Pandora
Solutions
Overview

Pandora colour systems exude quality. For over 20 years we have honed our systems by working closely with the Colorist: Alongside the development of the current range of products aimed at non linear, resolution independent workflows, Pandora have a proven track record in comprehensive linear connectivity — control of all major telecines/scanners and features, the syncing of up to four tape decks, integration with real time noise reducers and interoperability with many other major components found in a typical colour suite.

Of course, we can still supply the industry leading linear control systems but with the distinct advantage that any of them can now be upgraded to fully non-linear, resolution independent data suites at any time.
(In fact the previous colour corrector, PiXi, can also be upgraded to a non-linear HD workflow.)

In the realm of DI*, it is our notion that the suite should be built with an open architecture connecting to any SAN or disk: on the flip side, ingesting media into a closed system isolates the suite whereby new material presents such systems with a dilemma, especially if the session is client attended. We believe systems should be open and truly real time: the smoke and mirrors of back ground rendering, typically found on commodity PC systems, can be left wanting if the session takes an unexpected turn.

In a busy environment where every scanned job seems to demand more and more terabytes of storage, and moving files can eat up hours of time and available bandwidth, our real time processing comes into it's own: the scanned raw material can be accessed and resized in real time and multiple versions can be stored and applied as metadata to the original material — it is only at the point of committing a deliverable that any copy is made.
 
Our philosophy is that the creative suite should be exactly that – creative. Why tie up the colour suite to produce multiple deliverables when it can be done directly by the data management system in another room? In Pandora's case the YoYo can resize and lay off in real time from a remote location. We don't expect Colorists to divert their focus to housekeeping, IT or engineering issues, we aim to supply them with the tools to create beautiful images. That is why the nerdy stuff silently and efficiently underpins the creative technology.

 Key Features of Revolution Systems

    •    Real time all the time
    •    Extensive non-linear data management utilising YoYo
    •    Maximum operational time – no ingest prep’ delay
    •    Comprehensive linear control
    •    Resolution independent
    •    16bit internal processing
    •    Prodigious, responsive, subtle, organic toolset
    •    Storage efficient (Single copy requirement until deliverable playout)

    •    Completely modular architecture – fully upgradeable and infinitely expandable

 

* Historical note:

It is interesting to note that Pandora forged the way with DI grading back in 2000. As one independent source notes:
"Milestones * 2000 — O Brother, Where Art Thou? — The first time a digital intermediate was used on the entirety of a first-run Hollywood film which otherwise had very few visual effects. The work was done in Los Angeles by Cinesite utilizing a Spirit Datacine for scanning at 2K resolution, a Pandora MegaDef to adjust the color and a Kodak Lightning II recorder to output to film."