Streambox Enables Instinctual to Better Serve Their Post-Production Clients

Instinctual is a post-production company specializing in visual effects and a full range of finishing services based in Los Angeles. They work on a variety of features and have developed a specialty in theatrical movie trailers.

A key customer for Instinctual is Sony Pictures located in Culver City. Instinctual finishes all Sony Pictures trailers with conforming, color, and visual effects services. As with many post facilities, Instinctual is located in the Hollywood area several miles away. For Sony Pictures, it is critical that its clients are able to conveniently stay on the Sony lot as projects are in progress.

Therefore, the challenge was how to supply these demanding clients the same visual experience as they would have if they were reviewing content at the Instinctual location. The first step was to set up theaters at both facilities with the same high-quality digital projectors with the same matching color calibration. The next stage was being able to transport the media content from Instinctual to Sony so that clients and production professionals could collaborate in real-time. While a dedicated and managed network with dark fiber could make the implementation less difficult, this was not an option at the time. Even if such a choice had been possible, it represents additional complexity and cost. Instinctual really needed a solution that could work reliably and provide the required quality over a standard public Internet connection.

With that goal in mind, Instinctual tested a well-known system, but despite intensive attempts over several hours, it was barely keeping up even using a high rate of bandwidth. That is where Streambox comes into the picture. After a simple setup, the Streambox solution using the Chroma encoder-decoder systems just worked within minutes. Not only did Streambox work reliably on Instinctual’s microwave wireless network connection, it did so using only about a quarter of the bandwidth of the other system- all with minimal latency.

Instinctual had other requirements which Streambox was able to address very quickly and they have continued to develop more capabilities for Chroma that Instinctual has requested. Alan Latteri, partner and chief technologist emphasized, “There was no other choice to make. Streambox was the right choice, the only choice for a future solution."

Instinctual has enjoyed personal, direct, and responsive service from the Streambox organization. As part of this interaction, Streambox made product roadmap commitments for 12-bit, 4:4:4 RGB, 2K Stereo, and 4K DCI functionality on the Chroma platform.

Alan pointed out that Streambox not only works for broadcast applications but has the extra processing and protocols needed for their high-end post-production needs. Sony Pictures has one Chroma system and Instinctual has two to cover their needs. While making reviews convenient and saving time was the initial impetus to put this type of solution in place, complete satisfaction has been truly realized by having clients be able to view content that is visually lossless and reproduces exact color. Color fidelity is a major consideration for Sony, and testing has been done that confirms that clients are receiving the proper visual experience, while everyone benefits as no color conversions are needed.

For Instinctual and Sony Pictures, Streambox Chroma is enabling an entire production workflow, and as Alan Latterri states, “The fact that Streambox performs reliably over the public internet is pretty remarkable and a key differentiator."