HD For Indies

Avid Announces Major Shift in 2008 Strategy in Response to Customer Feedback

...including NOT having a booth at NAB.

Hmm....much could be read into that.

" In the past, we’ve seen how investing marketing resources in alternative, customer-focused activities, can be more effective with our users – and to our bottom line. It’s time for Avid to start giving something back to the industry and these activities will create a more vibrant community where customers and newcomers can learn, share, and understand where the industry is headed – and how they can help shape it.”

From my perspective, Avid has been threatened by Final Cut Pro for some time. While they make good products that serve the high end well in ways that Final Cut doesn't (hello media management, dailies audio syncing, ScriptSync, etc. etc.), their value/dollar for the majority of the market I've found lacking in the increasingly DIY market. DNxHD is a great codec. That you have to use Adrenaline HD to ingest it is not. AJA's $3500ish IO HD with Apple's ProRes codecs is a direct threat to Avid's technology initiatives in that area.

He who has the biggest market share usually wins, and Avid hasn't been gaining market share.

-mike

PS - thanks to Jim G for sending this in!

Labels: Avid

Hey all -

So way back in in 2005, I got an email from John August, screenwriter of Go, Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, yadda yadda.

He was looking to make a movie of his own, but wanted to keep costs contained, and keep the workflow flexible - so that if he wanted the option to do it as small as finishing inhouse, it would be possible, but also be able to scale it up to big dollar, high quality post facility workflows as well. He's a talented screenwriter, but also a techie/propellerhead type, and contacted me to discuss workflow for his proposed film.

Lately he's been putting up a lot of details about how the film was made, and there is LOTS of very useful info in this. One nice bit about all this is that he's an experienced professional, yet shares his info like most professionals don't bother to. Much appreciated.

SHOOTING

Lets start with the techie nitty gritty about the production and post on his film, The Nines (for context, here's the trailer and the one-sheet , and it is showing at the Nuart on the 31st)

johnaugust.com � Technical details on The Nines:

For Part One, my hope was to shoot HD. Even as I was finishing the script, I’d begun a conversation with Mike Curtis at HD for Indies about the potentials and pitfalls of various cameras and workflows. In case you ever doubt my the extent of my geekery, check out the four pages of flowcharts I made to map out the process we came up with: nines_workflow.pdf.

Mike was a big help in letting me talk through, and think through, my goals and priorities in the technical details of shooting movie. But how much of his advice did we end up using? Almost none.1 As it turned out, we didn’t shoot HD at all.

I really thought we would. But our d.p., Nancy Schreiber, quickly convinced me otherwise. She’s no Luddite — she’s won awards for her digitally-shot features. But when she visited our main location, with its vast expanses of glass, she made it clear that any savings we would have gained from shooting on HD would be lost by the extra time and expense it would take to control the light.

So out went the plan for tethered cameras and hard drives. Instead, we shot two sizes of film, and standard-def video.


Pardon my long quoting from his blog, but this makes a really good point - just because one team member makes a recommendation for some plausible sounding reasons* doesn't mean that you should stick to it. I'd recommended a particular setup for a particular set of needs and budget constraints, but I wasn't there to scout the location. I heard "indoors" and PRESUMED that lighting would be controllable environment. Nancy, the DP (whom I never had the pleasure to meet), scouted the location, saw all the big windows, and nixed my suggestion as ill-advised since I didn't know all the facts. This is a great example of the kind of collaboration required from a team. The producer would now need to get involved to help chug, quantify, and vote up/down on the potential cost changes for this kind of format change.

* (my suggestion at the time was to shoot tethered uncompressed HD to disk for higher quality, lower cost than HDCAM in a controlled, indoor environment not requiring a lot of camera movement with good power and space facilities nearby for an edit/capture room. He mentioned windows, but I figured some netting/flagging could address without seeing the location. Wrong! This experience, and similar ones, has led me to change my methodologies to recommend including the DP as early as possible in these "what are we shooting on" conversations with director/producer/filmmakers.)

