The Working Pro

With Media Composer 6.5, Avid doubles down on the professional editing market

By George Avgerakis

At NAB 2012, I had an opportunity to speak with Avid CEO Gary Greenfield. When Greenfield arrived at Avid in December 2005, he found a mishmash of products like Pinnacle Studio and Softimage|XSI. I was curious to find out what his long-range plans were, particularly with regard to consumer-editing products. "We’re definitely streamlining... Read more

At A Glance: Technicolor CineStyle Color Assist

A professional, yet intuitive color-grading system

By Neil Matsumoto

If you’re a Canon DSLR shooter, one of the best third-party applications has been Technicolor’s CineStyle profile, which enables you to capture a flat Log-like look, which gives you more latitude during color grading. Now Technicolor has released a software application, CineStyle Color Assist, that makes color grading easier and more efficient,... Read more

Set Etiquette

EC3 and Light Iron perform on-set digital workflow for the 21st century

By Neil Matsumoto

For motion-picture production, film has been the dominant format for the past 100 years. Although technology has modified the film workflow—especially with the emergence of faster computers, cheaper storage, film scanning, the digital intermediate, etc.—the workflow has generally remained the same. On-set digital workflow has been around for a... Read more

Cause And FX

Red Giant releases new effects tools targeted at both professional and indie filmmakers

By Neil Matsumoto

Here at HDVideoPro, we’re always on the lookout for companies that create innovative tools for indie filmmakers, yet can still satisfy the pros. Red Giant, which produces plug-ins for compositing software and NLEs, is one of those companies. Its most popular plug-in, Magic Bullet (introduced back in 2001) is an advanced, yet easy-to-use application... Read more

Judge And Jury

DNA Films and vfx post house Prime Focus create a brilliant sci-fi look in 3D for Dredd

By Ian Blair

Dredd, the new British sci-fi film directed by Peter Travis and starring Karl Urban as Judge Dredd and Olivia Thirlby as Judge Anderson, paints a bleak picture of the future. America is an irradiated wasteland, and on its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington, D.C., lies Mega-City One, a vast, violent metropolis of over 400 million citizens... Read more

Data Managers

Codex Digital is streamlining the professional production workflow

By Dan Brockett

We’ve been hearing about how digital acquisition and workflow would be overtaking film as the predominant production workflow for several years. Postproduction made the leap to digital a few years ago with the popularity of the DI (digital intermediate) process, but the past few years have finally seen the production side of the business following... Read more

A Loaded Suite

Adobe CS6 Production Premium offers major upgrades and new features to Premiere Pro and After Effects, as well as a world-class color-grading system in SpeedGrade

By Neil Matsumoto

It goes without saying that the production industry has seen some significant changes in the past couple of years. Disruptive camera technology (the RED ONE, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, etc.) has helped create a new industry in which low-budget filmmakers can compete with high-end studios and production houses in delivering a professional-looking movie. The... Read more

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

Critical Mass

Will Thunderbolt technology change postproduction in 2012?

By Dan Brockett

Introduced in early 2011 by Apple in conjunction with Intel, Thunderbolt™ is a technological marvel, a whole new direction for high-speed data transfer, monitoring and signal input/output. By the end of 2011, Apple was shipping Thunderbolt-enabled MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, Mac minis and iMacs—the entire lineup of Apple computers, with... Read more