDA architecture-enabled real-time, end-to-end data workflow for post production. Designed for creative and post professionals, SCRATCH encompasses data management, review/playback, color grading, finishing and final mastering to numerous formats at resolutions up to 4K.

"ASSIMILATE is completely focused on leveraging NVIDIA GPUs to deliver new real-time tools that were simply not possible before," said Lucas Wilson, director of business development at ASSIMILATE. "Having started with a data workflow on the CPU, we leveraged CUDA technology to accelerate the production pipeline to the point where users have the ability to experiment creatively and still meet deadlines."

CUDA Architecture Accelerates Digital Media Conversion and Distribution

GIC, a global software development company providing workflow solutions for 2D/3D content creation and distribution, utilizes CUDA-enabled GPUs to perform computationally-intensive video conversion faster and more efficiently than CPU-only based solutions.

"As film and television industries move toward the standardization of an Interoperable Master Format (IMF), our CUDA-accelerated Digital Video Package tool rapidly converts a master or mezzanine file into a variety of formats for video distribution," said Henry Gu, president of GIC. "Leveraging the power of NVIDIA processors, we have taken what used to be a week-long process for studios and post production facilities, and reduced it to hours, while cutting storage costs by at least a third."

CUDA architecture-accelerated solutions for broadcast and film production will be on display throughout the IBC 2009 expo, and at the NVIDIA/PNY stand H37 in Hall 7 of the RAI Centre in Amsterdam, Sept. 11 - 15, 2009. NVIDIA featured demonstrations include: RT Software showcasing its virtual effects software, and Elemental Technologies highlighting its Elemental Server and Elemental Accelerator video encoding solutions.

For more information on NVIDIA CUDA, visit: www.nvidia.com/cuda. For more information on NVIDIA Quadro, visit: www.nvidia.com/quadro.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999. Since then, it has consistently set new standards in visual computing with breathtaking, interactive graphics available on devices ranging from portable media players to notebooks to workstations. NVIDIA's expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing which make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible. Fortune magazine has ranked NVIDIA #1 in innovation in the semiconductor industry for two years in a row. For more information, see www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits, features, impact, performance and capabilities of NVIDIA Quadro GPUs and CUDA architecture; are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: development of more efficient or faster technology; design, manufacturing or software defects; the impact of technological development and competition; changes in consumer preferences and demands; customer adoption of different standards or our competitor's products; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended July 26, 2009. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

2009 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Quadro and CUDA are trademarks or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

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Source: NVIDIA Corporation

CONTACT: Danny Shapiro of NVIDIA Corporation, +1-408-562-7187,
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Web Site: http://www.nvidia.com/
http://www.lowrydigital.com/
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Profile: International Entertainment