Toolbox

The Tiffen Company, a manufacturer of imaging accessories, has announced its new product lineup for the 2015 International CES exhibition, which will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center from January 6-9. Defining the trend for image maker gear and technology, Tiffen will be giving show attendees an exclusive inside look at a number of new breakthrough products at booth C10441, including the CES Innovation Honoree Steadicam CURVE.

“We have spent decades immersed in the image making world and consider ourselves master architects when it comes to developing innovative digital imaging accessories,” said Steve Tiffen, president and CEO of the Tiffen Company. “The connection we have with the imaging community runs deep. From skateboarders and soccer moms to wedding photographers, independent filmmakers and Hollywood cinematographers, we have crafted Tiffen products that transcend genres and skillsets, connecting everyone through the art of image making. Laying the groundwork for 2015, our new Tiffen products carry forward that core DNA innovation and define the image making trends of tomorrow.”

The special star of this year’s Tiffen show offerings is CES’ newest Digital Imaging Innovation Honoree, Steadicam CURVE. The CES Innovation Awards is an annual competition honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products.

A groundbreaking camera stabilization product from the Steadicam brand, CURVE’s compact form factor gives GoPro users the freedom to shoot shake-free video. The CURVE handle can be locked for use as a handgrip for capturing the most adventurous shots, or folded up to fit in a back pocket for maximum portability. CURVE provides Steadicam Hollywood stabilization to the action-oriented GoPro user, promising a flawless shot every time. Steadicam CURVE for GoPro is designed specifically for use with GoPro HERO, GoPro HERO2, GoPro HERO3, GoPro HERO3+ and most recently, GoPro HERO4 Black and Silver cameras.

Also joining Steadicam’s consumer-friendly lineup of gear at CES 2015 is the SOLO camera stabilizer and monopod. The Steadicam SOLO has been ingeniously engineered for versatile shooting with both DSLRs and camcorders, and can be used hand-held, as a monopod, or with the optional Arm & Vest, making it suitable for a wide range of prosumer and professional video productions.

For CES 2015, Tiffen is rolling out brand new products designed with today’s technological needs in mind. The latest is the ZING imageTaker collection, the ultimate solution for perfecting iPad photography. The ZING collection includes an innovative iPad case that gives users the ability to quickly switch from protecting to shooting, all without the trouble of removing the iPad from the case. Carry, shoot and protect in style, all in one step, with ZING’s lineup of cases, pouches and straps.

Tiffen will also be showcasing the latest updates to Tiffen Dfx. Version 4 now offers OFX plugin support for compatibility with digital intermediate workflows such as Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve and Assimilate Scratch, as well as The Foundry’s high-end NUKE visual effects program. Dfx Version 4 also adds historical photographic processes and motion picture film stocks to its extensive collection of features and capabilities.

Featuring cutting-edge filter technology, Tiffen’s brand new XLE Series filters help color correct images captured during long, extreme exposure shooting, producing a smooth, softening effect on objects and matter in motion. On display at CES 2015, the APEX, the ADVANTIX and the AXENT XLE filters are the ultimate imaging tools designed to provide control for these issues on a wide range of sensors and lenses in various lighting environments.

For run-and-gun location lighting, the Lowel PRO Power LED is a compact focusing light available in hi-CRI tungsten or daylight color, with impressive output and a wide fresnel 8:1 focus range for lighting from a distance. Dimmable without color shift, the light works with both AC power and its special DC accessory battery system, which can clamp-mount to the stand or be used with a shoulder strap for handheld lighting. The Lowel PRO light is ideal for on-the-go shooting and small location studio setups.

Chinese facility Post Production Office Group (PO Group) graded and finished American Dreams in China on Mistika. Produced and directed by Hong Kong’s Peter Chan, the Mandarin-language film brought in $87.6 million at the box office.

PO Group purchased from SGO a Mistika 4K Colour Grading and Finishing System, a Mistika Assist Station and an SGO SAN to support their Stereo 3D and high end color grading services for film and commercials projects a few years ago. Founded in 2003 by entrepreneur and actor, Nicholas Tse, PO Group is the largest post house in Hong Kong, which grosses over one billion Hong Kong dollars annually, with branches in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing.

American Dreams in China is Peter Chan’s first digital camera shoot where he filmed the entire movie using ARRI Alexa and recorded it on Codex. His strong affection for the filmic look set the tone and brief for PO Group’s colorist Antonio Zhang to work with, selecting Mistika for the grading and finishing of the entire movie.

Zhang explained the color grading process, “I chose the ARRI Log C as the default debayer and applied a FPE (Film Print Emulation) 3D LUT on top of all of the shots to mimic the ‘filmic look’ that Peter Chan was after. Also, my aim was to preserve the highlighted elements and enhance them further by revealing even greater details where possible.”

