The Cutting Room Floor
dedicated to the art of film & all things post production
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Avid Makes Big Changes with Release of Media Composer 5
Final Cut lost one of it’s better selling features with the release of Avid’s Media Composer v5. Although Final Cut still retains it’s “one stop studio” (similar to that of the more consumer used Adobe Production Suite), Avid has now incorporated the drag and drop format for video and audio along with the ability to import footage without having to transcode. The latter being one of the biggest complaints of Final Cut users when working with Media Composer, since the ability to just grab (most) video formats and simply import them into your project in seconds has always been a primary function of workflow with FCP. Well, now Avid has finally added this convenient little feature to v5, and it will certainly take a little wind out of the sails of Final Cut’s ambitious climb to topple Avid in the post production market.
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Television Loses Great Editing As 24 Comes to an End
Well, here we go, yet another blog about one of the great television shows ending it’s series run. But I’m not here to discuss the finale or debate whether or not this show ended on a high note ( well, not really anyway ). What I really wanted to do was pay respect to the post production of one of the recent shows whose decided to pack it in after many years of entertaining us all, that show was 24. As an editor myself, one of the many draws that had me watching 24 for the last eight seasons was the way the stories were told from an editing standpoint. I’ve never seen a show that did such a unique and brilliant job of bringing in it’s story lines and make such creative use of split screens as 24 did. When the show first aired, I was completely enthralled with the originality of how it displayed real time and made use of multiple screen shots. Now after eight seasons, I can actually say that I feel that this show should go down in the annals of television as one of the most original and creative of it’s kind ( at least certainly from an editing standpoint ) . Read More
‘Assimilate’ Adds New Fire With Scratch v.5.1
SCRATCH the’ Digital Finishing Solution’ by Assimilate is billed by the company as the essential mix for a real-time, resolution-dependent data workflow.Riding the RED MX Wave and beyond: The RED-ONE Digital Camera has taken the entertainment world by storm. Assimilate’s Scratch 5.1 leads the industry with first support for RED cameras, such as support for multiple RED Rocket cards in a single SCRATCH system; first dual RED Rocket support for MX R3D; and first non-RED application to support the new RED MX sensor and revised color math, with native real-time playback and adjustment of all on-camera color parameters, such as FLUT, exposure, and curves. Working easily with the native R3D files, SCRATCH streamlines the RED ONE MX workflow and delivers a high-quality master for multiple delivery formats.
With 3D in full gear, Assimilate has given post artists the ability to work in real-time 3D at all times with direct output to any stereoscopic display system. Additionally. Assimilate offers post houses it’s exclusive 3Play Pro, which enables playback and review of full-resolution HD stereoscopic material on a variety of consumer 3D monitors, as well as non-3D monitors using a variety of Anaglyph formats. With enhanced color grading along with finishing and compositing, Scratch v.5.1 also offers support that reads and writes every DNxHD format, which provides full compatibility with AVID media for projects originating on Media Composer, Symphony, or DS.
Assimilate’s Scratch v.5.1 will be on display at this years NAB with multiple booths for those eager to test out the new features and take a test run on what is proving to be a valuable asset to those in the post community.
Write Protection With Shared Avid Projects in Windows
Most post houses have multiple editing stations which generally pull projects and media off of a main server, this certainly isn’t new. But an issue that has been brought to my attention over the last few weeks is one regarding the use of multiple avid suites with different windows based platforms (ie. Windows 2000, XP, Vista) accessing the same projects. The issue being that when a project is closed on one particular suite and re-opened on another, the user would get an error which stated that the projected is locked or write protected and therefore any changes would not be saved. As one can well imagine, this can be a huge issue, especially if the project is under a deadline, and if you haven’t experienced this before, then God bless you, but I hope the shared knowledge here will benefit you down the road. Read More
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