Gone are the days when you could buy a plug-in collection for a fixed price and then use it for years. Most providers have switched to subscription models, which can be paid for either monthly or annually. This can be advantageous for users who only need a specific effect or collection for a short period of time and remember to cancel their subscription in good time. In most cases, however, users pay many times what the collection would have cost (in the past) as a one-off purchase. And at least once a year, you are painfully reminded of this when another £250 is debited from your credit card for an FX set that you haven’t used in ages.

The situation is similar with stock footage from relevant databases: in the past, if you bought a collection in the truest sense of the word, you could use it for numerous productions and essentially forever (somewhere in our cupboard, we still have the Artbeats collections “American Cities” and “African Animals” in wonderful NTSC resolution in MotionJPEG format). Nowadays, you either buy expensive credits (as with Adobe Stock) or subscribe (e.g., Envato) to get the material you need.

The manufacturer Production Crate offers a combination of both in its suite: a plug-in collection that includes an extensive database of visuals, music, and sound effects, available by subscription, of course. In this review, we take a closer look at whether the model is worth its USD 300 annual price.

Scope and management

The entire (paid) suite consists of just over 40 plug-ins, around a quarter of which are freely available, i.e. do not require a subscription (we have taken a brief look at the most interesting effects below). According to the manufacturer, the scope of the assets, i.e. the stock material, exceeds 10,000 elements, ranging from simple explosions to animated Valentine’s Day hearts to confused zombies.

The database is divided into VFX, motion graphics, music, sound effects, and 3D models, including Blender assets, with Pro Suite customers entitled to 50 downloads per day. Plug-ins and assets are managed via a central app called ProductionCrate Portal. Depending on their preferred software and workflow, users can install plug-ins for After Effects and Premiere, tools for Blender, or extensions for direct access to assets from the host software. The idea is not new (even Envato now offers a plug-in for Premiere), but it is quite helpful when you need an atmosphere, a background or a nuclear explosion quickly.

Pro plug-ins

The set of both free and subscription-based plug-ins is designed for Premiere Pro and After Effects, with most of the tools working in both host applications. Only plug-ins that don’t really make sense in Premiere (such as unmulting layers or working in 3D space) are only available in After Effects. Otherwise, it must be said that the ProductionCrate Suite offers few surprises.

Most of the effects will be familiar to users, as they have been integral parts of other plug-in collections for decades, such as Glow, Old Film Effect, and HyperGlitch. Nevertheless, the ProductionCrate effects are very cleanly programmed (i.e. few crashes or problems when loading) and also proved to be easy to use – once you’ve experimented a bit and halfway understood what the countless controls are for.

Let’s start with the obvious: turn new video into old film. Or old video. Or old television. Production Crate provides a handful of plug-ins for different applications. The “Retro Film” effect transforms the video into 8, 16 or 35mm film with all the trimmings: faded or blurred colours (or even black and white), dust, hairs, scratches and lots of wild camera shake. The settings are relatively clear and understandable, yet comprehensive, so that the user will hardly miss any options for converting to old film.

Particularly interesting are the presets, where the user can choose among a 1960s home-video style, a Tarantino-esque grindhouse effect, or an old Italian western. All presets are lovingly designed and even include aspect ratios tailored to the look, which you don’t often find. The individual settings range from blur/sharpen to saturation, framing and lens errors to hair length and scratch depth. So basically everything you need for a quick old film effect. The preview and rendering are also pleasantly fast and of sufficiently good quality.

This is followed by the VHS effect, which does exactly what you’d expect from the name: it converts digital video into old VHS footage. Both the presets and the settings are a lot more limited than with Retro Film, but they’re more than enough to achieve a cool 80s look (what else do you really need to adjust with VHS?). In fact, you don’t need much more than the “default” preset; if that’s not enough destruction for you, you can switch to “Found Footage” or “Corrupted” to generate more magnetic interference, distorted colours or jumping line skips. Other custom options include colour softness, grain, jitter and block formation, as well as the number and colour of line skips.

