Boosting Creativity Is As Easy As “DPPO”

Sponsored Blog Post

By Scott Hamilton, Vertical Market Strategist, Dell / Apr 25, 2013

I just returned from the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas and the theme of the event was “The Changing Face of Media & Entertainment.” This topic seems particularly relevant due to the insatiable demand for content via traditional media outlets such as televisions, movie theaters and the myriad of new devices including tablets, smart phones, and gaming devices that are all connected to the internet. This demand is driving tremendous complexity in content creation and distribution, which in turn is placing ever-increasing demands for higher quality and faster delivery.

Dell is helping the industry make this transition by developing some of the most advanced workstation solutions on the market.

We design Precision Workstations to deliver high productivity and reliability using the best components on the market like Intel® Xeon® processors and best in class design features such as the newly released Dell Precision Performance Optimizer (DPPO). With DPPO we have seen performance increases by as much as 61% with some functions in Adobe Premiere. Our advancements in design and build quality have been noticed in the industry with such awards as Videomaker's Best Products of the Year Award for 2012.

DPPO is one of our newest tools for Precision Workstations featuring Intel® Xeon® processors. DPPO can help your system achieve optimum performance for professional media and content creation software such as Autodesk Maya, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and Media Encoder. Having DPPO on your system is like having an IT pro always on hand to ensure your workstation with Intel® Xeon® processors is performing at its peak. 

DPPO has three key capabilities: Automatic Performance Optimization, System Maintenance, and Tracking & Reporting.

We know applications such as Autodesk Maya, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and Media Encoder don’t always follow a “one size fits all” approach and “tweaking” a number of hardware and software parameters can directly benefit the user experience. The beauty of the Automatic Performance Optimization module is this is done automatically. In some cases, we have seen performance increases as much as 61% with some functions in Adobe Premiere. With Automatic Performance Optimization, many features within the BIOS, Operating System, and drivers are compared and adjusted to determine an application profile. The profile contains settings specific to performance and optimization of a particular application. Once the profile is activated and the corresponding application is started, DPPO will change the system to the optimal configuration automatically. You select the profile for the application you are using, and DPPO takes it from there.

With DPPO, you also know that your system will always be up to date. More than just getting updates to the operating system, the System Maintenance module provides the latest drivers and firmware for all the hardware components you have — you can even determine when you want updates and for which parts of your system. 

With the Tracking and Reporting module, information such as the amount of free memory, Intel® processor utilization, and even thermal sensor data is all available over a custom timeframe. You (or your IT department!) can get a fully detailed system report while your workstation is compiling code or rendering frames. DPPO lets you get a glimpse under the hood during the most important times you are utilizing your workstation.

We are very excited to offer the Dell Precision Performance Optimizer to our Precision Workstation customers working in the media and entertainment industry! For more information about the DPPO and how it can boost your creativity, please visit – Dell Precision Performance Optimizer.

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Siggraph Slates Five-Studio-Strong Session on Man of Steel‘s VFX

By Bryant Frazer   /   Jun 17, 2013

The movies are a lot of fun, but Siggraph Production Sessions are serious stuff — deep dives into the details of some of the most elaborately crafted and elegantly executed animation and visual-effects work on the biggest VFX films. The just-announced schedule for Siggraph 2013, which kicks off July 21 in Anaheim, CA, is led by a Tuesday-afternoon session on the effects work for superhit Man of Steel, featuring a dream-team panel of VFX supervisors from five different VFX studios.

That's right. Weta Digital's Dan Lemmon, MPC's Guillaume Rocheron, Double Negative's Ged Wright, Scanline VFX's Stephan Trojansky, and LOOK Effects's Max Ivins will crowd the room for a 90-minute session highlighting the work that went into some of the most impressive shots in the film. A closing Q&A session will feature all five panelists. How can you resist?

Nearly as impressive is a Wednesday-morning session on Iron Man 3 in which Marvel Studios EVP of Visual Effects and Post Production Victoria Alonso will lead a discussion of three different sequences from the film. Also on the podium will be the film's overall VFX supervisor Chris Townsend, Weta Digital VFX supervisor Guy Williams, Digital Domain CG supervisor Geoff Baumann, and Scanline VFX supervisor Bryan Grill.

