Up In Smoke

Autodesk’s Smoke is a powerful, all-in-one postproduction application

By Clint Milby

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X and Adobe’s Creative Suite Production Premium have dominated postproduction news recently. During this time, however, a sleeping giant has awoken with a new, all-in-one finishing solution that promises to revolutionize the way we think of post. The giant is Autodesk, and their solution is Smoke. HDVideoPro visited... Read more

A New Pipeline

nextLAB and ALT Systems deliver postproduction solutions to your file-based production

By Clint Milby

In the past few years, the motion picture industry has been thrust into a state of flux like never before, which was due in large part to file-based camera systems replacing film cameras. Over the past 12 months, there have been roughly 10 new camera systems introduced to the market that are actively being used for digital film production. And in today’s... Read more

EZFX

Create stunning visuals with affordable visual-effects software

By George Avgerakis

There’s a recurring trend in technology’s relationship with its users. First, it’s very complicated, with dedicated users learning the complications, fixing them and then employing the technology. Then it seems to get very simple, with less dedicated users jumping in and popularizing the technology. Eventually, everybody gets tired... Read more

Data Wranglers

With an abundance of new workflow solutions, the gateway between production and post is looking like the Wild West

By Skip Ferderber

Welcome to workflow 2011. Some wags are calling it Deadwood, while others are referring to it as High Noon. But there are few, if any, bad guys here, simply a production picture that has become excessively fragmented and in need of a new sheriff—a plan to bring some order to the wide and wild variety of workflow solutions. Over the last decade,... Read more

The Z-Finder EVF

Zacuto releases an essential HD DSLR tool

By Neil Matsumoto

We’re all aware of the various work-arounds associated with HD DSLRs. Although most HD DSLR users consider sound to be the biggest problem, I’ve actually found monitoring to be the system’s Achilles’ heel when capturing professional-quality video. One of the main problems working with most HD DSLRs is that while in video mode,... Read more

Noise Annoys

Cinnafilm’s Dark Energy creates a cleaner and more filmic look out of video

By Iain Blair

While physicists still wrestle with fundamental questions about the nature and role of dark energy in the universe—What is it? How does it work?—filmmakers and postproduction crews have no such problem, thanks to Cinnafilm’s new Dark Energy image-processing modular software. Available as a standalone system and as a plug-in for leading software... Read more

Connect The Dots

From DP to DI, new clues in the postproduction industry signal a paradigm shift

By George Avgerakis

Many great video people lost a lot of money investing in $100,000+ “online” tools like CMX and ADO just before the advent of Avid and the Video Toaster and the bottom of an entire market fell out. I think another bottom is going to fall out. Let’s witness a chain of events in the process of exploring six new products—ARRI Relativity,... Read more

The State Of Post

The postproduction industry is seeing rapid change in both film and digital workflow

By Simon Wakelin

“The industry is always going through a metamorphosis,” offers Dennis Ho, president of Hollywood-based post house Digital Jungle Post, on the current state of postproduction. “It’s the nature of the beast. You need to acquire new hardware and software, especially when digital is pretty much at the forefront of our work.” Ho... Read more

Posting Red

Postproduction companies are discovering there are multiple workflow solutions for projects shot with the RED ONE camera

By Debra Kaufman

The RED ONE (www.red.com) camera is red hot. Numerous features—indie and otherwise—TV shows and music videos are using the high-res camera for capture. But capturing images is only half of the game, and every facility has to tame the RED workflow beast in its own way. Although a handful of manufacturers—and their ranks are growing—already have... Read more

The Raw Deal

Raw video and its workflow is explained, from production through post

By Jim Matlosz

The Oxford American Dictionary defines raw as: "Uncooked, a material or substance in its natural state; not yet processed or purified, information not analyzed, evaluated or processed for use." The definition of raw generated by the digital stills industry reads as such: A raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor... Read more