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Blackmagic Design announced the public beta of the free version of Fusion 8, the world’s most advanced visual effects and motion graphics software, is now available for download from the Blackmagic Design website. This beta is for the free version of Fusion 8 and is available for both Mac OS X and Windows.

A beta for the paid version, Fusion 8 Studio, which adds stereoscopic 3D tools and is designed for multi user workgroups and larger studios, will be available shortly. However, current Fusion Studio customers can download the public beta for the free version of Fusion 8 and start using it today.

This public beta is also the first ever Mac compatible release of Fusion, which was previously a Windows only product. By bringing the free version of Fusion 8 to the Mac, high end visual effects are available to even more users than ever before, opening the door to millions of motion graphic artists, broadcast designers, video editors, visual effects compositors, and 3D animators. In addition, projects can be easily moved between Mac and Windows versions of Fusion so customers can work on the platform of their choice. Now, anyone with a Mac or Windows computer can get access to the same high end visual effects tools used by Hollywood’s most elite artists.

Long time fans of Fusion will also notice that in the 6 months since Fusion 8 was launched at NAB there has been many improvements to the user interface and Fusion customers will appreciate the more modern look of the software. There will be many more improvements to the user interface as the Fusion engineering teams continue to work with the visual effects community.

Fusion has been one of Hollywood’s leading visual effects and motion graphics tools for over 25 years, and has been used on thousands of feature film and television projects, including blockbusters like Thor, Live Die and Repeat, the Hunger Games trilogy, White House Down, Battlestar Galactica and more.

Featuring a powerful node based interface, Fusion makes it extremely easy to build sophisticated visual effects compositions very quickly. Nodes are small icons that represent effects, filters and other image processing operations that can be connected together in any order to create unlimited visual effects. Nodes are laid out logically like a flow chart, so customers won’t waste time hunting through nested stacks of confusing layers with filters and effects. Unlike timeline based applications, it’s easy to see and adjust any part of a project in Fusion by simply clicking on a node.

With a massive toolset consisting of hundreds of built in tools, customers can pull keys, track objects, rotoscope, retouch images, animate titles, create amazing particle effects and much more, all in a true 3D workspace. Fusion can also import 3D models, point cloud data, cameras or even entire 3D scenes from Maya, 3ds Max or Lightwave and render them seamlessly with other elements. Deep pixel tools can be used to add volumetric fog, lighting and reflection mapping of rendered objects using world position passes so customers can create amazing atmospheric effects that render in seconds, instead of hours.

“Since we announced our plans to bring Fusion 8 to Mac OS X, we’ve had a massive response from the creative community,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “This is something that animators, designers and visual effects artists have wanted on the Mac for a very long time. Because it was written specifically for Windows, bringing Fusion to Mac OS X wasn’t just a simple port. Our engineering team has been working tirelessly to rewrite parts of the Fusion code base so it runs incredibly well on Mac OS X, while also improving the Windows version. This new free version of Fusion 8 for Mac and Windows will make it accessible to many more users than ever!”

Fusion Versions

Fusion 8 will be available in two versions:

Fusion 8 for Mac and Windows is free for customers and the public beta of Fusion 8 is now available to download. Fusion 8 is a full professional 3D visual effects and compositing system that is suitable for independent effects, motion graphics, and broadcast design artists. Fusion 8 features integrated 2D and 3D compositing and motion graphics software with a massive toolset featuring paint, rotoscope, titling, animation, multiple keyers, an amazing 3D particle system, advanced keyframing, GPU acceleration, and support for importing and rendering 3D models and scenes from other applications.

Fusion 8 Studio, will be available for Mac, Windows and Linux for $995 and the public beta will be available soon. Fusion Studio has all of the same features as the free version, but also adds advanced optical flow image analysis tools for stereoscopic 3D work, retiming and stabilization. Fusion Studio also includes support for third-party OpenFX plugins, unlimited distributed network rendering, and Generation for studio wide multi user collaboration to track, manage, review and approve shots when working with large creative teams on complex projects.

Availability and Price

Fusion 8 Public Beta is available today for download from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge. Fusion 8 Studio Public Beta will be available soon and will be available to download from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge for all current Fusion 7 Studio customers.

Press Photography

Product photos of Fusion 8, and all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

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.