ASSIMILATE’s new SCRATCH Play Pro is the Essential Media Toolkit:  a universal professional format player, immersive media player, look creator with version management, transcoder, and QC tool all in one. Play Pro gives all filmmakers on-set and creative artists in post production a toolset for more efficiency and productivity in their workflow, which of course saves time and money. See the quick overview video here.

Universal Player: Play Pro is able to playback nearly all formats – camera formats, raw or not, including h.264 and h.265 (HEVC), deliverable formats of any sort, even still frame formats. You can also show the image full screen on a second/output display, either attached to the GPU, or through SDI video-IO (AJA, Blackmagic, Bluefish444). Load and play as much media as you can store, almost instantly. Inherent to Play Pro is the Construct (timeline) environment, a graphical media manager that allows you to load and manage stills/shots/timelines, and full features and all versions. Play Pro is not only fast, it’s easy to operate. It runs on just about any system from laptop to a desktop monster, running Windows or OSX.

Go-to Immersive Player: Play Pro supportsequirectangular 360, cubic/cubic packed 360, 180° VR, stereo, mono, side-by-side or over/under, embedded ambisonic audio, and real-time mesh de-warping of 180° VR media. Play back on screen or through immersive headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and HMDs supporting OpenVR on both Windows and Mac. In addition to playback and CDL color correction, Play Pro can directly publish your 360/180 media to Facebook 360 or YouTube 360.

Look-Creator: Play Pro supports 1D and 3D LUT formats of any size for import and export. It also supports import/export of CDLs in both popular formats: .cdl and .cc. It also allows you to combine two different LUTs and still add a display LUT on top. A CDL-based toolset, which is compatible with all other color tools, allows you to modify looks and/or create complete new looks. It can also export LUTs in different depths and sizes to fit for different LUT boxes, cameras and monitors. The ability to create looks in production or to import looks created by post production, allows you to establish a consistent color pipeline from on-set to delivery. Using the Construct (timeline) environment, you can store all look versions and easily apply them at any time in the production process.

Media Transcoder: Each camera vendor has their own app to review and transcode just their specific format. Play Pro reads in all formats and can transcode to ProRes, h.264, and h.265. Play Pro includes the fastest and the highest quality encoders for Apple licensed ProRes, h.264 and h.265 to meet even the toughest delivery specs. For VR delivery, it supports h.264 rendering up to 8K, including the metadata needed for online portals, such as YouTube and Facebook. You can add custom metadata, such as scene and take information, and include it in any exported file; or, export it as a separate ALE-file for use further down the pipeline.

QC-Tool: Play Pro is the ideal tool for quality check, both on-set and in post-production. It supports SDI output, split-screen, A-B overlay, and audio monitoring and routing, Play Pro comes with a number of QC-tools for video measuring like Vector Scope, Waveform, Curves, Histogram, as well extensive annotation capabilities through its dynamic note feature. All metadata and comments can be exported as a report in different styles, including an HDR-analysis report that calculates MaxFALL and MaxCLL. Action- and title-safe guides, as well as blanking and letter-boxing, can be enabled as an overlay for review.

Price and Availability: SCRATCH Play Pro is available now at only $19.00 (USD) per month, or save nearly 13% with an annual license at $199 (USD). As a subscription service, you can keep up-to-date with the new and ever-evolving camera formats. It’s superior value with superior performance. To purchase and learn more, see http://www.assimilateinc.com/products/scratch-play-pro/.

See the quick overview at https://vimeo.com/281404716!

About Assimilate
Assimilate provides real-time post-production tools and workflows that have proven essential to productivity and creativity in the creation of 2D/3D/VR studio and independent feature films, documentaries, TV episodes, and music videos. The Scratch product line equips directors, DPs, on-set DITs and post-production artists with the latest, state-of-the-art, cost-effective tools and workflows they need to simplify the post-production process and achieve high-quality results. Scratch is resolution independent, and continually updates support for nearly all formats. Additionally, in SCRATCH VR, ASSIMILATE offers the only professional end-to-end VR workflow and tools for VR360 / 3D and VR180 / 3D, including stitching, Ambisonic sound, and live streaming. Assimilate partners with Z Cam to offer complete, integrated VR workflows with its SCRATCH VR and the Z Cam S1, S1 Pro, and K1 Pro VR camera – from previews to shoot, data management, stitch, color grading, compositing, finishing, and mastering. Assimilate also partners with Sennheiser to include its world-class audio capability with its AMBEO A-B converter integrated in SCRATCH VR. Learn more at www.assimilateinc.com.