Narrative production was always traditionally single camera, or at least "dominant" camera, with a main camera you worried about monitoring. If you had a second or third camera, you didn't tend to obsess about making sure that image was making it's way to video village, since the "main" camera was what was important.
Of course, sitcoms and live TV did massive multi-camera setups, but they were all built around a control room with dozens of monitors hard wired to ensure crews were seeing all the images getting captured properly. However, narrative production is now practically always multi-camera, and there is increasing need for DIT's to manage how that image is not only monitored but routed. This need is why Pomfort has released LiveGrade Studio to make that job easier.
Pomfort LiveGrade has long been the dominant tool for ensuring that all the footage shown to director/producer/client is getting properly graded (be it by way of LUT, Transform, or hand touched) to manage client expectations during the shoot. LiveGrade Studio is about integrating that functionality to control of a video patch bay. Now -- from within a single app -- you can control not only how the image is manipulated, but also where it is going.
For instance, if you have four cameras but only two monitors in video village, you can control which cameras are being sent through the router from within Pomfort.
Of course, you could do something similar before by switching between LiveGrade and whatever software is around for controlling your patch bay (and a hardware router is still required), but the chance for errors are high. Have a DP who wants to always see clean LOG images and a director who wants to see the preview LUT on their monitors? Switching the signal around, and processing it, used to involve a complicated dance between applications to ensure that every team member is seeing all the angles they want in the format they want them. By putting both grading and switching into a single application, LiveGrade Studio will make the lives of many DITs much easier on set.
Another additional (and very nice) touch is the ability to have single-click group record. Rather than saying "roll camera" and have every operator hit record at their own time, the DIT can click "record" and send the record signal out to cameras that accept it via SDI, so that every shot starts at the same moment.
This is available now, so check out the Pomfort site for more.
- Intel Mac with MacOSX10.13 or higher
- Works with MIDI controllers
- CDL compliant
- Group record
- Works with common routers such as AJA Kumo or Blackmagic VideoHub
