Batch: Automatic roto for the people

Batch is a new services start-up that aims to help post companies complete rotoscoping tasks at volume and speed.

NAB rather drowned this story out, but it's an interesting one for anyone that has ever found themselves with a mountain of rotoscoping work in front of them and a collection of tools that haven't really sped it up all that much in recent years.

Batch claims that by harnessing patented machine learning processes, it can preprocess mattes for every person in an entire film or television series 'in mere hours' and, what's more, do it at exceptional quality.

The company calls current AI-powered rotoscoping tools archaic, which is an interesting turn of phrase for something that's still relatively new, but it has a point. Artists still typically need to progress through a project scene by scene and sit in sessions, ultimately wasting their valuable, not to mention expensive, time. Batch the developers say, quickly delivers mattes of an entire show, film or even dailies as multi channel EXRs or ProRes files prior to color or VFX sessions, maximizing time for creativity. It even does depth maps.

Color? This is one of the drivers behind the idea as co-founder Zak Mulligan explains.

"A few years ago, Seth [Ricart, the other co-founder] and I were working on color for Hustle, the Adam Sandler basketball film," says Mulligan. "With so many players on the court and multiple cameras rolling at once, I had to light nearly 360 degrees for some of the games. The challenge? Skin tones were blending into the wooden courts, making it incredibly difficult to separate players from the background using traditional methods.

"One day, Seth and I were venting about this issue, reminiscing—half-jealous, half-admiring—about Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki’s work on The Revenant. He had managed to convince the producers to pay for rotoscoping every person in the film, giving him unparalleled control over color timing. That sparked a question: How could we possibly convince productions to rotoscope everyone in a movie?

"It was prohibitively expensive, a luxury reserved for only 1-2 of the top cinematographers on the highest budget films. That’s when we started digging into the latest advancements in image segmentation. At the time, this tech was mostly being used for things like Zoom call backgrounds and iPhone emoji overlays—not exactly professional post-production work. But we saw potential."

The result several years later is a full service company specializing in automating rotoscoping for high volumes of footage with all material processed in a TPN-certified facility. Beta testing is open now at https://www.batch.film. The company is playing pricing information close to its chest and is actively looking for investors too, so it's obviously early days yet. But the potential is there, and it's certainly fast; turnaround times are listed as typically within a few days with rush services / same day turnaround also available upon request.

tl;dr

• Batch is a start-up focused on automating rotoscoping tasks for post-production, aiming to improve speed and volume of processing for films and TV series.
• The company claims to utilize patented machine learning technology to create high-quality mattes for all individuals in a production within hours, enhancing creative workflow.
• Co-founders Zak Mulligan and Seth Ricart were inspired to develop the service after facing challenges with color correction in complex scenes, realizing the need for efficient rotoscoping.
• Currently in beta testing, Batch offers quick turnaround times from a TPN-certified facility, usually within a few days, and is exploring investment opportunities while keeping pricing details private.