Developer of the digital cinema engine SCRATCH, Assimilate made an announcement this morning about their free new massively inclusive, cross-platform media player SCRATCH Play, which supports a wide array of video formats, including cinematic and DSLR RAW files and VFX formats, while at the same time offering color-correction capabilities, as well as metadata control. Continue reading to find out more about what this powerful player can do.
Operating on MacOS and Windows, SCRATCH Play claims to be the "world's first universal media player," a welcomed improvement on multi-format media players, like VLC. Here's an incomplete list of formats it supports:
- RAW files: RED, Arri, Sony, Canon, Phantom, DSLRs RAW files
- Editorial: MXF, WAV
- VFX: DPX, EXR, etc.
- Consumer: QuickTime, Windows Media, MP4, H.264, etc)
- Still image formats: TIFF, JPG, PNG, etc.
Check out this introductory video on Assimilate's new media player:
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/73680499
SCRATCH Play also utilizes the "CONstruct," their version of a timeline. CONstruct not only serves as a timeline, but as a version manager and media organizer, capable of combining multiple formats at the same time, as well as framing them within a single resolution, which makes managing data much simpler.
Below are some demos on how to utilize CONstruct:
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/73679960
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/73679138
Another feature of SCRATCH Play is a real-time ASC CDL color-correction toolset, which is also used in Assimilate's powerful color-grading SCRATCH app. It allows users not only to generate LUTs, CDLs or JPEG snapshots for sharing metadata, but also to set looks on set.
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/73678478
SCRATCH Play seems ideal if you're working with dailies or wanting to refer back to footage quickly and easily. Most players focus on specific file types or only operate on one platform, so SCRATCH Play's format neutrality is a big plus for users who work with multiple formats.
For more information on SCRATCH Play, or if you're ready for the free download ($5 gets you the ad-free premium version,) head on over to their site.
What do you think of SCRATCH Play? For those who have managed to mess around with it, what do you think about its usability? Let us know in the comments below.
Your Comment
17 Comments
Just bought it. Sounds fantastic...
September 3, 2013 at 2:20PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Can it play AVCHD direct from the camera's card?
September 3, 2013 at 2:24PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Where is the free/$5 version? I keep seeing 150/day or 5,000/year. Is there something I am missing?
September 3, 2013 at 2:55PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
http://www.assimilateinc.com/products/scratch-play
Link for paid and free version on the left.
September 3, 2013 at 4:46PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
shame it's not open source
September 3, 2013 at 3:27PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Try another link. Scratch and Scratch player are different things.
September 3, 2013 at 4:44PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Just downloaded and tried it. Actually not a very good player (yet). Performance is very poor compared to VLC, Media Classic Player, TweakRV, Stereoscopic Player - that i use for playback of 4K and 6K files.
Tried different GPU prefs with no success. Unless I'm missing something, it's not able to use hardware drivers very well at this point. I get realtime 4K playback with VLC and Media Classic Player. This player is worse than YouTube's player for 4K.
September 3, 2013 at 4:54PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
I have to agree. It's having a hard time playback regular AVCHD footage, and crashes a lot on Win 7 64-bit. Hopefully it'll improve. And the animated pointer, I could do without.
September 4, 2013 at 12:57AM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
ummm... Tried to open a normal DNG sequence after converting from RAW using Rawmagic and it failed to opened. I guess it needs to convert to CDNG... Now resolve opens normal DNGs but not cineform AVIs, only MOVs.
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, also tried to turn On cuda but it's still disabled... I guess I need to go deeper on the manual...
Or still keep using resolve on set.
September 3, 2013 at 6:46PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
We used SCRATCH for color grading on my recently completed feature, it's a cool program and I actually want to learn it. I'll definitely check this out for future use.
September 3, 2013 at 9:53PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Sounds like a bit of scratch and sniff.
September 3, 2013 at 9:56PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Downloaded it but it won't launch. Been trying for a while now. It won't start up.
Windows 7 64bit
September 3, 2013 at 10:25PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Pure crap. Struggles with avchd and dng files...any gpu support? So slow.
September 4, 2013 at 1:22AM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Running perfect on Windows 8 64-bit.
September 4, 2013 at 2:56AM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
So does it work with Magic Lantern .RAW files?
September 5, 2013 at 6:24AM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
Hi all,
Just fyi - there is a brand new open Google Group for SCRATCH Play. Located at http://groups.google.com/group/scratch-play
Please go on over there and ask your questions! We are listening...
(and yes - Play supports Magick Lantern... )
Lucas (assimilate dude)
September 5, 2013 at 3:22PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM
I am on a dual-head system, and if I don't enable dual-head output, I'll get extremely sluggish playback.
So try enabling Dual-Head Output, and see if that'll help.
September 6, 2013 at 4:29PM, Edited September 4, 8:21AM