London, UK. September, 2008. Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry, is delighted to announce the release of Furnace 4 and Keylight for Final Cut Pro 6. These toolsets are The Foundry's first product releases for Final Cut Pro and give artists access to a host of Academy Award © Winning advanced image processing and keying tools.

Thousands of leading digital artists worldwide already take advantage of Furnace and Keylight to enhance workflow and boost productivity in digital visual effects post production.

With Furnace 4, Final Cut Pro 6 artists will - for the first time - be able to access The Foundry's sophisticated motion estimation technology.

Ben Kent, Senior Software Engineer, comments: "With Furnace on Final Cut Pro editors and artists will be able to use advanced motion estimation technology to repair and retime troublesome shots without the hassle, delay and generation loss involved in exporting to a separate compositing package. Improved results and quicker workflow all in one!"

Based on Apple's FxPlug standard, The Foundry Furnace 4 for Final Cut Pro 6 includes:

DeFlicker is a fully automated plug-in designed to remove luminance flicker in a sequence. It can remove multiple over-lapping phase different flickers, while adapting to cope with motion in the sequence.

DeNoise is a noise and grain removal plug-in that uses advanced motion estimation technology along the direction of motion, thus reducing the noise without introducing any of the artefacts typically associated with noise reduction.

Kronos also uses The Foundry's advanced motion estimation technology to build in-between frames in a sequence. Kronos can be used to speed up (with motion blur) or slow down an image sequence. Artists have the option of supplying foreground mattes, to give retimed objects tight crisp edges and the latest version will detect and account for occluded regions of the image.

ReGrain is an advanced grain management tool, which duplicates grain either from a sample image or stock footage and applies it to a new sequence.

DirtRemoval automatically detects and cleans dirt, dust and hairs from a film scan.

MatchGrade copies the colour look from a reference sequence and applies this to the source image. This technique involves a non-linear transformation of the colour histogram and is useful for balancing and colour matching plates to the master grade.

MotionBlur utilizes advanced image processing to add organic looking motion blur to a sequence. Blur can be added automatically based on the amount of motion in the sequence of the shutter time can e set manually.

The Foundry Keylight, the Academy Award©-winning blue and green screen keyer is easy to use, and highly effective at tackling shots in which it is problematic to pull a clean key - particularly shots featuring hair, reflections and semi-transparent areas. Spill suppression is built-in, meaning that selection of the screen colour is often all that is needed for the user to pull a perfect matte and allow effects elements to be seamlessly seated together and to look genuinely photographed.

"Getting our hardcore tech into the hands of FCP users should be a real boost to what they can do," said Bruno Nicoletti, Chief Technology Officer. “Our engineers have worked brilliantly to build a superb range of effects and bring them to the wider market."

Keylight has an unparalleled pedigree, having been used on scores of feature films including: Speed Racer, King Kong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Harry Potter series, Mission Impossible, Resident Evil, Sleepy Hollow, Chicken Run, The Truman Show, Armageddon and many, many more.

Its ease of use, and ability to tackle difficult footage via an array of built-in tools, has earned Keylight an enviable reputation, and established it as a favourite with visual effects facilities and artists across the world.

Availability and Pricing

• Purchase The Foundry Furnace for Final Cut Pro
Purchase The Foundry Keylight for Final Cut Pro
• Download a Free Demo

About The Foundry

The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post production. On February 10th 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry's development team for the Furnace image processing suite. The company now holds a trio of Academy Award® winning products including the high-end compositing system Nuke, and keying application Keylight.

The Foundry's products support a wide range of host platforms including After Effects, Autodesk® Media and Entertainment Systems, Avid DS, Baselight, Film Master, Nuke, Scratch, Shake and FCP. The company has also driven OpenFX, an open standard for visual effects plug-ins, now broadly adopted by host and plug-in developers such as Autodesk®, Assimilate, FilmLight, Digital Vision, eyeon Software Inc, Grass Valley, Soluciones Graficas por Ordenador (S.G.O.), Photron and others.

Customers include: Digital Domain, The Moving Picture Company, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Warner Bros and Weta Digital Ltd.

The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles.

Labels: Final Cut Pro, Furnace, Keylight, The Foundry