Speaking of line skipping (a factor that used to exist in post-production, but which should no longer be a burden to you, dear Gen Z): a very interesting effect can be found in the CRT Factory (CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube, or tube monitor for short). The effect transforms digital video into an old television or video monitor, with all the trimmings: curvature, pixels, interlacing, discolouration, optical deviations and strange glows. Here, too, the presets are extensive and lovingly programmed, covering numerous looks, including arcade monitors, billboards, monitors from different decades, LEDs, and plasma TVs. Especially in combination with the VHS effect, but also as a standalone tool, for example, for screen captures or the animation of screen content, impressive results can be achieved here.

And, before we forget, there is, of course, also a proper film grade effect. Unlike other plug-in collections, in which realistic film material from Fuji, Kodak or other (now bankrupt) manufacturers is meticulously reproduced, “film grade” at Production Crate is more of an interesting gimmick. Presets such as Polaroid, Miami, Pop or Retro are available, which already indicates that these are not serious stock simulations. Nevertheless, it’s fun to click through the presets, which here and there are even sufficient to achieve a look that is worth seeing and, in any case, creative. Numerous options are available for customising the image, from colouring, saturation and grain to light rays and, of course, a vignette. Strangely enough, when applied to a video element, the effect switches the comp size to 1,440 x 1,080, so you should proceed with caution here. Whether this is intentional or not is something only the manufacturer knows.

If you take a closer look at the ProductionCrate Suite, you can’t overlook Easy Glow. Although Easy Glow is certainly not the only filter on the market that makes bright areas of an image glow (hardly any plug-in collection comes without a glow effect), the result is extremely impressive and stands out from the competition thanks to its many detailed presets.

The presets range from sunset to retro to science fiction films and always look professional, neither overdone nor understated. The individual settings are not overly extensive, but they still serve their purpose. Of course, you can adjust the intensity of the effect, the colour scheme, as well as shifts and optional light streaks. All in all, Easy Glow is one of the best “make me glow” filters we’ve seen so far — and we’ve seen a lot.

One last filter from the Pro series deserves a more detailed introduction: Hyper Glitch. As the name suggests, this plug-in generates video glitches — from “very subtle” to “completely unrecognisable”. The effect is programmed in a very interesting way and offers a variety of looks, while the individual settings remain simple and easy to understand. Once you have decided on a preset, you can, of course, adjust the strength of the effect to your liking, as well as its intensity, size, colours, jittering, halftones, and speed. Ultimately, there is hardly a setting that you cannot freely design and, of course, animate. Once again, the combination of Hyper Glitch and the CRT monitor makes particular sense for achieving a realistic effect of transmission errors and an old screen.

Surprisingly, the ProductionCreate Suite (in the Pro version) includes numerous other filters that are not really documented or described anywhere (at least not on the website). Installing the collection is like opening a lucky dip: you find an incredible amount of stuff you didn’t expect, and which you probably won’t have much use for until you actually need it. For example, there is an aurora effect that generates northern lights from any image (something you’ll probably need once or twice in your life, if at all).

Or the Fractal filter, which creates 3D fractals like those from a spaceship in films from the 90s. The bokeh effects used to create soft lighting environments are also interesting. Or the Glass filter, which makes text and graphics appear as if they were made of glass, and can actually be used as a virtual window pane with corresponding glass edges. The list goes on, but the space in this report (and our readers’ attention span) is limited.

Free plug-ins

As mentioned above, Production Crate does not necessarily require a subscription for effects and assets, but also offers a handful of useful and interesting plug-ins (and elements) that can be downloaded and used free of charge from the website. We won’t go into more detail here, but we recommend trying them out on your own computer.

One of the free effects that deserves a special mention is certainly “Black Hole”, which is either useful for very specific applications or for promoting the nerdiness of individual DIGITAL PRODUCTION employees (we reported: https://digitalproduction.com/2026/01/15/diy-gravity-make-your-own-black-hole-in-afer-effects/).

