New Casablanca Smart Edit 7operating system - First Announcement from MacroSystem

It has become a tradition for all members of the Casablanca community to expect the arrival of a new OS for the Casablanca product family in the fall. This year won’t be an exception. We are proud to announce the feature list of a new OS that will make our powerful editing systems even better.

This year’s update will focus on enhancements that work for all Casablanca II products, so for Avio, Kron, Prestige, Solitaire, Gymnos, Renommee, Claro and Liberty. Most of its features are usable for SD and HD projects alike, so all of our users will be able to enjoy the advantages of this new SE incarnation. Newer units (the announced T- and S-series) will run SE 7 as well, indeed.

A full list of all the changes will be published later on, but for now, we wish to announce the ten most exciting and important changes. Many of the new functions are based on user request, so we would like to say thank you for all the feedback.

1. New “Four picture” Trim and Insert and “Two picture” Split
2. Supercharged Photo recording
3. All-New Stop/Fast Motion Recording Tool
4. Automatic transition FX insert tool
5. Original DV timecode for video playback
6. Group-Function for scenes in the scene bin
7. Enhanced FX Preview modes
8. Enhancements in the titler
9. HDV improvements (effects in Edit menu, auto split)
10. Much enhanced VGA display modes (higher resolutions, multi-row scene bin)
 

Here are some more detailed explanations about our “top ten” SE 7 features.

New “Four picture” Trim and Insert and “Two picture” Split

Split, Trim and Insert is probably the most important and essential part of a video editing job.

Until now, the user could see just one full resolution image during Trim, Insert and Split. This has the advantage of a full quality preview, which is often the best way to trim, Split and Insert.

However, many users asked for a multi-image way to perform these essential editing steps. SE 7 now allows you to switch the display mode from a single image to up to four images.

In Trim, you see two large pictures of the In and Out frame, plus two smaller pictures of the In-frame minus one and the Out-Frame plus one frame. So you see the last image that is trimmed out, the first image of the shortened scene, the last image of the shortened scene and the first image that is trimmed out, all at the same time. As soon as you change IN or OUT, all the related images will update (change) to the new position.

In Insert, the same principle applies. It will be especially helpful for covering unwanted parts of a continuous speech, for example if the camera was shaking for a few seconds. Now, it is very easy to use another scene as a “patch” to cover the shaking part with neutral footage and have the original audio playing without interruptions.

  
For Split, you now see the two images around the potential split point.

Enhancements for photo recording

Recording single images is an important feature for many customers already, as it is the fastest way to put photo positives on a DVD. Using a video camera for that task is much faster than using a scanner, even though a scanner can deliver higher resolution.

The single image recording feature of Smart Edit was much used for that purpose, but we have received many requests for enhancements. We incorporated many of these wishes, and then we went ahead and created new, unrivalled features that will put SE 7 ahead of many competitors.

First, we have added tremendous speed for single frame recordings. Then, we improved the image quality for such recordings very significantly. These changes have been asked by many users.

  

It is often desirable to use transitions between photos in the storyboard. If you have many photos, then selecting and inputting a transition between all of them was a time consuming and exhausting task. Now there is a tool that allows you to select a set of transitions (as many as you like), the length of the transition, and the selection mode (random or fixed).

Then, SE 7 will put a transition between all the scenes in the storyboard (from the current position onwards). You can of course change these transitions afterwards. This tool is a huge time saver for photo projects.

To complete the list of enhancements, there is now a new, ground breaking tool for stop and fast motion recordings.

Stop Motion is the method employed by clay animation movies like “Wallace and Gromit”.  You take a picture, move your objects, take another one and so forth. It is an easy way to create stunning motion effects, like two wedding rings moving towards each other, moving dolls and more.

The most complicated issue is to move things just right, to avoid jerky motion. For that, you can loop the pictures that you have already recorded, and at the end of the loop, you see the current camera signal. The camera signal looks like you have already recorded it, but of course you can change it until it fits in perfectly with the previously recorded images.

