ASSIMILATE Announces New SCRATCH Play Pro

New Universal Format Player and Essential Media Toolkit

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 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. 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. Read More

Industrial Quick Search, Inc. and IQSDirectory have entered into a partnership agreement with YEXT which will let IQS efficiently manage your major online listings using the Yext platform. Yext provides an interface with over 100 directory publishers that allows immediate listings and updates to all properties. Read More

Project Profile:

Behind-the-Scenes on the Portland Indie Feature "Pretty Broken"

When her father goes missing during a mountaineering expedition, Lindsey Lou (Jillian Clare) sets out to find him - only, she's the least qualified candidate to do so. "Pretty Broken" follows Lindsey's journey as she struggles with the loss of her father, and deals with how life and family can be challenging (and funny). Directed by Brett Eichenberger, the film recently premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival. Read More

Technology: By Miles Weston

Content Insider #578 - VR Filmwork

Some people think we like 360/VR just because it devours so much storage capacity. Ok that's a good reason but still the good VR stuff is really really good. Not just scare your pants off good but good to experience, enjoy, be immersively entertained, informed. Despite what Musk says we may never experience travel to the outer reaches of space or the depth of the Mariana Trench or climb Mt. Everest but 360/VR can let us experience, really experience these ventures and more. We know because some friends took us there and back. VR is good and it's getting better all of the time. Read More

Business Issues: By Miles Weston

Content Insider #577 - Talk to Me

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our techie talk we forget the ROW (rest of the world) doesn't know what we're saying and honestly...don't give a rat's behind! You know real people like Aaron Semmel an EP and his film project producers/directors. They may have heard the specs we're so impressed with but all they care about is...what's it do for me/us? Film people - and film viewers - may tolerate the jargon we're so impressed with but maybe, just maybe, if we did a better job of thinking in terms of what they want/need we could sell more stuff. What a revolutionary idea we need to practice...more. It's just a thought... Read More

Product Review:

The EWin Flash Series Ergonomic Gaming Chair

Ever had that moment when you're in an intense shootout in PUBG, and suddenly your back feels like it's killing you because your chair is about as good as a chair as a rock is as a home? And then you get killed in PUBG? In case you can't tell, that happened to me a while back and I got sick of it. So, I got rid of my half-broken office chair and decided to invest in a gaming chair, and after a bit of digging I decided on an EWin Champion Series gaming chair. Read More

Feature:

Avoiding Footage Loss - Tactics for Storing and Recovering Data

Months of planning and work can go into a filmmaking scene. There's the set design, lighting, location scouting, and many other facets that all need to work in concert to pull off a great shoot. With all of the care and attention put into the production, there should be more directed towards the actual product. If the footage data is damaged, corrupted, or incomplete, then all of the efforts going into a shoot were wasted. High-end cameras are not foolproof, and occasionally errors occur that disrupt the data. And people are certainly not foolproof, as they sometimes make unwise decisions about storing and protecting data. Thankfully, there are some best practices production teams and filmmakers can follow to best protect valuable footage. Read More

Business Issues: By Miles Weston

Content Insider #575 - She Belongs

If company big wigs can't insist on equality because it's the thing to do maybe shareholders should be selfish. The World Bank just reported equal pay, equal hours and equal participation in the workforce could improve the global economy by $23,620 a person ($160 T). And we'd have added benefits like lower malnutrition and child mortality rates. While we're at it, knock off the excuses for not having more female executives and board members. Treating everyone equal - personally and professionally - might help get things done more quickly...and better. It's worth a shot! Read More

Feature:

2D vs 3D Animation - Which Should You Choose?

