Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, has given their EDIUS Pro and Workgroup 8 editors new EDIUS 8.3 software in response to feedback from their customers.

One of its most intriguing new features is high quality slow motion using what’s called “optical flow interpolation”.

“Up to now we’ve been using ‘frame blending’ which is actually just what it sounds like, sort of interlacing from one frame to the next,” Steve Wise, the director of product marketing for Grass Valley’s EDIUS told The Broadcast Bridge. “Optical flow improves on that by calculating the data between the frames and figuring out how best to combine information from one to the other.”

In other words, by using the spatial and temporal image derivatives of a group of frames, a spatiotemporal smoothing factor is applied to the interpolated sequence flow.

“This is an open algorithm that we had promised for EDIUS 8.x, so we will be improving it over time,” Wise said.

EDIUS come in two flavors: EDIUS Workgroup 8 is intended for editors working within a collaborative, broadcast-based, editing environment that might require GV STRATUS or third-party MAM connectivity, while EDIUS Pro 8 is geared toward the individual professional user.

This latter group will benefit from one of the major improvements in this 8.3 upgrade, the improved burn-to-disc options for DVD and Blu-ray.

“EDIUS has always been known as a ‘finish a project in one day’ system, and this updated disk burner lets you create DVD or Blu-ray disks directly from the time line,” Wise said. “You can shoot and edit in 4K and burn a DVD without having to go through a down convert step first. That can be a great time saver for indie editors.”

There are also now three kinds of proxies for Workgroup editors to cut with, which can be very handy for news editing. Having the option of large, medium and small proxies can fit more material on the desktop of a journalist while still giving the craft editor more material to finish with.

In addition, you can now see the in/out timecode on the thumbnails of clips in the edit bins.

The companion application called GV Browser that was launched with the introduction of EDIUS 8, combines personal media asset management with a built in media player.

“In the future, you might see us insert some editing capabilities into GV Browser, too,” Wise told us.

At this April's NAB, EDIUS got RGB primary color correction, and 8.3 provides the ability to upload LUT’s (Look Up Tables), now including F-Log, for Fujifilm’s color space.