5D made several announcements today from IBC regarding the introduction of new products as well as improvements and updates to existing ones. Without having actually gotten to the booth yet, here’s a preliminary look at their announcements…
Colossus now supports standard definition and high definition video I/O, opening up the workstation-based color corrector to numerous facilites now that is no longer a data-only input tool. As more and more facilities look towards data-driven infrastructure, the upgrade to Colossus provides a more efficient way to make the transition. It’s now is a platform that can provide a broadcast video signal to a monitor to allow a better client-supervised type session, which is very typical in commercial post production work. In addition to the hardware improvements, the upgrade inlcudes new dustbusting and defocus tools, improved editing, and tracking and pan-and-scan functions.
5D also announced that Digital Anarchy’s image-processing effects Text Anarchy and Knoll Lens Flare Pack will be integrated into its compositing products. These sparks are currently available as sparks for the discreet products.
On the effects side, 5D introduced 5D Eclipse, lower cost version of its 5D Cyborg product. The product was released earlier this month and has an entry price of £35,000 ($54,000US at current exchange rates). Exactly what features are in and what are out — we’ll look further into — Timeline & TimeTwister, morphing and warping are available as upgrades and not inlcuded. Obviously, the Eclipse product can easily share effects such as motion tracking, keying, and color correction set-up data with Cyborg systems. Eclipse also has real-time uncompresed standard definition video I/O.
It was also announced that version 2.5 of 5D Cyborg is scheduled for release in December of 2002, which provides new features as well as major speed improvments when working with HD. According to company press releases, new to the version is “Scene node, a powerful tool for keeping even more work live and unprocessed for as long as possible. It allows users to collapse and entire 3D composite into a single 2D layer that can then be used within another Scene, whilst still being instantly accessible for tweaks. It also means that a single timeline can be used to cut between multiple cameras, each looking at different live composites, or a different angle of the same comp”. Other improvements include new edge tools and mask improvments in the keyer as well as implementation of the the Primatte keyer libraries. There are also updates to the TimeTwister, TimeTracker, Distort, Morphing, and Warping tools.
More details at the 5D website (see link at right of article).