The film is based on a true story about three friends who graduated from Peking University and go on to build a successful English language school in China called “New Dreams.” This school helps to make the dreams of Chinese teenagers come true. As the film covers a time-span of over 3o years which involved various scenes flicking backwards and forwards into the present and past, the PO Group team combated this challenge by setting the looks for each time period. The first part covers the time the three friends study in Peking university and the second focuses on them building the language school, followed by their success in the stock market.

“For the first look,” said Zhang, “we tried to make the colours more vivid to depict university life and the passion for the characters’ start-up days. We used an old 1980’s Chinese magazine as a reference and made the grade look really old but colorful.” He added, “The second look had to be really cool, professional and business-like, and due to the fact the characters had a lot of arguments, the cool tone helps to portray that antagonistic atmosphere effectively.”

While the 4K Mistika system forms PO Group in Beijing’s principal system, the Mistika assistant station is a fully capable file-based Mistika system in its own right, which allows the studio to increase efficiency and throughput, by having an assistant to the main colorist to prepare projects in advance, or to work alongside to ensure the smooth running of even the most complex projects. The SGO SAN not only allows the two Mistika’s to share project assets, but also allows the media sharing to extend to all other technical facilities at PO. Projects of various formats occupy the facility’s pipeline from 2K to 4K, and S3D to higher frame rates. With the SGO Mistika and SGO SAN, PO Group have built a very efficient pipeline.

“Mistika was the perfect grading and finishing tool for this movie.” Zhang said. “It has a strong editing function, and we were also able to achieve both the conform and grading in Mistika. This really created a smooth and effective workflow, as I could grade from the original ARRI RAW Raw file and easily change the debayer for individual shots which was so convenient.”  He concludes, “Flexibility is really important to us here at PO Group,  especially as we face a lot of different digital camera formats, however Mistika’s compatibility with various camera formats is a great advantage and provides an excellent high-end service for us throughout the entire postproduction process.”

Avid today announced that the latest version of Avid Media Composer| Software, which allows video professionals to acquire, manage, edit, and deliver native 4K and other high-res media faster and more efficiently than ever, is now available.

Leveraging the new Avid Resolution Independence architecture and Avid DNxHR encoding, Media Composer offers the most complete and flexible end-to-end workflow for file-based editing of any resolution. This new release helps content creators deliver higher quality content in more collaborative, powerful, and efficient ways – a key part of Avid Everywhere. Leveraging the Avid MediaCentral Platform, Media Composer is part of the Avid Artist Suite of industry-standard creative tools.

Avid Resolution Independence provides a holistic, platform-centric approach that puts no limits to the resolutions customers can capture, edit, and output. Media professionals can work with the broadest variety of media in every resolution – SD, HD, 4K and beyond – using their existing infrastructure. Media Composer is the first Avid product to support Resolution Independence, with support for more products and solutions across the MediaCentral Platform coming soon.

At the center of the Avid Resolution Independence architecture is Avid DNxHR, a new extensible media codec that makes it possible to edit and deliver high-res content within HD-capable infrastructures. Offering greater beauty without the bandwidth, DNxHR scales from lightweight proxies to mastering-quality high-resolution media.

Other new capabilities in the latest version of Media Composer include enhanced color management, high frame rate support, high-efficiency proxy workflows, and timesaving background rendering of high-resolution media.

Archimedia Technology, a company providing technology and applications which bring precise multiformat viewing to the professional’s desktop, TV, UHDTV, and infrastructure, announced that CMO Josef Marc will participate in a session at Storage Visions 2015. The session, “Creative Storage: Looking for Storage for High-Resolution Content Capture and Production,” will take place Jan. 4, 2015, at 8:15 a.m. at The Riviera in Las Vegas.

The 90-minute session will address digital storage and the requirements for capturing, rendering, editing, and archiving content, especially as file-based and object-based workflows, 4K and 8K content, and multicamera video transform the media industry. Larger content libraries support an increasing diversity of content delivery methods, while raw video content of several petabytes is not uncommon for a single project.

Marc’s presentation will focus on the media and entertainment industry and the special storage problems that arise from collaboration within that space. He will discuss how to handle such problems when working with large, complex objects that have a critical temporal element, and will share one real-world approach to illustrate how the temporal collaboration problem is being addressed.

Joining Marc with their own presentations are Shreyak Shah of DataDirect Networks; Hillel Kolodner of IBM; Ian Trow of Harmonic; and Alex Grossman of Quantum. Panelists are Eric Herzog of Violin Memory and Joe Arnold of SwiftStack.