In its continued commitment to boost the creativity and productivity of creative professionals in digital cinema within a streamlined post-production workflow, ASSIMILATE today announced SCRATCH 8.5, a significant update to its entire SCRATCH ecosystem. SCRATCH has always been known for its leading-edge, real-time creative tools for virtually every format and resolution (2D/3D), superior data management features and functions, as well as the industry’s strongest price/performance value. The design of SCRATCH is based on the concept of easily managing thousands of shots, versions, grades and timelines in a single project.

The new, real-time SCRATCH 8.5 ecosystem includes the SCRATCH 2D/3D post-production tools – dailies, conform, color grading, versioning, compositing, and finishing; SCRATCH Play for playback and review; and SCRATCH Web for cloud-based review and collaboration.

SCRATCH 8.5. Highlights
SCRATCH v8.5 continues to build on this capability, now introducing:

• Data Integrity: Provides easy validation of availability of physical media and file references throughout a project, timeline and render, including calculating and reporting MD5 hash values
• Bookmarks: Provides fast access to all external resources (media / LUT / CTL / etc.)
• To fully complete your ACES workflow in SCRATCH, the installation now comes with the full set of transforms as published by the Academy.
• Command-line support: Allows the ability to launch SCRATCH from a series of xml-script commands, which allows closer integration with post-infrastructure and third-party software and scripts.
• Publish media directly to Facebook

Enhanced stereo 3D workflow to substantially increase the speed of working on stereoscopic media:

• New Manage Stereo tool in the Player gives full control over stereo images/cameras
• More flexibility and efficiency in setting up a stereo project
• Improved ease of synchronization of grades between the eyes and the management of convergence
• A new Stereo Generator output-node for rendering out any stereo pattern, or having multiple patterns in a single output tree, which allows for quickly combining all deliverables in a single-output setup or template.

To learn more about SCRATCH 3D workflow options, read this overview article.

Support for new media formats and improved efficiency in processing of existing formats:

• SCRATCH is first to support the new ARRI Alexa Mini camera and the new MXF Raw format (also in SCRATCH Play)
• Further enhancements in new QuickTime reader that shield against Apple ending its Windows support (also in SCRATCH Play)
• Includes latest Sony Raw decoder (also in SCRATCH Play)
• Added support for reading 12-bit DPX (also in SCRATCH Play)
• Added support for rendering PNG file format, in 8 or 16-bit.
• Reads all metadata in an EXR and includes / writes all (extended) metadata in an EXR render (Reading also in SCRATCH Play)
• Updated metadata support in QuickTime (also in SCRATCH Play)
• New and improved XAVC reader (also in SCRATCH Play)

Additional features:

• HDR support - apply a PQ transfer function to primary or secondary / reference output with a single click. Integrates into the SCRATCH color management with no need for using external LUTs
• Improved color - grading efficiency
• And many more….

“SCRATCH continues to provide bleeding-edge real-time tools and workflows that DITs, post-production artists and all filmmakers need to be creative, productive, and competitive,” said Jeff Edson, CEO at Assimilate. “With SCRATCH 8.5, users get an abundance of advanced features that enable them to excel in their storytelling capabilities, and at a price everyone can afford. And with a host of SCRATCH industry partners, they can build an extensive and integrated SCRATCH ecosystem that gives an even greater boost to their productivity.”

Price and Availability
SCRATCH 8.5 is available immediately at a range of price points, from $75 (US) per month to $650 (US) per year. Site licenses are also available. Learn more about SCRATCH at http://www.assimilateinc.com/products/. Purchase at the Assimilate Store http://store.assimilateinc.com/categories.php?category=ASSIMILATE-Software.

About ASSIMILATE
ASSIMILATE is the premier provider of affordable, real-time, post-production and workflow tools that have proven essential to the successful creation of 2D/3D/VR studio and independent feature films, documentaries, TV episodes, and music videos. The SCRATCH product line, running on Windows and OS X, equips directors, DPs, on-set DITs and post-production artists with the state-of-the-art, cost-effective, data-centric solutions they need to meet the challenges of increased creativity and productivity amid ever-shrinking budgets. SCRATCH is resolution independent, supporting multiple formats, including ARRI RAW, KineRAW, Sony F5/55/65 and Cyber Shot s700, Phantom, Panasonic Varicam 4K, Canon C300/C500, Canon 3DGoPro, as well as enhanced support for all RED cameras. SCRATCH is the only post-production tool to support native Kinefinity RAW (KRW and DNG) files. SCRATCH enables mixing and matching of any camera format, resolution or color space (including ACES) on the same timeline. Additionally, ASSIMILATE offers the only professional end-to-end VR workflow and tools in the SCRATCH VR Suite. Learn more at www.assimilateinc.com.