MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—TVU Networks today announced it has partnered with video management and distribution software provider Vimond Media Solutions, bringing the Vimond IO cloud-native non-linear video editing tool to the TVU ecosystem where it can access live video.

With real-time access to live video, Vimond IO editors can begin editing before ENG crews return from the field to offload their footage to a server. The integration gives editors the same immediacy they enjoy with other TVU applications, the company said.

For example, using the TVU MediaMind platform, live video sources can be enriched with a variety of metadata automatically, such as the names of people identified by facial recognition AI algorithms or the types of objects in a frame.

If Vimond IO editors are producing a package on forest fires, they can create an alert that finds live footage of a forest fire from authorized sources. Using TVU MediaMind’s AI-driven metadata, Vimond IO editors can find other archived forest fire footage or expand their searches to include other parameters, TVU Networks said.

Vimond IO is a browser-based video editing and publishing tool that runs in the cloud. News and sports organizations can ingest video from live streams and file-based footage directly to Vimond IO, then publish to multiple social media and content management systems using a fast rendering engine, thereby reducing time to air, it said.

This content also can be sent to TVU Producer to be included in a mutli-camera live production, the company said.

Flame is the core of my personal post boutique, I use it for VFX and compositing, and also as a fully functional NLE. I’ve been in post and VFX for many years, and started using Flame when it became available as a software-only solution. There are several new features in the 2019 release that allow me to complete almost every aspect of post on my commercial and broadcast projects in Flame.

My broadcast work includes many genres and types. I was recently hired to shoot and finish 23 interviews for an international broadcaster that was an in-depth look at the life of a soccer referee. Every interview clip was approximately 2:30 minutes, and was shot in front of a green screen. 

We had about 20 days to edit and finish the 23 clips. Only Flame’s exceptional speed and workflow options made this job possible. The 45 minutes of green screen compositing alone could have been a year-long task. Everything was done in Flame, including sound and broadcast mastering. For another project I had to produce content that had to be delivered across multiple mediums. Flame’s capability to deal with high resolution pictures, and delivery of consistent and predictable results in different color spaces, made this production very easy on the post side.

Before Flame 2019, color grading in Flame was doable and OK but far from what I would consider streamlined. With the Effects Tab and MasterGrade, this changed so much for the better that I now consider Flame as a serious contender in the color correction realm. Because Flame is all about choices, it takes some time to understand how color management is implemented and how to customize it to your needs. Flame’s new color management also allows me to work in ACES. MasterGrade is ACES optimized with log and lin optimized maths. You notice the difference instantly when working with MasterGrade. I get much better results compared to my old workflow in legacy video mode and CC/CW nodes.

The new Timeline to Batch workflow is a huge time saver and the new Connected Conform, an industry first and only, is a god-send to all of us who have to create tons of versions and need a fast way of producing them.

More and more I experience the need to produce high-level video content that must perform consistently across vastly different media platforms. This is a massive challenge for producers, writers and creatives and the postproduction back-end alike. From shooting high-resolution material for HDR productions, to the delivery of square social media in standard-video, to all that must be accomplished and archived for later use in a short time frame.

With the Facebook Logik group, I have access to a very active online community with many seasoned and smart Flame artists who are always helpful and insightful. Newbies are welcome, and the tone is friendly and open-minded. The Autodesk dev. team is also part of this community and has helped navigate how to maximize use of the new 2019 features; Grant Kay’s brilliant tutorials are a gem and a necessity.

The benefit of working with Flame is that you can see it as a fast compositor and finishing tool for client attended sessions that allow conforming timelines and sophisticated project management, or you can see it as an NLE with unbelievable possibilities. I use Flame for both, and I gain a lot with the new features that Flame 2019 is offering.

Hans Von Sonntag has been working as a filmmaker, editor, VFX, compositing and finishing artist for over 20 years. In addition to many awards including the ADE, Spotlight, Eurobest and World Media he has also been a lecturer on the subject of filmmaking. He can be reached at hans@vonsonntag.com

In this year’s annual “State of the Edit” survey, I asked representatives of most of the major NLE’s about today’s challenges facing editors and the post production community. As usual, their responses were generous and insightful.

ADOBE

“Gone Girl” is the first major feature shot in 6K and was cut in Adobe Premier Pro. Coming off the success of “Gone Girl” as the first major feature shot in 6K and cut in Adobe System’s Premier Pro (using 2K proxies!), Al Mooney, senior product manager for professional video editing at Adobe, is tracking the way post production pros are becoming involved with the final “look-and-feel” of a production’s imagery starting from dailies on the set through to mastering.

