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Lost in the Tardis

Apr 2012

PVC Reviews Plural Eyes 3

PVC and Scott Simmons have an excellent preview of the stand alone Plural Eyes 3 from NAB. I can’t wait, and hope that at least Premiere Pro and Avid can be integrated in the single app! Especially since they are trying to group clips after syncing in FCP like they do in Premiere and FCP.
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Marco Solorio is the Blackmagic Cinema Camera the DSLR Killer

Marco Solorio at OneRiver Media has a good article on the possibility of the new Blackmagic Cinema Camera being the DSLR Video killer. He give a compelling argument, and at this price point this camera is going to be huge.
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Maximum PC on NVIDIA Tease

Maximum PC has an article on a recent NVIDIA tease on Facebook, saying It’s Coming!

Swedish overclocking site SweClockers.com (as translated and explained by VideoCardz.com) says that "independent sources" claim that "it" is the GeForce GTX 690, the long-rumored video card that theoretically sports two, count 'em, two of the GK104 Kepler GPUs found in the GTX 680, 4GB of GDDR5 memory, 3072 CUDA cores and a pair of 8-pin connectors. That, kiddies, would be one heck of a polygon-pumping beast.



Now this may be a gaming card, but 3072 CUDA cores would be a beast for Premiere Pro! Makes me want a PC for editing!
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Tim Siglin reviews Adobe Prelude

Tim Siglin at Streaming Media has a good review of the Adobe Prelude. Check it out. Sounds like a great addition to the Production Bundle.
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RED announces 6K Dragon Senson

RED has announced it’s 6K Dragon sensor for the Epik and Scarlet. $6000 to upgrade your Epic and TBD for the Scarlet. Very cool to have upgradeable cameras!

dragon

They also announced the Red Ray Player.

redray

And a High End digital projector.
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Panasonic at NAB

Studio Daily has the info on Panasonic at NAB this year. It seems Panasonic has some big plans, but not much to actually show this year at NAB. They are taking the slow route to 2K and 4K with new AVC Ultra Master Quality Codecs and an eventual AG-HPX600 camera for less than $16,000, but with no set release date.

For AVC they will be releasing a 200 class and a CCLass 444 for 2k and 4k (SOund like ProRES rivals).

They also introduced the replacement for P2 a cheaper SD card sized Micro P2, with adapters for some older cameras with paid firmware upgrades.

Sounds like some interesting stuff, and they make great cameras, but mostly vaporware this year, maybe we will see prototypes next year at NAB. It will be exciting when they have actual 4K Varicam’s out, but until then.

Honestly the Black Magic excites me more, as it is much more within my budget range!
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Adobe Audition CS6 Multitrack Enghancements

Adobe Blogs by Ron Day has a list of new features in Audition CS6.
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Intro to Premiere Pro, Prelude and Encore CS6 & Mercury Transmit I/)

DAV’s TechTable has a video that is worth checking out from Adobe Blogs.

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Singular announces PluralEyes 3.0

Creative Cow has the news from NAB. Sync is now faster, and the whole workflow is done within PluralEyes instead of within your NLE. No word on price or release dates though.
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Lightworks official Release Soon

CreativeCow has the news from NAB on the official full release of the pro editing suite Lightworks for Window, Mac and Linux for free, with a $60 per year Pro version.

A new Lightworks Web site will be released on May 28th.

New features include:
  • Very wide format support including AVCHD, H.264, AVC-Intra, DNxHD
  • ProRes, Red R3D, DPX, XDCAM HD 50, XDCAM EX, DVD, BluRay, 4K support (DNxHD available for a single additional payment)
  • Support for all popular camcorder and DSLR video
  • Native real-time title generator
  • Improved interoperability – including AAF with Avid and Editshare Flow
  • Major improvements to Drag-and-Drop in the timeline
  • Trimming enhancements
  • Automatic Edit backups
  • Better Import and Export windows: more options, easier to use
  • Shared Projects
  • Stereoscopic workflow

The Free and Paid versions will be released May 28th, 2012, and is only $30 a year for education users, and a you get a free community membership with a pro membership.

Looking forward to trying out this powerful NLE.