And while stereo 3D's bubble may have burst when it comes to broadcast and home viewing, the technology is alive and well in the realm of feature animation. On Monday afternoon, a panel titled "Storytelling Through Stereography" will look at the different ways different studios approach filmmaking in three dimensions. Slated to speak are Blue Sky Studios Stereo Supervisor Dan Abramovich, Walt Disney Animation Studios Stereo Supervisor Robert Neuman, Pixar Animation Studios Director of 3D Production Joshua Hollander, freelance stereo supervisor Rob Engle, and DreamWorks Animation Head of Layout Gil Zimmerman.

Other sessions will put different films under the microscope, including Epic, "The Blue Umbrella," Star Trek Into Darkness, Life of Pi, The Croods, Frozen, Oz the Great and Powerful, Monsters University, and Pacific Rim. And some sessions cover technology, including open-source software for studio pipelines and VFX for stop-motion animation.

The Production Sessions are part of the Computer Animation Festival, so if you want to go make sure you have a Full Conference or Select Conference registration to cover your attendance. Here's the full list of Production Sessions announced today.

Warner Brothers Presents the VFX for Man of Steel
Tuesday, 7/23, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

The Visual Effects teams from MPC, Weta Digital, Double Negative, Scanline and LookFX will each provide a unique insight into their work on Man of Steel. This session is designed to highlight signature moments from the film and show how creative contributions came from around the globe to help deliver one of the year's most exciting films.  The final Q&A with all five vfx studios is not to be missed.

Panelists:

·         Dan Lemmon - Visual Effects Supervisor, Weta Digital

·         Guillaume Rocheron - Visual Effects Supervisor, MPC

·         Ged Wright – Visual Effects Supervisor, Double Negative

·         Stephan Trojansky, President/Sr. VFX Supervisor, Scanline VFX

·         Max Ivins - Visual Effects Supervisor, LOOK Effects

Blue Sky Studios Presents: The Fantastical World of Epic
Wednesday, 7/24, 3:45 PM – 5:15 PM

At Blue Sky Studios we have always taken inspiration from nature, and that is certainly true of our latest movie, Epic. For example, the armor of the Leafmen was inspired by the multi-segmented exoskeleton of crickets. Their costumes use iris petals instead of muslin fabric, and thistle down instead of tulle. Looking at real-world physics, Leafmen could jump more than twice their height, and their sense of time would be sped up by the change of scale, which was taken into consideration during animation. Along with that, the selective use of a wider-than-usual lens package helped us tell a story about a seemingly distant and fantastical world that feels right at your fingertips. We plan to show this process, along with portions of Epic, which demonstrate these points. We will show some of the reference material that designers and animators used as inspiration and how our cinematography was carefully mapped out in order to better serve our story-telling endeavor.

Panelists:

·         Mike Knapp, Art Director

·         Galen Chu, Supervising Animator

·         Renato Falcão, Cinematographer

The Making of Pixar's "The Blue Umbrella"
Sunday, 7/21, 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM

A screening of Pixar’s "The Blue Umbrella" will be followed by a "Making-of" presentation with the director Saschka Unseld. He will retrace his journey from discovery of the idea all the way through the Pixar story process and onto the big screen. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the artistry and technology that went into every frame and then re-watch "The Blue Umbrella" with new eyes.

Panelist:

·         Saschka Unseld, Director of The Blue Umbrella

Industrial Light & Magic Presents: The Visual Effects of Star Trek Into Darkness
Tuesday, 7/23, 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM

Visual Effects Supervisor Roger Guyett and the team from ILM discuss the visual effects challenges overcome for the intergalactic manhunt portrayed in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness. From the on-set approach to the effects work to constructing a Starfleet and building and destroying future San Francisco and London, the panelists will cover the creative solutions developed for the film.
 
Panelists:

·         Roger Guyett, Visual Effects Supervisor / Second Unit Director

·         Paul Kavanagh, Animation Supervisor

Rhythm & Hues Studios presents: How to bake a Pi
Thursday, 7/25, 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM

Get a first-hand look at the story behind the stunning, Oscar-winning visuals of Life of Pi as Rhythm & Hues takes you on a journey from script to screen through a world of vast oceans, carnivorous islands, flying fish, bioluminescent jellyfish, whales and tigers. Leaders from the visual effects team will discuss in detail how they attempted to tackle the project, share the hard lessons learned along the way and explain the complex process used to seamlessly combine live-action with extensive digital environments and hand-crafted character animation in a fully-stereo pipeline that required a total rethink of much of the traditional vfx process.

