News

The long wait for MovieRecorder 3 is over! You can download MovieRecorder 3 from our website, where you will find a FREE DEMO version. Please take a moment to fill out the required form, to let us know which features are important to you. It will only take a few minutes to fill out and it will greatly help us to build better products. You can watch a QuickStart video here and read more about it on the MovieRecorder 3 page.

Softron's M|80 is also now shipping. The M|80 is an 8 ingest hardware & software bundle that connects 8 video inputs via a single Thunderbolt 2 port to a MacPro. It includes 8 x MovieRecorder 3 licenses on one dongle, 1x 8 Input SDI Video card, 1 Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis and 1 Black TB cable - everything for a very affordable price. You can read more info about the M-80 on its dedicated product page.

So - what's new in MovieRecorder 3 ?
MovieRecorder 3 has some amazing new features such as:

• One application for multi-channel ingest - a beautiful black user interface, with everything available in one window,
• Efficiency - thanks to the fact that it is now a 64-bit application,
• Automatic seamless switching - allows for 24/7 recording. (MovieRecorder 3 will automatically create a new file, frame accurately, based on a duration you establish.)
• Pre-sets to allow users to change their record settings.
• Multiple destinations along with multiple codecs - to allow you to record High Res and Proxy in one folder or to record to two different hard drives. Just select "Destinations." You can have as many destinations as you want for a single source. The only limitation is the processing power of your Mac.
• H.264 and DNxHD support - codecs that were not available in MovieRecorder 2.
• Direct Link - between OnTheAir Video 3 or OnTheAir Node 3 and MovieRecorder 3. Check this video.

In the works !
We have many more things planned for MovieRecorder 3. (Admittedly many of the "must haves" did not make their way into the current release because getting MovieRecorder 3 out the door was too important.) Just so you know what to expect, here is what we plan to release in updates soon:

• Support for more codecs: MovieRecorder 3 currently supports Apple ProRes, DNxHD and H.264. It is a 64-bit application and no longer uses the QuickTime APIs. The QuickTime APIs were used to compress the frames into the various codecs. However, these codecs are no longer available with the AVFoundation framework that is now used. Thus, Softron has to negotiate the rights with third-parties to be permitted to add support for these codecs. Stay tuned to our website because we expect to add more codecs very soon! This will come as a paid option on a per license base.
• Support for MXF and HLS: Currently, when you create a destination, you can only choose a QuickTime destination. MXF and HLS are greyed out. This is something that we know is important and will remedy soon.
• Remote Control: one of the widely used features is the ability to remote control MovieRecorder. That has not been incorporated yet into MovieRecorder 3 because we have some very innovative features that impact remote control and will share these in a near future as well.
• Other features that will be rolled out very soon: Closed Captioning, Audio Mapping, VTR Control, metadata, automatic delete files after a period of time...

MovieRecorder 3 licenses are also valid for MovieRecorder 2 Pro so if there is a MovieRecorder 2 feature that is crucial right now, you can deactivate MovieRecorder 3 and use that feature in MovieRecorder 2. Of course,if you have a dongle it makes it easy - just close one application and launch the other. Above all, remember to provide us feedback and express your opinion of what is important to you - that is why we recommend using the online form.

What's up for Softron at NAB2014?

We've held back telling you about NAB. We did not want to spoil the surprise.
Well – now it's time!

Check the following page where we announce many important upgrades to Softron Media Services’ products.

Stop by NAB - booth SL9405 if you want to see all this Live!

After having spent a few days with a new Mac Pro (base configuration with 4-core, Dual D300, 12GB RAM), we can say that it really is a Mac made for Softron! We also had the chance to test a higher end configuration (8-core, Dual D700, 64GB RAM), to see what you could achieve with each configurations and Softron’s playout and ingest software.


INGEST with MovieRecorder 2
When talking about MovieRecorder, which still uses the QuickTime APIs, the most important factor here is the CPU. The GPU is not used a lot and the basic configuration (Dual D300) will be just fine. The better the CPU, the more channels you’ll be able to do.
Generally speaking, we can say that we were able to achieve one HD 1080i Apple ProRes (LT) ingest per core.

• 4 channels on the 4 core
• 8 channels on the 8 core

Note that we were then using a little bit more then 70% CPU then, and the computer is then at its limit. For safer operations, you may want to use for example a 6 core for 4 channels and a 12 core for 8 channels.

Also, these numbers will be different with other frame size and fps, as well as with different codecs.


PLAYBACK with OnTheAir Video 3
In OnTheAir Video 3, both the CPU and GPU are important, specially when using the SMART resize and graphics.

Basically, the CPU will be used mainly for the decompression of the files. So if you want to decode 4K video clips encoded in H264, you should consider using a higher end CPU such as the 6 or 8 core.

The GPU will then be used for resizing the file to the desired resolution (if needed) and overlay graphics, so the requirements of the graphics card will be bigger:

• the more you use videos of different resolutions that require a resize to fit in the output
• the bigger the « target » resolution = the resolution of your output. (NTSC = easy, 4K = a lot to of dots to calculate!)
• the nature of graphics that you want to overlay and the number of layers (Text and still images = easy, animation = hard)

In our tests, using the Dual D300 configuration, we were able to read files in ProRes LT, resize and overlay a ticker, a still image, a clock, and a rotating logo (source = movie ProRes 4444 file), all that on a 4K output.

Using the D700 configuration, and more importantly the 8-core (for decompression) we were able to add 3 more HD outputs on top of that 4K output, which is pretty amazing.


Conclusion
The new Mac Pro is really the most powerful Mac that we have seen so far. On such a small form factor, it is pretty impressive to be able to do all that, and the more so, silently. Now we’ll have to invest in our converters, hard drives and other peripherals so they are silent too. Maybe the next big hit in the industry is already not 4K anymore, but... silence )

Our tests are not finished yet, and we will come back with more feedback, and long term tests with more video outputs.

As usual, we give these results for information only, it is not contractual as it can vary following your specific configuration, and we always recommend that you run tests with the demo versions available on our website.