Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/87274
products Bluefish444's Scratch plug-in S OUTH MEL- BOURNE, AUS- TRALIA — Blue- fish444 (www.blue- fish444.com), mak- ers of uncom- pressed 4K/2K/H- SD SDI video cards, has developed a new Windows plug- in for Assimilate's Scratch and Scratch Lab enabling both 4K HD/SDI preview and 12-bit HD-SDI preview. The plug-in compliments its Epoch range of video cards, includ- ing the Epoch|4K Supernova. The 12-bit SDI preview support allows Scratch users to preview high-bit- depth imagery avail- able with modern digital cameras. The 4K Supernova card will support a variety of 4K SDI previews from within Scratch/ Lab. The Windows driver is available this month. Blackmagic expands Cinema Camera line F REMONT, CA — Blackmagic has introduced the second version of its Cin- ema Camera — this one featuring a passive Micro Four Thirds (MFT) lens mount, giving customers a greater choice of lens options when shooting. The new Cinema Camera MFT model supports any Micro Four Thirds with manual iris and focus, and is also easily adapted to other lens mounts such as PL via third-party adapters. The ability to use third-party adapters to allow other types of lens mount is due to the Micro Four Thirds lens mount being much closer to the image sensor and allowing space for adapters to other lens mounts. The Blackmagic MFT model is identical to the original Cinema Camera introduced back at NAB, however it does not include lens communication, so manual lenses are used. The current model will be renamed Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF. Both include a super wide 13 stops of dynamic range, a large 2.5K sensor, and a built-in SSD recorder that has the bandwidth to capture open standard CinemaDNG RAW, Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD files. Both models cost $2,995. A touch screen allows for direct metadata entry. Stan- dard jack audio connections are included as is a high-speed Thunderbolt connection and 3Gb/s SDI output. A full copy of its DaVinci Resolve for color and UltraScope waveform monitoring software are included. MFT ships in December. 44 Post • October 2012 www.postmagazine.com Primestream ups logging tool, Adobe integration M IAMI — Primestream (www.prime- stream.com), a provider of media asset management and broadcast automation soft- ware, has released Fork Logger 1.0, a cross- platform module that's part of the Fork Pro- duction Suite 3.5. Fork Logger is a metadata-tagging tool that allows for logging live or prerecorded video. The module's user interface enables content loggers to tag video with defined metadata into the Fork environment easily, making assets simple to manage, automate and monetize. For example, if it's a soccer game, you can preset Penalty Kick, Goal, Assist, etc. The company also enhanced its level of inte- gration between Fork and Adobe's Premiere Pro CS6 software. The improved integration allows users to drag and drop clips directly from Fork into Premiere Pro CS6 and to browse Fork con- tent without leaving the software. Editors and producers can get content to air more quickly and easily, using Windows or Mac systems. Fraunhofer's LCC improves streaming E The Foundry's Nuke 7 available soon L ONDON — Version 7 of compositing tool Nuke from The Foundry (www.thefoundry. co.uk) will be available for purchase this fall. The Foundry says the focus of the V.7 release is on increased performance as well as support for Alembic and OpenEXR 2.0 Deep Data. Nuke 7 introduces RAM cache, a sought-after feature that gives users realtime playback. Also new are a variety of GPU- accelerated nodes for NukeX, including MotionBlur, Kronos, Denoise, VectorGenerator, Convolve and ZDefocus. This allows users to speed up interactive image processing times. When the GPU is available, NukeX will take full advantage of that power. If it's unavailable, the software reverts back to the CPU without any need to adjust settings. V.7 allows users to perform lighting tasks in a comp using the ReLight node and model using NukeX's new ModelBuilder. Both additions reduce the need for artists to jump in and out of other programs. The app's roto tools have been redefined to enhance performance and improve stereo support. Support has been added for raw camera formats, including Alexa ArriRaw and the latest R3D SDK. Nuke 7 includes Primatte 5 and a new 2D tracker. RLANGEN, GERMANY — Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Cir- cuits IIS (www.iis. fraunhofer.de) has developed the Low Complexity Codec, which adapts streams of image data to the avail- able infrastructure and bandwidth without sacrificing high resolution or dynamic range. In film production, high-res camera images often stretch transmission capaci- ties of buffers and internal bus sys- tems. If these imag- es are transmitted to external equipment using a standard connection, then bit rate limits will lead to bottlenecks. The LCC elimi- nates this problem, making it possible to use standard con- nections and low- cost programmable chips to transmit high-res video frame by frame with visu- ally lossless com- pression (1:2 to 1:8) and mini- mal latency (typically less than one mil- lisecond). While data volumes are greater than with the H.264 codec, the computational cost involved is low enough to enable the use of existing or easily available low-cost electronic components.