The Open Source Swimming Hole; C’mon In The Water’s Fine^h^h^h^h Murky
Sunday, 21 July, 2 pm – 3:30 pm

Open Source Software (OSS) has become an integral piece of the ever-expanding Animation and Visual Effects industry. With OSS firmly implemented into many studios’ production and development pipelines, what has been gained? Professionals within these fields will discuss the challenges and benefits of using OSS, reflecting on how the industry has changed as a result. They will look back on their own innovations that have become widespread within the community, in addition to revealing what future developments are in the works.
 
The panelists represent a community of developers and enthusiasts who encourage open collaboration, as they share their thoughts and experiences with the world.
 
Topics Include:

·         What are some legality challenges that arise when implementing OSS into a company’s pipeline?

·         The benefits and disadvantages between closed source and open source software

·         The future of OSS in various studio settings

·         Updates and new developments from the panelists

Panelists:

·         Robert Bredow, Sony Picture Imageworks

·         Andrew Pearce, DreamWorks Animation

·         Bill Polson, Pixar Animation Studios

·         Ton Roosendaal, Blender Foundation

·         Kevin Gambrel, Disney Animation Studios

The Visual Effects of Marvel’s Iron Man 3
Wednesday, 7/24, 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM

In Marvel's Iron Man 3, from Director Shane Black, brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man goes on a harrowing quest to find the enemy who has destroyed his personal world. Marvel Studios, Digital Domain, Scanline VFX, and Weta Digital take SIGGRAPH audiences through their VFX journey as they created some of the movie’s most heart-stopping moments – the house attack sequence, the dramatic ‘barrel of monkeys’ sky rescue and the climactic final battle.
 
Panelists:

·         Victoria Alonso, EVP of Visual Effects and Post Production, Marvel Studios / Executive Producer Iron Man 3

·         Chris Townsend, VFX Supervisor, Iron Man 3

·         Guy Williams, VFX Supervisor, Weta Digital

·         Geoff Baumann, CG Supervisor, Digital Domain

·         Bryan Grill, VFX Supervisor, Scanline VFX

DreamWorks Animation Presents: A Journey to the Croodaceous
Wednesday, 7/24, 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM

A behind-the-scenes look at DreamWorks Animation's hit film The Croods directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco. The session explores the artistic and technical challenges of bringing uniquely designed, appealing, gritty and at times dangerous prehistoric characters, creatures and environments to life, all with the ultimate goal of delivering an insightful emotional family journey set against a pending natural disaster. The artistic leadership of the film will talk about the aesthetic decisions made along with the technical and workflow innovations necessary to accomplish the film.

Panelists:

·         Chris Sanders, Director

·         Matt Baer, Head of Effects

·         Mark Edwards, Head of Lighting

·         Damon Crowe, Character Effects Supervisor

Walt Disney Animation Studios Presents Frozen: The Craft of Character and Cold
Tuesday, 7/23, 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM

The team from Walt Disney Animation Studios gives a first-time, behind-the-scenes look at the their November 27, 2013 film, Frozen. Attendees will learn how the team of artists and technologists created the film's characters through visual development, rigging, animation and advanced rendering tools and discover how the elements of cold — ice, snow and frost — were brought to life through new simulation techniques.

OLM Digital Presents the Anime Spirit: From Pokémon, Pac-Man to live action films
Wednesday, 7/24, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

Anime has gained great popularity in the world for its unique expressiveness in contrast to western animation. OLM Digital, a digital production company in Tokyo, keeps trying new anime styles, making the Pokémon movies over 15 years. This session presents the company’s various works in 2D/3D hybrid anime, 3DCG, S3D anime and live action films. The showcase focuses on how the anime spirit of OLM Digital is put into various visual forms. The brand-new Pac-Man animated TV series, which is a collaborative work with Sprite Animation Studios, is also one of the highlights of this session.

Panelists: 

·         Yasuhiro Mikami, CGI Director OLM Digital

·         Masashi Kobayashi, CGI Producer OLM Digital

·         Moto Sakakibara, CEO and Creative Director Sprite Animation Studios

·         Ken Anjyo, R&D supervisor OLM Digital

LAIKA Presents: The Seamless Fusion of Stop-Motion and Visual Effects Technologies in LAIKA's Feature Films
Wednesday, 7/24, 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM

LAIKA, the Oregon-based animation studio behind the remarkable features ParaNorman (2012), Coraline (2009) and The Boxtrolls (in theaters 26 September 2014) has inspired audiences — and industry professionals — with an unprecedented visual artistry. Animators breathe life into meticulously hand-crafted puppets while visual effects artists seamlessly enhance the performance with cutting-edge technologies. This unparalleled fusion of stop- motion and computer graphics has garnered the studio two Oscar nominations and worldwide acclaim. In this session, Georgina Hayns and Brian McLean address the key interdependent and collaborative relationships between these uniquely different but critically important departments.
 
