Preparing for 8K Streaming and Next Generation Remastering

We have always been trying to keep on the leading (sometimes bleeding) edge of remastering movies and our new mission is to future proof all remastering work moving forward as we upgrade our entire workflow to support 8K output and streaming.  While the downstream routines remain fairly similar to 4K, one area for great improvement that we recognize is to move out of the use of CCD imaging sensors and into a new methodology of using trilinear capture of pixels that will allow for much greater detail and lighting of the finest elements when scanning film.

The reasoning is pretty simple.  CCD capture devices used in the current crop of 4K-10K scanners all operate in the same basic method.  This can lead to color “cross talk” between pixels when capturing.  This is because CCDs use the Bayer Filter when capturing the image data.

When implementing a trilinear scan the idea is to scan each pixel in Red, Green and Blue and then superimposing the colors during the scan.  This eliminates the need to interpolate the pixels to properly represent the color data.  By capturing in color layers the digital representation is built much like the original film was in layers of color.

We are now working on replacing our standard scanning methods and future work will be done using the trilinear capture at 8K resolution with the initial image data at 48 bits of color data.  This will not only provide for the best possible 8K HDR streaming signal, but provide for even cleaner 4K and HD delivery with more detail than previous available in those resolutions.