Press
ASSIMILATE ships new SCRATCH Six data-centric DI suite on Mac and Windows
Press Releases
Santa Clara, CA, July 4, 2011 – ASSIMILATE, the leading provider of powerful post-production tools for digital workflows, today announced the eagerly-awaited release of SCRATCH® Six, its renowned, end-to-end digital cinema and broadcast imaging tool for post-production workflows.
Released simultaneously on Mac OS® X and Windows 7, SCRATCH Six is ASSIMILATE’s flagship data-centric DI system for the playback, conform, editing, color grading, compositing and finishing of RED camera and high-end digital workflows. Its new price tag of $17,995 USD reflects today’s market demand for maximum price-performance amongst independent and documentary filmmakers, episodic broadcast facilities, and boutique post-production houses.
SCRATCH Six is paired with SCRATCH Lab™, also released today on Mac and Windows, the industry’s first digital lab tool designed to meet the requirements of on-location workflows and VFX dailies pipelines.
This new generation of SCRATCH delivers the industry’s most comprehensive DI toolset for data-centric digital cinema and broadcast productions on 2D and 3D stereo projects, up to 5K resolutions and beyond. Significant new features include a multilayer timeline for tighter integration with editorial systems, advanced tracking and keying technology for color grading and VFX workflows, new paint tools, plus the widest support for input/output formats in the industry.
Emery Wells, founder and CTO of Katabatic Digital in NYC said:
"SCRATCH Six is ASSIMILATE's most significant release to date. They have taken their core high-performance engine and added a host of new features, at an aggressive new price, that brings SCRATCH squarely into the realm of the 'hero' finishing system. With the new multi-layer timeline, support for all popular RAW camera formats, advanced keying and tracking capabilities, and availability on Mac OSX with ProRes support, we can run our entire DI pipeline on one system."
Eric Martin, head of digital post-production, Duboi, Paris, said:
“SCRATCH Six is a fantastic tool, and an excellent evolution of software that we've been using for four years. It's scalable from a simple 2K player, to a conform tool, to a full scale DI finishing system. RED EPIC footage is very easy to deal with in SCRATCH Six, and since it handles 3D stereo grading so well, it's the heart of our data management workflow on 3D stereo projects. All of this at a great new price.”
Victor Vasini, post-production supervisor, Cinecolor, Argentina, said:
“The inclusion of today’s most important digital camera and DSLR formats in SCRATCH Six allows us to devote more time to creativity and less to operational matters. New features like the multi-layer timeline, 3D stereoscopic tools, HDRx support and, of course, the great new price, mean we can finish the bulk of our projects – TV shows, commercials and feature films – on one system, while delivering the greater speed and efficiency that our clients demand.”
SCRATCH Six’s new compositing, color grading and paint features include:
- Advanced tracking and keying for greater control over grading than ever. New state-of-the art tracking tools combine the accuracy of point tracking with an easy-to-use shape tracker. Multiple keyers, with fine controls, offer artists unlimited creative options to tackle the most sophisticated grades.
- Vector paint tools for non-destructive painting – paint set-ups can be saved and re-applied on different images, enabling versioning.
- Support for Avid’s Artist Color and Tangent Wave and CP 200 control panels with 150 map-able functions for auxiliary control surfaces.
SCRATCH Six’s enhanced 3D Stereo features include:
- Bicubic controls – high-accuracy controls for fixing lens differences and distortion to assist in making left and right eyes identical.
SCRATCH Six’s extended input/output formats include:
- Multilayer timeline support – automatically reproduces multilayer timelines from AAF and FCP XMLs, saving huge amounts of time.
- Widest range of input formats, including 5K RED Epic, ARRIRAW, Phantom, SI-2K, Panasonic & DSLR cameras, output formats including DPX, DNxHD MXF, ProRes 422 and 444 (Mac OS version only), TIFF, JPEG, and Quicktime.