The effects community assumes Avid DS is end of life, after a post in a forum by AVID’s Marianna Montague on Monday which read
“Folks – The DS is EOL. đ Â
Details to follow by the end of the week.
Marianna “
This followed a leak from the European sales team apparently. The global community reasonably assumed AVID was closing down AVID DS, and one of the first companies to court the AVID community is eyeon. Today they announced their “eyeon for AVID bundle” of their visual effects for editing suite of products. This is something AVID has worked with eyeon to achieve.
Later today Avid confirmed the closure of DS on a conference call, “Since 2008-2209 we have tried to move people towards Avid DS but the business just hasn’t been there.” Users were not happy of course. The product hardware being discontinued for a month or so in June, and the software is EOL as of Sept. 30th, 2013 for sales, with service contracts continuing until June 30, 2014. There will be a v11.1 final version released, this week.
Based on eyeon Connection and eyeon Softwareâs visual effects technologies, the eyeon for AVID product offering provides a suite of tools that connects AVID customers to a comprehensive VFX and editing environment. eyeonâs applications have most recently been used in the making of the upcoming Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Thor 2, and Douglas Trumbullâs 4K 120 FPS Stereo project. Trumbull is quoted as saying:
“With the Fusion Avid plugin I can finally use professional tools to easily create much higher-quality, on-the-fly VFX. Using node-based compositing right out of the Avid allows easy access to great looking rotoscope mattes, green screen keys, and even the introduction of 3D elements as well. This plugin, in combination with Fusion, saves our show lots of time and produces brilliant results.”
According to a Fusion forum, DS owners will get special promotional pricing for Fusion, Dimension and Generation at a combined price of $1,250 US MSRP.
Douglas TrumbullÂ
Just last month eyeon signed a facility deal with Legend3D for hundreds of licenses of eyeon’s latest Generation release.
“We have been fine-tuning our pipeline over the years to work as efficiently as possible, and Generation’s design and functionality is a natural fit for us. Even during the evaluation stage, eyeon provided such responsive help and guidance that we knew this was the way to go.”, commented Anthony Lopez, Director of IT, Legend3D.
With an increasing popularity among the larger studios, and with several key technology advancements such as high frame rate playback, logical effects stacks, event scripting to support Legend3D’s Nuke pipeline, and specific stereoscopic tools for both conversion and visual effects, eyeon Generation will soon become an integral part of Legend 3D’s day-to-day workflow.
One of the things that appealed to Legend3D was Generation’s advanced scripting environment, which supports Python and Lua. This takes an out-of-the-box application and allows companies such as Legend3D, with their existing proprietary technologies, Â to extend their capabilities.
For example the entirety of Man of Steel was converted by Legend3D in direct collaboration with Zack Snyder and John âDJâ Des Jardin. After its release, Man of Steel blasted through the box office records, breaking the all-time B.O. record for a June release. Man of Steel hit the half-billion dollar mark in just over three weeks.
âCreating the 3D for this incredible story from one of my favorite filmmakers was a fantastic experience. Zack and the team at Warner Bros. are extremely collaborative, and we are so happy to be involved.â â Jared Sandrew, Legend3D Stereo VFX Supervisor
3D stereo work is complex, demanding and has both high technical and schedule demands. “We began the journey of developing Generation to add value to a Fusion shop. Today, we see how all studios require the right tools to significantly tighten their workflows and connect their pipelines as much as possible. We are anticipating great feedback from one of the most efficient studios out there – Legend3D.” explained Joanne Dicaire, EVP Sales & Marketing at eyeon.
Eyeon’s press release states that “eyeonâs development team has been delivering game-changing ties into all aspects of visual effects with their recent release of EPP (eyeon Production Pipeline) and immediate sale into major efficiency-driven studios like Legend3D. With a unique perspective to bring together all industry products into one pipeline for a highly-efficient workflow, eyeonâs bundle provides a VFX and editing workflow capable of producing for any requirement, from ingest to delivery. ”