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Blackmagic Cinema Camera

BMD-Digi-Camera

FCP.CO has the news on a new Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It is $2995 with 13 stops of dynamic range, a large 2.5K sensor and Canon EF mount lenses. And it comes with a full version of DaVinci Resolve and Ultrascope. It records to SSD in 12 Bit Log as well as CinemaDNG, ProRES and DNxHD, and has a large touch screen for entering Metadata. Check it out at Blackmagic Designs Web site.
BMD-Camera-Back
From what I see the biggest problem seems to be the lack of XLR audio inputs and only 1.4” instead. Certainly not as good. Makes this a good run and gun B-Roll camera, but you would want something with XLR for sync sound. Actually been reading more and it is the same sound as it would be with XLR.

Seems people’s biggest complaint is going the Apple rout and having a non-removable battery that takes 3 hours to recharge. This certainly makes it more of a get a shot here and there camera, though it seems that it can actually take many different voltage power, so you can power it from many different batteries and it will be fine, so it is not like this is a huge problem, but you will have to have some sort of mount and extra batteries for any serious shooting.

BMD-Camera-side
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Blackmagic Announced new Teranex 2D and 2D

Creative Cow has the news on the 2 new Teranex Box, starting at $1995 and a smaller thunderbolt design for $3995 with all the power of the previously $90,000 version to do conversions!
teranex3d
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Blackmagic Announces DaVinci Resolve 9

Creative Cow has the announcement of a completely overhauled user interface, that will be available in July and free of charge for all Resolve customers, or $994 full price as it is now.. New features include automatic 3D eye matching, mutli-layer timelines, xml support and more camera and file support. It also includes Log grading, audio playback with 16 tracks per clip, automatic audio sync, clip data burn ins and batch rendering for dailies.
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Engadget has a hands on with the EOS-1D C 4K

Engadget also has a video hands on with the EOS-1D C 4K.
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Engadget hands on with the Canon C500

Engagedget has a nice little hands on with Canon’s new 4K camera, which is noticeably heavier than it’s 1080 counterpart the C300. Check out the video.
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Larry Jordan previews FCP X features to come

Larry Jordan has posted a preview of new features that will be added to FCP X and that Apple is saying that FCP X is to be a pro editing App. This includes native RED and Scarlet editing, and better audio editing, Dual Viewers (wow is apple admitting it was wrong??) and native MXF support, and rumors of another app to go with Motion and Compressor.

Maybe Apple can make FCP X a real Pro Editing Program, but the bad word they have created with the initial release will forever taint it. Honestly they should be a doing a 64 bit Final Cut Pro 8, and put in as many new features from X as they can as additions, and that might convince people they are still going for the pro market, but FCP X in my opinion will be forever tainted.
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Smoke 2013 for Mac Announced

Electronista has the announcement on Smoke 2013 for Mac. Sounds pretty cool, but I think the $3495 price tag will hurt them when they could have gone cheaper or done a crossgrade and really cleaned up, though the drop from $15,000 is really appreciated. I think a serious crossgrade offer like Adobe or AVID offered for Final cut Pro would hugely widen their installed user base.

You can also check it out at Autodesks web site with a whole slew of videos.

PVC also has a good article on the new smoke, as does Larry Jordan.

It seems they are really stressing that Smoke does more than edit, with color correction, true 3D compositing, fast garbage masking, motion tracking, fast renders and node based compositing, which is really exciting for anyone who dabled with the ill fated shake in the past. And it is supposed to have been retooled to work on MacBook Pro’s not just high end MacPro’s. And it can take FC 7 and FCPX XML directly, though it needs to take AVID and Premiere as well.

It will come out later this fall, but will have a fee beta version starting in June.

I am really damn excited about this! I love node based editing since I learned Shake, but have stopped using it since Shake went away. Would love to have an editor with real Node based FX and full editing capabilities. I just wish there was sidegrade pricing!
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Creativedojo links to a bunch of After Effects C6 Tutorials

Check out the videos showing off the new features. I so can’t wait to give CS6 a test drive!
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Flame/Smoke 2013 Feature Videos

FXGuide has a bunch of Flame/Smoke 2013 Feature Videos. Worth checking out. Still am hoping for a serious price drop to make it so any editor can have access to Smoke.
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PVC Review of After Effects CS6

Chris and Tish Meyer have an After Effects CS6 Review.

