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ITFC KEEPS
PROGRAMMES LEGAL WITH COURTYARD'S SHERIFF
Farnham, 10 March 2003
The Independent Television Facilities
Company (ITFC) has purchased two Courtyard Sheriff legalisers to
check and correct programme material. As a part of their
programme technical compliance business the Sheriffs are used to
ensure that the colour gamut of video is kept within specified
limits.
Compliance checking is a part of ITFC's
varied work and it is responsible for verifying all ITV 1, ITV 2
and Channel 5's acquired material. The work has recently
expanded with a contract for Hallmark Entertainment that
includes comprehensively checking the compliance of all their
material destined for Europe, Middle East, Southern Africa and
Russia. David Willis, ITFC's Director of Video Operations,
comments "We looked at Sheriff a year ago and were very
impressed but it was the contract with the Hallmark Channels
that made us move forward."
Sheriff is supplied with SDI inputs and
outputs to allow perfect signal transparency. When corrections
are needed, the techniques applied alter the signal values in
such a way that there is no obvious, or visible trace of the
correction. The lack of hue shifts, or other artefacts produced
during correction is a major feature of the product. Steve
Cranny, Courtyard's Director of Sales comments, "We are
delighted that ITFC has chosen Sheriff. For many, they operate
as a technical gatekeeper and so this is exactly where Sheriff
should be."
ITFC has to take a cautious approach with
client’s material. It first uses Sheriff just to detect and log
any out-of-gamut errors, or illegal colours, that are produced
by certain combinations of the components in SDI signals. The
errors are clearly displayed as distinct colours overlaid on the
preview output with their hue indicating the degree of error.
Then, if the client agrees, the problems are fixed. Willis
describes the next step. “Generally we only fix problems we've
detected if the client has OK’d that we can. Usually there is a
blanket ‘OK’ for all the material we handle from a client.
Otherwise, with no OK, we reject.”
Images: Sheriff Logo, Sheriff 1RU box
(higher resolution image available on request)
About Courtyard
Established in 1986, Courtyard Electronics
Limited designs, manufactures and sells a product range whose
success stems from its high performance and reliability supplied
at competitive prices. Current products include SPGs and
changeover units, test pattern generators, colour correctors,
on-air and VT clocks, logo generators, character generators and
serial legalisers.
About ITFC
ITFC has been developing its services for
over 25 years to offer the broadcast and entertainment
industries a unique range of facilities for clients to enhance
their material. The broad range of
Video
Services include post production, duplication, quality
assessment, standards conversion, 35 and 16mm film grading and
transfer as well as DVD authoring. The
Media Access Services
for broadcast, commercials, DVD, video and cinema include
English and foreign subtitling/captioning, as well as services
for the hard-of-hearing and the visually impaired.
For further information contact
Courtyard:
Steve Cranny
Tel: +44 (0) 1252 712030
E-mail:
steve@courtyard.co.uk
ITFC
David Willis
T +44 (0)20 8752 0352
E-mail:
davidw@itfc.com
Press:
Bob Pank
Tel: +44 (0) 1342 836056
E-mail:
bob.pank@virgin.net
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