Assimilate Inc

If you produce dailies in visual effects pipeline, SCRATCH Lab is the workflow tool for you. SCRATCH Lab is the industry's only truly scalable dailies system designed to manage the massive numbers of shots, versions and plates required the complex VFX projects. With support for XML, HTML and SQL, Lab integrates seamlessly with any virtually database, as well as compositing systems such as The Foundry’s Nuke and Adobe’s After Effects. Featuring real-time playback of resolutions up to 5K and powerful automation capabilities, SCRATCH Lab puts everything you need into one fast, intuitive tool.

First and foremost, SCRATCH Lab helps you meet your deadlines. And it’s flexible enough to work the way you want to work. From painless media loading, to unparalleled shot management, 2D or stereo/3D, Lab streamlines the vfx dailies process like no other tool, allowing you to maximize both productivity and creativity.

SCRATCH Lab benefits:

Effortless media and shot management.

• SCRATCH Lab is optimized for DPX, OpenEXR and RAW formats, so you can confidently load any combination of format, resolution and colorspace into a timeline. In addition, Lab is fast enough to play back resolutions up to 5k in real time.
• SCRATCH Lab’s unique CONstruct™ view allows you to seamlessly manage an unlimited number of previous versions and plates from a shot on a single timeline. This unparalleled level of shot management saves huge amounts of time in review, while instant “what if’s” keep the creative process flowing smoothly. Meanwhile, Lab’s Dual View mode provides immediate switching between 3D and stereo/3D playback.
• SCRATCH Lab’s XML support means you can smoothly integrate with even the most complex media database to automatically associate the media and load it into the required slots and layers in the CONstruct. This takes the guesswork out of loading thousands of media clips per day regardless of format, CODEC or resolution.

One-of-a-kind creative review tools.
Only SCRATCH Lab elevates the creative process by offering an innovative “sticky notes” feature that allows any reviewer to add pertinent information about any file so that anyone, at any stage of the process, can open the file and read the comment. Moreover, full HMTL support allows reviews to happen in your theater or anywhere in the world.

Powerful automation.
SCRATCH Lab can be easily automated to reclaim hours of time performing even the most difficult repetitive tasks. From automatically correcting aspect ratios to correcting frame offsets to even selectively applying LUTs based on file type, Lab is the most flexible VFX dailies tool on the market today.

SCRATCH Lab means digital.  
ASSIMILATE was the first DI partner to natively support RED, so it’s no surprise that Lab is the most mature, reliable tool you can buy for digital workflows. Period.

SCRATCH Lab features include:

Real-time full resolution, native playback of all popular camera formats

• REDCODE RAW.r3d with support for dual RED Rocket cards
• Support for the latest RED color science
• Support for RED EPIC HDRx (including Magic Motion and Simple Blend)
• REDCINE and on-camera color settings can be read and manipulated within SCRATCH and augmented using SCRATCH’s powerful color tools
• ARRI RAW
• Phantom
• Panasonic P2/MXF and AVCHD
• SI2K
• Canon 5D
• GoPro
• Sony F65

For a complete list of supported formats click here

Flexibility and extensibility

• Automate SCRATCH Lab via XML to maximize productivity
• Extend SCRATCH Lab via HTML for remote review and comments
• Integrate SCRATCH Lab with other applications in your workflow via XML
• Enhance SCRATCH Lab via our OFX plug-in architecture
• Built-in SQL database supports a full range of metadata
• Automate deliverables by designing templates based on output format, metadata and LUTs/grades
• Import, apply or export CDL

Integrated Stereo Workflow

• Real-time, resolution independent playback to all stereoscopic delivery systems
• Side by side
• Over/under
• Line interleave
• Checkerboard
• Anaglyph
• Check and adjust stereo with dedicated link and convergence controls
• Immediately review decisions in stereo
• Panasonic stereo camera support includes auto de-muxing of stereo streams

Primary Color Grading

• Real-time, non-destructive primary grading
• Heads-up color grading interface and support for Avid Artist Color panel series or all Tangent panels - including the Element
• Source-side adjustments for mixed color space workflows
• Match and auto grading
• Integrated Histogram, Waveform, Vectorscope and Color Curve views
• Group shots, copy/paste color grades and reference libraries
• Key frames and animation curves
• Import and save 1D and 3D LUTs based on primary color grades

High-Speed Conform and Confidence Checking

• Mix-and-match RED.r3d files with ARRI RAW or Phantom (or any other media format recognized by SCRATCH), even Canon DSLR, within the same resolution-independent timeline
• Dual-View, Half-Mix and Side-by-Side comparison options
• Quick Keys for moving through a timeline
• AAF import and MXF integration
• FCP XML import
• DNxHD and ProRes Read and Write (ProRes write only on Mac OS)
• Export TIFF with timecode and metadata
• Import and export ALE
• Shot log metadata import
• Metadata search
• Stereoscopic versioning
• CDL support
• Output to multiple file formats such as DPX, DNxHD, ProRes (Mac OS version only) Tiff, JPG, QuickTime and more
• Quick visual sync of audio to waveform or by timecode
• Multilayer timeline

State of the art metadata and timecode support

• Sync timecode from multiple cameras (including stereo) with a unique “Match Timecode” function. Stack cameras into a single slot, then automatically sync the timecode all of cameras to one of them.
• Generate dailies by automatically naming clips based on any metadata field, including camroll, scene and take.
• Create flash burns either at the top and tail of a clip, or throughout its duration.
• Capture scene and take metadata automatically from broadcast wave audio files.
• Automatically generate new timecode for DSLR cameras such as the Phantom, Cannon 5D/7D and GoPro that don’t support it. Easily increment the timecode with each slot and even skip by user-defined intervals.
• Populate Avid AAF files with extended metadata, avoiding the double pass to access that ALE files required. This effectively removes the need for separate ALEs.

Advanced Audio Sync

• BWAV support
• Sync on TC
• Auto-sync to Clapper
• Interactive Waveform for sync
• Interactive Audio Scrub

Deliverables
SCRATCH Lab features fast, flexible, automated simultaneous output to any popular delivery format.

• Avid DNxHD and DNxHD MXF
• QuickTime (MPEG4, TIFF, JPEG, etc)
• ProRes 422 and 444 (Mac version only)
• DPX
• Real-time tools for frame-rate conversion, image-resolution scaling and frame-accuracy to monitors, projectors and tape decks using both DVI and SDI interfaces
• Create deliverables in different resolutions, image formats and framing, all from a single source and output multiple targets simultaneously
• Queue and manage outputs for unattended batch processing
• Export metadata in a variety of formats, even add notes to shots and include them in XML or MXF files