Autodesk Debuts 2014 Entertainment Creation Suite

Autodesk Debuts 2014 Entertainment Creation Suite:

Autodesk announced the new features of the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite 2014 today. The versatile workflow includes award-winning 3D animation, visual effects and creative tools, Autodesk Maya 2014, Autodesk 3ds Max 2014, Autodesk MotionBuilder 2014,Autodesk Mudbox 2014, Autodesk Softimage 2014 and Autodesk Sketchbook Designer 2014, all which have been updated to offer new workflow enhancements that help artists collaborate, manage complexity and move data through their pipeline more efficiently.



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Sonnet Expands xMac™ mini Server Lineup; New Model Supports Two Half-Length, Full-Height PCI Express® Cards

Sonnet Expands xMac™ mini Server Lineup; New Model Supports Two Half-Length, Full-Height PCI Express® Cards:
xMac mini Server 2H is Sonnet's Second Thunderbolt™-to-PCIe® Expansion System and 1U Rack Enclosure for Mac® mini With Thunderbolt Port (Irvine, California--March 27, 2013) Sonnet today introduced the xMac™ mini Server 2H, a second model of the company's xMac mini Server Thunderbolt-to-PCI Express® (PCIe®) expansion system and 1U rackmount enclosure for a Mac® mini with a Thunderbolt™ port. The new xMac mini Server 2H enables the use of two half-length, full-height PCIe cards, allowing users to select from and install the majority of Thunderbolt-compatible cards into either slot. The original xMac mini Server accommodates one full-length, full-height PCIe card and one half-length, half-height (low-profile) card.

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Pomfort releases major upgrade to its professional onset data-management software Silverstack

Pomfort releases major upgrade to its professional onset data-management software Silverstack:
Pomfort today announces the immediate availability of the new Silverstack. The powerful new version 3.0 of Silverstack now supports high-speed and checksum-verified copy processes to multiple destinations for all kind of camera and file formats. Furthermore it comes with a revised user interface and provides customizable copy reports. (Munich, Germany--March 27, 2013) Pomfort, a global provider of professional solutions for data and color management on the film set, today releases the latest major upgrade to its flagship software product Silverstack.

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The Difference Between Raw Video and Uncompressed Video

The Difference Between Raw Video and Uncompressed Video | Videomaker.com:
So what's the difference? Raw video is uncompressed, right? Well, it is, and raw video is always uncompressed. However, uncompressed video isn't always raw.

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Creating a look in DaVinci Resolve – Part 2

Creating a look in DaVinci Resolve – Part 2:
Colorist Jesse Borkowski is back with a second series of node by node tutorials on how to create a music video look in DaVinci Resolve involving qualifiers, simple compositing techniques and more. Jesse walks through creating his look and explains the techniques he uses in plenty of detail.  To check out the first series of 4 video tutorials check out this previous post.

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Exploring the World of Color Theory with a 3D Modeling Program

Exploring the World of Color Theory with a 3D Modeling Program:
From time to time I post plots of color gamuts like the one above. Each time, I get emails asking how I make them, leading me to assume that the world’s thirst for color nerdiness is going unquenched. I’m setting out to fix that in this post.




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Hacking NVidia Cards into their Professional Counterparts

Hacking NVidia Cards into their Professional Counterparts - Page 1:
Firstly I will give a bit of history for those that are unaware. NVidia's has for a long time had two ranges of cards, the GeForce for the gaming market, and Quadro for the professional market, and more recently the Tesla range for high end parallel computing stuff. As I am sure most of you would be aware, it is cheaper to manufacture a single chip and cripple it in some way for different product lines then it is to make different silicon for every product.

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5 Ways the Camera Department Can Help Avoid “Fix It In Post” Headaches

5 Ways the Camera Department Can Help Avoid “Fix It In Post” Headaches:

Have you looked around on a film set lately?
You might notice that production and post-production are beginning to merge.
Walter Murch, the “Yoda of editing,” often talks about how he doesn’t think editors belong on set. He thinks they need to come to the footage fresh with untainted eyes — knowing in your mind, for instance, that a shot took a whole day to film might bias you into using it.

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NVIDIA GRID VCA Delivers Remote GPU Acceleration

NVIDIA GRID VCA Delivers Remote GPU Acceleration:

NVIDIA’s new visual computing appliance GRID VCA enables facilities
to deliver faster GPU performance to Windows, Linux or Mac clients
on their networks.


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Professional Transcoding with Consistent Color

Professional Transcoding with Consistent Color:
5DtoRGB is an awesome tool that extracts every last drop of video quality from cameras that record to the AVC/H.264 video format. Cameras like the Canon EOS series of HDSLRs record video in this format with subsampled color.