Read on about how they shot Super-16 for part one (and why that was such a good idea, but the caveats involved), SDX-900 for part 2 (16:9 DVCPRO50 24p), and 3 perf 35mm for part three.

They wanted three different stories, three different looks. In our original early conversations, HD was going to be used for all three sections, and do check out that workflow PDF of the original-but-ditched plan - there was going to be a mix of F900 (or Varicam, budget depending) recorded tethered uncompressed directly into Final Cut Pro, then part 2 would have been Varicam or HVX200 (at the time John wanted a small camera that people wouldn't think much of on the street to be noticed), and part three I'd said defintely go film, 3 perf 35mm being my suggestion at the time as film was the only suitable recording media to deal with dappled sunlight in the woods and not get blown highlights and toasted shadows, as that would represent an extreme challenge to any media in terms of exposure lattitude.

In the end, Super-16, SDX-900 (standard def 24p), and 3 perf 35mm were used - so only part of my original suggestion was implemented.

This also points out that HD is not the best solution for everything, as Nancy said, in terms of overall budget, HD wouldn't give as good a result as 16mm.

WORKFLOW

I'd originally been suggesting, since John was a Final Cut Pro fan, and wanted the option to be able to do all the post inhouse if necessary, that shooting all these formats and converting to DVCPRO HD 720p23.976 would be the ideal way to get a decent quality rough HD edit done, and still be able to relink or uprez to 1080p for the mastering final - all within the same system. AND be able to screen decent looking HD during the process - storage is CHEAP these days, not at all the hindrance it was 5-10 years ago.

Besides the format changes, his award winning editor used Avid - so FCP was out the window at that point. But one interesting thing they did - all footage was transferred to HDCAM...and that became their master they worked from - NO matchback to negative to cut. They rented HDCAM decks (I presume the lowest cost J-H3 deck), and all footage was transferred from there. No going back to original source tapes, the color timed HDCAM was IT. Read on for why they did it, they had some good reasons but a few snags (shoulda gone 23.976, not 24.0 fps). D-5 would have been preferable, but at the time it appears it may have been a budget decision - D-5 is a MUCH more expensive deck, and there is no inexpensive capture deck available for that format as there is for HDCAM.

I'm proud that the "master from source digital" idea stuck from the beginning - it isn't the highest possible quality route, but in terms of quality per dollar, it is a helluva way to go. Our original intent had been to master from FCP (see the PDF again) from uncompressed or converted media, which wasn't feasible with the new workflow on the different system used, but their budget and confidence grew as they moved along and they had it all worked out. One thing I'd like about the FCP route was that it offered graceful scaling and degradation - if they'd needed to stay lower budget and finish inhouse, they could have. If they had the option to do a higher quality finish, they could "get there from here." The Avid route they went with worked, and worked well for them, but if they'd been budget constrained they would have run into some issues and problems doing a high quality finish on the system they could afford. Then again, their editor was an Avid guy, and an excellent editor, so that pretty much trumps a lot of decisions. Plus, higher end facilities tend to prefer to work with Avid for project hand-off - it is what they are used to. Avid can be limiting in some ways, but at least it limits you to the more viable choices. FCP offers tons of flexibility, including some options Avid doesn't offer, but it will let you make decisions that may bite you later moreso than Avid will, as a general rule of thumb.

As I usually recommend to festival bound clients, I say be READY to go out to film, but DON'T go out to film until you've already got your distribution deal signed. And at that point, what quality of DI, whether you go back to source film (if shot on film) for a re-transfer to better tape stock or scans; who pays for how much of what part of the process, what the budget is, etc. is all part of the discussion with the distribution company...to be determined LATER. If you have a budget of $500K, do you REALLY want to spend 10-15% of your budget going out to film, when considering that there were about 4000 films (of all lengths and types) submitted to Sundance, and perhaps 2-3 were actually "discovered" and bought at Sundance proper at BEST? From a business perspective, that is a poor use of your money.

