The Latest from Avid! (and Tiffen Too)

New Features in Media Composer and Symphony 6.5, Plus Tiffen's Dfx 3

Our good friends from Massachusetts flew in to share their latest and greatest at the Editors' Lounge in November. Avid Application Specialist Bob Russo was on hand to demo and explain new features in Symphony and Media Composer version 6.5 like:
• Avid Media Authoring for archiving
• Active Format Description support
• Advanced relink support using metadata
• Advanced audio keyframing
and much more...

In addition, Tiffen Product Manager Jena Rappolt-Noyes stopped by to demonstrate version 3 of their Dfx Plugins. Available for film/video- and photo-editing products, the Dfx plugins simulate over 2000 of Tiffen's award-winning glass filters, specialized lenses, optical lab processes, and natural lighting and photographic effects.

The evening's turnout was amazing. Thanks to Avid and Tiffen for sharing with us!

Mysteries of Color Correction Revealed!

An Evening with Colorist Steve Hullfish and Tektronix Engineer Steve Holmes
Has a director ever asked you if you can fix a few bad shots? Have you struggled to make a final sequence look better? Steve Hullfish brought the art of color correction from the dark arts to the light of day in 2002 with his book Color Correction for Digital Video: Using Desktop Tools to Perfect Your Image (now in its 2nd Edition), followed in 2008 by The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction (2nd Edition just released). At this special Editors' Lounge, Steve Hullfish gave a boost to attendee's color correction skills by revealing his tips and tricks in an up close and personal presentation.

Have you ever wondered what colors you are really looking at? Do you sweat about passing QC? Tektronix waveform displays to the rescue! Whether you think they are too technical to bother with or you just want to improve your ability to use them correctly, help arrived with a special class geared towards editors led by Tektronix Sr. Application Engineer, Steve Holmes. With over 25 years of experience installing, teaching, engineering, and managing video and CATV systems, Steve Holmes will help you achieve beautiful images with simple technical instruction.

The June Editors' Lounge was a phenomenal success. Guests were overwhelmingly surprised by how much they were able to learn from these amazing presenters in so short a time. Many thanks go to both Steves and to Tektronix for an eye-opening event. Special thanks to Key Code Media for behind-the-scenes assistance.

NAB 2012 Roundup: Avid and Blackmagic Design

Pro Tools, Symphony 6, DaVinci Resolve 9 and More...!
 

Didn't get enough of this year's NAB? The Editors’ Lounge filled that need by hosting the Post NAB 2012 Roundup with Avid and Blackmagic Design showcasing their latest tools for post production.

Avid Video Application Specialist Derek Benton demonstrated powerful and time-saving features in Symphony 6, including support of additional media formats via AMA, stereoscopic 3D editorial tools and effects, along with 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound mixing. Benton also presented Symphony's enhanced speed and performance as a 64-bit application, the updated graphical interface, and advanced color correction and finishing within the application.  Benton comments, “The Editor's Lounge gives us the opportunity to connect with the film editing community in a way where we can learn about what our customers love and what they'd like to see in the future.  This sort of interaction is very valuable to help us continually develop the best products for our customers.”

Scott Wood, Avid Senior Audio Application Specialist, discussed how the interoperability between Media Composer 6 and Pro Tools 10 has been improved through features such as multi-channel track support in Media Composer 6, RTAS plug-ins, and the consistent naming of attributes between Media Composer and Pro Tools. Wood also shared examples of ISIS shared storage workflows between video and audio projects, as well as best practices that picture editors should consider when working with an audio editor.

BlackMagic Design demonstrated updates to DaVinci Resolve Version 9 that features a faster user interface, streamlined workflows, and log-grading in corrector nodes. Also on hand was Blackmagic’s entirely revamped Teranex processor that allows video editors to move between hundreds of video formats in real time.

Over 100 production and post-production professionals were in attendance with lucky winners receiving copies of Avid’s Symphony 6 and Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve at the end of the evening.

