Assimilate introduces universal format player, Scratch Play Pro
July 25, 2018

Assimilate introduces universal format player, Scratch Play Pro

SANTA CLARA, CA — Assimilate (www.assimilateinc.com) has introduced Scratch Play Pro, a universal format player, immersive media player, look creator with version management, transcoder, and QC tool — all in one. 

As a universal player, Play Pro is able to playback nearly all formats – camera formats, raw or not, including h.264 and h.265 (HEVC), deliverable formats of any sort, and even still frame formats. Users can also show the image full screen on a second/output display, either attached to the GPU, or through SDI video-IO (AJA, Blackmagic, Bluefish444). Inherent to Play Pro is the construct (timeline) environment, a graphical media manager that allows users to load and manage stills/shots/timelines, and full features and all versions. Play Pro is fast and easy to operate. It runs on just about any system, from laptop to a desktop running Windows or OS X.

As an immersive player, Play Pro supports equirectangular 360, cubic/cubic packed 360, 180-degree VR, stereo, mono, side-by-side or over/under, embedded ambisonic audio, and rea-time mesh de-warping of 180-degree VR media. Play back is possible on screen or through immersive headsets, like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and HMDs supporting OpenVR on both Windows and Mac. In addition to playback and CDL color correction, Play Pro can directly publish 360/180 media to Facebook 360 or YouTube 360.

Play Pro supports 1D and 3D LUT formats of any size for import and export. It also supports import/export of CDLs in both popular formats: .cdl and .cc. Users can combine two different LUTs and still add a display LUT on top. A CDL-based toolset, which is compatible with all other color tools, allows users to modify looks and/or create complete new looks. It can also export LUTs in different depths and sizes to fit for different LUT boxes, cameras and monitors. 

The ability to create looks in production or to import looks created by post production, allows you to establish a consistent color pipeline from on-set to delivery. Using the Construct (timeline) environment, users can store all look versions and easily apply them at any time in the production process.

Instead of using a camera vendor’s app for reviewing and transcoding, Play Pro can read all formats and can transcode to ProRes, h.264, and h.265. The tool includes the fastest and the highest quality encoders for Apple-licensed ProRes, h.264 and h.265 to meet even the toughest delivery specs. 

For VR delivery, Play Pro supports h.264 rendering up to 8K, including the metadata needed for online portals, such as YouTube and Facebook.

Play Pro is well suited for quality check, both on-set and in post production. It supports SDI output, split-screen, A-B overlay, and audio monitoring and routing. A number of QC-tools for video measuring are includes, such as vector scope, waveform, curves and  histogram. Extensive annotation capabilities are also available.

Scratch Play Pro is priced at $19/month, though users can save nearly 13 percent with an annual license of $199. As a subscription service, users can keep up-to-date with the new and ever-evolving camera formats.