DIY Gravity: Make Your Own Black Hole (In After Effects)

The Chromatic Aberration effect is also very useful. It refracts the wavelengths of different light colours to simulate faulty (or very cheap) lenses, which, especially in combination with other effects, produces amazing results. The ASCII filter (also known as the Matrix effect) is also always welcome, as it transforms video images into a shower of characters.

One last free filter that should not go unmentioned here is Long Shadow, which casts a shadow of any length based on an alpha channel of text or graphics. This shadow is not comparable to the realism of a drop shadow or the shadow of a virtual light source in After Effects, but it can be very helpful in designing interesting logos and graphic animations. And, as mentioned, all of the filters mentioned in this section are available free of charge.

VFX footage

We have already mentioned that Production Crate also offers many thousands of assets in its subscription. The focus is less on real stock footage, as is the case with Envato and its ilk, and more on all kinds of elements for designing more or less elaborate special effects. In the “SciFi” submenu alone, there are hundreds of assets for space battles, cyberpunk environments or a remake of Minority Report. Most of the VFX graphics are rendered films with optional alpha (choose from HD to 4K, in ProRes or MP4), but you can also find real images with alpha or green screen (usually when it comes to people who are either shooting wildly or staggering around as zombies).

As we mentioned, the number of downloads is limited to 50 per day (in the Pro version), but this is certainly sufficient if you know in advance what you actually want to design. The VFX section alone is divided into 16 categories (explosions, fire, smoke, blood, flying objects, and so on), which are in turn sorted into subcategories (e.g. explosions on land, in the air, and nuclear), so users should be able to find what they are looking for quite quickly.

Within the VFX section, things can also be a little less brutal if, for example, you are looking for weather phenomena such as snow or rain, or animals such as birds or fish. The motion graphics section is quite interesting, but somewhat less extensive. Here you will find all kinds of animated backgrounds, lens flares, animated icons and buttons from popular portals, cute emojis, and lots of transitions, textures, and quite elaborately designed captions.

Users of 3D programmes such as Blender will be delighted with the numerous 3D objects, most of which are once again very martial in nature (lots of war toys, apocalypse and sci-fi), but there are also things from normal, everyday life, such as cars (that aren’t standing around as bombed-out wrecks), trees, sports equipment and delicious doughnuts with pink frosting.

SFX footage

In addition to the numerous visual assets, the Production Crate subscription also includes sounds in the form of sound effects and royalty-free music (editor’s note: “royalty-free” does not necessarily mean “free for commercial use” — if in doubt, check the terms of use with the provider). The selection of music tracks is not overly extensive, but it offers a pretty good start for use as a layout, at least. The music tracks are divided into categories such as rock, disco, epic and action, so you should be able to find at least a small selection of music for every application.

In terms of quality, the tracks are in the middle range, meaning they meet the standard of a professional sound database, but do not particularly stand out. In addition to numerous music tracks, Production Crate offers more than 5,000 sound effects that can be used at will within the subscription. These are also divided into categories for ambient sound, animals, accidents, organic sounds (such as breaking bones) and various vehicles. However, it is clear that the martial approach prevails here too, i.e. there are significantly more explosions and muzzle flashes than delicate birdsong. Nevertheless, the range is extensive and of high quality.

As a special gimmick, Production Crate offers a plug-in that allows access to the sound effects directly from Premiere. Using a separate window in the editing programme, users can browse the sound library, listen to samples, and, if they find what they are looking for, download the element with a single click and insert it into the timeline at the position of the playhead. The plug-in is clever enough not to overwrite existing elements in the sequence but instead to create a new audio track.

Conclusion

Anyone interested in compositions, effects and motion design within After Effects (or sometimes even Adobe Premiere) should definitely try out the numerous free plug-ins from Production Crate. Whether a subscription is worthwhile depends, of course, very much on the individual working environment and production requirements.

