da Vinci Systems is a manufacturer of high end video equipment and post-production products in Coral Springs, Florida. It manufactures Color Correctors for telecines, virtual telecine, digital mastering system and film restoration. Along with Filmlight, da Vinci Systems leads the post-production industry in market share.
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Current Products
- Color Correctors: 2k and 2k Plus, High end Color grading and Gamma correction system used to control telecine.
- virtual telecine: Splice, interface for the 2k and the 2k Plus.
- digital mastering system: Resolve, Color correction, conforming and system. Mostly for digital intermediate use.
- film restoration: Revival, Film restoration to improve film quality of digital files.
 Joy ball control panel |
 2k Display |
History
- The Wiz was the predecessor to the da Vinci Classic color corrector and was built in 1982 by VTA Technologies in Ft. Lauderdale. It was built on an apple computer, the program was stored in EPROM, the list could be backed up to mini cassettes. VTA Technologies later became da Vinci Systems, Inc in 1984. The Wiz was the first color correction system to have a customized external control panel and was also the first color corrector with internal primary and secondary processing. Prior to that, the primaries in the telecine were
used. The Wiz had 10 vector patented secondary color correction. The first two systems were bought by Editel, Chicago, which at the time used the color corrector on Bosch Fernseh's FDL60 telecine.
- da Vinci Classic analog system was the most popular color corrector on the Fernseh's FDL 60 and Rank Cintel telecines (Mark 3 and URSA). It had customized external control panel with internal primary, secondary processing and an internal NTSC encoder. It ran on a 68000 Intel Multi Bus 1 system computer. The program and color correction list were stored on a 20MB MMF hard disk, with backup to a 5.25" floppy disk.
- da Vinci Renaissance was the analog system that followed the Classic analog system. Was similar to the above system, but ran on Intel 68020 Multi Bus 1 system with a 3.5" Floppy. Options like kilo vectors were later available for the analog Renaissance.
- da Vinci Renaissance 888 also call the GUI-Graphical user interface was similar to the above system, but had 888 digital video processing, in place of the analog video processing. Can operate with 4:2:2, 4:4:4 or 8:4:4 input in NTSC or Pal.
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- da Vinci also made the da Vinci Light. This was not marketed, so not many were sold. It is a da Vinci DUI 888 without the digital 888 cards. The telecine interface card controlled the telecine's internal color corrector. This came in two configurations; the first was the DUI with an Silicon Graphics-Indy CPU. The second DUI system used an Silicon Graphics-SGI O2 computer. These systems supported da Vinci's new Control Panels.
The newest system supports HDTV and SDTV, the 2K Color Corrector. Current system uses an IBM PC computer running Red Hat Linux interface software. The current system is the 2k Plus an improved 2k Color Corrector. The 2k Plus is used on high-end DataCines and telecines, Like Thomson-Grass Valley's Spirit Datacine and Cintel's C-Reality & ITK Millennium. The 2k can operate in with a 4:2:2, 4:4:4 or 8:4:4 input in NTSC or Pal. In HDTV it can operate with 4:2:2, 4:4:4 input.
TLC
The TLC is a edit controller for telecines and VTRs. It give accurate 2/3 editing. TLC 1 was originally made in Moorpark, California, later TLC was acquired by da Vinci and the TLC 2 was released. The da Vinci DUI 888 had an option to have a TLC built into it. If the TLC is not built in an external A/B switch box is needed to switch control between the TLC and other Color Controllers. Some versions had a separate CPU and Telecine interface rack.
See also
- digital intermediate
- Display resolution
- Film-out
- Film recorder
- post production
- digital film
- Direct to Disk Recording
- TV
- Hard disk recorder
- 3D LUT
- Film restoration
- Color correction
