News

The V-Ray 3.0 for Maya Beta program is now open! This major release is just around the corner and Chaos Software would like your input to help make it their best update yet. A new Progressive Rendering Engine, support for several open source technologies, plus up to 5x faster ray tracing and rendering performance are some of the features included in the initial round of enhancements. The new website V-Ray.com has been updated with a complete list of new features and improvements to the already powerful toolset. V-Ray 3.0 for Maya public beta is available now and open to all V-Ray for Maya commercial users. Join today!

Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that the Pocket Cinema Camera was used to shoot the first person point of view footage for McDonalds’ recent “SuperGood” ad campaign produced by Stern Advertising. Joe Murray, of Woodside, CA based production company Native Sons Films, was the director and cinematographer, and he used DaVinci Resolve 10 to transcode the Pocket Cinema Camera footage and to color correct the director’s version of the edit.

“The idea was to shoot the commercial from the point of view of a person eating, sharing and going throughout their day with McDonalds. Not only did that allow us to show the product and logo in almost every shot, but the first person point of view grabs the audience’s attention and makes them feel part of the experience,” said Joe. “I worked closely with Stern Advertising to ensure the spot had a positive vibe, high energy and constant movement to really engage the viewer.”

Mounted to the mouth guard of a motorcycle helmet, the Pocket Cinema Camera was chosen for its light weight and compact form factor while delivering RAW image quality and 13 stops of dynamic range.

“We had the camera operator and actors on bicycles, skateboarding, running into a meeting and dancing at a beach party. Movement was essential to the theme, and the Pocket Cinema Camera’s form factor was perfect,” said Joe. “We also cast real people, which provided extra personality and enhanced the natural feel. So at times we had actual skateboarders wearing the helmet and shooting with the camera, and it gave a really authentic feeling. A DSLR would have been too unwieldy and wouldn't have provided such a natural feeling of movement.

“I also wanted it to look authentic, as if you are looking through a human eye, not a camera, so the footage had to have a sophisticated, cinematic look. Even though it’s a roving, quick point of view, I didn't want over sharpened, highly compressed images or barreling distortion with a fish eye look. I wanted a naturalistic wide lens look with correct corners and smooth, high quality images, and I couldn't have done it with any other tool,” he continued.

With scenes ranging from bright light streaming through windows, sunshine coming through the trusses of a bridge and a beach campfire at dusk, much of the footage had an extreme contrast range, and Joe noted that the Pocket Cinema Camera’s latitude helped capture all detail. “A few of the images were created using a DSLR, and the quality difference was quite apparent. The DSLR was not able to record the dynamic changes in exposure and latitude that the Pocket Cinema Camera easily captured without clipping. The Pocket Cinema Camera’s extra latitude was what we needed. Even during the campfire scene on the beach, the camera captured everything from the shadows to the detail in the fire,” he said.

With the Pocket Cinema Camera’s 13 stops of dynamic range, the footage had all the information Joe needed to finesse it in post with DaVinci Resolve 10. “Being able to work natively with the RAW codec in DaVinci Resolve is a huge advantage over traditional H.264 DSLR codecs because there is much more latitude in the images as long as you expose the footage correctly. DaVinci Resolve has been my go to color corrector forever, and I wouldn't use anything else, it’s so powerful,” he concluded.



Press Photography

Product photos of Pocket Cinema Camera, DaVinci Resolve and all 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 film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, 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 stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

If you purchase a Panasonic AG-AC8EJ camera between 10 February and 31 July 2014, you will receive an immediate discount of EUR 150 excluding VAT! The offer is valid for professional end users only. In order to take advantage of this offer, the end user must accept that we will send a copy of the invoice to the manufacturer together with their written agreement to the rules of this promotion. The end user's details will only be used in connection with this promotion and will be deleted by Panasonic at the end of the promotion

Press Release

Blackmagic Design today announced a new model of the Blackmagic MultiDock with super fast Thunderbolt 2 technology. The new Blackmagic MultiDock replaces the previous model and is available now for 445 EUR ex. VAT.

Blackmagic MultiDock is a 4 disk docking solution and high speed disk array featuring an attractive machined metal rack mount design with an easy to access “cartridge” style design that enables customers to work more efficiently with high capacity solid state drives. Each disk dock features an independent SATA interface chip for extremely fast data transfer speeds. MultiDock is fully compatible with SSD’s recorded in HyperDeck broadcast recorders, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and more.

Compatible with existing Thunderbolt computers, MultiDock features advanced Thunderbolt 2 technology for blazingly fast transfer speeds at up to 20 Gb/s. This means customers get super responsive editing and color correction directly from source disks and avoid slow file copying. The new Blackmagic MultiDock also includes a loop thru so users can connect up to 6 devices with a single Thunderbolt connection. This means customers can build SSD docking stations with up to 24 slots or incredibly fast disk arrays consisting of up to 24 disks all striped together on a single Thunderbolt connection to the computer.

Blackmagic MultiDock uses Mac OS X and Windows driver support so SSD’s will mount like regular built in hard disks. That ensures 100% compatibility with popular software tools including DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Avid, Smoke and more. Customers can even stripe multiple disks together and build a super fast SSD RAID array.

“The Blackmagic MultiDock is a fantastic solution to managing storage in a busy broadcast or post production environment. Now with Thunderbolt 2 technology you get amazingly fast transfer speeds of up to 20Gb/s, that’s enough bandwidth to easily handle the highest resolution video formats. It’s fantastic when using disks independently or when striping them together as a large disk array ,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “Blackmagic MultiDock is an incredible solution to the problem of managing disks and the amazingly fast transfer speeds will make editing, design and color correction even faster!”

Blackmagic MultiDock Key Features

– 4 disk docking slots with attractive illuminated disk access indicators.

– Rack mount design with built in 110V to 240V power supply. 1 RU size.

– High speed Thunderbolt connection for Mac and Windows computers.

Availability and Price

Blackmagic MultiDock is available now for 445 EUR ex. VAT.

Press Photography

Product photos of Blackmagic MultiDock 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 film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s DaVinci Emmy™ award winning color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K 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 check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Steinberg are showcasing the next point update of their award-winning audio editing and mastering software, WaveLab, at this year’s Musikmesse trade show in Frankfurt, Germany. WaveLab 8.5 puts a heavy emphasis on encoding and processing audio files, introducing the new Watch Folder feature for easy, efficient file conversion and batch processing plus the Encoder Checker for A/B comparison between encoding formats. The new version also introduces encoding to the AAC file format compatible with iTunes and related Apple hardware as well as convenient multi-format rendering for simultaneous file export to various formats. WaveLab 8.5 will be a purchasable update available from June 2014.