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Digital Intermediate Conforming with EDLs and DPX

AREA | Digital Intermediate Conforming with EDLs and DPX:
It doesn't matter whether the original material came from traditional film celluloids or digital acquisition formats like RED or ARRIRAW.  The mediums are converted into DPX to make it a much more workable format in all genres of post production.  Feature films, television series, commercials and so on.

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aescripts + aeplugins

aescripts + aeplugins:
aescripts + aeplugins is a repository and marketplace of high-end scripts and plugins. Augment your reality and improve your workflow.


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5 Free Apps Film & Video Editors Shouldn’t Live Without

5 Free Apps Film & Video Editors Shouldn’t Live Without:
Check out 5 FREE apps that you'll want to have in your film and video editing toolkit. These utility applications can save you in a pinch and speed up your post production workflow.

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Maxon Announces Strategic Alliance with Adobe to Bring Creative Professionals New Levels of Digital Media Content Creation

Maxon Announces Strategic Alliance with Adobe to Bring Creative Professionals New Levels of Digital Media Content Creation | Studio Daily:
Maxon, the developer of Cinema 4D, a leading 3D animation software for film, broadcast and motion graphics professionals, today announced it has entered into a strategic alliance with Adobe Systems Incorporated to further collaborate on technology that provides creatives in the motion graphics and visual effects industry with new levels of digital media content creation. As part of the alliance, both companies are expected to collaborate and engineer a pipeline between Adobe After Effects software and Cinema 4D to give users a seamless 2D/3D foundation.

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Avid: Automatically converting OP-Atom MXF to ProRes MOV

Avid: Automatically converting OP-Atom MXF to ProRes MOV:
Over the last few days I tried to automatically convert Avid OP-Atom MXF files to ProRes 422 HQ MOV files. At first this didn’t sound too hard but it took me several days to come up with an good solution.

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MPEG-DASH open source tools and cloud services

MPEG-DASH open source tools and cloud services:
Our presentation from the media web symposium 2013 in Berlin on the open source landscape around MPEG-DASH as well as on cloud-based services for MPEG-DASH

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The ARRI Alexa RED EPIC Sony F55 Sensor Test

The ARRI Alexa RED EPIC Sony F55 Sensor Test: : Cinescopophilia:
What does an ARRI Alexa, RED Epic, and a Sony F55 camera have in common? Sensors… And Allstar the gear makers who gave us the A-Mount System and the tripod / shoulder base rig for cine compact cameras have bundled together the ARRI Alexa, RED EPIC, and Sony F55 cameras for a little sensor test.

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This may be the most important stuff you can know about digital video

This may be the most important stuff you can know about digital video:
This is a topic that nothing else makes much sense without. If you don't understand this stuff, you're likely to make mistakes all the time with video - especiallly now that we're into an era of complex raw workflows and grading. Luckly, you're in safe hands. Phil Rhodes is an expert: he's not just a cinematographer but an engineer as well.

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Review: HP Z1 Workstation

Definition Magazine - Def Mag - Review: HP Z1 Workstation:
Unless you’re using ‘Smoke For Mac’ is there any reason to keep loyal to the Californian badge anymore? HP reckon there isn’t and are aiming their mid-level workstation, the Z1, directly at the old Mac Pro market. We review a post production specced model and find an ingeniously designed all-in-one package.

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Understanding Lift, Gamma and Gain

Understanding Lift, Gamma and Gain:
In this installment of our weekly tutorials, I aim to explain the concepts of three basic controls in the Power Window filter, namely Lift, Gamma and Gain. It’s a bit longer than usual, and more theoretical, but I hope it serves well as an introduction to this topic:

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Final Cut Pro X versus Premiere Pro CS6

Final Cut Pro X versus Premiere Pro CS6 « digitalfilms:
The struggle within most shops that invested in Apple’s Final Cut Pro is whether to stay put a while longer, adopt Final Cut Pro X or cut the cord and move on. For many this means shifting to the Adobe Production Premium bundle – part of Creative Suite. Most of the editors and facilities in my sphere are doing just that. I’m one of only two local editors that I know actually using FCP X professionally. The rest are in the process of shifting to Premiere Pro, while maintaining some continued use of FCP “legacy”. This post is not intended as a “shoot out” or to say one is better than the other. Both are good tools and much of the choice gets down to personal preference. Instead, my goal is to lay out some random considerations in making the move.

