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Blackmagic Design will bring DaVinci Resolve for iPad to the market so creators can extend video workflows in new ways and new places. Optimized for MultiTouch technology and Apple Pencil, DaVinci Resolve for iPad features support for cut and color pages providing access to DaVinci’s image technology, color finishing tools and latest HDR workflows. And Blackmagic Cloud support allows creators to collaborate with multiple users worldwide. DaVinci Resolve for iPad will be available in Q4 2022 from the Apple App Store as a free download, with an upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio for iPad also available as an in-app purchase.

With optimized performance for Apple Silicon, DaVinci Resolve delivers 4x faster Ultra HD ProRes render performance on the new iPad Pro with M2. HDR is also supported for customers using an 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the M1 chip. Creators can send a clean feed grading monitor output to an Apple Studio Display, Pro Display XDR or an AirPlay compatible display. This lets customers use the external display to quickly create grades on set or color correct clips in post production directly from their iPad.

The new DaVinci Resolve for iPad will open and create standard DaVinci Resolve project files which are compatible with the desktop version of DaVinci Resolve 18. Supported file formats include H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips able to be imported from the iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, or externally connected iCloud and USB-C media disks.

Paul Cameron, Paul Debevec, Tom Duffield and Marlon West have accepted invitations to join the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Academy’s Science and Technology Council focuses on the science and technology of motion pictures--preserving its history, developing educational programs, driving industry standards, and providing forums for the exchange of information and ideas.

Cameron’s cinematography credits include “Reminiscence,” “21 Bridges,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” “Collateral,” “Man on Fire,” “Swordfish” and “Gone in Sixty Seconds.”  An Academy member since 2006, he currently serves as a Cinematographers Branch governor.

Debevec returns to the Council as co-chair after serving from 2012-2018, with three of those years as co-chair.  He is the director of research for production innovation at Netflix, where he oversees R&D in new technologies in computer vision, computer graphics and machine learning with applications in visual effects, virtual production and animation.  An Academy member since 2010, Debevec currently serves as a Visual Effects Branch governor.

Duffield’s production design credits include “Patriots Day,” “Hell or High Water,” “Lone Survivor” and “Ed Wood”; his credits as art director include “Men in Black,” “The Birdcage” and “Batman Returns.”  He has lectured at AFI, Chapman and Loyola universities and various other educational institutions around the United States.  Duffield, an Academy member since 1989, currently serves as a governor of the Production Design Branch. 

West is head of effects animation and a visual effects supervisor at Walt Disney Feature Animation Studios.  He has worked on hand-drawn and computer-generated projects.  West’s credits include “Encanto,” “Frozen II,” “Moana,” “Frozen,” “Winnie the Pooh,” “The Princess and the Frog,” “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” “Fantasia 2000,” “Tarzan,” “Hercules,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Pocahontas” and “The Lion King.”  He is currently serving as VFX supervisor of “Iwájú” for Disney+.  An Academy member since 2015, West currently serves as a Short Films and Feature Animation Branch governor.

The Council co-chairs for 2022–2023 are Lois Burwell and Debevec. 

The Council’s other returning members are Bill Baggelaar, Linda Borgeson, Visual Effects Branch governor Brooke Breton, Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch governor Bill Corso, Sound Branch governor Teri E. Dorman, Theo Gluck, Buzz Hays, Greg Hedgepath, Leslie Iwerks, Andrea Kalas, Colette Mullenhoff, Ujwal Nirgudkar, Helena Packer, David Pierce, David Schnuelle, Andy Serkis, Leon Silverman, Amy Vincent and Jeffrey White.

Elon Musk has a penchant for the letter "X." He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, "X." He named the company he created to buy Twitter "X Holdings." His rocket company is, naturally, SpaceX.

Now he also apparently intends to morph Twitter into an "everything app" he calls X.

For months, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has expressed interest in creating his own version of China's WeChat — a "super app" that does video chats, messaging, streaming and payments — for the rest of the world. At least, that is, once he's done buying Twitter after months of legal infighting over the $44 billion purchase agreement he signed in April.

There are just a few obstacles. First is that a Musk-owned Twitter wouldn't be the only global company in pursuit of this goal, and in fact would probably be playing catch-up with its rivals. Next is the question of whether anyone really wants a Twitter-based everything app— or any other super app — to begin with.