•Ray-Traced 3D Rendering Engine sounds great, but very also limited at this point. And it only works with CUDA cards not the few AMD Laptop cards approved for Premiere Pro.

•3D Camera Tracker is covered. It sounds pretty automated, but I am very excited to have Shadow Catcher layers, a white solid which only receives shadows. It basically sounds very good, but not as good as the Foundry’s excellent CameraTracker which has more options.

•Track in Mocha is a new feature that allows you to send files to Mocha instead of having to import files yourself. A feature that will make Mocha a more integrated tracker.

•Rolling Shutter Repair that removes Jello Cam from CMOS DSLR.

•Variable Mask Feathering is a feature I have been missing since Shake, and I am glad as hell to see it in After Effects. To do it you just Option drag on a mask point.

•Global Performance Cache where RAM Previews are retained in memory to save re-renders.

•Persistent Disk Cache all RAM Cache’s are saved to disk with projects, and you can Cache work area in background.

•Faster Graphics Pipeline is an update to how OpenGL is handled (which is how some AMD cards are supported). And NVIDIA cards are 150-250% faster and possibly 16 times faster, but mostly under windows.

Also

•Automatic Duck Pro Import After Effects is included

•CycloreFX HD is now bundled

•Drop Shadow, Spill Supressor, Timewarp, Transform, Set Matte, Photo Filter, Fill and Linear, Iris, Radial Wipe Transitions have been updated for 32 Bit.

•Apply Color LUT supports CineSpace,, Irrisad and Speedgrade files.

•Arriraw can be imported

•MXF OPIa video codecs can be exported

•Render only machines don’t need serial numbers

•Many Scripting additions have been added.


Things that were removed.

•Photoshop Live 3D layers are no longer supported.

•FreeForm AE is no longer bundled.

•Custom Pixel Bender effects are no longer supported

•CS6 can only save to CS5.5 no but CS5


More changes can be seen at Todd Kopriva’s blog.
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Top 5 Premiere Pro CS6 Features from PVC

PVC has an article by Scott Simmons on his top 5 Premiere Pro CS6 Features.

1) Better Broadcast Monitoring

2) Hover Scrub over clips

3) Trimming

4) Cleaner Interface

5) Effects Improvements: Adjustment Layers and Warp Stabilzer

I so can’t wait to get my hands on this!
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Some more on Adobe CS6

Here is an Adobe Premiere Pro what’s new from Adobe.

A 16 Page PDF on New Features of Premiere Pro from Adobe.

And what’s new in Premiere Pro page from Adobe.

Here is a Page on SpeedGrade CS6.

A PDF on On Encore CS6.

A PDF on After Effects CS6.

A PDf on Prelude CS6.

A PDF on Media Encoder CS6.
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Canon Announced EOS-1D C 4K DSLR

canoneos-1dc-lg1



Electonista has this story, about the new 4K DSLR from Canon. It shoots 4K 4096x2160 video at 24 FPS 8 bit 4:2:2 video. It has an 18.1 Megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with a maximum ISO of 25,600 and 12FPS continuos shooting like the EOS 1D X it is based on.

With video it shoots 4K with the full sensor, but 1080 can either be the full sensor for full sharpness and 35MM equivelency, or it can use a middle portion which allows for 60P frame rates.

The LCS can remain on even with external HDMI attached, and it has a headphone jack as well.

It will be released in 2012, but has not been given a price yet.

Sure no PL mount, but very exciting. If only they would move some of this tech to lower end cameras as well.
canoneos-1dc-lg2canoneos-1dc-lg3canoneos-1dc-lg4
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Stéphane Baril on Correcting GoPro Video Lens distortion in Photoshop CS6

John Nack links to this video on using Adaptive Wide Angle Correction to fix GoPro fisheye distortion.

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How Apple took the Pro out of FCP

Jan Ozer over at OnlineVideo.net has a great blog on Apple taking the Pro out of Final Cut Pro with Final Cut Pro X.