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A Colour Grading Round Up For Virgin & Veteran Colourists

A Colour Grading Round Up For Virgin & Veteran Colourists:
Here’s a quick round up of some of the latest free tutorials, tips and training on the craft of colour grading that should help both those who are new to the craft and those who have been around it for years.

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NLE Version 7.0

NLE Version 7.0 | Edit Geek:
With NAB less than a month away it seems a certainty that we’ll see new versions of the two main NLE platforms vying for the attention of broadcast and professional editors. And they both reach version 7.0 – we’ll see Avid Media Composer (and Symphony) 7.0 and Adobe Premiere CS7 – what are we hoping for?

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Some tips on making DCP trailers

Some tips on making DCP trailers:
Trailer DCPs should be delivered in two resolutions: 1998×1080 (Flat) and 2048×858 (Scope). This way the cinema can play the trailer before both Scope and Flat movies without changing presets on the projector. With common height cinemas a preset change involves zooming the lens and changing the side masking.

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Upgrade your iMac to an editing monster - what can improve the performance?

Upgrade your iMac to an editing monster - what can improve the performance?:
If you edit videos and movies you are probably well-aware that the performance of your computer, Mac or PC, can vastly affect your the effectiveness of your work. If you use many filters and effects, the computing power required to render them can be huge. Heath McKnight shared some of his thoughts as recently he moved up to an iMac from his Mac mini for Final Cut Pro X editing. Of course everything depends on your available budget but what counts is to get the best hardware possible for the money you want to spend. If your budget is tight and you want to save a few bucks, you might for instance get a refubrished iMac.

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How to understand Dynamic Range

How to understand Dynamic Range:

Camera performance is now measured as much in terms of Dynamic Range as Resolution. Phil Rhodes explains this essential aspect of camera technology

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CatDV

CatDV:


CatDV by UK-based Square Box Systems, has become the darling of the asset management crowd. Why? Because when it comes to managing, accessing and protecting your media there’s nothing out there like it.
And the newly released ver 10 takes managing media to a whole new level. Highlights include:

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Live streaming over HTTP of video and subtitles (cont’d)

Live streaming over HTTP of video and subtitles (cont’d) | Cyril @ Telecom ParisTech:
Here are the slides describing the demo I gave during the ACM MMSys 2013 conference, in Oslo, February 2013. It is an update of the demo I gave during the MPEG meeting in Shanghai, October 2012. Source code should be published soon in GPAC and if I can, I’ll set up a running live server (or, if not possible, I’ll put a video of the demo). Stay tuned.

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Over 4 hours of real-world training for Media Composer

Over 4 hours of real-world training for Media Composer:
Rule Boston Camera’s Learning Lab Series is always superb and I’ve shared to some of their excellent videos before (like this post on 2 Hours with a Colorist). As I’ve continued on my Avid Media Composer journey lectures like these have been invaluable for an eye-opening look at how editors are working with Media Composer in the real world.

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NVIDIA Unveils New Quadro Kepler Line

NVIDIA Unveils New Quadro Kepler Line | AWN | Animation World Network:
SANTA CLARA, CA -- NVIDIA has unveiled a range of NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics products that offer unprecedented workstation performance and capabilities for professionals in manufacturing, engineering, medical, architectural, and media and entertainment companies.


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Avid — Has the Ship Sailed (or Even Sunk)?

Avid — Has the Ship Sailed (or Even Sunk)?:
Mark my words… Avid will make a desperate announcement at this year's NAB (if not sooner). Their 'we're focussing on the pro market' strategy is too little and too late. The pros they want to keep are moving on in records numbers (let alone dwindling).

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Zero Budget Software Suite For Filmmakers

Zero Budget Software Suite For Filmmakers | Raindance Film Festival:
Money is, by definition, always a difficult issue for the low budget filmmaker.  The challenge is in getting as much of your meagre budget up on the screen as possible.  With that being the case do you really have the money to throw around on overpriced software packages?

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RED Workflow - copy/backup and one light color pass in REDCINE-X Pro!

RED Workflow - copy/backup and one light color pass in REDCINE-X Pro!:
Rogue Cine released their first tutorials on working with RED's cameras. The first tutorial is quite basic and focuses on 2 ways allowing you to copy and back up your R3D media. Useful if you want to be 100% sure that you will not lose your data after this process. The tutorial showcases the R3D Data Manager app that you can find here. The second video is even more interesting as it covers how to perform a quick one light color pass in RedCine and export the files to ProRes for use in most NLE’s such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere or Avid Media Composer. If you use Media Composer, the author suggests to make DNxHD files since ProRes is wrapped as MXF files. Even more Rogue Cine's tutorials are coming in the future, so stay tuned!   Source: http://www.premiumbeat.com

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