The latest incarnation of Avid's DS editing and finishing system will include Symphony-style secondary colour correction and do away with the need for a Nitris accelerator box.

Version 10 will use the processing power of the host computer and the GPU in the video card rather than proprietary hardware.

It will also provide real-time Symphony-style secondary colour correction, real-time up-conversion from SD to HD and support for stereoscopic 3D images.

Gus Comegys, the director of Creative Editorial at FotoKem in Burbank, was one of the beta testers on the new version. He said: “We are very impressed with the performance improvements, colour management capabilities and the addition of the advanced colour correction tools with secondaries.

“Having all those effects in real-time in 4:4:4 is a tremendous timesaver. Our clients expect speed, accuracy and style, regardless of the type of project or how tight the deadline. Avid DS 10 allows us to continue meeting these needs for our clients.”

A turnkey Avid DS v10 system including workstation, monitor, storage and software will cost around£30,000* and will be available from September.

Key facts and features

  • The new system is powered by the HP xw8600 with dual-quad 3.0GHz CPUs with 8GB RAM, the NVidia QuadroFX 3700 (G92 GPU) and a dual-link I/O card with a rack mountable breakout box.

  • The Avid DS system offers multi-stream, 10-bit uncompressed HD, Avid DNxHD codec, and SD finishing and mastering as well as HD-RGB and 2K/4K file-based editing with real-time playback up to 2K.

  • Colour management has been enhanced to allow users to preserve colour definitions and define and manage Look-up Tables (LUTs). The system now offers support for 3D LUTs with the Thomson Luther, Kodak KDM, Iridas .itx formats and extended 1D LUT support to tape-based capture.

  • It can handle a wide array of new HD YUV 4:2:2 formats including 1080p 50, 1080p 59.94 and 1080p 60;

  • Interplay support enables customers to connect to an Avid Interplay and access media via the same indexer as Avid Media Composer - streamlining the workflow between the two applications.

  • Stereoscopic container allows customers to create 48i sequences and set up left and right eyes with output through the dual link card.

* Pricing based on the US model of: a CPU workstation, 30” monitor, 8TB of SAS storage, a WACOM tablet, one license of Avid DS 10 software, DS 10 RP (Remote Processing), Media Composer software and Avid Metafuze.

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