Edius to get 3D editing support

Grass Valley has unveiled new 3D tools for its Edius multiformat nonlinear editing software and is adding 3D support for editing peripherals to provide a complete stereoscopic 3D post production workflow.

The Storm 3G and Storm 3G Elite editing platforms will both be supported via the Edius timeline with stereoscopic 3D I/O through a single 3G SDI source and/or dual 3G SDI signals.

“We see 3D production and post projects increasing around the world and customers have been asking for easy-to-use tools within Edius to help complete those projects quickly and cost-effectively,” explained Charlie Dunn, Grass Valley's Executive VP of Products.

“Edius has always been a flexible, highly affordable platform and the product continues to grow and get better with time. Now anyone working on an Edius system can instantly add 3D post capability to their arsenal of production tools and generate new revenue by expanding their client base.”

The 3D support will include: native support for 3D video clips captured with the most popular 3D cameras; easy clip pairing for synching left eye/right eye clips; 2D-to-3D conversion capability; an array of simple tools on the timeline for 3D adjustments (to compensate for mistakes in shooting) with no transcoding; automatic convergence adjustment; and 3D preview monitoring.

Functions available in 2D are also supported in 3D, such as realtime colour correction, keyer, transitions and multicam editing.

A 30-day preview version of the new 3D software tools will be made available early in December 2011, on the Grass Valley website, and will include tools for importing, organising, and adjusting 3D clips efficiently.

For broadcast use, Grass Valley has also included integration with its K2 media servers, whereby its K2 ChannelFlex technology (a software application within the AppCenter Elite software suite) enables all K2 Summit and K2 Solo servers to be expanded from handling four SD/HD video streams to up to eight streams in specific applications such as super slo-mo, multi-camera recording, and 3D production.

Every K2 Summit production client and K2 Solo HD/SD server can be used as a 3D production server for 3D recording or replay, a 2x or 3x slo-mo recording device, or as a server for recording from 2-6 simultaneous camera angles with at least one channel for playback, via a software upgrade.

Edius is currently on a half-price offer until the end of the year for owners of other NLEs.

By David Fox