The presentation will address the following:

·         The use of Maya and Zbrush to enhance practical sculpts;

·         3D Printed material and subsurface scattering to allow puppet builders to break free of previous design limitations;

·         The advancements in color 3D printing and the enabling of puppet builders to evolve beyond prior design limitations;

·         The use of in-house developed silicones which enable character performance previously unseen in stop-motion animation;

·         The utilization of 3D Printers to pre-vis puppet construction issues and control how practical materials perform;

·         The use of laser cutting fabrics to enhance the design and functionality of the puppets costumes.

·         Production puppets will be displayed during the presentation.

Panelists:

·         Georgina Hayns, Creative Supervisor, Puppet Fabrication

·         Brian McLean, Director of Rapid Prototype.

Sony Pictures Imageworks Presents: Take a Journey Down the Yellow Brick Road

Tuesday, 7/23, 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM

Sony Pictures Imageworks, under the direction of VFX supervisor Scott Stokdyk, created the majority of the visual effects for Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful. As a cinematic prequel to L. Frank Baum’s first book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the film explores the backstory of the wizard character. The goal of the film was to create a beautiful stylized environment for the land of Oz and bring to life computer graphics characters that accompany Oz on his journey, including Finley the monkey, the porcelain China Girl, and various creatures that surprise them along the way.

Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Animation Presents: Scare School 101: The Making of Monsters University
Thursday, 7/25, 12:45 PM – 2:15 PM

The filmmaking team will guide attendees through the production process of the summer 2013 Disney•Pixar film, Monsters University. Twelve years after the original film, see how creators rebuilt the Monster world; updated familiar characters into college-age versions of themselves; designed, built and lit a campus fit for a monster; and populated the university with a student body of diverse, unique and terrifying monster types.

Storytelling through Stereography Industry Panel
Monday, 7/22, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

This panel brings together the Stereoscopic supervisors from some of the leading studios in the computer animation industry to discuss the artistry of the Stereo process and to show how storytelling is enhanced through the use of stereo.
 
From the beginning, stereography has been seen as either a gimmick, a trend, or a technical process done in post production.  But now, stereography has moved into the filmmakers tool belt – filmmakers have begun using stereography to raise and lower the emotional temperature of a film in the same way as lighting, color, composition, and the choice of lens.
 
In this panel we will discuss the varied approaches that each studio has used. We will discuss our individual philosophies and our interactions with the directors in the execution of each of our films. We will present specific examples from recent movies.

Panelists:

·         Dan Abramovich, Stereo Supervisor, Blue Sky Studios

·         Robert Neuman, Stereo Supervisor; Walt Disney Animation Studios

·         Joshua Hollander, Director of 3D Production, Pixar Animation Studios

·         Rob Engle, Freelance Stereo Supervisor

·         Gil Zimmerman, Head of Layout, DreamWorks Animation

'Cancel the Apocalypse' – Industrial Light & Magic Presents: The Visual Effects of Pacific Rim
Tuesday, 7/23, 3:45 PM – 5:15 PM

From aliens that threaten Earth’s very existence to massive human-piloted robots, this panel will discuss the wide-ranging scope of Industrial Light & Magic’s effects work on Guillermo del Toro’s science fiction epic Pacific Rim. The artists will cover creative and technical challenges overcome in the areas of asset development, character animation, lighting, digital environments, advanced fluid simulation work and more.
 
Panelists:

·         John Knoll – Visual Effects Supervisor

·         Hal Hickel – Animation Supervisor

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Learn to Shoot Comedy (and More) with SNL‘s DP

By Beth Marchant   /   Jun 7, 2013

Alex Buono, who has worked as a contract cinematographer since 1999 for Saturday Night Live, is taking an improvisational workshop version of his weekly gig on the road. A regular speaker at user groups and conferences, Buono has no qualms discussing what he does behind the camera in front of an audience. With an incredibly busy season behind him, Buono, three assistants and a ton of gear have just left Minneapolis, the first stop on a 31-city tour he has put together with an independent tour producer and technology vendors. "We're going around the country in an RV, and we'll spend one intense day actually doing what I'd do on a regular shoot," he says. "I've been to a lot of other workshops and the last thing I want to do is some watered-down version of what I do at the show. I thought, if we can get the same vendors I already work with, then I can essentially reshoot stuff I've already shot. Check it out. Here's how I work. All those vendors are now sponsoring the tour so I'm just literally recreating things I already shot and showing the attendees the exact workflow that we used and what it looks like. I definitely don't want to stage a generic scene that looks like yet another camera test — for example, 'woman holding a gray card and a Macbeth chart'."