Production Crate leans heavily into sci-fi, fantasy and action, which is why a large part of the material on offer and some plug-ins are not particularly suitable for, say, “normal” productions (documentaries, reports, cooking shows, weather reports, Sunday sermons). We would therefore recommend the Production Crate subscription to users from the aforementioned fictional areas. Nevertheless, it is worth taking a closer look at what is on offer for the majority of users. In fact, there is also a “beginner subscription” available for USD 9 per month (USD 100 per year), which includes the plug-ins but does not allow access to most of the footage database. So if you only want to use the effects, the starter pack is a good choice.

Info box

ProductionCrate Suite Skills (plug-ins only) $100/year
ProductionCrate Suite Pro (Plug-ins and 50 downloads/day) $299/year
ProductionCrate Suite Enterprise (plug-ins and 100 downloads/day) on request

Check current pricing and options here.

Host application: Adobe After Effects/ Adobe Premiere Pro

Further information: https://www.productioncrate.com/

The post ProductionCrate Plug-in Suite with docked footage database first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Andreas Zerr.

After years of HDMI-only Ninjas, Atomos is finally handing over what professionals have asked for: the new Ninja TX now includes both 12G-SDI and HDMI 2.0 I/O in a 5-inch monitor-recorder. This is not a Ninja in Shogun clothing—Atomos insists everything from the enclosure to the electronics and OS is entirely new.

CFexpress Type B is now supported, allowing high-speed RAW video capture straight to reliable solid-state media. The Ninja TX also accepts USB-C external drives, so storage is whatever suits the shoot: tiny and fast, or huge and cheap.

Pro Codecs Out of the Box

No more codec activation codes, dongles, or “contact sales” detours. Ninja TX comes with Apple ProRes, ProRes RAW, Avid DNx, and H.265/H.264 all pre-activated. Out of the box, users can shoot up to 120fps in HD, 60fps in 4K UHD/DCI, or 30fps in 8K UHD/DCI, depending on what the connected camera supplies.

Bright, Light, and Apparently Not Melting

The new industrial design, besides looking like a Ninja (but not that Ninja), is lighter, cooler, and smaller, with a claimed 1500 nits of brightness—50% more than previous models. A redesigned cooling system aims for quiet operation, so production audio is less likely to catch your monitor wheezing.

All the Monitoring Tools You’d Expect

The touchscreen display is loaded with pro-level tools, including EL ZONE false color, focus peaking, waveform, RGB parade, and vectorscope. Exposure, framing, color, and sharpness can be dialed in without menu-digging.

Ready for Cloud and Remote Production

Ninja TX ships with Wi-Fi 6E and Atomos AirGlu timecode sync via RF or Bluetooth. Camera-to-cloud is not an extra—creators get 20GB of free ATOMOSphere storage and can upload directly to Frame.io, Dropbox, and more. For streaming, Ninja TX supports NDI 6/HX3 TX/RX for real-time video over IP.

Connectivity: Brackets, Locks, and No Wiggling Cables

A new cable-locking system for HDMI and USB-C aims to keep connections from falling out at the worst moment. The Ninja TX ships with a USB-C locking cable (HDMI locks are available separately). Dual USB-C ports allow for connecting drives and calibration or accessories simultaneously. Power comes from USB-C, NP-F battery, or AC adapter.

Shipping, Price, and the Fine Print

Ninja TX is expected to ship at the end of August 2025. MSRP is USD $999, EUR €999, GBP £835, or AUD $1625 (excluding taxes/VAT). Storage media is not included; subscriptions may be required for some cloud services.

Verdict: Finally, a Ninja for Grown-Ups

Ninja TX puts SDI, CFexpress, and all codecs in a 5-inch package, with Wi-Fi, NDI, and a Linux-based AtomOS for faster updates. It’s built for camera operators who need monitoring, recording, and upload on set—without mystery firmware or cable acrobatics. As with all newly-launched gear: test innovations thoroughly in your workflow before using them on actual productions.

