GridIron Flow Ships with Surprise Additions

GridIron Software this morning announced on a conference call that Flow, the one-of-a-kind visual file management, workflow and time tracking tool that has been in development for three years, is now available for purchase or 30 day demo from the GridIron site.

In addition to a demonstration of how the software can be used to recover otherwise lost versions of graphics files, to discover the use of an element – including even a font – in a given file, or to track time spent on a project, Steve Forde, CEO of GridIron, brought on John Nack, Product Manager at Adobe, to show how Flow has been integrated directly into CS4 via Flash Panels.

A Flow icon was shown right in the tool bar of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign – and reportedly is available for all CS4 apps – that opens a Flash panel showing a miniature version of Flow and allowing capabilities such as coordinating fonts with a file from a different CS4 application that have never been possible.

Steve also announced a new feature added to Flow that did not appear in the public beta: the ability to see the same Flow map regardless… more »

Seeing the Future - In Color

We’re still recovering from the HOW Design Conference in Austin last week, where temperatures hit 107. After the ice packs melt, we’ll post a summary of interesting things we heard there.

In the meantime, for those who have color-focused jobs (or color-fussy clients), you may be interested in the work of the Color Marketing Group: a global consortium that attempts to determine what the hot trends in color for various market segments will be in different parts of the world. Click here to see their predictions for 2009 (white for business, blue is the new green, etc.). They also have a free weekly newsletter of color trends and ideas.

Using CoreMelt Transitions as Filters in After Effects and Motionvideo

G’day Guys,
Learn how to quickly and easily create cool transition effects using CoreMelt’s PolyChrome Transitions plugins as filters in After Effects and Motion so you can access all the great features your used to in Final Cut Pro, right in After Effects and Motion.
The process is nice and simple and the results are stunning, check out our video tutorial for a step by step guide.

For more information on PolyChrome Transitions, check out this page:
http://www.coremelt.com/products/v2/polychrome-transitions-v2.html

For more video tutorials check out our YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/coremeltfx

Cheers,
CoreMelt

50% off Artbeats Stock Footage

Stock footage prices have risen considerably over the past several years, making it less of a discretionary “that’s cool” purchase and more one where we may wait for a client who needs a particular shot. That’s why we were particularly happy to see a nice deal arrive in our mailbox from Artbeats: 50% off all footage collections, and 30% off of all single clips (excluding low-res and any other special offers), through midnight PST on July 4. Just use code 4017 when you check out.

(While you’re there, sign up for their newsletter; subscribers tend to get a free clip each month.)

RED announces REDCINE-X™

RED Leader Jim Jannard today announced a new version of RedCine that they hope to be shipping sometime in August called REDCINE-X. For those of you who have used, or attempted to use, RedCine then you might have watched the video (see the embeded clip after the jump {sorry about the autoplay} or watch the full-rez version here) with quite a bit of shock and awe as it really looks and feels nothing like RedCine. And this is a good thing.

(3) Comments: • Most recent comments by: pablokorona, sean90291, Jon Chappell,

Please label tapes and disks: An open letter to DPs, camera ops, DITs

Man, there are a lot of high definition formats out in the world today. Just to spell them out would be a dizzying array of letters and numbers. 720p, 1080i, 23.98, 30p ... this list could literally go on and on so I won’t even attempt a partial list other that what I have above. Just take a look at this HD format chart. That’s a lot of different formats and it doesn’t even take into account the different flavors of a particular format that camera manufacturers often come up with on their own.

With that in mind this PVC post is an open letter to all DPs, ACs, camera ops, DITs, anyone and everyone associated with the camera department to please label their tapes and hard drives with the usable, relevant information of shooting format and frame rates, codecs and cameras so post-production will at least have an idea of what is being handed to them.

(9) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Scott Simmons, Rob, Scott Simmons, Martin Weiss, Martin Weiss, Mark Raudonis, J. Curtis, Scott Simmons, John Burkhart,

Black Glimmerglass and Hollywood Black Magic Filter Tests

World-class camera assistant Mako Koiwai recently shot a camera test with two new sets of diffusion filters: Black Glimmerglass from Tiffen and Hollywood Black Magic from Schneider Optics. He compared them to diffusion filter sets that he has in his own collection, which includes Tiffen Soft Effects and Schneider Classic Soft filters.

Final Cut Pro (Minor) Update

A new Final Cut Pro update has arrived… FCP 6.0.6.  Your Software Update may have alerted you.  On first glance it looks pretty minor,as it addresses only 1 major fix. But once you dig into the release notes it gets interesting. The 6.05 update (which also gets installed if you hadn’t updated, has a TON of features.

(1) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Filip Vandoorne,

The iPhone 3G S can’t really EDIT video!

Okay, let’s get one thing straight about the new Apple iPhone 3G S ... it can’t edit the video it shoots. What it can do is trim the beginning and end of each and every clip. That may just be semantics talking but I’ve seen lots of stuff on the Interweb saying that you can edit the video that you shoot on the iPhone ... to me editing means that you can actually join two separate clips into one. You can’t do this on the iPhone 3G S. But you indeed can trim your clips to shave off unwanted frames at the head and the tail. It’s a really cool thing to be able to do, especially if you are running low on storage space on the phone. And considering you have to tap the start/stop button on the touch screen (as opposed… more »

(16) Comments: • Most recent comments by: DanConklin, Josh Mellicker from DVcreators.net, Scott Simmons, Eric Granata, Josh Mellicker from DVcreators.net, Scott Simmons, Josh Mellicker from DVcreators.net, Scott Gentry, Scott Simmons, Jon Chappell,

It’s the End of the World as We Know It…

I posted a fun little video about creating a shoulder mount rig for the iPhone 3G S on Friday. You can see it here.

While done in a tongue and cheek way, the most important thing for Pros watching the video is actually the first minute. I was dead serious there. The new iPhone is a game changer… make no mistake about it.

(8) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Adam Wilt, Adam Wilt, Simon T, Mark Spencer, Franklin McMahon, Jared Scheib, Jared Scheib, gcelso,