Buono's Visual Storytelling Tour, by contrast, aims to give attendees real-world, experiential filmmaking in a nutshell. "We'll come up with some content that feels like SNL, I'll recreate some scenes from movies and documentaries that I've shot, I'll create some scripts, and I'll show them how I break down a script," he says. "The idea is that the first 30 people to show up in every city become my crew. I'm pulling people out of the audience and saying you're my gaffer, you're the key grip, you're the camera operator and you're talent, get in there." Buono will cap off each city stop with a seminar about visual structure on film, focusing, for example, on Stanley Kubrick's use of one-point perspective, or Paul Thomas Anderson's obsession with linear motifs and what that means. So far, he's playing to a very receptive crowd. "The first stop was totally sold out," he says.

Sign up in your city at visualstorytellingtour.com.

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So … Will We See That New Mac Pro Next Week, or What?

By Bryant Frazer   /   Jun 5, 2013

It’s been almost a year since Apple stealth-announced a barely-there update to its line-up of Mac Pro workstations at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), frustrating users who still rely on tower-style desktop workstations — with lots of room for graphics horsepower and other expansion cards under the hood ­­— for performance computing tasks. But the buzz in Mac circles is that there may finally be light at the end of the tunnel. NAB came and went, but the WWDC begins again next week, and rumor has it that we may finally hear about the new Mac Pro — or whatever’s going to replace it. Mum is, of course, the word from Mac HQ. But with Apple news and gossip sites working overtime, we can still speculate. Here are the questions being asked, with a look at the best answers that can be gleaned at this point.

Will the Mac Pro be announced next week?
Maybe! Apple CEO Tim Cook promised "something really great" in this category would be released in 2013 and, as recently as NAB, Apple was reaffirming that promise, albeit with no further comment about when or what we were going to get. MacTrast reports that leading Apple retailers are reporting low or no stock levels on entry-level Mac Pros. Given that Apple tends to keep retail well-stocked, this is usually taken as a sign that a product is about to be refreshed (or discontinued). Meanwhile, the current Mac Pros can no longer be sold in Europe because of new safety regulations related to electrical ports and fan guards. WWDC is a software event, of course, but software developers need development machines, so this would be an excellent time for Apple to update its pro workstations.

Will the new Mac Pro look like the old Mac Pro?
Doubtful. If you’ve ever tried to lug your Mac Pro up a flight of stairs, you know it’s a pretty heavy machine. Facilities and other pro users tend not to mind that so much, since the machine will spend its life chained to a desk. But Apple is emphasizing portability across all of its lines — remember, this is the company that unceremoniously killed the 17-inch MacBook Pro, beloved by video editors, as if it were just another popular character on Game of Thrones — so it seems likely that the Mac Pro will be slimmed down. It’s possible we’ll see a much smaller desktop unit that relies on a separate (Apple-branded?) Thunderbolt expansion chassis for connecting bulkier PCIe-based hardware.

What else might be different?
Who knows? Speculation across the net is that the machine will support dual-GPU processing out of the box, and MacNN.com reported that OS X 10.8.4 includes drivers for Nvidia's Geforce GTX Titan card, which ZDNet notes could suggest interesting multi-GPU options for a Mac Pro. Apple would be nuts to release a new machine without USB 3.0 as well as Thunderbolt, but FireWire 800 and CD-ROM may leave the picture. (You'd be able to connect your existing devices using a Thunderbolt adapter, though.) And there’s some talk that the machine may incorporate some flavor of fast solid-state memory rather than a spinning disk, which would certainly improve boot speed. The We Want a New Macpro Facebook page has a good round-up of what seems to be on the table.

If the Mac Pro 2013 is announced at WWDC, when can I get one?
We’d be surprised to hear that new Mac Pros are ready to ship next week, and the preponderance of rumors are saying that the new machines will ship this fall — possibly in order to sync their release with the availability of new Intel Ivy Bridge E processors, which are thought to be due in September. That means Apple could decide not to talk about them at all next week. But the more dramatic the changes, the farther out Apple might be willing to make a “coming-soon” announcement.