Interesting to note, bit-head that John is, that he prefers the digital projection to the film (but he explains and gives caveats as to that answer).

LOCATION SCOUTING

johnaugust.com � Location scouting vs. reality

John finds some old locations scouting videos he took (and posts them!), discusses why videotaping is SOOOO much better than just snapping stills for location scouting, and has sample stills from the finished movie from those same locations to compare them to. Gold!

He mentions what a difference a professional DP, good lighting, good color grading (and not stated but implied a good camera, such as 35mm film) makes when you compare the scouting footage to the stills from the movie.

Not stated but should be pointed out - this is EXACTLY WHY amateurishly shot, poorly lit, non-color corrected, shot on cheapie camera indie movies look like ass and nobody wants to watch them. Same place, different talents used, different tools - ALL the difference.

He also points out how LONG it took to find & secure these locations - there is SO much prep work to be done to shoot a film properly.

John states he'll always video for location scouting from now on, you can tell so much more than from stills. Makes me think about how to best communicate with rest of staff/crew - IF (BIG if) you could quickly make a DVD or website (I'm thinking of iMovie/iDVD/iWeb type stuff as I just got the new versions, or Adobe CS3's ability to make a website from an Encore DVD project), wouldn't that be darn useful? But all contingent on how quick/easy to make and distribute and access that kind of info - and who has the technical chops to do it.

WEB COMPRESSION

johnaugust.com � Three from The Nines - shows compression examples on YouTube -

"In preparation for the trailer competition, I wanted to see how footage from the movie would hold up when subjected to the Flash compression of YouTube and the other video-sharing sites. So I uploaded three clips in various formats to experiment.

The results? Two clips look surprisingly great. The third looks like ass."


He then explains why. Read on.

OTHER

======

Other stuff about John and the movie I found researching:

johnaugust.com � The Nines goes to Venice


Out of Africa | Exclusive | Advocate.com John goes to Malawi to paint an orphanage.


Guest blogger John August on publicity shots | Popwatch | Blog | Movies | Music | TV: Entertainment Weekly John talks about families and privacy

John is a smart, interesting, motivated, good hearted guy. I hope I get the chance to work with him (and more folks like him) again in the future - and I can't wait to see the final result for myself, I was unable to get into a screening of The Nines at Sundance while I was there.

-mike

Labels: Avid, workflow

The Editblog - Helpful Avid tips site

"A recent post on Splice Here pointed to a great blog called Avid Tips. Coming from Grant way down under in Sydney, Australia the site is a treasure trove of all things Avid tips, tricks and techniques. For a complete list if tips, click on over."

See? I can try to be less Apple centric.

: )

The site is Avid Tips.

-mike

Labels: Avid, NLE, software

The Editblog � Online Avid to Final Cut Pro course: "In the wake of the recent FCP to Avid, Avid to FCP websites and debates, here’s a link to Avid’s Alex online learning site that I have mentioned before. As of today they have a free online course available called Avid for Final Cut Pro users"

Labels: Avid, FCP, Final Cut, NLE, post

This is a crazy busy week for me - all the press releases for NAB are rolling in at the same time I have a lot of other stuff to finish up. So when in doubt, punt! Thus what I call a blogwad - a buncha news all piled into one article, in no particular order or significance. Here's my pre-NAB blogwad on software. This isn't a comprehensive list by any means, just some stuff I haven't talked about before:

SOFTWARE:
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The big news, of course, will be from Apple and their press event Sunday - YES I'll be reporting what happens there.

I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Adobe CS3 stuff - Premiere Pro & After Effects in particular, but also what's up with Encore, their DVD authoring software.

Avid as some new goodies as well, I have an appointment with them next week at the show to get all the latest scoopage.

