September 10th, 1999

[10:20 AM]
Puffin Designs Announces New Commotion Product For Digital Video
Puffin Designs has announced a new video editing tool called Commotion DV. Commotion DV is aimed at the professional market and includes several features designed to make editing easier and faster. According to Puffin Designs:

Puffin Designs announced today Commotion DV, a professional image editing and effects program for digital video artists. The application is specifically tailored to professional digital video artists working on a Macintosh(R) or Windows NT(R) computer.

Commotion DV is ideal for creating original stylized motion graphics and fixing image problems such as video dropouts without spending hours working in applications designed for static images. The SuperClone brush allows users to move and duplicate objects such as mountains, trees or clouds to create just the right background; fill in crowd scenes; or remove visual distractions such as power lines or a wayward microphone. Easy-to-use playback controls allow users to create animated write-on effects or motion mattes for keying and compositing.

Created by Scott Squires, Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, Commotion DV is built on the same technology as Puffin's award-winning flagship product, Commotion. Commotion DV includes familiar bezier tools for creating an animated Rotospline. With flexible options for merging spline shapes with existing alpha channels and advanced feathering controls, Rotosplines are useful for cutting out subjects for color correction or creating animated alpha channels that can be used in Adobe After Effects(R), Apple's Final Cut Pro(TM) or other applications.

FX Feature Set

The FX Feature Set includes hundreds of FX brushes, and DV SnapShot, a one-button method to preview images on a NTSC or PAL video monitor through a Firewire DV device. The FX Brush offers an expandable collection of over two hundred brushes for adding artistic touches to images, including full Wacom tablet support. Users also have access to a total of 25 powerful keyframable filters for color correction, image control, keying, stylizing footage or adding grain/noise.

Technical Specifications

Playback options include independent frame rate controls (including 24, 25/30 fps, 60-field NTSC and PAL), frame sizes up to 768 x 576, and playback at bit depths of 8, 16, and 32 bits per pixel. Extensive file format support includes DV, AVI (Windows), or any QuickTime format, including still images. In addition, Commotion DV can use Adobe File Format plug-ins to further extend file format support.

Commotion DV will be available in October. Pricing for the package has been set at US$795. The company is offering an upgrade path for owners of Commotion LE owners for US$199. Puffin Designs has not yet added information on Commotion DV to their web site. Information on other Commotion products is available.

Puffin Designs