Black Magic Designs Ursa Upgradeable 4K Camera

BlackMagic Designs has announced a new like of 4K upgradeable cameras called URSA. It starts at $5995 for an EF mount or $6495 for a PL Mount version. There will also be a broadcast version and one without a sensor and just an HDMI in for recording.

This is an impressive looking camera, especially with the 10″ fold out viewfinder and dual touch screens for control. With this Black Magic is going all out with it’s cameras and making a really impressive high end camera to take on RED, and yet be cheaper.

David Fincher has moved to Premiere Pro CC for his film GONE GIRL

Studio Daily is reporting that David Fincher’s new film GONE GIRL is being edited on Premiere Pro CC. And we already know Saturday Night live is using it for it’s pre-done segments.

Lets hope this is moment like when Walter Murch used Final Cut Pro 3 to cut Cold Mountain. That really pushed Final Cut Pro more mainstream. And since I have seen so many big companies moving back to AVID of late, it is great to see something high profile like this, to push Premiere Pro, which I really prefer to AVID, especially for Graphics heavy projects, like Direct Response which I mostly cut of late.

Not that Premiere doesn’t have it’s issues, but overall it is a very impressive program, and it’s integration with After Effects really makes it even better.

Adobe has announced an upgrade to the Creative Cloud Video Suite for NAB

Rich Young a the ProVideo Coalition has the news on this exciting next release of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Video Suite.

Looks like Adobe is taking aim at the finishing power of AVID with the ability to add effects to Master Clips in Premiere, as well as edit Text from After Effects Projects within Premiere.

Scott Simmons has a more extensive look at Premiere.

And as for After Effects, the effects on a per mask basis is pretty exciting, as it will change the use of layers and adjustment layers within After Effects.

Chris and Trish Meyer look deeper at After Effects.

Looking forward to it. The fast update cycle is pretty awesome. I would like to see AVID come close.

Sonnet has announced a rack mountain solution for the new MacPro, the xMac Pro Server

Sonnet has announced it’s xMac Pro Server, to add the new MacPro to a Rack. Of course that is not all as it also adds PCI expansion through Thunderbolt 2, room for optical drives and ports. It is $1499, but adds 3 PCIe Ports to the MacPro including a Red Rocket (through Thunderbolt 2, so no graphics cards) with a 300W power supply, places (with additional kits) to install optical drives and additional hard drives.

A very cool idea, if a bit expensive.

Sony adding a paid upgrade to ProRES and DNxHD for the F5 and F55

NonLinear Post has the news.

This is so exciting as Sony has always loved their proprietary formats, even proprietary media, and for them to be opening up their amazing cameras to ProRES and DNxHD even with a paid upgrade is huge. Especially with the F55 which has a Global Electronic Shutter, which gets rid of the rolling shutter problem of CMOS image sensors!

And it has beautiful image quality.

NVIDIA announces next gen Pascal GPU’s and $3000 Titan Z Graphics Card

PC World has this exciting news.

Pascal will use NVLink, to enhance the PCI connection between cards, and allow for 5x to 12x speeds over PCI Express. And with 3D stacking of chips to increase bandwidth between components we will have serious powerhouses here.

And the Titan Z has 12GB of memory and 5760 CUDA Cores! Wow, think of the CUDA accelerated editing with that! And Pascal will be even faster than that. AWESOME.

And this is why it was insane for Apple to give up on user expandable PCI Express cards in their computers. By limiting graphics to only specific AMD cards they have done their customers a huge disservice, and this is likely why I will end up with a PC someday.