As far as stuff you haven't heard me talk about before, read on:

Cineform offers new cross platform NEO family - cross platform codecs for video work aren't quite there for HD work, so Cineform is introducing NEO. NEO is cross platform, Mac or PC. It has three products for different levels of production: NEO HDV, NEO HD, and NEO 2K, guess what those are for. You'll be able to work cross platform with the same files, moving between apps like After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Motion, Combustion, Vegas, etc.

NEO HDV is for HDV & DVCPRO HD folks, and handles 3:2 pulldown and 24p cadence issues, over/under cranking, spatial resampling, etc. as needed for JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Canon, etc. cameras. I'm guessing 8 bit.

NEO HD is 10 bit, full raster for higher end production.

NEO 2K offers up to 12 bit 444 with their RGB codec.

ALL versions can re-wrap AVI to QT and vice versa - that's a BIG deal - means it is fast and doesn't change/convert the files/footage - re-wrap, NOT re-encode.

Supports AJA Xena & BlackMagic cards (on Windows presumably), can capture as AVI or QT.

More goodies:

Pricing and Availability

NEO HDV, NEO HD, and NEO 2K will be priced at $249, $599, and $799 respectively

NEO for Windows will be available for purchase in early May.  Availability of NEO for Mac OS X will be announced later. 

Prospect HD v3 will be priced at $999, and will now include both the “Edit” and the “Ingest/Edit” capabilities that were previously provided in separate versions of Prospect HD. 

Prospect 2K-Edit, which now includes single-link HD-SDI ingest, will be priced at $1999.  Both will be available for purchase in early May.

As part of its new product rollout, CineForm is offering special pricing on most of its products through the month of April, details of which are available on CineForm’s website: www.cineform.com.  Upgrade policies for existing CineForm customers are also available on its website.


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Studio Daily | Sonic and Digital Vision Team Up To Deliver HD Mastering

Dense PR piece with minimum of hard data. Blu-ray and HD DVD authoring, but at what price point?

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Studio Daily | Converting AVCHD Files to MPEG: "The Windows-only application has two new modes that open files either as multi-source or single files, and has predefined HD-DVD and Blu-Ray modes with AVC presets. For audio, it can support .WAV, MPEG-1 Layer II, MPEG-1 Layer III, AAC, and AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) format files.

Elecard Converter Studio is available as a suite that includes Converter Studio, Converter Studio Pro and Converter Studio ProHD. Elecard Converter Studio Pro is designed for conversion of video with resolution up to standard definition (720x576).

Elecard Converter Studio and Elecard Converter Studio ProHD enable high-resolution encoding (HD 1920x1080). Pro and ProHD versions also support transport streams. Prices begin at $239.70."

Now, why you'd want to convert to MPEG-2....feh.

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POMFORT - SilverStack
From the site:

With Pomfort SilverStack you can open and inspect image sequences such as scanned 35mm film or rendered sequences as you would expect it from professional tools:

Browse sequence-based and timecode-oriented with a unique info-timeline that shows SMPTE timecode, frame numbers or a timecode calculated from file names
Open movie-typical file types such as DPX, Cineon, TIF in practically any resolution (PAL, HD, 2k, 4k, 6k)
View color-channels, inspect color with a selective RGB histogram, inspect pixels with a high dynamic range color picker and use a genuine pixel ruler for complete access to your image data
Visualize clipping pixels in blacks and whites
Zoom and pan to see every single pixel even on smaller screens
Apply Gamma- or LUT-based color linearization with custom presets
Apply primary grading (basic RGB-grading capabilities for both linear and logarithmic color spaces)
Playback-preview of image sequences on any machine using built-in QuickTime™ player


I'm getting a copy to doodle with after NAB.