There are quite a few elements to consider when tackling a video project for marketing and advertising purposes. A video project requires a script, voiceover, character development, themes and movement. Whether it's for a game, marketing or entertainment, animation is a great and creative way to bring a story to life. While animation is a top choice for video development, it requires a few extra elements to consider, such as deciding between 2D and 3D animation. For those who don't have much video production experience, it can be difficult to decipher which animation method will yield better results. But believe it or not, there's a time and a place for each one. Read More

Feature:

3 Reasons Why You Need to Embrace AR in Your Workflow

The year 2017 marked a new development in my work as the mobile team manager at Vectorworks, Inc. - one that perfectly aligned with a new trend in the AEC industries. Apple just introduced its ARKit to complement the new iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X models. This platform allowed developers to create Augmented Reality (AR) applications that integrated live images from a device's camera with dynamic 3D models developed by the user. Read More

Project Profile:

Exploring "The Depths" of Filmmaking

"The Depths" blew audiences away at the Manhattan Film Festival where it won Best Feature Film. Telling the story of two men desperate for success, "The Depths" follows wannabe screenwriters Mickey Hansen (Patch Darragh, "Sully") and Ray Ferguson (Michael Rispoli, "Sopranos") who decide to fully explore the depths of murder and crime as part of their writing process. Also starring Charlotte Kirk ("Vice"), Hampton Fluker ("Shades of Blue") and Michelle Veintimilla ("Gotham"), "The Depths" was shot by DP Omar Portilla with a Blackmagic Cinema Camera and graded by Colorist Tim Buttner with Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve Studio. Read More

Feature:

How Artificial Intelligence Is Projected To Influence The Automotive Industry

Artificial intelligence and data science are two main technologies that forms the processes of the automotive. Since 2017, Udacity selected a group of 18 talented engineers (out of hundreds of applicants) to form the Self-Racing Cars team Udacity offer the first self-driving Nanodegree program. The program was Built in partnership with Uber, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Nvidia. After a huge success, Udacity introduced another Nanodegree program for the beginners. At last, MIT and university introduced their courses in the automotive industry. Read More

Business Issues: By Miles Weston

Content Insider - Good, Bad

It won't be long and the leading people in the global M&E industry will be gathering in Amsterdam. With the seismic shift that is taking place everyone will be intent on how they can make the right decisions to not just survive but prosper. It's especially true of the exhibitors who want to stay ahead of the pack, stay in the race. They can only do that by leveraging every opportunity possible. Commit, plan, execute, follow-thru... If you don't there may not be a next year. Read More

Project Profile: By Miles Weston

The Young Gaucho

Good films are like fine wine...they have to cure/age to be something worth shown, viewed, enjoyed. But Ed Darino had no idea how long it would take him to finish a docudrama about his native Uruguay. But now after years of the finished shoot aging on celluloid he has reached a point in his life when it's time to deliver his work to viewers. As with most independent filmmakers he's finishing up all of the easy work - production/post. Now comes the tough part getting it placed and seen. But for now, here's the story of his visual travels... Read More

Feature: By Iyke Iheukwumere

Assimilate Scratch - A Workhorse in television and feature Post

Assimilate Scratch over the years has become a trusted tool, used for everything from on-set DIT to digital intermediate and finishing. One of the industries where scratch is being heavily used is VFX, and this is in part due to scratch's open support for xml scripting, which allows most VFX post houses to build their entire pipeline around scratch. One of such VFX houses is FuseFX, where I worked as a VFX editor for almost three years, working on various television shows such as The Blacklist, American Horror Story, Agents Of Shield, Luke Cage and feature films such as American Made, The Purge (Election Year). Read More

Technology: By Miles Weston

Content Insider #573 - Options

The content delivery folks have finally figured out the obvious. People don't want a big bundle of entertainment options. In fact they don't want options at all! Nope all you want is one option...your content. That could be tough but the more different your tastes from your neighbors, the more they're similar - musicals, comedy, drama, horror, documentary, immersive. The providers who are ahead of the game even know what you want before you do which is why you keep coming back again and again without thinking much about it. And the people in the know are ordering up more content from really good indie filmmakers in record volumes. People may not be able to describe great content but they know it when they see it and increasingly there's more really good stuff to see. Read More

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Project Profile:
	Open Media Foundation Helps Denver Open Media - and the City of Cortez, CO Achieve Greater Transparency and Accessibility with Blackmagic Design