Monday, April 26, 2010

New Titler From MacroSystem!

Macrosystem Previews new Title Studio software at NAB Show
At the NAB Show 2010 (National Association of Broadcasters) held in Las Vegas, Nevada this week, Macrosystem AG CEO Jorg Sprave is joined by MSUS President Eric Kloor and MSUS VP Sales & Marketing Phillip Bice. They are greeting resellers and customers in their hospitality suite at the Hilton Gardens Hotel (near the LV Convention Center) and showing the newest Casablanca Operating Systems: Smart Edit 9 and Bogart SE 3.

They are also sharing a new software program called Title Studio - this is a forthcoming product that will be available for the Generation 3 Casablanca editors (S2000, S4000/PRO, and S4100) running Bogart V3 and higher. I had the opportunity to play with a beta version of the software recently and really enjoyed the new creative capabilities. Here is a translation of the PDF announcement from the MS AG website (translated from German -- the syntax is rough in some passages due to grammar translation)

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TITLE STUDIO ANNOUNCEMENT


Title studio is a new formation program that replaces the standard titler program. Title studio is obviously HD capable and offers many creative possibilities to form text up to the single letter and calculate together with a title effect.


Title studio will be published briefly and is available at the the price of 149. EURO.

We offer in April 2010 all customers, who have licenses one of the following packages for its system: Title effect package 1, 2, or 3, Deluxe Titler 3D the new title studio with a discount of 20% on. (NOTE: this offer is made in the German language website to PAL Customers - NTSC customers may have a different offer when the product is closer to NTSC release)


With title studio, you have next to the previous possibilities in addition many further helpful and functions that are based to a large degree on. They individually can format any letters of a line. A large selection at predefined styles already is included. Moreover you can form self also the letters far the accustomed possibilities out. So your text can get a surface structure and tilted edges. The selection of structures to the formation of the text as well as that stands you an extensive library to that. That individually formed can be stored and are styles by an example picture in the style archive to find easily again. The title studio indicates you in its exactly that, what you see later also after the calculation, (that names one WYSIWYG, exception upon inputting of a course writing). At the same time also all current text formats are available.

General
To generate generally over 100 predefined writing styles and almost endlessly many possibilities own styles over 300 included, different materials and pattern of writing style own to the design all titles now also in perfect abundance HD quality project independent: An once generated title can be used in all any video formats.

WYSIWYG editor
Every letter can its own writing style have is every letter the sign distance, the sign width and the writing size individually adjustable the line distance is each separated line adjustable, block sentence becomes the text alignment (to the left, centers, to the right, looked) is each line individually adjustable it can as desired many lines per text chalkboard written become. Any area in your title, marked with Shift, Ctrl, mouse and double click and Dreifachklick two different users layouts solutions small and large.

Sides (3D Textures)
it can be generated as desired many sides, can become can become can archive become that sides after retroactively in your sequence sorted sides copied sides in order to use it
in any other projects again

Text chalkboards
It can be generated as desired many chalkboards per side, can receive are can there each chalkboard an any background the edges freely adjustable the text above, met with and aligned become below at the chalkboard, the position and size of the chalkboards are can freely adjustably chalkboards retroactively forwards and/or behind pushed become. A chalkboard can be archived in order to use it in any other projects again. The shadow the text can narrow places become per chalkboard as desired

Writing style
Every writing style is individually change-able through: Type / size, surface (color, pattern, etc.), imprint (punch), frame, facet, 3D and outline

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Casablanca ROI vs FCP

Hello all! I'd like to ask you for a little help... I'm working on some ROI papers (requested by dealers and customers). Since you are our users... perhaps you could email me at suggestions@macrosystem.us with some thoughts on what I've left out, forgotten, made up, or am just plain wrong about.



Purpose of the software -
Apple regularly advertises that they have oscars and other awards from movies that were editing on their software. Apple is clearly making a HOLLYWOOD solution. What other hollywood products do you use at a Wedding or K-12 School? None. Why use a Hollywood editor in a non-hollywood setting? Typical budget for a FCP editor on a SMALL movie (<1million budget) is 50k-100k and 3-6 months.

