Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/642315
PRODUCTS www.postmagazine.com 39 POST FEBRUARY 2016 PIPELINEFX RELEASES QUBE! 6.8 LOS ANGELES — PipelineFX (www.pipelinefx.com) has released Qube! 6.8, the latest update to the company's render farm management software for visual effects. Based on customer feedback, Qube! 6.8 expands the capabilities of ArtistView, bringing job submissions, a simpler configuration process, and tabbed navigation into a new user interface. ArtistView was designed to streamline WranglerView, so artists only have to focus on creative elements, like queue control, project updates, and ren- der previews. Among the additional new Qube! 6.8 features are Centralized Preferences, a new easy-to-use admin interface that allows users to set job submission defaults across their studio or for specifics groups and users, and new platform support, which adds support for Windows 8, Windows 10, Mac OS X El Capitan, and CentOS Versions 6.7, 7.0 and 7.1. Customers currently on maintenance and support can download Version 6.8 immediately from the PipelineFX FTP site. Subscription licenses are available for $15/month. MINNETONKA BRINGS DOLBY DIGITAL TO AVID PLATFORM MINNETONKA, MN — Minnetonka Audio (www.minnetonkaaudio.com) an- nounced that its SurCode for Dolby Digital Plus Decoder and Encoder are now available for Avid AAX supported products, including ProTools and Media Composer. They are among the first companies to bring Dolby Digital Plus to the Avid platform. The SurCode for Dolby Digital Plus Decoder enables the auditioning and decoding/confidence monitoring of Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital en- coded audio files for post production, film, TV, mobile, gaming and video on demand. It also has the capability to decode back to multichannel PCM audio directly into the timeline. The SurCode for Dolby Digital Plus Encoder allows users to create fully compliant Dolby Digital Plus E-AC-3 files from multichannel WAV or AIFF sources. SurCode for Dolby Digital Plus also provides encoding and decoding of Dolby Digital AC-3 files for legacy content. SurCode for Dolby Digital Plus with both an encoder and decoder is $595 (MSRP); for Pro Tools Dolby Digital customers. The cross-grade price point for Neyrinck SoundCode is $295 for the bundle. CHAOS GROUP UPGRADES V-RAY FOR 3DS MAX LOS ANGELES — Chaos Group (www.chaosgroup.com) has released a free upgrade to V-Ray for 3DS Max. The update offers 20 to 50 percent faster rendering for most scenes, and contains more than 25 new features and improvements. It also introduces a new variance-based adaptive sampler (VBAS) for more uniform noise distribution, faster setup, and improved imag- ery for VR, VFX, and arch-viz workflows. Variance-based adaptive sampling provides better sampling of dark areas and faster sampling of overbright areas; more consistent noise detection; final image quality that's less dependent on materials and lights settings; im- proved alpha channel sampling — especially in scenes with depth of field and motion blur; and works in both bucket and progressive rendering modes. Improvements include updates to global illu- mination and GPU rendering, The upgrade is available for free to all V-Ray 3.0 customers and can be down- loaded directly from the Chaos Group Website. CALIBRATED SOFTWARE ADDS XAVC SUPPORT AUSTIN, TX — Calibrated Software (www.calibratedsoftware.com), creator of applications and plug-ins for video and asset management software, has released a major update of its Calibrated AVC-Intra Create product that adds Sony XAVC Intra encoding to Apple's Compressor application. Calibrated AVC-Intra Create, available now, already supports the exporting of Panasonic AVC-Intra MOV files, P2 and OP1a AVC-Intra MXF files with metadata from Apple Compressor and other third-party applications. This new release ex- pands the capabilities of Calibrated AVC-Intra Create to include support for exporting Sony-compliant XAVC Intra MXF files with Sony metadata at HD, QFHD and 4K resolutions.