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LITTLE FROG IN HIGH DEF: Matrox MXO v2.0 drivers available

: "* DVI monitor calibration - hue, chroma, contrast, brightness, and blue-only adjustments * Super black and super white monitoring on the DVI display * Pixel-to-pixel mapping on the DVI display * 'Virtual bezel' on the DVI display * New HD editing resolutions - 1080p at 23.98, 25, and 29.97 fps; and 720p at 25 and 50 fps * New DVI output resolution - 1024x768 at 59.94 fps * Region of interest output selection in Presentation Mode * Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 support * Max OS X 10.5 Leopard support"

Read on, Shane has a good write up on what all this means.

More info here too.

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HD Monitor Pro - FireWire based software to do live monitoring including 1:1 pixel viewing (helps for pulling fine focus), record, sort, review, etc. footage from HVX. Can take notes and hand off to FCP. No mention of 24p - can it handle 24p and 24PN modes? "24p" isn't found in the release.


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If you hear of other new editing, VFX, or post related software, let me know. My time on the floor will be limited, so I'll need to prioritize and just see the Big Stuff, or little stuff that is particularly significant to the HD for Indies audience. Feel free to comment away with suggestions, and preferably booth #s, and why you think it relevant for me to check out.

-mike

Labels: Adobe, Apple, Avid, blogwad, NAB, software

Got an email from David Taylor of CineForm with a new product announcement. To boil it down:

Cineform announced a new codec - 12 bit "CineForm 444" codec - 12 bits/channel, 4:4:4 RGB. Note that this is different from their Cineform RAW codec that they've been using with the SI-2K.

So, this new codec details:

-targetted at high end of digital cinema & broadcast acquisition
-pitching as a competitor to HDCAM SR
-tested HDCAM SR vs CineForm 444, CineForm bested SR by 3 to 5 dB in peak s/n ratio testing
-used StEM (Standard Evaluation Material, is scanned film)
-see results here
-same results discussed on David Newman's blog here

More on the codec from their press release:
-12 bit RGB
-member of the CineForm Intermediate codec family, called CineForm 444
-up to 2048x2048 pixel resolution (why not 4Kx4K? -Mike)
-Prospect 2K for Premiere Pro supports real-time, multi-stream editing (oh, that's why! -mike)
-a version of CineForm 444 for Intel Mac QT "will be released in the near future"
-"Intended for professional film, digital cinema, and broadcast applications"
-it now offers realtime direct-to-disk capability over dual link HD-SDI onto Windows now and OS X "soon"
-alternative to tape based recording, much lower price point
-setup allow for picking AVI or QT wrappers
-recorded files IMMEDIATELY editable with no conversion or transcoding required IF using Premiere Pro on Windows (currently). Can also open directly in After Effects on Windows for compositing using native, recorded files
-Final Cut support coming
-tested using a Wafian prototype recorder (hardware computer solution using CineForm recording) recording off a Viper, compared to HDCAM SR deck, as well as StEM footage
-comparing peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), the CineForm solution bested HDCAM SR by 3 to 5 dB

Mike's Comments:

This all sounds very good - the Wafian recorder is simply a customized Windows portable system that has the horsepower and storage to record the CineForm codec format, but you could lug a suitably hoss system onto a stage/set for DIY recording for greenscreen etc. shoots. The Wafian makes it easier and productized, but the CineForm codec is the magic inside.

The point being they now have a very high quality recording option to meet or exceed the bit depth of the high end production being down these days over dual link HD-SDI. The F950, D-20, Genesis, & F23 will all kick out a maximum bit depth of 10 bits/channel over dual link HD-SDI.

I know just enough math to know that PSNR is important but not the only factor that matters when evaluating compression techniques. As someone on CML pointed out, 20 seconds or more of rolling footage viewed in a critical viewing environment is one way to evaluate material, and running compressed footage all the way through post processes to make sure nothing non-visible to human eyes but software visible (think keys and aggressive color correction).

The Davids were kind enough to point out all this material to me in recent weeks, but I've been too busy to sit down and thoroughly evaluate the material in the rigorous methods needed to give a comprehensive and definitive analysis.