It's All About Baselight

Color Correction Solutions from FilmLight

An entire crew from FilmLight was in town at the April Editors' Lounge, fresh from NAB 2012 and prepared to strut their stuff. Laura Jans Fazio demoed the latest version of their flagship color correction system—Baselight 4.3—and showed off workflow interchange with Apple's Final Cut Pro 7, including the Baselight for FCP plugin and XML interchange with the standalone Baselight.

Just down the hall, FilmLight presented their soon-to-be-released brand new Baselight for Avid Media Composer. This AVX plugin promises to bring all the power of Baselight's advanced color tools to the familiar Avid timeline. For more details, watch the NAB video presentation or read the FAQ.

The event was a smashing success with a huge turnout. Thanks FilmLight!

9th Annual Pre-NAB Discussion Panel

Curmudgeons Assemble!

The biggest and most popular event of our Editors' Lounge Series: the Annual Pre-NAB Discussion Panel and Gripefest—now in it's 9th year—was once again hosted by our pals at Key Code Media in Burbank.

Our favorite media journalist, Debra Kaufman—lion tamer's whip in hand—was back to moderate our panel and keep our speakers in line and on their toes...

• Steve Cohen: Editor/Author Avid Agility — who is currently writing his first hot-and-steamy romance novel...
• Terence Curren: Colorist, Avid expert and Founder, AlphaDogs — who made a New Year's Resolution to finally embrace Final Cut Pro X…
• Michael Kammes: Sr. Technology & Workflow Consultant, Key Code Media — who finally stopped confusing Las Vegas with Sony Vegas...
• Mark Raudonis: VP of Post Production, Bunim/Murray Productions — who now sells slightly used FCP systems out of his garage…

You can watch the panel discussion right now on our Videos page (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). Be sure to check out other past video presentations there.

A great big thanks to our fiends at Key Code Media for hosting us!

February is for… Editors!

Hot Demos from Red Giant, Intelligent Assistance and AIRware

People got into the mood and "lept" into February with the Editors' Lounge second event of 2012! We had a great lineup for everyone, starting with great new stuff from Intelligent Assistance. Philip Hodgetts was back to reveal a brand-new trio of software products: 7toX for Final Cut Pro, Xto7 for Final Cut Pro, and Event Manager X. Whether you need to move a project from FCP 7 to FCP X (or vice versa) or need help managing Events and Projects in FCP X, this is your solution!

Red Giant Software also attended the Lounge in February, to demo the latest version of Magic Bullet Suite 11. Now featuring support for Avid Media Composer 6 and FCP X 10.0.3, Magic Bullet Suite is a collection of 8 powerful toolsets for color correction, frame rate conversion, HD up-conversion and much much more. Learn how creative tools like Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks can transform your project!

Additionally we had a presentation by AIRware Technology on AIRship: a solution for securely delivering data anywhere in the world without dedicated servers or exorbitant contracts. Platform agnostic, automatically resume interrupted sessions and much more!

Ringing In the New Year With a Burst of Creativity

Demos by eyeon Software, GenArts, Imagineer Systems and RE:Vision Effects

The Editors' Lounge started the new year off with a bang, bringing VFX to the editing masses with an event featuring plug-ins and toolsets from some of the best in the business. New to the Lounge this year was Jeff Krebs of eyeon Software who demonstrated their amazing 2D/3D compositing and VFX package Fusion and stereoscopic toolset Dimension. Long-time raffle sponsor GenArts was on hand with Todd Prives showing off the new features of the Sapphire V6 suite of powerful cross-platform plugins, with a nearly infinite variety of creative possibilities for manipulating your footage. Mary Poplin of Imagineer Systems also returned to demonstrate the amazing power of their flagship product mocha Pro, featuring planar tracking, object removal and rotoscoping tools that will blow your mind. Also new to the Lounge was Lori Freitag of RE:Vision Effects who demonstrated several of their amazing image processing plugins, including Twixtor, DE:Noise, and ReelSmart Motion Blur. The smartest plugins and tools from the smartest people, all under one roof!