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Apical, Storenet and Fuji Television launch D-Rex broadcast picture enhancement device (24/1/2008)

New D-Rex delivers real-time management of video quality using industry-leading, dynamic range image technology

Apical Limited, the imaging technology company whose products enhance the performance of electronic imaging devices, including the very latest digital SLRs, will launch D-Rex LCP-100(r), a new real-time picture enhancement device at Broadcast Live/Video Forum, Earl's Court, London, 30 Jan to 1 Feb 2008.

The D-Rex LCP-100 incorporates Apical's Iridix(r) advanced Retina-Morphic Processing, which enables electronic devices to "see like the human eye". This technology detects and enhances shadow regions in an image, whilst controlling highlights in other parts of the image and maintaining colour fidelity.

D-Rex is a co-development between Apical, Storenet Corp and Fuji Television Network Inc, and attracted significant attention during its debut at InterBEE 07 in Tokyo last November. Broadcast Live will be the product's first 'live' demonstration in Europe.

Apical and its partners have designed the D-Rex to provide unique tools for the management of HD and SD video quality. The system enables users, such as broadcast engineers or camera operators, to apply real-time, dynamic-range correction, non-linear chroma correction and sophisticated noise reduction on a wide range of SDI input sources.

In a live workflow, video sequences - whether from a studio, outside broadcast or archive source - often need tonal range adjustment for consistent and high quality appearance on distribution. In particular, scenes with high contrast ratios or non-uniform lighting require the use of sophisticated dynamic range management to achieve a natural appearance, which has previously been unavailable in a real-time video system.

Using D-Rex, users are presented with a completely new set of quick and intuitive controls, which allow instant adjustment of tonal range, colour and noise locally within each frame.

For example, in a scene where highlight detail is well-captured, but the subject's face is underexposed and chroma oversaturated, simple D-Rex controls enable the correction of underexposed and oversaturated area automatically, without affecting the highlights. D-Rex is particularly effective for situations where it is either difficult or inconvenient to achieve complete control over scene illumination at source.

D-Rex supports real-time processing of sources up to 1080i. The resulting image quality cannot readily be reproduced even by time-consuming manual correction in an off-line environment.

Fuji Television has started to use D-Rex's in the station's sports broadcast, live news and post-production suites. Says Mr. Naohiro Sudo, Director, Fuji TV Technical Department: "We co-developed this product because we could see that it would solve many problems commonly encountered in achieving best possible video quality in a broadcasting workflow."

Dr Michael Tusch, managing director, Apical commented: "We have successfully implemented our next-generation, image-processing technology into a product that offers an attractive combination of functionality, quality and cost. I believe D-Rex will make a significant contribution across a wide range of applications in the broadcast production industry."

The D-Rex LCP-100 will be demonstrated on the Apical-Storenet booth D64 at Broadcast Live. Dr Michael Tusch will give a presentation about the technology at a seminar session on 30 January at 2 PM at the TV Tech room.

www.apical-imaging.com  

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