The post Ninja TX: Atomos Finally Gives Ninjas SDI, CFexpress, and Cloud: No Ancient Relics Inside first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Non-linear video editing with computers (NLE for short) has given us enormous freedom. Not only the fiddling with adhesive presses and cotton gloves, synchronised tape machines or even toxic carbon tetrachloride in magnetic magnifiers from the early days of videotape are a thing of the past. today, “cuts” are non-destructive and can be altered at will (sometimes all too often). But the whole thing has one disadvantage: the individual components are actually scattered around on storage media and are only accessed at lightning speed. If the end product is to be passed on or archived, a final rendering must therefore be carried out. Depending on the complexity of the visual processing and the codec used, this can sometimes take longer.

However, customers sometimes (or usually) have last-minute change requests. We ourselves are not perfect and sometimes only discover errors shortly before delivery. Careful quality control under human eyes is essential in any case because of technical errors. These can range from faulty field sequences to the erratic rendering errors of overheated graphics cards (just think of the infamous D700 in the MacPro). Such errors are particularly time-consuming because they can occur in completely different places when rendering again. In the final check, the entire file must therefore be reviewed one-to-one, even if only a short section has been corrected – sometimes it’s just a single line in the credits.

Experienced specialists in the fields of 3D animation and VFX, where the final rendering can take an extremely long time and errors often occur in completely unexpected places, therefore generally use numbered image sequences instead of contiguous individual files. This allows faulty parts to be specifically recalculated and inserted. However, such sequences take up an enormous amount of space and require very fast storage media for smooth playback. Errors during copying would also easily lead to shifts in image and sound or separate alpha masks. Compared to DPX master files (Digital Picture Exchange), ProRes 444 or DNxHR can be up to a factor of 10 smaller. In the broadcast sector, individual files in high-quality codecs are therefore in demand today, which usually also include numerous audio tracks and subtitles due to the international evaluation. What if it were possible to correct a section or individual tracks without affecting the rest of the content?

Until now, people have said: “That’s not possible!” Charles D’Autremont from Cinedeck proudly explains (presumably with a twinkle in his eye): “But we didn’t know that, so we did it.” The company does indeed have a unique selling point with CineXtools, even though Avid has announced a similar function for its NLE. However, this is still in beta testing and will only work with the company’s own system in the OP1a container anyway, while CineXtools support the common intermediate and broadcast codecs in both popular containers. In addition, they have already proven themselves at several large production houses, which is the most important thing for such a tool. The whole thing is open-heart surgery, so to speak, because the target file is irretrievably changed in the process. If you cannot rely on the integrity of all other parts afterwards, the enormous time advantage of a targeted quality control of the corrected parts alone is lost.

Technical requirements

The central condition for such an operation is that the file structure allows the exchange of any image sequences, even with changing content. This not only rules out temporal compression methods, but also codecs with pure I-frames but variable bit rate (VBR) are unsuitable. After all, you cannot rely on the content of an image to be exchanged being compressible to the same extent as the original image. What is needed is a framework for the individual images that corresponds to the maximum expected image content. Only codecs with a constant bit rate (CBR) fulfil this requirement. Apple’s ProRes, Avid’s DNxHD/HR and, as optional upgrades, Sony’s AVC-Intra and XDCAM-HD are currently supported. For XDCAM, only the versions with CBR are permitted. In addition to MOV (Quicktime), both versions of MXF are also suitable as containers, depending on the codec. While DNxHD/HR theoretically also allows VBR, in practice it always occurs in CBR, ProRes is usually output as VBR.