Fast Motion allows you to automize single image recordings, with long (adjustable) breaks between the recordings. This allows you to film a growing plant and play it back in super-high-speed, but it also allows you to record the setup procedure for a party, the arrival of guests, the decoration procedure of a Christmas tree, and much more.
 

Original timecode for video playback

When playing back video over the analogue outputs, you do see the timecode in the image, always counting from zero. Many customers want to see the original DV timecode instead, for many purposes. Now, this is possible by switching the timecode display from “Casablanca” to “Original DV”.

Group-Function for scenes in the scene bin

  

Smart Edit traditionally sorts scenes in the order of their recordings to the harddrive. But especially in longer projects, it is desirable to group scenes for the benefit of a more tidy scene bin. This allows you to find scenes faster.
SE7 allows you to define scene groups and put scenes into such groups. A wedding project could have groups like reception, ceremony, party and so on. There is no limit on the number of possible groups.

It is possible to select a number of groups and blend out all the others. This enhances the access speed even further, as you can focus only on the relevant scenes for that part of the project.
 

Enhanced FX Preview modes

This very important part of the FX system has been enhanced much. Until now, there was a single image preview that could preview the original, the effect and a 50/50 image, with the original scene at the left side and the effect scene at the right side.

Now, it is possible to display both the original and the effect scene side by side. If used in a high resolution VGA mode, the two scenes will be full resolution, otherwise there is a choice between a downscaled version or a full resolution, but cropped display of the two scenes.

For the Special effects in the Edit menu, there is a looping preview that restarts as soon as changes to the effect settings have been applied.

Enhancements in the titler

The titler now offers a shadow with smooth edges, and further allows a smoothing of the titles themselves.

Special-FX (edit menu) now work in HDV projects as well

When working in HDV mode, several effects have not been functional. Most of these effects have been developed by third party (non-MacroSystem) engineers. As it is necessary for HDV compatibility to change the software itself, some products are not yet compatible for high definition video.

Over time, more and more effects are made HDV compatible, like Photo-Studio 2 or CBPaint 2. But for now, there are still software products that are SD only. Especially the MotionPerfect Slow Motion product is severely missed by many users.

Smart Edit 7 now allows the usage of most effects under Special (Edit menu). Therefore, it is now possible to apply MotionPerfect directly to an HDV scene.
As the HDV scene has do be downscaled to SD in the process, the image quality won’t be as good as a “native” HDV effect would achieve, but it certainly is a big enhancement. The downscaling is very high quality.

Nevertheless, we are working with our third party developers in order to update their products to be “native” HDV compatible.

Auto-Split available for HDV recordings down converted to DV by the HDV camera

So far, the auto split function worked fine for both DV and HDV projects, but it did not work for DV projects for footage that was down converted by the camera. The reason: The camera did not output the HDV timecode in DV down conversion mode.

Now, it is possible to switch the camera to “Time” rather than to “Startcode”. In this mode, the auto split function works properly for HDV to DV down converted footage.

Much enhanced VGA display modes (higher resolutions, multi-row scene bin)

VGA editing (either in single or dual monitor mode) has become very popular amongst Casablanca users. So far, the resolution was somewhat limited, and especially the higher resolution modes had a lot of “empty” space.

This has been modernized. Now, the screen resolutions can be as high as 1920x1200 pixels (depending on the VGA output specs of the related Casablanca model).

Further, in those high resolution modes, the scenes in the scene bin will now be arranged in multiple rows instead of a single row of scenes.

This allows the display of far more scenes at the same time.

These enhancements will make your Casablanca editor ultimately more powerful. It will enhance the capabilities, the ease of use and the speed of the system.

We have started the beta testing and expect a November 2007 release of the PAL-version. The release in NTSC is expected soon afterwards.

Please note that this information is subject to changes, as the beta testing has only just started.