But this all sounds very good and promising and it is great to have new options.

The ability to have a 2K master that edits in realtime with a reasonable datarate for high quality work. Wait, what datarates? I emailed David Taylor and he was kind enough to respond quickly:

But as a quick summary, using the StEM material (which is a bit more complex than most material, the average bitrates were:

CineForm 444 Filmscan 1: 350 Mbps (=43.8 MB/sec -mike)
CineForm 444 Filmscan 1-Keying: 410 Mbps (=51.3 MB/sec -mike)
CineForm 444 Filmscan 2: 415 Mbps (=51.8 MB/sec -mike)
CineForm 444 Filmscan 2-Keying: 480 Mbps (=60 MB/sec -mike)

Source in all test cases was 1920 x 1080 24p 10-bit dual-link HD-SDI.

David.


Those datarates are stretching beyond the bounds of what is reliably doable on a single SATA drive. Modern single SATA drives run from about 30-55 MB/sec (full to empty rates) for slower drives to 40-65 MB/sec for faster drives. So really, you need a RAID to run these - if you're using 44 MB/sec footage on a drive that falls below 40 MB/sec when full, you aren't going to get reliable, no frames dropped performance. So a RAID of some sort is a practical necessity, esp. if you want a realtime transition (where two streams must be sustained).

But even a small native SATA RAID 0 could suffice, and they are quite affordable (starting under $1000).

That said, some issues:

1.) At present, the only native editing solution is Premiere Pro on Windows. That's at least 3rd on the list of NLEs high end professionals (target for this product, remember) want to work on. Avid is serious editors #1 pick, Final Cut tends to follow, and then it devolves to "everyone else" of which Premiere Pro tends to be at the front of that line. Final Cut support is coming but not quite here yet (it is in beta). When it does get here, will he have realtime support for things like cross dissolves and color correction? That is a mission critical feature as far as I'm concerned.

So no Avid native support at all at present or on the foreseeable horizon (and they historically Don't Play Well With Others unless others are camera companies). But then again, you can always downrez (software easy but slow, hardware realtime but cumbersome esp. for timecode issues) for an offline edit and conform on PPro/AE. Then, if needed, kick out to uncompressed for online if you want to do so on a different system (DPX sequences, SR tape, whatevah).

2.) As the last bit of the above alludes, data migration. Right now you can get that footage into some desktop type apps on Windows, soon on Macs, but lets face it - most shoots working with HDCAM SR are likely to also be using heavy iron production equipment that is often Linux/Unix based, and expects a DPX sequence. While you CAN convert to that format, you're losing the storage, time, and One Master File convenience offered by CineForm. You could acquire and archive with CineForm, then convert to offline editorial codec and uncompressed full res for VFX - your "digital negative" would remain conveniently small.

3.) I have yet to do my own testing to verify how well this compressed format holds up to heavy post - aggressive color correction and green screen keying the two items of greatest concern.

OK, gotta go run...

UPDATE:

Got an email from David of CineForm and that got me thinking:

1.) You CAN just treat this like a deck, with data copied off as your "tape". Wafian HR-2 (designation of new model) DOES have dual link HD-SDI, so you could shoot on set, bring it back to studio/editorial, ingest over HD-SDI any way you want (DVCPRO HD for offline edit, downconvert to SD for edit, whatever), and have SOME kind of sync system to go back for the high res masters.

2.) OR you could batch process the Wafian files down to whatever you want for offline/online/VFX pipelines as needed using After Effects or possibly other tools. After Effects isn't built for batch conversion, but you can do it.

3.) High quality file based compressed wavelet source captured to hard drive that lets you convert to offline/online formats of choice - that's pretty much what Red is doing, but they're building their own conversion utility as well, with the added benefit that there is a shipping solution to edit it now with realtime effects (on a duly pimped system).

