News

Panasonic announced an extended warranty program for its AVCCAM camcorders: AG-AC8, AG-AC160 or AG-AC90. Upon purchase of this option, the warranty is extended by 2 years for a total of 5 years of warranty.

Panasonic has announced a new professional AVCCAM HD handheld camcorder, the AG-AC90A, with significant improvements over its predecessor, the AG-AC90. Advances include two new recording options -- a PM mode (1280x720, 8Mbps) supporting sports analysis applications and a CS mode (720x480, 3.5Mbps) for cloud service utilization. Other enhancements comprise the ability to copy content from one SD card to another, a date and time superimpose function ideal for law enforcement and legal depositions, Freeze Frame (still picture) on video out during shooting position change, Eye-Fi card support, a Variable White Balance function, additional marker displays, and a Digital Range Stretch (DRS) On/Off user button. Current AC90 owners can access these new features via a free firmware upgrade available at http://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/index.html.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design would like to congratulate the films “Foxcatcher” and “Lost River” on their inclusion in the 2014 Cannes International Film Festival. Blackmagic Design is proud to announce that color correction for these films was done on DaVinci Resolve.

Held in Cannes, France from May 14-25, the Cannes Film Festival is one of the world’s most distinguished film festivals and previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from around the world. Inclusion in the festival is one of the most prestigious honors an independent film can gain, and each year some of the most successful films of the next several years are shown for the first time there.

Some of the films color corrected using DaVinci Resolve at this year’s festival included:

– “Foxcatcher,” graded by Tom Poole, Company 3, which will be released in theaters by Sony Pictures Classics on November 14; and

– “Lost River,” graded by Siggy Ferstl, Company 3.

The films in this year’s competition join a long list of films that have used DaVinci Resolve systems, including “Les Miserables,” “Zero Dark 30,” “Prometheus,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Avatar,” “Precious,” “Skyfall,” “Frankenweenie” and “The Fighter,” as well as some of the world’s most popular TV shows, including “NCIS: LA,” “Elementary” and “Sleepy Hollow.”

DaVinci Resolve is used by thousands of colorists worldwide. It has been used to grade more feature films, television commercials, documentaries, episodic television productions and music videos than any other color grading system.

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve 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.

The latest version of Steinberg's mastering, editing and batch processing software is available for purchase. Users of WaveLab 8.0 can download the update at the Steinberg Online Shop. WaveLab 8.5 comes with a broad range of new functions, among them industry-first features such as the new Watch Folders batch processor.

Top features in version 8.5
Watch Folders: Drag-and-drop automated offline-processing feature, using standard folders of the operating system to process and render audio files.

Encoder Checker: Compare and contrast codec quality and settings on the fly without perceivable latency and with up to three streams simultaneously, such as MP3, AAC and OGG Vorbis.

Multi-format rendering: Render to multiple audio file formats simultaneously and save encoding chains as presets.

AAC Encoder: Encode straight to AAC formats, such as HE-AAC, HE-AAC v2, HD-AAC and 3GPP, for compatibility to Apple products, such as iTunes, iPod and iPhone.

Eyeon Software's much-anticipated update of their compositing engine, Fusion 7, comes with a battle-tested pedigree of 25 years of development and thousands of productions. With core updates that have significantly increased speed and efficiencies, Fusion 7's design of 2D tools in a 3D system has achieved a highly-productive VFX environment.



Fusion 7 Key Features
Fusion 7's 3D system and renderer import geometry from FBX and Alembic, as well as OBJ, 3DS, and Collada. Millions of polygons, complex Shaders, Ambient Occlusion, Deep Volumetric Atmospherics, Particles Systems, and other toolsets, are now all final rendered with advanced optimization for GPUs, benchmarking in seconds instead of hours. Fusion 7 offers the ability to have multiple 3D renderers all in one project, all integrated and rendering different aspects from the same scene. Generating Deep Passes, such as World Position, Normals, UV, and Velocity, with Fusion's flexibility to combine 3D and 2D in a single workflow, is a significant demarcation point from other applications. In addition to new 3D tools (Replace Normals 3D, 3D Text Bevel Shaper, or 3D Interactive Splines), Fution 7 contains Dimension, eyeon Software's highly regarded Optical Flow and Stereoscopic Tools, previously offered as an option.

Fusion 7 Productivity and Workflow
Productivity and workflow are streamlined further with automation tools and enhanced rendering. Fusion 7's built-in Render Manager, and the Scripting engine that supports Python 2.x and 3.x, and Lua, are supported with scripts that ship as part of Fusion 7. Developing Macro tools, managing and sharing tools, jobs, and footage, are now part of Fusion 7's design for studio-wide use via the integrated Bin System. Fusion can have multiple projects open at the same time, with cut and paste abilities between comps adding to the integrated environment design. It is now a matter of seconds to test one comp while rendering another. The Integrated Script Debug Console works for Python and Lua to step through code, set breakpoints, and have multiple scripts open at the same time. Just-In-Time Compiling for Fuses and OpenCL tools gives the ability to develop sophisticated tools without having a C++ development environment. Immediately compile and use these tools while working in the Fusion comp. These are multithreaded for speed, and OpenCL is GPU accelerated.



“I love this software! It is literally like I can think of anything and Fusion will allow me to do it.”
– Leon Liebenberg, CVC Media

Fusion 7 Updates and Enhancements

• Animation Indicators

• Drag and Drop Layout

• User Interface Templates

• Learning Environment

• Multi Projects/Documents

• Connected Node Position and Prediction

• Templates

• Native Camera Support

• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion

• 3D Custom Vertex

• Alembic Import

• Latest FBX Library

• Replace Normals 3D

• 3D Interactive Splines

• 3D Ribbon

• UV Render and Super Sampling

• 3D Text Bevel Shaper

• Dimension - Optical Flow and Stereoscopic Tools

• Just-In-time Compiling

• Script Development Interface

• Linear Light Color/Open Color IO

• Deep Volume Processing

• Roto Onion Skinning