Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 17, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The new version of the colour-grading and finishing solution Film Master comes with greater speed and new effects. Compared with the previous version, some effects are said to run up to five times faster on the same hardware. However, Film Master 3.5 is currently still in the beta stage – Digital Vision did not announce an exact release date at the NAB.
Film Master 3.5 will contain several new filters, including a sharpening filter that works: DVO-Sharpen makes use of Digital Vision’s “Motion Estimation” technology and sharpens images without the familiar side effects. There are no double edges as with conventional filters, and the technology prevents areas with grain from being sharpened, which with sharpening filters in other programs often leads merely to the grain being intensified and the image therefore not necessarily becoming better.
In addition to the existing DVO-Grain filter, which removes grain, there is now DVO-Regrain, which puts the grain back into the image. This makes it possible to first remove the grain from some areas for easier compositing and then provide them again with the original grain. 3D graphics can be inserted seamlessly into the film material by giving them the same grain.
DVO-fix is a small painting module. This effect makes it possible to remove dirt and dust from the image. Analysis of the 12 frames before and 12 frames after in conjunction with the company’s own Motion Estimation ensures that the effect automatically paints over the defective areas with suitable material.
DVO Brickwall removes high-frequency interference in the image, for example noise. Together with Degrain, the user can thus optimally prepare the material for compression and prevent artifacts.
DVO-Alias should actually be called DVO-Antialias, because that is exactly what this is: an antialiasing filter that removes troublesome interference such as stepped and flickering edges from the image.
DVO-Alias can also be integrated as a module into Sonic’s CineVision software. CineVision is encoder software for the new HD video formats AVC, VC1 and MPEG-2. The combination makes it possible to achieve an optimal result in encoding, since DVO-Alias prepares the image material so that the encoder can do its work optimally.
As before, Filmmaster is offered as a system. On request, however, the software is also available without hardware; together with the control panel, its price is about 120,000 US dollars.
In addition, in cooperation with a large bank, Digital Vision offers Filmmaster customers financing for the system. This is intended to give smaller studios a chance to work with this hardware as well.
Digital Vision initially only announced another plug-in. This is a Filmmaster plug-in for Photoshop that makes all the functions of the Filmmaster software available in Photoshop. This allows every DoP or director on set to define a preliminary correction in Photoshop and then import the presets directly into Filmmaster. The plug-in does not yet have a name; price and release date are also still unknown.
Further links:
- Digital Vision
