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Scala announced the availability of Scala Enterprise Release 11, featuring powerful enhancements in speed and performance, focusing on the digital signage core product Scala Enterprise Content Manager. Functional as well as creative features contribute to the significant upgrade of control, power and ease-of-use for both network managers and designers. Scala users can tailor and refine messaging faster, optimizing interactive and engaging audience experiences with dynamically displayed content.

Highlights of this major release, which introduces 25 new features and 265 enhancements, include:

Speed and performance: With a major refactoring of the core software engines of Content Manager, significant gains both in UI responsiveness and through the APIs can be expected. Content Manager now responds exclusively to the REST-based 2.0 API calls, and developers can request Web Application Description Language (WADL) for all services of the APIs.

“Initial testing has shown upward of 3-4 times the gain in speed and performance compared to what we saw with sample customer databases using Release 10,” noted Peter Cherna, Chief Product Officer. “This allows for quicker analysis and decision making, which ultimately leads to messaging refinement and targeting.”

Ease of use and noise reduction: New controls reduce noise without compromising complete network control, and more stringent workgroup rules have added filters, mitigating the risk of asset misplacement. Pop-up alerts, extended error reporting and additional hyperlinks give at-a-glance views of content usage and conditional playback, and search functionality has improved. The end result is smarter and quicker content adjustment.

Creative and functional enhancements: Major design elements boost aesthetics as well as increase functionality. Most notably, Scala Enterprise Designer has a new table element format, an easier layout for viewing and organizing data. Due to creative designers’ positive responses to more aesthetic power found in Release 10 and the ever-increasing need for eye-catching, clear messaging, designers are gaining even more creative control – corner styles, opacity gradients and alpha masks can now be applied to all major element types and page backgrounds. The Scala Script Exporter now supports 64-bit versions of Adobe Photoshop allowing page layouts to be developed in Photoshop and exported, including layer information, to be enhanced within Designer. Interactive scripts that combine Scala Script and HTML content (Webclips) are more flexible with enhanced data sharing and an added capability to overlay Scala Script buttons on top of Webclips. An update to the Chromium Embedded Framework enables CSS 3D animation support for HTML5-based content.

Increased intelligence and control for network managers: Network managers can now optimize their bandwidth usage for Android playback devices with the extension of bandwidth-throttling for controlled data distribution. They will also have greater insight into playback activity with audit logs updated hourly, and playback logs that can accept errors reported from any integrated third-party applications.

Additional notables in this release include compatibility with Windows 8.1 for playback devices and Windows Server 2012 R2 and Internet Explorer 11 browser support for using Content Manager. Firmware for many Android devices can now be remotely updated via maintenance jobs. Lastly, certification is announced for the NEC Display OPS-DRD digital player, a powerful Android device for 24/7 playback.

“Scala Enterprise 11 addresses trends in audience engagement where scale and productivity are key,” said Scala CEO Tom Nix. “Our enhanced REST-based APIs continue to allow our Enterprise customers to connect to adjacent solutions and enable our partners to create new businesses, with almost unlimited creativity and flexibility to develop powerful experiences for their target audiences.“

About Scala

Scala solutions deliver engaging experiences by connecting networks of digital signs, kiosks, mobile devices, websites and Internet-connected devices – in both public and private environments. Scala provides the platform to easily create and centrally manage deployment of experiences, while retaining the flexibility to rapidly adapt to local business conditions. Scala has over 25 years’ experience entertaining, informing and educating audiences in wide-ranging industries including retail, quick-service restaurants, finance and more, as well as in private areas like corporate environments. Headquartered near Philadelphia, PA, Scala’s network of partners and developers located in more than 90 countries drives more than 500,000 screens worldwide. For the latest information visit scala.com, and connect on Twitter and Facebook.

The Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) has announced that Panasonic is a recipient of the organization's 2015 Engineering Excellence Award for the company's development of the 4K camera imager in its VariCam 35 4K camera/recorder. The coveted honor will be bestowed on November 12, 2015 during the tenth annual HPA Awards gala at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, CA. The VariCam 35 is an exceptional tool for high-end filmmaking, commercials and episodic production as well as live 4K events. The camera provides superb image handling in multiple formats ranging from pristine 4K RAW to more practical 4K, UHD, 2K, HD and HD ProRes capture. Several assets set the VariCam 35 apart from other high-end cinematography cameras, including dual native ISOs of 800 and 5000, allowing DPs to realize incredible image quality in dramatically low light situations; the ability to record three simultaneous video formats (4K + 2K + Proxy, or UHD + HD + Proxy); an optional high-speed 4K uncompressed RAW recorder (CODEX) that captures uncompressed 4K VariCam RAW (V-RAW) at up to 120fps; internal AVC-Intra 4K / 2K / HD recording to 120fps; support for an ACES workflow for full fidelity mastering of original source material; and in-camera Color-Grading via CDLs / 3D LUTs.

The new Blackmagic Camera update adds support for the new high resolution Blackmagic URSA Viewfinder and it also updates all URSA cameras to support the Blackmagic URSA Viewfinder. For URSA cameras, the update also adds an option to display timecode input by tapping on the timecode display, and performance enhancements and improvements. No changes to other Blackmagic cameras.

The Beta 3 update adds empty track deletion, timeline proxy mode, improved H.264 performance as well as general performance enhancements. The free DaVinci Resolve version is a full professional editing and color grading system that is suitable for independent users working on SD, HD and Ultra HD projects. This software replaces DaVinci Resolve Lite. The DaVinci Resolve Studio features multiple GPUs support, 4K mastering, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, 3D tools, remote and multi user collaboration tools. Installation requires a DaVinci Resolve dongle.