DaVinci Resolve also supports ProRes in CBR as an option for output under MacOS, as do the video products from Autodesk. Plug-ins from Cinedeck are available for Adobe and Avid, which enable output in CBR. Alternatively, CineXtools also offer re-wrapping from ProRes to CBR. In this process, only the container is filled with empty data so that the maximum permitted data rate can be accommodated – this is also known as padding. This is not a transcoding of the image material, which remains completely untouched (even if the generation losses with ProRes would be very low anyway). Due to Apple’s licensing policy, however, some ProRes functions are only available for MacOS, while the other parts of the program are available for PC and Mac and a CineXtools licence can even be transferred between the two systems. The programme’s system requirements are modest: OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) is sufficient on the Mac, while we tested on High Sierra. On the PC, everything from Windows 7 (64 bit) with Service Pack 1 or newer is possible. The programme is also frugal when it comes to hardware, even if transcoding and copying processes are of course significantly faster on powerful machines. During re-wrapping, the metadata in the header is also cleaned up in such a way that it should pass a quality check for broadcast – unfortunately, this is not a given with every NLE system.

If CineXtools is primarily used for quick last-minute changes, it makes sense to output all master files in CBR, even if they take up a little more space. In the test, the CBR version of a professionally produced short film with low-noise image quality and typically easily compressible elements (such as opening and closing credits) was around a third larger than in VBR due to the padding. On the other hand, the new tools save the space that new full-length render files would take up during corrections. If ProRes is frequently delivered in VBR, the re-wrapping by the CineXtools is primarily dependent on the disc throughput. When reading and writing the material to a single USB 3 hard drive, you have to expect considerable waiting times, whereas padding is done very quickly with two separate SSDs or fast RAIDs. Our test film took almost seven minutes on such a single hard drive, while the process on an SSD RAID connected via USB-C took 45 seconds. A free tool for re-wrapping with automation via watch folder has also recently become available. For projects where the length and format have already been determined but most of the content still needs to be created, CineXtools can prepare a suitable blank file with all the desired additional tracks using “Create Insert Media”.

The above conditions apply to the full-length master file. The patches to be inserted (i.e. the corrected sections) may also be in VBR and even in another of the above codecs and containers, as they may be quickly converted during insert (this is then logically a real transcoding). JPEG2000 in YUV with 4:2:2 subsampling is also accepted as a .mov file for patches
for patches. Even the support of several formats for single image sequences such as .dpx, .tiff and OpenEXR is in the works: we have already been able to try it out with .dpx in 10 bit and .tiff in 16 bit. Even different colour depths or colour spaces are accepted for patches, but this can certainly lead to image jumps when inserting into parts of existing scenes. The responsibility for this therefore lies entirely with the user, who should select the same output format and the same software as the original file if possible. Logically, insertions in the appropriate format without recoding are the fastest. Changes to audio or subtitle tracks are possible without affecting the picture, even with files in VBR. The resolution can be over 16,000 pixels, but must be the same for the patch and target file, as must the frame rate and line structure (interlaced or progressive). Sound to be inserted from external files must be in .wav format with 24 bit and 48 kHz, .aac or even .mp3 are not accepted.

The tools

First and foremost is “Insert Edit”, i.e. the insertion of patches into a film file. The term is not used here in quite the same sense as in conventional NLEs, as the area is not inserted in the target file, but overwritten in the same length. This is more of an “overwrite” in the modern sense, but it was no different with tape machines. Because of the similarity to working with tape, the manufacturer also likes to use analogue terms such as the classic “Black Striped” for an empty file – many users are obviously still familiar with this. Video, audio and captions can be selected in any combination as content to be changed, the timecode (TC for short) can be rewritten for patch and target (“Restripe”) and the reel tape ID of the target file can be corrected.

For audio, there are also extensive options for reassigning up to 32 channels in patch panel style, adding external sound files and, if necessary, crossfades for critical connections of the sound content. The target file can be renamed, but editing is still a change that cannot be undone. If you have enough time for copying, it is therefore better to work with duplicates.
The actual insert cut is very simple: For example, you specify an entry point in both windows and an exit point in one of them, and the area to be replaced is marked in both windows (known as a 3-point cut). The convention of band cuts applies here, i.e. the out point corresponds to the first image that is not changed. If the TC matches, the cut points can also be conveniently copied to the other window. Finally, there is an opportunity for a preview or to trigger the hot cut, which does not take place without a warning that the file will inevitably be changed. Incidentally, unlike a rendering process, the file can already be checked in a player while a somewhat longer insert is running elsewhere. This means that another person can continue quality control under time pressure while corrections are still being made.