“The need for editors to be creative in color and light requires employing sophisticated grading capabilities earlier in post production than ever before,” Mooney said. “Even lower budget shoots can obtain a high-end filmic look thanks to the increased palette of finishing tools now available to editors right from the beginning of the post process.”

AVID

David Colantuoni, Avid The strongest trend David Colantuoni, senior director/product manager for the Artists Suite of Products at Avid Technology, sees editors facing is the growing need for professional editing skills in and of themselves.

“There are so many new delivery channels available that filling their content requirements has called for a renaissance in the need for highly trained editors,” Colantuoni said. “The new business models such as subscription pricing have spread the availability of high-end NLE’s over a wider community. Customers are asking us how to get the myriad of input sources digitized more efficiently, making the availability of background ingest and rendering increasingly valuable to streamline workflows.”

BORIS FX
Now that they have acquired Oscar-winning VFX company Imagineer Systems, Ltd., Boris Yamnitsky, now the CEO of Boris FX/Imagineer, foresees a burgeoning call for “beauty work” effects capabilities since 4K images are four times as unforgiving of facial bumps and blemishes than HD.

“Every human face on the screen can use some cleanup,” he said. “As on-screen talent ages, we often need to apply some skin restoration especially as their appearance changes from one day’s shooting to the next. The key is a call for improved masking capabilities earlier in the editing process so the faces can be automatically tracked from frame to frame. We want to keep the stars’ on-screen image looking as good as they think they are.”

EDITSHARE

EditShare’s Matt Sandford notes a potential new market in virtual reality productions by providing content for such devices as Microsoft’s “HoloLens” hologram glasses. As if reality were not enough to deal with, Matt Sandford, product manager for EditShare’s Lightworks edit system, is seeing a potential trend toward virtual reality productions, citing a recent cinematic VR project finished for New Deal Studios by Jaunt VR in Palo Alto, Calif. We can also note that Facebook plunked down $2 billion for Oculus Rift and Microsoft is buzzing about its transformational “HoloLens” hologram glasses

“These are still very early days, but productions showing 360-degree views are becoming practical thanks to the small size purpose-built high resolution cameras on the market today,” Sandford said. “The editor could insert a section of a clip on the timeline, and then the system would extrapolate a whole wrap-around image to be displayed in 3D space. With multiple sources shooting multiple angles, especially in 4K, this could change the whole way we think about video production.”

GRASS VALLEY
“It’s the wild sources we need to corral,” said Steve Wise, product marketing manager for editing for Montreal-based Grass Valley. “We need to be able to take in video from cell phones, the Web, or flying drones and output the result in the explosion of deliverable formats being demanded today. So we’re seeing that NLEs have to be packed with all the available codecs on both the input and the output side. No matter the source, editors need to be able to get the shots into and out of their systems as quickly as possible. After all, today’s eye witnesses are tomorrow’s cell phone witnesses.”

QUANTEL

Damon Hawkins, Quantel “In a nutshell, resolutions and frame rates are rapidly evolving and we need to upgrade our systems to handle them,” said Damon Hawkins, product manager for Quantel post and broadcast workstations. “After all, there is no SMPTE standard for 60p editing, and edit systems need to be able to track the one/two, one/two frame count so they can cut on the proper frame boundary. Finishing workstations can accomplish this, but it is much more difficult in offline editing.”

To begin with, he said, we need a new standard for 60p timecode. “Add in greater resolutions, higher dynamic range video, the increased color space being implemented by camera manufacturers, and the throughput requirements of 60p are pushing the boundaries of today’s NLE capabilities.”

SONY CREATIVE SOFTWARE
As purveyor of Vegas Pro editing software, Michael Bryant, director of marketing at Sony Creative Software, feels that the advent of new display technologies is going to accelerate the demands put on today’s edit systems.

“Once people start to see the vivid luminosity of high-dynamic range color, editors are going to have to know how to capture the associated metadata and maintain it throughout the post production chain,” Michael said. “The chances are this topic will be a focus of discussion at the NAB Show now that content providers like Netflix have announced 4K streaming. It’s not just the codec, but the information contained in the codec that will make the difference.”

If you are visiting the technological tsunami that will be flooding the Las Vegas Convention Center during the NAB Show, make sure to stop by these vendors’ exhibits to investigate the solutions they will be unveiling to deal with the ever-increasing challenges of digital post production. All of these NLE representatives have been free to pose the questions, now let’s see what answers they can provide.

Jay Ankeney is a freelance editor and post-production consultant based in Los Angeles. Write him at JayAnkeney@mac.com.