The tests, carried out at Cinecitta film studios in Rome, showed the combination of Viper and IQ offered an effective method of exploiting the capability Viper has to record uncompressed images at the highest quality yet offered by an electronic production camera.
'This means IQ can take the full-quality output from Viper without any bit-depth truncation or colour-space conversion,' said Quantel marketing manager Mark Horton.
IQ features Quantel's development of resolution co-existence, which means Quantel equipment works internally at a range of resolutions, even within one production and on the same timeline. The breakthrough is a development of Quantel's Monty technology, allowing the kit to process at above currently accepted high-definition TV resolution levels in real time.
Cinecitta is believed to be planning to shoot a movie using Viper and then record straight to IQ, retaining all the essential RGB information at 10-bit levels - a process which has significant implications for the quality of special effects work.
At the recent Production Show in London, Thomson showed the Viper camera with the German Director's Friend hard-disk based system, as one of the only systems with the bandwidth required to capture the high-resolution signals exported from the Viper camera. The interest shown in the camera at NAB in April led Arri Media UK to purchase two Vipers, which will be delivered in the next few weeks.
Thomson's server-based Spectre system can already input signals from Viper, and a number of other manufacturers are looking at adapting their equipment to handle the camera's high-resolution output. 'We have a number of customers lined up who have specific tests they want to do with the Viper camera, as soon as we get them from the factory in Breda,' said Thomson Multimedia UK managing director David Phillips.
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