What are you hoping for from the new Mac Pro? And how do you feel about the rumors coming out of Cupertino? Let us know in the comments.

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New Bay Area Creative Pro User Group to Convene on June 5

By Beth Marchant   /   Jun 4, 2013

Heads up San Francisco: There's a new Creative Pro User Group coming to town. The Bay Area Creative Pro User Group, or BACPUG (suggested pronunciations include "Bay See PUG" or "Bass-e-pug"—perhaps even "Back-pug"?), was founded recently by filmmaker Kanen Flowers, creator of Scruffy.tv and That Post Show. The first meeting will be held this Wednesday, June 5, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at 601 Townsend St.

Promising "All community. No Bulls—," the BACPUG plans to make meetings social but also informative. The first meeting will include presentations by director Stu Maschwitz, the creator of Red Giant's Magic Bullet line (including the recent BulletProof), and Wes Plate, the founder of Automatic Duck and product manager of Adobe Prelude. Maschwitz will talk about Slugline and Fountain, a plain-text markup language for screenwriting that he has extolled on his influential blog, ProLost. But don't expect a battle royale. In a recent post, Maschwitz claimed there "are no plans for a Prelude-vs.-BulletProof showdown of Anchorman proportions, but be safe—bring your trident." Clint Torres, the creator of the Slugline app, will join Maschwitz on stage.

Kevin Monahan of SFCutters, the Bay Area's first Final Cut Pro editors group, will be on hand Wednesday to get things rolling. Tickets are available from the group's event page.

For more information: bacpug.org

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Defy Gimbal Challenges the Movi at a Lower Price Point

By Bryant Frazer   /   May 20, 2013
If you were scoping out camera gear at NAB, you probably saw the Movi from Freefly. Described by early users as a revolutionary handheld camera rig, the Movi is a three-axis gyro-stabilized handheld camera gimbal that keeps your camera steady no matter which way you end up turning the rig. The first Movi will hold up to a 10-pound payload and costs $14,995, and bigger and smaller models are said to be coming. Freefly already has experience with multi-rotor camera platforms, and power DSLR user Vincent Laforet quickly aligned himself with the Freefly team and spread word of the product far and wide. However, except where there's something especially clever and patentable about Freefly's designs, there's nothing stopping other companies from releasing competing products.
 
It looks like the first of those competitors may be the Defy Gimbal, which is being touted by Missouri-based digital media company Relentless. Relentless was apparently at NAB this year with a two-axis prototype of the product, but now says it plans to deliver a silent three-axis carbon fiber gimbal suitable for cameras ranging from the Red Epic on the high end down to the Blackmagic Pocket camera and the GoPro on the low end. In a video posted to the Relentless website, company CEO Drew Janes describes a silently operated handheld gimbal with brushless motors and plenty of options for building out a full-on camera rig. "We build custom multi-rotors right here in our shop," he insisted. "We get gimbals." (Watch it below.) Pre-orders will be taken at the company's new website, www.defygimbal.com, for estimated delivery in June at a what Janes promises is "a price point you can actually afford." The two-axis version Janes was showing at NAB was going to be sold for around $1800, so a three-axis model with the ability to hold a wider variety of cameras will presumably carry a bigger price tag.
 
 
We probably won't see too many early adopters canceling their Movi pre-orders on this news. For one thing, we haven't yet seen the Defy Gimbal in action. The Relentless team needs to create a demo video that proves they've hit their marks before competition heats up. For another, Freefly says it really has developed some unique technology for the Movi. The company has applied for patents on "Majestic Mode," in which the gimbal monitors the camera operator's handle movements and converts them on the fly into stabilized pans and tilts, allowing framing to be accurately controlled and maintained. Also patent-pending is the translation-compensation system that allows the Movi to automatically adjust the camera angle hundreds of times a second to maintain a consistent frame, as well as the "noise filter," which allows the user to dial in the amount of shaky-cam he or she prefers so the gimbal can leave exactly the right amount of instability in the image, no matter how roughly the camera is being handled. Freefly has also developed proprietary control algorithms that use GPS data for acceleration correction on cars or helicopters.
 
So it looks like the Movi will set the gold standard in this niche, and may become a popular rental item. It's slated to ship in the third quarter. But if you like the idea of a stabilized handheld rig without much in the way of fine control, the Defy Gimbal may suit your needs at an attractive price point. And if that doesn't work for you either, you can wait a few months and see if someone else does it better.
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