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A digital editing interface displaying a grid of images featuring a tabby cat on a patterned rug, along with editing tools on the right side.

New in the toolbox

21.06.2023
Standing around the DP stand at FMX and (as so often) looking stupid, various people came by and wanted to know something special. “Do you know anything for…” – and we were able to answer almost everything, and one of them (Hello Ralf!) said we should put the list in the magazine. Okay, here you go – the best tools we’ve recommended to people directly. You might find them helpful too!

Kards

A black background with a central white circle surrounded by four smaller white circles at the corners, all set on a grid pattern. The design is minimalist and geometric, focusing on circular shapes.
An audio sync software interface displaying a circular gauge with a needle pointing to 044. Below, a series of triangular markers are positioned along a horizontal line, with text indicating time offsets. The background is dark with a checkerboard border.
A color test pattern featuring a central color wheel, grayscale gradients, and various shapes in a grid layout. The design includes labeled sections indicating 'Media Server - Main' and 'ALTEKA Solutions.'
A color test pattern featuring vertical stripes in various colors including gray, yellow, green, cyan, magenta, red, blue, and black, along with a black and white bar at the bottom.

Good test cards are often overlooked. Maybe you have a background image, maybe a few slides in PowerPoint. Kards is better. Alteka Solutions has developed the testing tool for professionals – cross-platform, free and virtually foolproof. Kards creates a series of useful cards with motion and audio synchronisation tests. You can name and label the cards – and in version 1.2, Kards is available – free of charge – for Windows and Mac, and even in versions for Intel chips and M1 in the Apple system). Select the output screen and click on “Activate”. Very simple.

A screenshot of a software interface displaying resolution settings for a monitor. It shows options for card type, background, foreground, and output settings with toggles and fields for customization.
Select output and click together,
what you want – bars in different styles, from HDR to SMPTE to simple colour field or ARIB.
A user interface panel displaying settings for a grid in a software application. Features include options for background color, crosshair visibility, grid spacing in pixels, and output options like name, info display, motion, and fill output.
Grids are flexibly customisable – if you’re not sure what you need a grid for: projectors, virtual production and anything where you need to be sure it’s straight and on the right system. We’ve all sat in presentations where you get seasick.
A screenshot of software settings displaying options for audio device selection, frame rate settings, and output options such as card size and position. The interface includes checkboxes for enabling info, motion, and fill output.
Audiosync is also flexibly customisable – you can see which FPS is running on which screen with a click and frame counter. And we know of at least two sets where this was very helpful – and yes, we also think variable frame rates are great.
A user interface showing audio settings with options for 'Voice,' 'Text,' 'Tone,' and different sound types. It includes a toggle switch marked 'Enable' and a dropdown labeled 'Device' with options for audio outputs.
Having lots of audio outputs is great, but some screen always steals the signal – that’s why Kards can also output an additional signal and you can see what outputs are really active – or not. If you want, you can use AI generator voices, defined tones, pink/white noise, stereo signals or even your own audio files. It would be foolish to set up the whole team as a DJ. But be careful: you can add up the sounds – clicking on all of them will give you a headache.
A digital interface displaying settings for LED panel configuration, including options for panel width, height, columns, and rows. Output options for name, show info, windowed mode, and fill output are also visible, alongside a card size setting.
And if you want to test LEDs, you can even limit what happens in rows and columns – these are freely configurable in size (panel width/height) and position – or, like all other maps, can be set in motion.

You can change the map to be created at any time and configure the options for this map. If you give the computer/screen a name, you can easily recognise which output is which. If required, you can save the output map as a PNG file or set it up as a background image with a single click. This allows you to prepare the various output stations as you need them.
The – as already mentioned – free software is easy to use, and if you want to start your configured map in the system, simply click on “Enable” at the bottom left and the screen will be taken over – a window mode is of course also available. So to summarise: What more could you want?
alteka.solutions/kards

A digital editing interface displaying a grid of images featuring a tabby cat on a patterned rug, along with editing tools on the right side.

Movieprint

Currently available in version 0.2.22 for Windows and Mac, Movieprint is one of the more specialised tools – namely the task of creating a contact sheet from a video file. Now everyone is saying: You can do that with software XYZ, and with Edit Tools anyway – that’s true, but with Movieprint it’s also possible if you don’t have the big tools installed – or if you don’t know where, it’s just easier. And it really is almost foolproof easy to define custom grids, file and image specific data, margins etc. to create a custom look for MoviePrints. Depending on what you need it for.

In/out points can of course also be customised – depending on which shot, scene or area you want to create a contact sheet from. If you want, you can of course also scroll through the film and select the frames you want as thumbnails. So you run the “automatic” function and then select – frame by frame – which thumbnail you want. If everything fits, you can save it in a template and – for example – semi-automatically attach contact sheets to archived projects – depending on how important the project is or how much time you want to save when retrieving it. If you only need something “quickly”, you can also switch to Shot Detection or a timeline view and generate contact sheets semi-automatically – and thus collect a series of films in a contact sheet, for example.

All in all a special tool, but – like so many things – very useful from time to time, and since the exported example below – from finding the video file to exporting the printout – took less than 30 seconds, obviously also very easy to use. The example image is the “lead image” of the last link in this collection. www.movieprint.org

A promotional image featuring a film slate on an orange background, with text that reads 'OPEN SOURCE LIST OF FREE PRACTICE FOOTAGE DOWNLOADABLE R3D FILES' and a date of January 19, 2022.

iColorist Practice Media

The question of “where to get footage” is as old as the hills in VFX studios… A first selection of free, “free” footage in relevant quality (everyone has tried to download from YouTube) can be found at iColorist’s list, with links to download locations for footage from Arri, BMD, RED and more – in various versions.
icolorist.com/practice-media-footage-list

A collage of movie posters displayed on a dark background from the ShotOnWhat? website, featuring various film titles, including 'Sound of Metal' and 'Hellboy.' The layout includes navigation options for different film production categories.

Shotonwhat?

In principle, it’s all there somewhere – but putting it together is helpful. If you occasionally want to know which cameras and lenses are used to shoot the various cinema hits, you should bookmark “Shot On What” – a huge database that brings together the technology used, systems, people involved and more for the respective films – including crew and team, as well as dedicated categories for cameras, lenses, digital, film, stereoscopy, audio, VFX & animation, colour, services, pre-production/production/post-production, distribution and more
Post Production, Distribution and more. Definitely worth a visit and a bookmark!


shotonwhat.com

A grid of laptop images displayed on a website, showcasing various models and arrangements with different backgrounds and angles. Each image is labeled with a product description and price.

PicClick

Okay, we’re slowly moving away from the VFX context – but we recommended it at FMX, so here it is: Pic Click is an alternative, fast interface for Ebay – so if you search the used platform often, you’ll find a better overview here – including a gallery of all offers, a link to the suspected product on Amazon, and so on. You can also connect to your Ebay account, EASILY search in different country versions, and that’s it – anyone who is often on the second-hand platform knows how miserable the internal search is!
picclick.de

Cat and Moth

Some stories stick in the memory – and as we reported on “Cat and Moth” at the beginning of 2022, everyone wanted to see the film. And now guess what it’s about? Bingo! After a successful festival tour and a host of well-deserved awards, Cat & Moth is finally available to watch in full online. Watch the film here: is.gd/cat_and_moth

Bela Beier Author
Digital Production Newsroom