Nuke Mari Workflow by Frank Rueter

World's First Sony F3 S-Log Test

Based on Vimeo description

New York City, NY (April 18, 2011) Next Level Pictures in association with Tstop Cinema teamed up with Abel Cine, Kessler Crane, Wide Open Camera, Angenieux, Carl Zeiss, Cooke, Tyler Mounts, and Miller to unveil the worlds first ever camera test using the Sony F3 with S-Log. S-Log isn’t scheduled for official release until late summer 2011 so we are proud to get our hands on the camera and put it through several latitude tests to include helicopter aerials by Vincent Laforet, vibrant Vegas city lights, and skin tone tests of two models in ten different locations throughout Las Vegas at NAB 2011. The crew of twelve had only ten hours with the camera to produce and film the entire project. The purpose of this test is to compare the latitude and image quality of the new S-Log firmware to native EX codec.

Cinestyle profile for Canon 5D

@TechnicolorCo: #Canon Lovers, great news for you! No more waiting, the #CineStyle profile for DSLRs is available. ow.ly/4K6VC

The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping

Prominent trainer and consultant Larry Jordan has posted an excellent overview on his blog.

Baselight introduces Baselight on Final Cut Pro

Based on written by Scott Simmons http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/ssimmons/story/baselight_introduces_baselight_on_final_cut_pro/
Here’s the bullet points from the Baselight Tutorials website: Sophisticated colour grading functional within Final Cut Pro
Same interface and menus as Baselight colourist are familiar with
Option to export grades as an XML file for completion in a Baselight system
Compatible with Avid ‘Artist Colour & Transport’ control panels
Expected release fall 2011
Under $1000.00
Is this better than Apple Color or Davinci Resolve?
Baselight is pretty well known feature DI suite.

Gfx Hotkeys - Design & Vfx Hotkeys on your iPhone & iPod Touch!

GFX Hotkeys is the ultimate tool for Graphics Designers, Visual Effects Artists,

Compositors, 3D Animators, Video Editors, Architects, and Photographers.

Gfx Hotkeys version 1.5 massive update now includes all the shortcut keys for 29 applications!

I hope they add Davinci Resolve hotkeys, too.

NUKE and NUKEX 6.2 ships

NUKE 6.2

NUKE 6.2 gets the eagerly anticipated timeline Dope Sheet, making light work of manipulating animation key frames and interactively positioning and trimming read clips. It also brings significant improvement to rendering performance, flip book playback and 2D tracker interaction, along with enhancements to the expression editor and file browser - all core improvements contributing to improved productivity and workflow.

NUKEX 6.2

NUKEX 6.2 adds new image-based modeling tools allowing any artist to easily combine a tracked 3D camera with a selection of 2D image features, automatically creating simple scene geometry. When added to new dense point cloud generation and automatic calibration of projection cameras from 2D images and geometry, NUKEX 6.2 provides new ways to reference and re-apply composited elements more efficiently and realistically into live action scenes.

For those working with CGI rendered elements, NUKEX 6.2 brings Pixar RenderMan Pro Server support to the 3D compositing environment. As an alternative to the in-built scanline renderer, integration with RenderMan aligns NUKE-rendered scenes with the rest of the 3D pipeline, seamlessly matching motion blur and depth of field, whilst providing the compositor with more flexible control of new rendering capabilities such as ray-traced shadows and reflections.

Read the NUKE or NUKEX release notes to find out more.

Lightworks 2010 beta

Here's the another editing software from Editshare. Well, it is soon to be OPENSOURCE software.
It is only for Windows 7 but the company will release OSX and Linux version in 2011.

New Nvidia Quadro Graphics Card for Mac

Nvidia Quadro 4000 for Mac

New Fermi technology finally brings to the Mac pipeline.

It has 2GB of video ram. Even if Apple tends to promote AMD graphics card, most VFX softwares prefer NVIDIA Quadro cards. It is a great news for Mac users who use Adobe After Effects, Foundry Nuke/Storm, Autodesk Smoke, Davinci Resolve. Let's see how it goes with Apple Support.

Trapcode Particular for NUKE

Particular, developed by Trapcode and distributed by Red Giant Software is now released for Foundry NUKE. This plug is probably one of the popular plugin for After Effects artists. The Foundry even posted the tutorial clip which is done by Steve Wright. Since NUKE is becoming the industry standard package, I think other plugin companies will follow Red Giant and Genarts.IMHO, I wish NUKE supports importing audio files like After Effects or Shake.

Storm Beta is coming.

Storm by The Foundry, who developed Furnace, Ocula and Nuke, is coming in November 2010.
It will be beta release until February 1, 2011. Based on fxguide podcast/RED centre, it will be the RED only version of software but sooner than later it will be expanded for other formats such as Arri Alexa, Canon HDLRs. It looks like you can basic digital grade and debay your footage and send to FCP vice versa. I hope it eventually work as DI suite like Davinci Resolve or Lustre. The foundry is already well known for image science so let's see how it goes.