-mike

Labels: acquisition, Adobe, advanced, Avid, Cineform, disk based recording, FCP, Final Cut, NLE, post

ProLost: New Look

Stu Maschwitz, the brains behind the original Magic Bullet and more recently Colorista, couldn't help himself but to talk a little bit about the next version of Magic Bullet that is due to be demo'd at NAB.

Some tidbits of interest from his blog post with commentary, his in italics, mine in plain

Rather than a regular plug-in with a ton of sliders, Magic Bullet Looks features a standalone application with its own UI.


Hmm....I'm not sure about that, I'll have to see it in action. So much of what needs to be done gets done on THAT shot rather than applying a look. Stu gets workflow, so I'll have to trust him on this one until I can see it.

Interjection: I'd emailed Stu to talk about this, and he replied back:
Stu said:
I totally hear you -- the standalone UI is a double edged sword, but we're working to make it as non-modal as possible, and when you see the UI you'll understand why there was no other way.

Like the previous Look Suite, this tool isn't meant to be a color corrector in and of itself. The classic use would be Colorista followed by Magic Bullet Looks. You'd use MBL as a kind of LUT over your corrections. That way all the shots in a sequence have the consistent look but their own shot-by-shot corrections underneath. So there will be at least one mode of working where MBL will be somewhat fire-and-forget.

-Stu

That is certainly an interesting concept - Colorista for the tweaky tweaky color balancing, then MBL for applying a look. One key detail will be how the architecture in your app works - does it do Colorista in 32 bit floating point, then return results as what? Hopefully at LEAST a 10 bit space, not 8 bit RGB before THAT result gets sent to the next plugin (MBL). I don't know all the details on how exactly that works in each app, but it can make a substantial difference in the final quality results.

Back to quoting his blog entry...

Called Looks Builder, this application is launched when you apply the Look Suite 3 plug-in in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Motion.

I like that modularity, and the ability to use same looks in all those apps (don't forget Premiere Pro is coming to Macs this year)

Within Looks Builder, you build and edit looks using Look Tools; modular mini-effects for things like bleach bypass, gradient filters, and film stock simulation. All of these tools work in realtime and can be tweaked and edited in context. All processing is done in floating-point color.

Floating point GOOD, preservation of >100 IRE better - Stu tipped me to this in my own workflow issues, so I'm guessing he'll handle it right, or as rightly as the software & APIs allow him to do so.

With over 30 Look Tools to assemble however you like, you can create an infinite variety of Looks.Or choose a preset. Pop open the Looks Theater to see 100 different preset looks applied to your image (not a canned thumbnail) in realtime.

This bodes well for him "getting it" the way I want it to work.

Magic Bullet Looks was designed to be easy and fun to use, but it's powerful enough for pros too. Filters and exposure adjustments work in real-world units. Color corrections obey industry standards. Cineon film scans and digital cinema images, such as those from the Panavision Genesis camera, are interpreted correctly and can be converted to video or left in their native color spaces. The same look that you develop on an Avid rough cut in video color space can later be applied to a 35mm scan.

BINGO. If he's supporting Panalog, that bodes very, VERY well that he'll be handling a lot of other high end things I want to be able to do (Viper balanced LUT?). And all this with hardware acceleration on an 8 core Mac Pro with a good GPU? Bwahahahahhahaaa.....the POWER! Now, if he could just get secondaries in Colorista...

-mike

Labels: Adobe, After Effects, Apple, Avid, DIY, FCP, Final Cut, Genesis, NAB, NLE, plugin, post, software

Avid Delivers Media Composer and Avid Xpress Pro for Intel-Based Macs

Avid released new versions of Media Composer (v2.7) and Xpress Pro (v5.7). Big new features:

-Intel Mac support (hooray!)
-updated bundle of third party apps
-support for new formats
-can read AND write back to XDCAM & P2
-720p50 for Euro markets
-BIG new feature for Media Composer - ScriptSync for syncing script to the video clips (more below)
-new codec support - DNxHD 36, for low datarate (36 megabit) for offline editing at HD pixel resolutions at a bit over 4 MB/sec - not much more than DV's datarate. And it is full raster (no horizontal shrinkage) as well. This has LOTS of uses, I'm a big fan of cutting compressed HD for your offline, including seeing full resolution of your project and cutting at native frame rates.