I totally agree with the conclusions and think it was one of the stupidest moves Apple has ever made, but it looks like Adobe and AVID are ready to take the slack.
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AVID Symphony Upgrade from FCP for $999

Videoguys no have a crossgrade from FCP 7 to AVID Symphony for $999! Yes not Media Composer but Symphony! And it is also $999 to upgrade from Media Composer!

Symphony adds Advanced Color Correction and Universal Mastering, which allows you to play out a timeline to any frame rate or size!
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Intel Shipping new Thunderbolt Controllers

MacRumors has the story of Intel’s newly shipping Thunderbolt controllers.
thunderbolt_controller_comparison

The high end DSL3510 can even interface with a discreet and integrated graphics chip, so would great for Apple iMac’s and Laptops, and hopefully a new MacPro if that ever comes to pass.

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Pebble E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android Kickstarter Program



The Pebble e-paper watch is a very cool accessory for your Smartphone that is currently having a kickstarter campaign, and these people have already made a product for Blackberries.

The only downside it is uses the old Bluetooth 2.1 tech instead of the new lowpowered bluetooth that the iPhone 4S has, so it will drain battery life.

Still a very cool idea, and a product that will have a future.
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Canon C500 with 4K

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canoncinema500-1

Electronista actually has the info on this, but Canon has announced a higher end big daddy to the C300, the C500 and C500PL. They both output 10 bit uncompressed RAW footage and simultaneously records 50Mbps HD proxy video to CF cards for easy offline editing (a brilliant idea). It has a super 35MM equivalent CMOS sensor which is 8.85 megapixels.

It has cinema 4L 4096x2160 as well as 3840x2160 for 4k TV, though only records 1080 to the dual CF cards. It does 0-60FPS in 12 bit RGB 4:4:$ or at 10bit YCrRb 4:22 it can go up to 120 FPS.

No pricing has been announced, but this makes Canon a serious contender, as well as having the EOS facility in Los Angeles for support.
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Adobe shows off Production Premium CS6 and it looks Amazing!

Macworld has an in depth article on the new Production Premium CS6 showing off it’s new features, and it does sound exciting.

Premier Pro CS6 is getting unlimited dynamic Multi-cam, built in Image Stabilization with Warp Stabilizer from AE CS5.5 and an enhanced Mercury Playback engine that will even work with some AMD video cards instead of just NVIDIA CUDA cards. It ha s anew Default Workspace, and is more customizable. It has more Audio Mixing controls. Trimming controls have been added and more customizing. A rolling Shutter repair. And of course the addition of Automatic Duck for interoperability between Final Cut Pro 7 and AVID and Premiere Pro. And it will edit 5K for RED compatibility.

Yes! Adobe has been listening and it looks like Premiere Pro CS6 is going to be a power house editing tool!

After Effects CS6 has enhancements to it’s render cache, were renders can be saved with projects, a full 3D camera Tracker, a Ray Trace 3D rendering engine (that looks to give Zaxwerks a run for it’s money), variable mask feathering, and built in Automatic Duck, so it will work with Avid Media Composer and Final Cut 7 files! Nice! Mocha will also be better integrated so you can launch Mocha from within AE (and Mocha is set to get updates at NAB as well).

A new edition to the suite is Prelude CS6 for ingest, logging and organization as well as transcoding of files.

Audition CS6 also gets updated and has smooth project exchange between Premiere Pro and third party nonlinear editors. Has real time clip stretching, automatic speech alignment and pitch correction. Better control surface control with automation.

And an exciting new addition is this suits version of Color, the recently purchases SpeedGrade. A 64 Bit GPU accelerated Color Correction tool. This is really necessary especially with DaVinci software basically being made free from Black Magic.

It really sounds like Adobe has been listening, and is making their editing suite a powerhouse that can really replace Final Cut Pro 7 and easily go head to head with AVID with even more powerful tools. I can’t wait to try this suite out!
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Bare Bones updates the Free TextWrangle to 4.0

Bare Bones software has updated the fantastic free text editor TextWrangler to version 4.0. An amazing program for free, sure not as powerful as their pay program BBedit, but still a fantastic Text editor.
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Something new for Smoke at NAB

Smoke
So it seems Autodesk has something big and new for Smoke that will be announced at NAB next week. This is utter speculation, but an inexpensive version of Smoke, say $1000 or even $1500 for a crossgrade would be huge, as many editors fresh from losing FCP 7 would give Smoke with it’s amazing compositing tools a try.