Cassie is Made Specifically for WEV market and WEV needs - and K-12 School Environments. Churn and Burn environments where high quality matters


Post Production Time/ Costs -
Typical Wedding Videographer has fixed costs-
spends 4-5 hours at a wedding
has 3-4 people at the wedding
gets paid 500-1200 per wedding

Only variable costs are post production -
Typical Apple plus software = 3,500-5,500 (not including Monitors, etc)
Typical Apple lasts 3 years
Typical Cassie is used for 6-8 years
On Final Cut Pro - WEV spends about 5x the video hours recorded to Edit
On Cassie - WEV spends 3x the video hours recorded to Edit


ROI -
For 20 hours of video per event

FCP edit time = 100 hours
at $500 per event = earning $5 per hour (just for editing/ not including event coverage)
at $1000 per event = earning $10 per hour (just for editing/ not including event coverage)

Cassie Edit Time = 60 hours
at $500 per event = earning $8.30 per hour (just for editing/ not including event coverage)
at $1,000 per event = earning $16.60 per hour(just for editing/ not including event coverage)


Income Differences
WEV can do 1.6x as much work with Cassie as FCP in the same time.
If WEV can make $75k/ yr using FCP - they can make $120k with Cassie (because they can book more events!)

Friday, April 23, 2010

Club Casablanca

Over the years Casablanca owners have proven to be extremely passionate about video, excited about new techniques and incredibly loyal to the Casablanca line of editors. At MacroSystem US, we credit our success and longevity to all of the support, feedback, and collaboration with our end users. That has allowed us to grow and change to suit their editing needs and the needs of others in the industry.

The Casablanca Community is a strong and vibrant collection of people who share ideas, stories, and solutions via the Casablanca Forum, the Cassie Tips List, and various User Groups.

We have created Club Casablanca to provide exclusive products and services to its members as a way of thanking them for their continued support.

Club fees are $49 a year billed at time of enrollment, and in January of each following year.


CLUB CASABLANCA BENEFITS:

-10% discount for all software.*

-10% discount for all internal and external hard drives.

-Enrollment in the Operating System Pre-Order program to receive 20% off all future OS releases**

-Club-Only Specials announced throughout the year.

-An exclusive Club only Casablanca software title.

-Tips & Tricks DVDs and Video Manuals DVDs are available to Club Members at a 50% discount

*10% club member discount may not be combined with any other offer including: 40% second machine software discount and "Buy-Two-Get-One-Free" holiday offer.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

New Software Updates!

Software Updates

The following software updates are now available:

Caladan v1.8a. Now the popular printing program, Caladan, is also available for Bogart SE. Print DVD covers and media from your projects. Note: The Caladan will actual have two versions on the Add On Software CD. The Caladan v1.6 will be what you use for SE (Smart Edit) machines, the Caladan v1.8a is what you use for Bogart machines. Be aware that some older HP printers that don't support CD/DVD prints won't work if you try to print with that particular label setting in the program.

Pro Club 2009 v1.0. The Pro Club 2009 software is a free program exclusively for Casablanca Club members. It includes a new Countdown engine that allows you to add sound bumps, mix different types of backgrounds, and have more options to making creative countdowns . It also includes a few free filter mixtures in the archives of the "Effect Stack" found in Image Processing. The Pro Club software requires SE 8 or above to run on SE machines. It requires version Bogart 2 or above on the Bogart systems.

An updated disc can be downloaded here: http://macrosystem.us/index.php?pr=Add-Ons

Monday, April 19, 2010

NAB Roundup

Wow, What a great show!

it was one for the busiest shows for MSUS ever! We had Jorg and Eric manning the suite full time, giving demo's and showing off some software we'll be releasing in the near future. There were several dealers bringing customers and potential customers into the suite all day, every day! MSUS Reps also made it in from all over the country to get a demo for the upcoming releases and to meet customers!

If you made it to the show, you noticed a resounding theme with EVERYONE who was displaying - 3D

If you are a post production specialist you were probably overwhelmed with all the display and capture technology (cameras and TV's). But you were also probably severally disappointed in the 3D editing options available. Yes, I saw the demo's from Apple and Avid and Adobe too - they were COMPLICATED!
I'm proud to say that the MacroSystem 3D editing solution will be the easiest AND the fastest on the market! We will retain our current workflow, and will only require a couple of extra steps at the beginning of the edit process to initiate the 3D editing capability. It's an extra 30-60 seconds worth of work!



We'll be posting more details about future offerings soon - stay tuned!