Use our Software, it's Free. No, Use Ours, No Ours

The news coming out of NAB is that three of the leading software developers of editing and finishing applications will offer their programs for free or dramatically lower prices. Free software allows companies to get new users to try and become familiar with the capabilities of their products. The more new artists who know a program, the more it makes sense for editorial and visual effects facilities to use those products to increase output.

Last Saturday, Avid announced Media Composer® | First, a free version of their widely used video editing system. It provides "aspiring creative professionals, students, and those just starting their professional careers with free access to the same creative tools used by the most successful and acclaimed filmmakers and television program creators in the world." 

Media Composer | First gives users a comprehensive editing toolset with many of the same features and functionality the full version of Media Composer. ME First offers four video tracks, eight audio tracks, and a host of built-in visual effects, transitions, color correction presets and titling templates, users can quickly cut together layers of video, dialog, music and sound effects to produce professional-quality video content. Media Composer | First allows easy sharing, with easy publishing to popular social media channels including YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook.

You can download Media Composer | First starting in June.

A growing number of facilities are looking for trained Baselight colorists and assistants. Filmlight just released Baselight STUDENT, a free licensed and software-only MacOS application. It’s a perfect learning tool, either for training to become a professional colorist or for experienced practitioners moving up to Baselight from other applications. It provides you a professional grading experience

Baselight STUDENT is a complete version of FilmLight’s Baselight color grading software—with GPU rendering—that runs on any supported Mac platform. It supports using an optional control surface and SDI monitoring for a full grading suite experience.

The principle limitation is that the application is restricted to render out only h.264* movies or JPEG images. It has no watermarking meaning that Baselight STUDENT can be used to create academic-year projects within the limitation of the delivery formats. Along with conform capability, color space handling, format editing, and the ability to render both image sequences and movie files, this also makes the application the ideal tool to learn how to start your career as a professional colorist assistant. It is available now.

Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve has been coming on strong in recent years, and at NAB that introduced a new version Studio 14 and not only is it vastly more feature-laden, but it is also only $299 to purchase and FREE to try.

The new DaVinci Resolve 14, now has Fairlight audio tools specifically designed for film and television post-production. Adding this to the features from the previous version,  it’s like getting three high-end applications in one! All it takes is a single click to switch between editing, color correcting, audio mastering and delivery! 

Resolve 14 has a new playback engine that increases responsiveness. BMD claims up to 10X better performance. If you're collaborating with a team, you can all work on the same project at the same time!  It is available now.

VFX Technologies can provide you the hardware you need to run these applications, and we can rent it to you for a week, a month, or as long as you need. We sell what we rent, and for those of you looking to purchase Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio 14, we have a special price only for our subscribers, call Jim at (800) 516-4302 or email me by clicking here. - Jim Reisman

4k / UHD Post Production and the need for GPUs

For SD editing, you need nothing other than a decent computer and one or two monitors. For color grading and visual effects, using applications such as Maya, Resolve, Flame, and Premier Pro, a high-end workstation will provide a smoother and faster workflow. 4k / UHD media and above can tax a computer so having access to a top-of-the-line machine such as an HP Z840 or a Boxx Apex 4 can improve your quality of life as a creative artist. These computers are better because of their ability to use multiple GPUs in addition to powerful, multi-core CPUs. This technology is expensive but, increasingly necessary. On a project by project basis, it may be better to rent.

The importance of GPUs is that the video software mentioned above is now able to dump much of the heavy lifting onto the GPU (or even several GPUs), leaving the CPU free to do its job of delegating tasks, applications, APIs, hardware process, I/O device requests, and so on. The CPU just makes sure all the basic tasks run in harmony while the GPU takes care of crunching the more complex and intensive computation needed by the application. It is important to know that for all but the most basic video (and certainly for any form of 4K), the computer should have a dedicated graphics card for processing your editing tasks.

You may need several graphics card for any serious 4K work, especially RAW. The stock graphics card just needs to drive the number and resolution of whatever computer monitors one will use. One or more additional GPUs should be there to provide accelerated parallel processing crucial for any serious workstation. These extra graphics cards should be as powerful as one can get. Since these cards are very expensive, renting is a practical option. (Note that additional GPUs, when configured to provide acceleration cannot drive additional monitors.)

For many years, powerful GPUs were primarily only valuable to gamers drawing complex 3D worlds in real time, until software developers like Apple and chip makers like ATI and Nvidia realized they were sitting on a gold mine of untapped computational power. In response, two important standards emerged – OpenCL and CUDA.

CUDA is a proprietary specification exclusively available on specific Nvidia GPUs, including all of their professional Quadro models. Suffice it to say tests show CUDA beating OpenCL at floating-point and OpenCL ATI products beating Nvidia at integer math. Either way, they both do the same thing, make editing systems scream because they can process video way better than any CPU ever could.

We now have several models of GPUs in our rental pool and for sale. NVIDIA M6000, K6000, K4200, GTX 1080TI, GTX 1080 and GTX 980. If your computer has space to accommodate these, we can install and configure. If you need a complete workstation, we have those as well. For more information contact Jim at 800 516-4302 or email.

Much of this blog is derived from an article by Howard Gotfryd. I thank him for his insight and highly recommend you follow him on eXplora. - Jim Reisman

Today's VFX Leaves Mac Users Behind

The demand for visual effects is growing while deadlines, budgets, and resources are tightening. In all aspects of media production, the need to produce footage combining 4K and greater resolution and high dynamic range color space puts a strain on all the components of a computer. Apple's Mac computers have been the standard for creative artists to practice their craft but, Apple's computers are falling short of what's needed to process all the data associated with today's visuals.

I refer to an article published by one of our clients, Jan Ozer, that we featured in a VFX Insider email sent back in 2016. Jan rented one of our Mac Pro 12-core (late 2013) computers to test the top-of-the-line Mac against an HP z840 workstation. It's easy to see how the benefits of the architecture of the HP and how you can put in the CPUs and GPUs necessary to handle the media coming in from the field. HP and other companies such as Boxx, Dell, Digital Storm and some others; are addressing the needs of power-hungry creatives who are taking their technology to the max!

It is likely that Apple will step up to the plate with something eventually but, meanwhile, other VFX artists and producers are winning projects because they have what's needed to deliver the director's (or agency's) vision.

VFX Technologies sees this all the time. Working with the top post-production facilities in the USA, we work to bring out the maximum performance from our clients' technology. We are upgrading their networks, providing faster-shared storage solutions, and renting or selling new computers.

We rent a lot of Apple computers. They are still great machines and can handle many people’s media needs. Using Adobe Premiere and After Effects on Macs is second nature to most visual artists. Media Composer and Pro Tools from Avid work best on a Mac. The bottleneck comes when you start talking about Flame and Resolve and rendering. We have many filmmakers that do their editing on an iMac and then call us to rent a Mac Pro to finish the job so that they're not agonizing over the final rendering of their effects. It is a  reliable and economical solution.

At VFX Technologies, we hear about every challenge an artist or technologist working at a post company has. We handle the problems they can't. We attend trade shows, seminars, view webinars, and learn about technology trends constantly. That's why we become so vital to our customers. While they're creating and generating revenue, we are making sure they're prepared for whatever monster their client throws at them.