The catch: gotta use a high powered Avid to get the footage in:

Using either an Avid DNxcel(TM) powered Media Composer Adrenaline(TM), or an Avid Nitris(R) system, customers can encode HD content to Avid DNxHD 36 in real-time.


It SHOULD be possible to convert to DNxHD in non-realtime after capturing in some other compressed codec, but how quickly that transcoding be done? With what tools? I don't have answers to that yet - if you do, please post in the Comments, as I'm insufficiently familiar with these Avid capabilities.

ScriptSync sounds pretty damned impressive, but I have yet to sit down and get a demo. If you are cutting to a script, ideally you want all your shots associated with the right part of the script. The old way was to play footage and click ins and outs - not terribly precise. The way this new product works is to scan the audio track of the footage, do voice recognition, and then correlates that text to the text of the script. If it works right, it will be a HUGE time saver for those cutting narrative content from scripts. Clearly, you'll need ot have decent quality audio for this to work, but it could be a substantial time saver. I need to play with it to see how practical it is, and I will soon. From their press release:

"Script-based editing has been very popular among customers because it provides an easy way to respond to directors, who often want to quickly review different takes of scenes based on the dialogue in the script."

Stuart Bass, A.C.E., 2006 Emmy nominee and ACE Eddie award winner for Arrested Development: "I can easily line up twelve takes of a single performance and evaluate each one in a thorough and organized fashion. It enables our team to evaluate different readings with greater speed, streamlining the storytelling process under extremely tight deadlines."

....

...the ScriptSync tool advances the functionality of Avid's script-based editing by automating the task of synchronizing scripts or transcripts with their respective media files, and eliminates the labor intensive process of manually inserting sync points. Once the script and media are matched, editors, directors and producers can quickly and easily review multiple line readings and select individual takes. With ScriptSync, script-based editing is significantly more accurate and more practical for everyday use.

Other new stuff in the bundled apps - Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite 4.5 - faster encoding. SmartSound SonicFire Pro 4 - auto-creation of music with "Mood Mapping" to create a vibe and "match the mix and feel of music to the changing moods of any production." Boris Continuum Complete 4.2.2 lets you apply filters directly in Media Composer (but not Xpress Pro).

Media Composer (software only) if $4995 list, you can add Mojo SDI or Adrenaline hardware.

Existing users can upgrade to v2.7 for $195 (& includes Boris Continuum Complete 4.2.2). After June 30, goes up to $995.

For Xpress Pro, from the press release:

Avid Xpress Pro Software

Version 5.7 of Avid Xpress Pro software is available for $1,695 USMSRP. Customers with versions 5.5 or higher of Avid Xpress Pro software will receive upgrades to version 5.7 for $49.95 USMSRP. Customers with Avid Xpress Pro systems that precede version 5.5 can upgrade to version 5.7 for $149.95 USMSRP.

Native Intel support is a big deal - the latest laptops and towers are fast and powerful - but if you couldn't run the latest software natively, you couldn't use that power. And with eight processor Macs expected any day now, native support is an even bigger deal.

-mike

PS - I should have mentioned this before (I'm updating this Sunday) - Avid was kind enough to send me a copy of Media Composer 2.7 beta prior to its release for review/commentary, but I haven't gotten far enough into it to have salient commentary (SXSW then family crisis intervened in that time). I'll be testing this ASAP.

Labels: Avid, NLE

Studio Daily | Archion Announces Synergy HD4

Need fast storage for your Avid Unity setup? This might be what you need - 8TB for $20K, Unity certified.

-mike

Labels: Avid, hardware, storage