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Blackmagic Design announced that Muse VFX has expanded its Fusion pipeline to include Fusion 7 Studio. Fusion 7 Studio will be used for VFX on all of Muse VFX’s projects, including CBS’s “NCIS” and “NCIS: New Orleans,” as well as MTV's “Teen Wolf” hit television shows.

Muse VFX is one of the world’s leading VFX houses that has created one of the most efficient yet artistic VFX studios in Hollywood today. Its artists have used Fusion on some of the biggest films in recent years, including Columbia Picture’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” Lionsgate’s “Safe” and Dreamwork’s “Fright Night,” as well as dozens of hit television shows.

“We’ve been working with Fusion for years. It's been the clear winner for us with its amazing node based architecture and incredible feature set. Fusion has enabled us to create anything our clients have requested. The speed of Fusion has always been fast, but with version 7, there is a noticeable boost in performance,” said Fred Pienkos, founder and VFX supervisor at Muse VFX.

Outlining their diversity in creating top quality VFX for any type of project, the Muse team also recently received the prestigious Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects for their work on the Space Shuttle Atlantis Exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“By using Fusion in our day to day film and television workflows, we are able to confidently drive the best possible work in special venue projects. Fusion easily tackles large format projects with speed and is easy to customize for less common pipelines, such as multi camera projections and installations. This was essential for the Kennedy Space Center project,” said Pienkos.

“Fusion’s 4K toolset, along with Generation’s playback capabilities, have provided us with the means to effectively deliver on time and on budget, over and over again. With the ability to go from pre-vis to post production in one application, we are able to offer efficiencies that other products can't touch,” he continued.

With Fusion 7 Studio now available, facilities worldwide have begun the migration to Fusion’s new offering.

“We are very excited to see how Fusion 7 Studio will integrate into our VFX pipeline. Blackmagic has a great reputation for building upon the products they develop, so we’re all really happy with Fusion’s new home,” Pienkos concluded.

Press Photography

Product photos of Fusion 7 Studio are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Muse VFX

Muse VFX is a world-class visual effects and design boutique in Hollywood, California that consists of award winning artists, supervisors and producers. The Muse team specializes in CG animation, compositing, digital environments, character animation, on-set supervision, and conceptual design for Television, Feature Films, Commercials, Special Venue Projects and Online Content. Proud to offer a groundbreaking 4K pipeline and other powerful tools that ensure Muse VFX is among the leading VFX providers in the industry, Muse partners with clients from pre-production to delivery, developing and executing solutions that provide the highest quality, most efficient workflows within tight deadlines. For more information, please visit www.musevfx.com.

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.

Panasonic is introducing the new lineup of UHS-I type SDXC/SDHC memory cards that boasts maximum read speed of 95MB/s and maximum write speed of 90MB/s, in addition to compatibility with UHS Speed Class 3 (U3). In addition, the lineup includes a maximum capacity upgraded from 64 GB to 128 GB.

In recent years, the standard of video content has become larger and even consumer products are capable of recording motion picture in 4K. The footage bitrate is also higher, for products such as the Panasonic Camcorder HC-X1000 and the DMC-GH4 which record Full-HD All-Intra at approximately 200Mbps. To make the most of these cutting-edge imaging tools, the recording media also needs to function so there are no dropped frames and all content data is recorded without error. By crystallizing the technology long fostered through the development of digital camcorders and cameras, Panasonic is proud to produce the high quality memory cards that excel not only in the data transfer speed but also in the stability and durability under wide usage conditions to keep the data safe for the long term.

High Speed for 4K Video

The cards are compliant with UHS Speed Class 3 (U3). The UHS Speed Class 3 is the latest, highest level of UHS Speed Class demanding a constant minimum write speed of 30 MB/s (240 Mbps) to ensure smooth recording of high bitrate video. The UHS-I card types also feature higher speed data transfers. The UHS-I bus interface enables ultra-high-speed read/write operations: when used with a UHS-I compliant product, the cards can have a maximum read speed of 95 MB/s and maximum write speed of 90 MB/s.

Reliable

The cards also feature high reliability, including Smart Guard secure data protection technology.

Thanks to the Power Failure Protection, the data will be securely protected even if the recording device has a sudden power failure. Smart Data Writing technology equalizes the frequency on each writing block in order to reduce defect risk and extend products' lifetime. The cards are also compliant with Proof 7 standards, and are water/shock/magnet/X-ray/electrostatic/temperature-proof, and have a built-in fuse. The memory cards are durable enough to withstand severe field use. The integration of fuse prevents the cards from overheating or igniting even if the card causes mechanical destruction internally.

The following CFast 2.0 cards are recommended for 4K ProRes 422 HQ (up to 60 fps):

Lexar Professional 32GB 3400x

Lexar Professional 64GB 3400x

Lexar Professional 128GB 3400x

Lexar Professional 256GB 3400X

Sandisk 120GB Extreme Pro

Sandisk 128GB Extreme Pro

Wise CFast 2.0 128GB 3400X

The following CFast 2.0 cards are recommended for 4K RAW (up to 30 fps):

Lexar Professional 64GB 3400x

Lexar Professional 128GB 3400x

Lexar Professional 256GB 3400X

Sandisk 120GB Extreme Pro

Sandisk 128GB Extreme Pro

Wise CFast 2.0 128GB 3400X

The new Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014.2 update contains some important editing enhancements, including support for Arri Open Gate media, the ability to set transitions and still image default durations in seconds or frames and Cineform Export improvements. Adobe also improved scrubbing and shuttling in long GOP MXF files. In addition, QuickTime and Cineform codecs are now available for use as sequence preview file formats on Windows. Download Premiere Pro CC 2014.2 via Creative Cloud on your desktop, or online through your Creative Cloud account. A large number of known issues and bugs have been fixed:

XDCAM HD proxy files appear with red frames.

Crash using ripple trim on a grouped clip.

Missing clips after Consolidating and Transcoding overlapping subclips.

Crash when pressing Setup button of a AE-style transition.

Comment Markers added to a merged clip get added to constituent clips, but the Name & Comments are not saved.

Stop playback command ignored when editing or playing a multicam sequence.

Crash exiting Direct Manipulation mode in Program monitor.

Duplicate clips are missing from resulting project after Consolidate and Transcode.

Crash when exporting AAF from a sequence containing clips opacity and scaling.

GoPro 2.7K footage cannot be smart rendered when height is not evenly divisible by 8.

Crash when exporting AAF with disabled clips that have cross fades applied.

Turning on audio waveforms makes sequence unresponsive.

Audio drop out during loop playback.

MXF Media with Posterize Time Effect will not render.

Audio dropouts during shuttling.

Audio drops out while playing out to tape.

Consolidate and Transcode with a custom P2 preset does not work correctly.

Multiple accelerator files are generated on a network shared media cache location.

Switching between projects that use the same workspace, all open Project panels get reset to root.

Audio pops and surges during an audio transition.

Export AAF with 24 bit embed option creates distorted audio files.

Corrupt frames when rendering Sapphire effects and transitions.

Crash on launch if OS X update has changed permissions for certain folders to Read-Only.

Blackmagic Design released new version 10.3.4 of its Desktop Video software for DeckLink, UltraStudio, Intensity and H.264 Pro Recorder capture and playback devices. Version for Windows and Mac OS X adds Avid Media Composer 8.3 and Adobe Premiere Pro CC 8.2 support, Linux version features updated driver to build against Linux 3.15 and later, and a fix for issue with updating firmware on DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G.