Mistika IBC2012 Preview

At IBC 2012, SGO will be presenting its phenomenal world-leading line of powerful Mistika DI and Stereo 3D production solutions that are radically transforming the industry.
Mistika enables its customers to work more creatively and efficiently, while enabling them to seize new opportunities presented by the emergence of new technologies such as UHDTV. Mistika features a complete suite of production tools including timeline-based editing, conforming, infinite layer compositing, colour grading, optical flow-based motion estimation and image restoration. Mistika is able to provide its creative feature-set across all resolutions, in 2D and Stereo 3D, at standard and 'High Frame Rates', for production and post production pipelines. Mistika is based on non-proprietary hardware and has an open file structure with widespread codec-support to enable easy integration with other systems and any image format.
Mistika Version 7.0 Highlights Showcased at IBC
Mistika's Revolutionary Colour Grading Without Constraints. - New for IBC 2012, SGO presents Mistika's brand new colour grading system. It has been designed to provide unprecedented levels of control over every aspect of the image and, as with all functions in Mistika, is ready for 2D and Stereo 3D productions using standard or High Frame Rates and at all resolutions. New features include infinite possibilities to route and combine colour selections across any number of layers, with all layers having a complete set of colour transform functions, and all in a single tool designed to maintain real time performance. Further workflow enhancements include the implementation of selection “Gangs” to group together similar shots to enable rapid deployment of colour decisions. All features are accessible directly from Tangent Elements control surfaces, which have been especially programmed to create a highly ergonomic and efficient working environment.
Mistika's support for High Frame Rate and High Resolution workflows. - SGO has further developed Mistika's ability to support High Frame Rates (HFR), such as 48 and 60 Frame Per Second (fps) projects. These developments are enabling high-profile projects today and include complete workflow solutions such as the ability to export “half frame rate” material to standard editing systems, along with the complimentary functions to conform the resulting edit lists from the original High Frame Rate footage. Resolutions beyond 8K are already supported, making Mistika easily capable of high resolution work for feature-film or Ultra High Definition TV (such as “Super Hi-Vision”). The latest HFR formats are available through the fastest HFR interfaces, via four SDI-3G or four HDMI 1.3. (also 1x HDMI 1.4) HFR and 4K HDMI rasters are also now available.
Mistika's Smart Collaborative Workflow Caching– extending real time performance. - Brand new for IBC, Mistika expands upon its already proven SAN storage technology which already allows many of its customers to share project assets across multiple Mistika systems and non-SGO products. SGO will announce the development of clustered processing, which allows any number of Mistika systems or “render nodes” to pre-cache items from another Mistika system's timeline. This means that where real-time (render-free) performance would otherwise be impossible, for example because of high image resolutions and complex image transformations, real time playback can be ensured, because as soon as the artist makes a change, all available processors compute the result in time for immediate playback. The artist does not need to create an intermediate render, just to see their work in real time. This ground breaking approach enables Mistika customers to work with their clients in real time, even with high resolution, high frame rate, stereo 3D projects. Since Mistika uses “off the shelf” hardware, such configurations can be efficiently installed and updated.
Mistika's world-leading stereo 3D tools advances even further. - Mistika is the undisputed leader in Stereo 3D post production tools, with important involvement in recent feature films such as The Amazing Spider-Man, Prometheus, The Adventures of Tintin, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Asterix & Obelix: On Her Majesty's Service, The Hobbit, Madam Butterfly 3D and James Cameron's DEEPSEA CHALLENGE 3D. However, continual development continues and IBC foresees the addition of a feature to create a high quality “second eye” from a single eye and disparity map, which is intended to help rescue 3D shots that would otherwise be unusable. Ease of system integration into client sites and workflows remains a primary objective and therefore, Mistika now supports the export of disparity maps to Nuke.
Mistika general upgrades. - SGO's rapid development of Mistika, based on user feedback, means there are many new features on show at IBC 2012. These include improved DCP creation tools, the ability to create “clip sets” to group together clips of similar interest, support of even more codecs including Pro-Res writing and revisions to the compositing tools.
Insight into Mistika Insight
SGO also features its free educational training programme, Mistika Insight again at IBC, after a successful launch at NAB 2012. Designed specifically for students and freelancers, it enables them to learn Mistika by gaining hands-on experience, within the parameters of their own environment and provides an opportunity to join the fast growing community of Mistika users. Based on a Windows operating system for ease of installation, the training programme is complimented by a comprehensive set of online tutorials leading to an SGO certification process.
Witness Mistika in action at IBC 2012 this year at SGO's Stand A11, Hall 6.
www.sgo.es