I am excited to hear what happens here.

An update at CreativeCOW.net has Walter Biscardi saying that the new smoke is amazing! I can’t wait!
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Apple Updates FCP X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4

This is all over the web, but Larry Jordan reported on it. And Apple has updated FCP X in time for NAB.

Sounds like the biggest edition is better broadcast monitor support and better Multicam performance. So mostly bug fixes, but the broadcast monitor support is certainly important.
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Sony PMW-100

sony-pmw-100-camcorder

Engadget has news on the Sony PMW-100 Camera with 50Mbps birtrate. This camera ha sa 40-400mm (35mm equivalent) fixed lens does 1080o or i and 720p at 50Mbps MPEG HD422 compression on SxS cards. And can record 4 channels of sound in 24bit uncompressed 48kHz. Nor word on price yet though, but it will be released in May
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Sony Announces HXR-NX30 Camera

sony-hxr-nx30-camcorder

Engadget has the info on Sony’s newest portable camera. This has a built in 26mm-260mm lens (35 MM equivalent) Full XLR input for sound, 96GB of internal Memory for recording 1920x1080 in 60p, 30p or 24p or 720 60p. It Records in AVCHD and most strangely has a built in projector.

To me it sounds like a HVX200 competitor, and I have loved what footage from Sony’s has looked like of late, so I am interested in seeing what the footage from this camera looks like, especially for under $2000.
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OnOne Releases Perfect Layers 2 for Free!

PL1
  • Create and edit multi-layered files without Photoshop
    • Combine images directly from Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture into a new layered file
  • Create layer masks and build composites
  • Add Color Fill Layers for photographic effects
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OnOne Releases Perfect Effects 3 Free

PE3_BOX_1
  • The next generation of PhotoTools 2.6 Free
  • Based on the popular, new Perfect Effects 3
  • Over two-dozen professional photographic effects
  • Live, full-screen effect previews
  • Combine multiple effects to create your own unique look
  • Includes Perfect Layers for creating layered files
  • Works as a standalone application or directly with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom or Aperture
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OnOne Updates Perfect Photo Suite to 6.1

OnOne Software has updated it’s perfect Photo Suite to 6.1. It is a free update for 6.0 Users.

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Here are there updates.

Improved Refine Brush Rebuilt for improved results, the Refine Brush in Perfect Mask now better recognizes soft edges, like hair and trees, so you can make your edges more defined between your foreground and background.
New Color Spill Brush Remove unwanted reflected or transmitted colors with the new Color Spill Brush in Perfect Mask to ensure all areas of your image reflect their true colors.
Enhanced Brushing Performance Experience faster, smoother and more responsive brushing functionality, including improved opacity control with Wacom tablets and reduced brush stickiness, that allow you to create high-quality and natural looking masks with just a few strokes.
Retouch Portraits with Faster Tools Images and presets now open faster in Perfect Portrait, and the automatic detection of smaller faces has been improved, so you get to the task of retouching your portraits more quickly.  
Visual Tips to Get You Started Faster Getting Started tips show you the key tools to use when you open each module, recommending the first steps to take to start realizing your photographic vision.
Select Your Performance Preferences Now you can optimize the Perfect Photo Suite’s memory usage and undo behavior to match the resources of your computer.
Additional performance updates
  • Improved panning speed and responsiveness
  • Updated Raw processing library, added support for 35 more cameras
  • Ability to change thumbnail size in matrix view on the browser
  • Improved tool tracking when interacting with other controls
  • Improved speed when using as a Photoshop plug-in
  • Improved preview quality at all zoom levels
  • Added mask thumbnail to Stack in Perfect Effects
  • Perfect Mask Pen Tool greatly improved for classic use
  • Borders in Perfect Effects now scale non-proportionally to fit the image better

I love how this company does business. The 64 bit versions of their plug ins were free, and they keep releasing either free versions of plug ins or making some of them completely free. This is a company that not only loves it’s customers, but knows it’s whole suite is good enough that it is worth giving away stuff for free since it will make enough sales.
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Created by Jonah Lee Walker 2011