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/storm/try/

Davinci Resolve by Blackmagic

Blackmagic accquired Florida based company Davinci System last year. They just released Resolve software for OSX from NAB 2010. It is only $999 for software. Let's see how Apple feels about Their own DI software, Color.


- Posted by Yunsik Noh

Storm by Foundry

It is definitely good news for people using Red camera. As far as I know, there is no standard workflow for Red footage. I've been using Crimson Workflow since 2008. It is still pretty good when you just need to debay RED media for FCP workflow. However, it needs to improve better GUI.
Foundry is one of the best VFX software company based in UK. They are well known fora developer of Furnace plugins and now Nuke. Storm will be useful for Nuke compositor out there. I also hope that it supports other primary editing softwares such as FCP, Media composer.


- Posted by Yunsik Noh

AJA KI Pro

Via Mark at Offhollywood blogging from NAB Marks site

AJA kicked NAB off today with new product announcements which include io Express - Io Express - works on a Mac and ... on a PC!

Hi5-3G - 1080p50/60p over Dual-link 1.5G SDI or over 3G SDI, HDMI v1.3a capability at 30 bits per pixel allows full support of the latest 10 bit monitors. USB connectivity allows for PC/MAC setup in the feild, and ... Psf frame rate is supported.

HDP2 - The HDP2 is a miniature HD-SDI/SDI to DVI-D converter for digital display devices, such as LCD, DLP, and Plasma monitors or projectors. Using a very high quality scaling engine and de-interlacer, the HDP2 will automatically size 4:3 or 16:9 inputs to many DVI-D monitors.

Kona LHi -new PCIe Kona card -3G SDI I/O, HDMI 1.3a I/O, 1080p50/60 over 3G SDI, LTC timecode support, Hardware based Up and Cross-conversion, in addition to the LHeʼs Down-conversion. Better overall bandwidth for improved RAM Preview in Graphics/Compositing Apps

What does this mean for the pricing of the current KONA LHe?

The MSRP on the LHe drops almost $500 to $1295 effective at NAB, while supplies last.

But the REALLY BIG NEWS is the Ki PRO. At just under $4000 this is a tapeless video recording device that records high quality Apple ProRes 422 Quicktime files direct to disc. SD/HD-SDI, HDMI, and analog inputs. An olptional "exo-skeleton" puts the unit in a chassis that can both on a tripod with the camera.

Many cameras have outputs that bypass on-camera compression - so, for example - if you take the 10-bit HD-SDI feed from a Varicam into the device - you would record higher quality files that the actual camera is capable of.

Another obvious benefit is that some shows use a variety of different cameras and recording formats. Using Ki Pro's would allow all media shot to be in 1920x1080 Prores - ready to edit.

After Effects 3D Camera to 3D Apps

It has long been a feature of Cinema 4D that animation data, including camera animation settings, can be exported for use in After Effects. Which is fantastic, provided you do all of your camera animation for 3D/2D work in Cinema. If most of your camera animation is happening in After Effects, you would seem to be out of luck matching the camera in 3D. Untrue.

AE3D_Export will send the AE 3D animation data to Maya, Max or Lightwave. I have only given it a cursory test and can report that I did manage to get camera animation data into Maya with this script.

There is interest in more formats, of course, so if you know of a script to generate any others - AE to Nuke, anyone - by all means share a link

Clipfinder for RED Workflow

Here’s a new tool that I think is a godsend for users of the RED One. Very useful on set and for post-production as well. Works as advertised and highly recommended.

If you work with clips from a RED One Digital Camera, own a Mac with OS X 10.5 and use Final Cut Studio for editing, Clipfinder can greatly simplify your workflow:

http://www.daun.ch/software/

Clipfinder helps you manage the entire workflow

- selection and annotation

- communication with clients and team members

- rough edit using reference files or low resolution proxies in Final Cut Studio

- one-light colour correction in REDAlert

- conform and finish in Final Cut Studio

Final Cut Pro To After Effects

You have heard of Automatic Duck. As you know, it allows to share your edit between Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Combustion, Protools and so on. The good news is that it works but the bad news is that it is very costy. I recently found out this great script from this website.

http://www.popcornisland.com/2009/03/final-cut-2-after-effects/

It is the after effects script that allows to use your final cut pro xml.

Yes, it is free. Here's the tutorial, too.

Final Cut 2 After Effects (1.0.9) for CS4

XML totally rocks.

Thank you, POPCORN ISLAND.

Welcome to OPTICAL FLOW

I finally named my blog called OPTICAL FLOW. As you know, "Optical flow" is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and the scene.

Art of Optical Flow