Start with the competition and consumer demand. Facebook parent Meta has spent years trying to make its flagship platform a destination for everything online, adding payments, games, shopping and even dating features to its social network. So far, it's had little success; nearly all of its revenue still comes from advertising.

Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber and others have also tried to jump on the super app bandwagon, expanding their offerings in an effort to become indispensable to people as they go about their day. None have set the world on fire so far, not least because people already have a number of apps at their disposal to handle shopping, communicating and payments.

"Old habits are hard to break, and people in the U.S. are used to using different apps for different activities," said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. Enberg also notes that super apps would likely suck up more personal data at a time when trust in social platforms has deteriorated significantly.

Musk kicked off the latest round of speculation on Oct. 4, the day he reversed his attempts to get out of the deal and announced that he wanted to acquire Twitter after all. "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app," he tweeted without further explanation.

But he's provided at least a little more detail in the past. During Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk told the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he thinks he's "got a good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to make it radically better."

And he's dropped some strong hints that handling payments for goods and services would be a key part of the app. Musk said he has a "grander vision" for what X.com, an online bank he started early in his career that eventually became part of PayPal, could have been.

"Obviously that could be started from scratch, but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years," Musk said in August. "So it's kind of something that I thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do."

But it's not clear that WeChat's success in China means the same idea would translate for a U.S. or global audience. WeChat usage is almost universal in China, where most people never had a computer at home and skipped straight to going online by mobile phone.

Operated by tech giant Tencent Holding Ltd., the platform has made itself a one-stop shop for payments and other services and is starting to compete in entertainment. It is also a platform for health code apps the public is required to use prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

China has 1 billion internet users, and nearly all of them go online by mobile phone, according to the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center. Only 33% use desktop computers at all — and mostly in addition to mobile phones. Tencent says WeChat had 1.3 billion users worldwide as of the end of June.

Tencent and its main Chinese competitor, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aim to make apps that offer so many services that users can't easily switch to another app. They're not the only ones.

WeChat has added video calls and other message features as well as shopping, entertainment and other features. Government agencies use it to send out health, traffic and other announcements. WeChat's payment function, meanwhile, is so widely used that coffee shops, museums and some other businesses refuse cash and will take payment only through WeChat or the rival Ant app.

There is no comparable app in the U.S., despite tech companies' efforts.

It's worth remembering that Musk's grand visions don't always work out the way he appears to expect. Humans are nowhere near colonizing Mars and his promised fleet of robotaxis remains about as far from reality as the metaverse.

Twitter's user base is also tiny relative to those at its social-platform competitors. While Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all passed the 1 billion mark long ago, Twitter has about 240 million daily users.

"Musk would not only have to overcome the hurdle of convincing consumers to change how they behave online, but also that Twitter is the place to do it," Enberg said.

Barbara Ortutay is an AP technology writer. AP writer Joe McDonald contributed to this story.

Facebook parent Meta unveiled a high-end virtual reality headset Tuesday with the hope that people will soon be using it to work and play in the still-elusive place called the "metaverse."

The $1,500 Meta Quest Pro headset sports high-resolution sensors that let people see mixed virtual and augmented reality in full color, as well as eye tracking and so-called "natural facial expressions" that mimic the wearer's facial movements so their avatars appear natural when interacting with other avatars in virtual-reality environments.

Formerly known as Facebook, Meta is in the midst of a corporate transformation that it says will take years to complete. It wants to evolve from a provider of social platforms to a dominant power in a nascent virtual-reality construct called the metaverse — sort of like the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described the metaverse as an immersive virtual environment, a place people can virtually "enter" rather than just staring at it on a screen. The company is investing billions in its metaverse plans that will likely take years to pay off.

VR headsets are already popular with some gamers, but Meta knows that won't be enough to make the metaverse mainstream. As such, it's setting office — and home office — workers in its sights.

"Meta is positioning the new Meta Quest Pro headset as an alternative to using a laptop," said to Rolf Illenberger, founder and managing director of VRdirect, which builds VR environments for businesses. But he added that for businesses, operating in the virtual worlds of the metaverse is still "quite a stretch."

Meta also announced that its metaverse avatars will soon have legs — an important detail that's been missing since the avatars made their debut last year.

Barbara Ortutay is an AP technology writer