Latest SCRATCH Version Includes Support for RMD, REDGamma2, and REDColor

Jan 11th 2011, Santa Clara, CA, USA ‘ ASSIMILATE, a leading provider of powerful post-production tools for digital workflows, today underscored its long-term leadership in supporting 4K set-to-post workflows for RED Digital Cinema camera systems, with the announcement that it realized a 40% year-over-year increase of SCRATCH sales into RED features, commercials, broadcast and music video projects.
The company also experienced record revenue for SCRATCH sales in 2010. New features harnessing the power of SCRATCH include director John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, starring Nicole Kidman, and director Doug Liman’s Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn (above). Post production for both films was done by Offhollywood (NYC).

ASSIMILATE maintained its tradition of spearheading support for native RED digital workflows, with the recent v5.2 update to SCRATCH, which supports new technologies including REDColor2, REDGamma2, RED Meta Data (RMD), and is available free to SCRATCH users under maintenance.

“The great thing about SCRATCH is that it always evolves so rapidly when RED changes”, said Arnaud Paris, co-founder and stereographer, Sysmic Films in France. “ASSIMILATE is always the first to react, while others can take weeks or months. Others may claim they have the same workflow, but it’s just not the case.”

With the imminent release of RED’s new Epic camera, ASSIMILATE has already begun working with 5K test footage shot by the first RED Epic users, including New York-based OffHollywood. ASSIMILATE will ship SCRATCH with full Epic support when RED makes the final SDK available.

“The ASSIMILATE team is to be applauded for continually blazing the trail with RED, and for making SCRATCH workflows ready so quickly for early adopters,” said Mark Pederson, CTO and co-founder, Offhollywood. “SCRATCH gives us an extremely rich toolset that has smoothly handles any RED footage and metadata. We look forward to the same rock solid support for Epic.”

SCRATCH is the industry’s most comprehensive, high-performance digital cinema and broadcast imaging tool for dailies, conforming, color grading and finishing. Resolution independent, SCRATCH supports native RED 4K, RED MX, RED MX-3D, and ALEXA ARRIRAW, as well as 3D, HD/SD, DPX, AVID MXF, film, or any mix of formats. The SCRATCH 5.2 robust core feature set includes data management, review/playback, conform/editorial, dailies, color grading, compositing, finishing, and final mastering to virtually any format, including DCP.

Jeff Edson, CEO, ASSIMILATE, stated, “SCRATCH is a mature, battle-tested tool suite, with an esteemed pedigree in features, videos, and commercials. Our 2010 sales achievements are a testament to the fact that hundreds of filmmakers and post houses rely on SCRATCH to maximize their creativity and productivity while working in digital workflows. We were one of the very first companies to support native RED formats and we are committed to delivering the most intuitive, stable and reliable suite of tools for the post-production of RED projects.”