Success Continues For Baselight Editions

Filmlight's Baselight Editions – a series of plugins which put complex, high quality grading capabilities into popular post tools – is now available, free to use, to read and render grades. As the grade is created in the colour suite, it can now be seen immediately in Avid editorial and NUKE VFX without the need to purchase a licence for those systems.

Baselight Editions offer two sets of functionality: the ability to take in a Baselight Linked Grade (BLG) colour file and impose it on the content in the host software, so the pictures appear with the latest grade; and to open the Baselight user interface inside the software to make adjustments to the colour space and the grade. The newest announcement means in Baselight for Avid and Baselight for NUKE, the interpretation element is free, and if a user needs to access the grading tools, an online upgrade process is available, or the facility can hold floating licences on a central server which can be allocated to specific rooms as needed.

"Chainsaw has relied heavily on Baselight Editions and the BLG workflow for years," said Randy Magalski, Editor, Chainsaw. "Now, with the release of the free licence, this workflow is accessible in all of our Avid Media Composer bays wherever they might be – at no additional cost to us or our clients. Being able to leverage the work done in a relatively expensive colour bay back in Media Composer makes the Baselight for Avid BLG workflow one of the best solutions we've seen in our facility in years, and we applaud FilmLight for introducing this offering. We can now deliver the fastest, most flexible and most complete round-tripping solution available between online and colour."

Andres Kirejew, VFX supervisor of Alter Ego, added: "With Baselight for NUKE free-to-read licences now installed on our farm, every compositor at Alter Ego can work with ungraded EXR linear files and finesse their work as the look of the commercial develops. We can render or just load the project without having to return to the colour suite, which is a huge plus in the fast turn-around world of advertising."

The floating licence functionality means a facility can have unlimited seats of Baselight for Avid and Baselight for NUKE, allowing any user to apply, render and display Baselight grades, using the free licence.

"In the case of visual effects elements with a sophisticated grade, our floating Baselight for NUKE licence uniquely allows the whole grading stack, including colour space transforms, to be fully deconstructed and analysed at the compositor's workstation," added Kirejew. "This allows everyone the confidence to push what is creatively possible to the limit."

The decision to offer a free read-only mode is in response to the growing interest in BLG as the colour grade metadata format. More productions are using a collaborative workflow with initial grading performed on or near set, and final grading taking place in parallel with other post processes, allowing editors and effects artists to see the latest grade and make minor adjustments where necessary.

"Our customers have asked us to solve the challenge of sending parts of a job to rooms or other facilities which do not routinely need Baselight functionality," explained Steve Chapman, CEO and co-founder of FilmLight. "Making the read mode available for free is our contribution to a wider collaboration throughout the post industry, and we're delighted that our clients and their customers are adopting our BLG-driven workflow globally and so rapidly."

www.filmlight.ltd.uk

(JP)