Codex Digital
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Codex Digital is a high-resolution media recording system, designed to capture pictures and sound from digital cinematography cameras, such as the Thomson Viper, the Panavision Genesis and the RED Digital Cinema System. At the time of writing (2007) it is the only system capable of recording and replaying uncompressed 4K images from high-resolution cameras such as the DALSA Origin, or twin 4:4:4 dual-link HD-SDI inputs for A & B camera or stereoscopic 3D work.
First introduced in 2006, Codex consists of a self-contained unit, with a touchscreen interface and two removable DiskPacks, each containing up to 1.4TB of raid array disk storage. It has interfaces for the majority of digital cinematography cameras, via single and dual-link HD-SDI and Infiniband. Interestingly, Codex uses a Virtual File System which means that when accessed via a conventional Ethernet network, the captured material can be viewed in a number of resolutions and industry-standard formats, such as QuickTime, MXF, AVI, WAV and JPEG.
2007 saw the introduction of the Codex Portable recording system. Based on the larger Codex recorder, this unit is a compact, battery-powered variant which utilises JPEG2000 image compression for its recording. It also introduced several new features, such as the Mutter Track facility - the ability for the recordist to add voice notes during recording - for hands-free shot-logging or for transcription as an editorial aid in post-production.
Codex has been developed by the same team behind the Lightworks editing system, which won an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement in 1994.
[edit] Competitors
Codex is not the only recording system for digital cinematography. S-Two produce a unit which has been used on a number of high-profile projects, such as David Fincher's Zodiac/Chronicles. Like Codex, the S-two is an uncompressed system, which means that no image compression has been applied during capture.
Many digitally-originated motion pictures have also been recorded onto conventional High-Definition tape formats, such as HDCAM\HDCAM SR, which was most-notably used for George Lucas' Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and more recently, for films such as Miami Vice and Superman Returns.
