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With version SCRATCH 9.0, ASSIMILATE announces a major update to its entire SCRATCH product line at NAB 2018. As its most aggressive, highest-performing, and user-friendly product update to date, ASSIMILATE’s new SCRATCH 9.0 delivers a big boost in efficiency and performance, saving enormous amounts of time for DITs doing dailies and for all the creative functions throughout the post-production workflow.

SCRATCH, known for its high-quality 2D/3D tools in a single, streamlined workflow – dailies, conform, color grading, compositing, finishing & mastering – continues to evolve in SCRATCH 9.0 as the ultimate high-performance and most efficient end-to-end post-production workflow on the market, with the bonus of superior price/performance value.

“Dailies and post production workflows, whether for films or TV programming, are all about efficiency gains for increased productivity within demanding deadlines, and the new high-performance features in SCRATCH 9.0 meet that need,” said Jeff Edson, CEO at ASSIMILATE.

New SCRATCH 9.0 highlights include the following:

• Easy-to-learn UI with four tabs for “rooms” that contain all the necessary dailies and post-production functions. The tabs also guide the user easily through the entire software workflow and make it easy to switch back and forth between each functional room.
• GPU decoding of h.264 media for faster playback of 4K, 6K, and 8K files, as well as live streaming
• Fast h.265 encoder with a high-quality bit-rate for efficiently encoding very high-resolution media.
• New full-width, mini timeline that gives users more real estate without panning for added efficiency     
• Offered Only in ASSIMILATE SCRATCH - increased audio capability for dailies with manual audio sync functionality. Simply set a clap marker on the waveform and then sync it to the clap frame to slip audio.
• Up to eight configurable hot keys for dailies, creating greater efficiency and saving time
• DITs can add configured colored notes to a shot via hotkeys to make dailies and approval sessions more fluid and efficient.
• Greatly increased functionality in generating dailies metadata reports
• Amazingly fast rendering and transcoding

Customer Comments for SCRATCH 9.0
“We have found SCRATCH 9.0 to be an awesome tool for powering our dailies workflows,” said Leandro Marini, founder and color supervisor at Local Hero in Santa Monica, CA, “It offers amazing performance and efficiency, which translates into significant time savings in meeting deadlines. The end result is we then have the opportunity to take on more projects.”

Tobias Wiedmer is the lead colorist and head of the color grading department at Cine Chromatix in Berlin, Germany. He’s also responsible for advising clients and co-workers on workflows, testing new workflows and implementations of color science, and supporting DPs with their color, light and camera-related questions. Cine Chromatix has a SCRATCH site license so that SCRATCH can be used in every system in their facility.

“There are several new features in SCRATCH 9.0 that I greatly appreciate, but as a colorist, I mainly focus on the color grading tools that enable me to work extremely quickly and intuitively,” said Wiedmer. “Little things like the way the shapes work, the speed of setting up a high-quality color key, and the ability to manipulate areas of the image are better than in other post-production applications, which is particularly important for me. The various methods of copying and pasting grades, or parts of a grade, is also very well executed.”

Wiedmer added, “SCRATCH 9.0’s ability to define and export LUTs, in a way that you can’t in other tools, is especially handy.  For example, when you want to export a LUT built for the AJA LUT Box (16-bit, 17 steps, cube format) or for the ARRI Colortool (16-bit, 33 steps, cube format) to further process it to an Alexa Mini/ST/Amira camera LUT; or, even just to select 64 steps to have a really huge 3D LUT for oversampling and higher accuracy.”

See the Cine Chromatix color grading show reel at https://vimeo.com/256433488. All imagery was color graded in SCRATCH.

Price and Availability
SCRATCH 9.0 is now available in a public Beta version at http://www.assimilatesupport.com/akb/Download50814.aspx. Full product availability is within 30 days at www.assimilateinc.com, starting at $79.00 (USD) monthly and $650 (USD) annually.

Additionally, ASSIMILATE has updated SCRATCH VR to 9.0 for an even more efficient and easy-to-use VR tool suite for content creators who are creating high-quality, immersive 180-VR/3D, 360-VR/3D experiences. With the click of a button, live streaming and publishing video to YouTube couldn’t be easier.

Just announced, the new Z CAM K1 Pro VR180 Camera and ASSIMILATE SCRATCH VR is the only integrated VR180 production workflow on the market – from preview to shoot, dailies, data management, stitching, color grading, compositing, and finishing.

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.