Six new real-time effects released for Kona SD

Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd. (an independent developer of driver software for uncompressed video hardware) has announced, in conjunction with AJA Video (manufacturer of analog conversion products) has announced the immediate availability of new image control real time effects upgrade for the Kona SD.

This upgrade is included in the Blackmagic Kona SD software, version 1.3.1, which is available now for free. The Kona SD and the Kona HD are uncompressed 10-bit PCI video cards designed for both editing and design on Mac OS X. See our April 8 article for details.

Image Control real-time effects include Tint, Sepia, Gamma Correction, Brightness Contrast, Proc Amp, and Desaturate. All real-time effects update on the Mac monitor in real-time and don’t have to be rendered before playing out to tape, according to Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design. Image control real-time effects are useful when doing long form work, he added. If final program duration is around 30 or 60 minutes, rendering filter effects for common image treatments would be impractical, and require enormous quantities of disk space. Real-time effects don’t need rendering, and don’t use additional space on user’s disk arrays. Petty said that image control real-time filter effects are extremely flexible, and can be used for a variety of image treatments including:

Tint, for completely changing the mood of a shot;

Sepia, for setting the mood in shots that need to have that “turn of the century” look;

Gamma Correction, for enhancing or darkening a shot without clipping whites or blacks;

Brightness and Contrast, for lifting the mood of shots that are flat;

Proc Amp, an effect that’s used to quickly compensate for slight differences in individual cameras used in a multi camera shoot;

Desaturate, for turning shots into black and white or reducing color in noisy video sources.