ASSIMILATE, the leading global provider of DI and dailies tools for digital cinema, episodic television, commercials and spot workflows is now shipping the next generation of its SCRATCH® and SCRATCH Lab® products. SCRATCH v7 features a powerful new suite of enhanced 3D compositing tools that integrate seamlessly into its world-class color-grading, data management and finishing system to allow far faster, more fluid and more cost-effective DI sessions, known as Creative DI.

“SCRATCH v7 is a huge time-saver for me,” said Julio Macat ASC, the cinematographer behind blockbuster hits such as Home Alone and Wedding Crashers. “During our shoot of Universal Pictures’ Pitch Perfect, we used SCRATCH to do the creative DI. I found the SCRATCH DI session to be far more fluid and much faster than anything I’ve experienced before. With the savvy hands of Leandro Marini at the helm, we were able to do color timing side-by-side with items like object replacement, beauty work on women’s faces, and even some VFX – such as changing skies, adding assorted lens flares and creating or extending light beams from lighting instruments that couldn’t be practically photographed – right inside of SCRATCH. This was all quickly achieved without time delays, which can interrupt the creative process. The faster you go, the more DI work you can do. It was an eye-opening experience for me, and I know all directors of photography will fall in love with this way of working. Creative DI is a great step forward in helping cinematographers reach their visual goals, and I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned with my colleagues at the ASC.”

New Features in SCRATCH v7

SCRATCH v7 is the first real-time, client-attended toolset in the industry to deliver a consistent, integrated user-interface across both production dailies and creative DI. This consistency offers a synergy between production and post-production that allows directors and producers of features, commercials, spots and episodic television to dramatically enhance creativity while significantly improving productivity.

Enhanced creative tools to enable creative DI:

• An expanded compositing toolset with a new 3D camera model, featuring an improved OFX plug-in environment and plug-in workflow
• Full-peer interactivity between all SCRATCH features and critical VFX plug-ins, such as Sapphire, Neat Video, ReelSmart Motion Blur, Beauty Box, mocha Pro and more
• Ability to nest layers and apply color grades to groups of layers
• New rendering features, including directional and motion blur, multi-sampling, and bit-map filtering

An entirely new, flexible viewing model that displays content in a far more intuitive manner

Extended native camera support:

• Phantom Miro
• Canon C500 and C300
• Black Magic Cinema Camera (BMCC)
• The latest ARRI Debayer algorithm
• Sony F55 and F65 native high frame rate
• RED 5K
• SCRATCH v7 includes full support for the entire ACES specification including the file format, color space, and device and rendering transforms

Planar tracking data import from Imagineer System’s mocha Pro v3: New support and process for SRATCH users to import mocha’s planar tracking data for transform, scale, rotation and corner pin perspective. With the new mocha Pro-to-SCRATCH workflow, artists can seamlessly tackle the most difficult motion tracking shots for screen inserts, match moves, set extensions and image stabilization.

SCRATCH Lab v7: The Power of Advanced Dailies at Your Fingertips

SCRATCH Lab v7 is leading the Advanced Dailies revolution by meeting the highly complex challenges of managing media and metadata from any number of different cameras into a single timeline, quickly syncing audio whether you have accurate timecode or not, color correcting and creating looks in real-time, and providing wicked-fast rendering simultaneously for many different deliverable formats for review and editorial — all on-location.

“The proliferation of digital camera formats is rapidly changing the world of dailies, and Advanced Dailies has become the new baseline in the industry,” said Duck Grossberg, DIT and colorist for such projects as The Life of Pi and Real Steel. “I’m now required to manage an entire workflow that includes multiple cameras, syncing audio and color-correcting clips, all on-location. I love SCRATCH Lab because it’s the only tool that allows me to organize my media any way I want — by card or reel, by scene and take, or by camera type — and then visually represent the whole shoot in one single timeline. And with Lab’s state-of-the-art look and color management, metadata handling, audio sync and rendering templates, I can crank out an hour of Advanced Dailies in less than 45 minutes. It’s incredible how fast and accurate it is to work this way.”

New SCRATCH Lab v7 delivers the features and performance demanded by Advanced Dailies workflows:

• Organize your media any way you want: by reels or cards, by scene and take, or by camera type, and then visually represent all the media from a shoot in a single, ultimate timeline view
• Flexibly manage any metadata and timecode and even create it, if need be
• Access scene and take metadata globally through Lab’s unique media browser, or in the context of a single shot, via a new metadata stack
• Clip name and reel ID file masking
• Generate custom columns in metadata stack
• View any track or output stack from player
• Generate timecode and reel ID per construct
• Support for metadata burn-ins, including: Flash burns (ability to have metadata burn-ins appear over a specified number of frames) – Flash guides (same as flash burns, but with safe action/text and aspect guides)
• Support for more real-time native camera formats than any other software, including RED Epic, ARRI Alexa, Sony F55 and F65, Canon C500 and C300, Phantom Miro, DSLR and GoPro
• Advanced LUT support, including Cube LUT support and 3D LUTs via a browser
• Full ACES compliance
• The most powerful audio sync in the industry, with multiple ways to sync audio even if timecode is wrong or missing: Automatically, via timecode – Via analysis of the audio waveform – Full manual control If no access to timecode or a slate
• Wicked-fast background rendering, eliminating the need for a dedicated render machine
• Powerful and flexible means to set up templates to maximize efficiently and minimize errors

Pricing and Availability

The price for SCRATCH v7 remains unchanged at $20,995. Likewise, SCRATCH Lab is still priced at $5,990. Both prices include first year’s maintenance and support. A Site License Subscription is also available for SCRATCH and SCRATCH Lab v7, and is priced at $33,000 USD, annually (including maintenance and support for the period).

ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH® real-time digital workflow and post-production tools have proven essential to the successful creation of thousands of major studio and independent features, commercials, television shows, music videos and corporate productions. Both SCRATCH and SCRATCH Lab®, running on Windows and Mac OS® X, are the heartbeat of today’s most demanding digital post-production and dailies workflows for 2D and stereo/3D productions.

About ASSIMILATE

ASSIMILATE is the premier provider of digital workflow and post-production tools, that have proven essential to the successful creation of thousands of studio and independent features, television shows, music videos and corporate video productions. The company’s SCRATCH products, running on Windows and Mac OS® X, are the heartbeat of today’s most demanding digital post-production and dailies workflows for 2D and stereo 3D productions. They equip directors, DPs, DITs and artists with the state-of-the-art, intuitive, data-centric solutions they need to meet the continual challenges of increased creativity and productivity amid ever-shrinking budgets. ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH® data-centric DI system, is the most comprehensive, end-to-end cinema and broadcast imaging tool for playback, conform, editing, color grading, compositing and finishing of nearly all popular digital workflows, including, RED, ARRI, Sony F65, Canon 5D, Phantom, Go Pro and more. SCRATCH Lab® delivers a comprehensive toolset for the review, versioning, color correction, conform and output of on-set or VFX dailies. ASSIMILATE a privately held company, with headquarters in Santa Clara, California, USA, offices in London, UK, Groningen, NL and Beijing City, CN and markets its products worldwide via a global reseller network. To learn more please visit www.assimilateinc.com