A further tab (Multiple-Source Single Target) allows a whole list of patches to be inserted into a target file, so basically not just batch processing, but almost a rudimentary editing function. The target file can of course also be a “Black Tape” generated in the programme with “Create Insert Media”. With “Extract Audio to File”, you can extract audio tracks from existing films and write them to separate files; you can also select a different track assignment. The “Rewrap & Audio Versioning” tab is also basically self-explanatory: In addition to the conversion from VBR to CBR, comprehensive reassignment and the addition of audio tracks are offered, whereby their starting point can be redefined in relation to the TC of the target file. If required by the customer, this tool can also convert a CBR file back to VBR after correction. Pure audio inserts are also possible with VBR or GOP codecs anyway.

Finally, the programme also offers the option of editing or adding subtitles: Corrections are written directly into the file here. Subtitles as .mcc and .scc files are supported directly, as is extraction to sidecar files. Subtitles (or closed captions) can be imported in .cap format (Cheetah International) or as .scc files (Sonic), unfortunately not in the popular .srt format. But there are plenty of tools for converting subtitles: free online services such as subtitleconverter.net, subconverter.rest7.com or rev.com/caption. Those who are reluctant to entrust their texts to a third-party website will find professional tools in Subbit’s Subtitler (PC and Mac) or Annotation Edit Suite (Mac). Another option is the editing of metadata in accordance with the British broadcast standard AS-11 DPP (Digital Production Partnership), which is increasingly gaining acceptance in North America and Scandinavia.

Getting to know

While the available Quick Start PDF still looks a little immature and some links are missing, the manufacturer provides easy-to-understand and detailed video tutorials(cinextools.com/video-tutorials). They all look like Mac, but apart from ProRes conversions, everything works exactly the same on a PC. There is also a freely available basic version, which is limited to formats up to 10-bit colour depth, maximum 2K resolution and master files with two audio tracks. If you would like to get to know the full version better, you can request a one-week trial licence. Incidentally, the licence is issued using the iLok system familiar from Avid. This is somewhat cumbersome, but does not require a constant Internet connection, as is often required for production machines. The licence can be transferred to a computer via a temporary online connection or written to a dongle for full mobility.
The user interface still lacks clarity, with hardly any visual differentiation between important and less important buttons and information. Our test version also showed some minor quirks when controlling the Playhead in some formats. However, these are blemishes, activated tooltips make the individual functions quickly understandable and the core functions ran smoothly with clean source files. Unfortunately, it should be noted that some software and hardware manufacturers only loosely adhere to the standards, and FGPA-based cameras and field recorders in particular are notorious for this. It is therefore essential to use the test version to check whether your own workflow works without any problems. In our test, for example, the mixed insert between XDCAM-HD material and DNxHR in the MXF wrapper from DaVinci Resolve did not work reliably, while there were no problems in combination with DNxHD/HR in the MOV wrapper. However, Cinedeck is known for dealing with such problems quickly – this was also the case in our test.

Comment

At a time when editing programmes – albeit sometimes of dubious reliability – are being given away, the price of CineXtools seems rather steep. However, this programme is not aimed at amateurs and semi-professional users, but at users who will quickly amortise the price through massive time savings. This ranges from quality control for last-minute corrections to the creation of different versions from partially identical material, right through to internationalisation and multiple evaluation with subtitles or varying audio tracks. In addition to Technicolor PostWorks and NBC Universal’s “The Voice”, even pure audio houses such as RH Factor are already using the software. Anyone in DACH who is interested in CineXtools can order it from DVEAS (www.dveas.com).

The post The virtual glue press:CineXtools from Cinedeck first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.