Our Restless Planet, a new film about the effects of hurricanes, earthquakes and fresh water supplies on earth, has been edited in 3D for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Earth Science Visitor Centre using Grass Valley’s latest Edius 7 non-linear editor.
“With Edius at our fingertips, editing this film was an absolute breeze,” said Bruce Austin, freelance 3D director of photography, BAPI. “We were able to bring multiple formats, resolutions and clips together and were able to edit in realtime without rendering, which made the entire process quick and painless. We’re very excited with the outcome of this project, and I don’t think it could have been done on any other editing system.”
Our Restless Planet was assembled with footage from JPL consisting of Red Digital 3D files, 2D-to-3D converted archival footage and a number of other 3D file formats. Austin also shot original footage on a variety of 3D cameras, including Sony’s TD300 and Panasonic’s 3DP1 and Z10000. CG animations of the earth with multiple layers of compositing and chroma keying were also accomplished with Edius.
“The realtime 3D playback feature of Edius made all the difference,” said Austin. “The client could make instant quality judgments based upon the effect 3D has on the pacing and mood of the project. The ability to colour correct and do stereo alignment while the client watched was invaluable.”
“Edius allowed me to make editing decisions in realtime while viewing in 3D,” added Dan Harris, director and editor, Eight Ball Productions and Stereoscope. Previously, having to wait for other NLEs to transcode slowed the creative process down. “With Edius, the final delivery was performed in weeks instead of months. Whether editing in 2D or 3D, Edius stands out as one of the top editing tools available today.”
Edius 7 is designed as a native 64-bit application for Windows 7 and Windows 8, and can take full advantage of installed physical memory access for intensive media operations, particularly layering, 3D, multicam and multitrack 4K editing.
At NAB, Grass Valley announced updates to Edius that deliver cloud-based functionality, so that users can now transcode to a streaming format directly from their HQ/HQX assets through Microsoft Azure Media Services, which is now licensing support for Grass Valley’s HQ Codec/HQX Codec. This opens new doors for Edius users by giving them the improved functionality and flexibility to upload and stream content to a wider variety of environments through the cloud.
