Blackmagic Cinema Camera

BMD-Digi-Camera

FCP.CO has the news on a new Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It is $2995 with 13 stops of dynamic range, a large 2.5K sensor and Canon EF mount lenses. And it comes with a full version of DaVinci Resolve and Ultrascope. It records to SSD in 12 Bit Log as well as CinemaDNG, ProRES and DNxHD, and has a large touch screen for entering Metadata. Check it out at Blackmagic Designs Web site.
BMD-Camera-Back
From what I see the biggest problem seems to be the lack of XLR audio inputs and only 1.4” instead. Certainly not as good. Makes this a good run and gun B-Roll camera, but you would want something with XLR for sync sound. Actually been reading more and it is the same sound as it would be with XLR.

Seems people’s biggest complaint is going the Apple rout and having a non-removable battery that takes 3 hours to recharge. This certainly makes it more of a get a shot here and there camera, though it seems that it can actually take many different voltage power, so you can power it from many different batteries and it will be fine, so it is not like this is a huge problem, but you will have to have some sort of mount and extra batteries for any serious shooting.
BMD-Camera-side

Blackmagic Announces DaVinci Resolve 9

Creative Cow has the announcement of a completely overhauled user interface, that will be available in July and free of charge for all Resolve customers, or $994 full price as it is now.. New features include automatic 3D eye matching, mutli-layer timelines, xml support and more camera and file support. It also includes Log grading, audio playback with 16 tracks per clip, automatic audio sync, clip data burn ins and batch rendering for dailies.

Larry Jordan previews FCP X features to come

Larry Jordan has posted a preview of new features that will be added to FCP X and that Apple is saying that FCP X is to be a pro editing App. This includes native RED and Scarlet editing, and better audio editing, Dual Viewers (wow is apple admitting it was wrong??) and native MXF support, and rumors of another app to go with Motion and Compressor.

Maybe Apple can make FCP X a real Pro Editing Program, but the bad word they have created with the initial release will forever taint it. Honestly they should be a doing a 64 bit Final Cut Pro 8, and put in as many new features from X as they can as additions, and that might convince people they are still going for the pro market, but FCP X in my opinion will be forever tainted.

Smoke 2013 for Mac Announced

Electronista has the announcement on Smoke 2013 for Mac. Sounds pretty cool, but I think the $3495 price tag will hurt them when they could have gone cheaper or done a crossgrade and really cleaned up, though the drop from $15,000 is really appreciated. I think a serious crossgrade offer like Adobe or AVID offered for Final cut Pro would hugely widen their installed user base.

You can also check it out at Autodesks web site with a whole slew of videos.

PVC also has a good article on the new smoke, as does Larry Jordan.

It seems they are really stressing that Smoke does more than edit, with color correction, true 3D compositing, fast garbage masking, motion tracking, fast renders and node based compositing, which is really exciting for anyone who dabled with the ill fated shake in the past. And it is supposed to have been retooled to work on MacBook Pro’s not just high end MacPro’s. And it can take FC 7 and FCPX XML directly, though it needs to take AVID and Premiere as well.

It will come out later this fall, but will have a fee beta version starting in June.

I am really damn excited about this! I love node based editing since I learned Shake, but have stopped using it since Shake went away. Would love to have an editor with real Node based FX and full editing capabilities. I just wish there was sidegrade pricing!

PVC Review of After Effects CS6

Chris and Tish Meyer have an After Effects CS6 Review.

•Ray-Traced 3D Rendering Engine sounds great, but very also limited at this point. And it only works with CUDA cards not the few AMD Laptop cards approved for Premiere Pro.

•3D Camera Tracker is covered. It sounds pretty automated, but I am very excited to have Shadow Catcher layers, a white solid which only receives shadows. It basically sounds very good, but not as good as the Foundry’s excellent CameraTracker which has more options.

•Track in Mocha is a new feature that allows you to send files to Mocha instead of having to import files yourself. A feature that will make Mocha a more integrated tracker.

•Rolling Shutter Repair that removes Jello Cam from CMOS DSLR.

•Variable Mask Feathering is a feature I have been missing since Shake, and I am glad as hell to see it in After Effects. To do it you just Option drag on a mask point.

•Global Performance Cache where RAM Previews are retained in memory to save re-renders.

•Persistent Disk Cache all RAM Cache’s are saved to disk with projects, and you can Cache work area in background.

•Faster Graphics Pipeline is an update to how OpenGL is handled (which is how some AMD cards are supported). And NVIDIA cards are 150-250% faster and possibly 16 times faster, but mostly under windows.

Also

•Automatic Duck Pro Import After Effects is included

•CycloreFX HD is now bundled

•Drop Shadow, Spill Supressor, Timewarp, Transform, Set Matte, Photo Filter, Fill and Linear, Iris, Radial Wipe Transitions have been updated for 32 Bit.

•Apply Color LUT supports CineSpace,, Irrisad and Speedgrade files.

•Arriraw can be imported

•MXF OPIa video codecs can be exported

•Render only machines don’t need serial numbers

•Many Scripting additions have been added.

Things that were removed.

•Photoshop Live 3D layers are no longer supported.

•FreeForm AE is no longer bundled.

•Custom Pixel Bender effects are no longer supported

•CS6 can only save to CS5.5 no but CS5

More changes can be seen at Todd Kopriva’s blog.