The standout events at the discreet users group meeting are always the previews of upcoming software releases. As usual, these were “technology demos”, and not promised features that will be part of the mix when the release is final. Long time users know this — the promised 3D tracker took several years to see the light of day. We’ll first look at the upcoming Fire/Smoke release and in our next article take a look at the effects software.
Stephane “have a nice fire day” Labrie was the first to take the stage at the users group meeting and showed Fire 6. Of course, the new main feature shown was the idea of resolution independence in fire. Similar to the current effects release, there is no need to create framestore partitions for various resolutions — it is done automagically in the timeline. When cutting clips of one resolution into a record timeline of another, a “Soft Resize” is done. The software was currently shown with a Resize button to the left of the timeline (similar to the Axis and CC buttons).
With the new mixed resolution features comes the addtion of proxy processing. As we deal more and more with high resolution images, the need for using lower res versions of the images becomes critical. It truly isn’t simply a film-concept, but is extremely useful to speed up interactivity for client supervised sessions such as tv commercial work. I’ve found I use this feature on a daily basis in inferno — and that is considering doing NTSC standard definition work. It becomes even more useful when doing all HD work.
Proxy processing finds its way to the timeline. The sofware can use proxies (the size of which is defined in the project settings) instead of full resolution clips. As current effects users know, this dramatically speeds up work when making adjustments that need to be rendered. Visual cues are present so that editors know when non full-res clips might be used. If it is similar to the effects products, users define the size of the proxies and at what size they wil be created (or they could skip having proxies made).
In the DVE module, the proxy selections are almost identical to the ones in inferno. Users can switch between using proxies or full resolution clips — or select full res on individual layers. The setup can also be processed in full res or at proxy res, regardless of the setting of the source clips. There is also a new schematic view which gives a visual representation of the size of the clips used in the setup.
The EDL module has been enhanced a great deal with support for longer tape names, a full listing of the tapes needed for an Auto Capture, and more. There is also the ability to unlink media from metadata (such as timeline cc, etc) and relink it with new media. So you could load lower resolution footage, do your work, and then link the timeline to higher resolution source material. Of course, DVE rendered clips in the timline would need to be reprocessed, but this could considerably speed up work and make multi-resolution mastering much easier.
Back on the Editdesk there is a new feature called timesmear, which is a visual representation of the edit over time. It is an image that rests near the time controls and basically seems to take a small thin slice of images used in the edit and then combines it horizontally. It is quite incredible that simply by sampling small periods of time, it is very easy to get a quick visual indication on what is going on at a certain point in time. As the edit is changed, the timesmear visual is updated as well.
The timeline also has new search tools that can find clips in a timeline based on search parameters that are entered. Once the clips are found, they are “selected” and highlighted in yellow. You can then adjust soft effects for the clips as a group all at the same time. Such as color correct multiple clips. Or move the images the same amount all at the same time.
The color corrector in the timeline also included the Color Warper from the effects products. This is a matrix-based and incredibly fast color corrector. It works quite a bit differently from the standard discreet color corrector, but is extremely powerful (includes multiple secondary color corrections, for example). The new one-touch/uber keyer that was shown during the inferno demo will also be part of the keyer in Fire (read more about that in our upcoming article about the effects demo at the users group).
Fire will now support the import of QuickTime movies that are supported by the sgi implementation of QuickTIme (none, animation, mjpega, jpeg, etc) — the same ones that are supported for export. Newer codecs will not be supported, as Apple has not allowed sgi to keep up with the development.
Effects report is coming soon…..