RE:Vision Effects releases major updates to their Discreet Systems (Sparks) versions of Twixtor, their popular retiming solution and ReelSmart Motion Blur, which adds and removes motion blur based on per-pixel calculated motion.

Twixtor 4.5 raises the bar in motion estimation. Nick Brooks, Academy Award and Emmy Award winner for visual effects says, “Twixtor 4.5 represents a new touchstone in retiming. The difference in accuracy means that retiming artifacts are either drastically reduced or disappear on the hardest to retime footage. ”

Twixtor 4.5 introduces a complete rewrite of its tracking. Twixtor is much more accurate, tracks objects farther, and exhibits fewer artifacts when there are objects crossing in the scene. This means less tearing and stretching of objects as they cross or go out of the frame. Twixtor now includes a smart blending option for pans and zooms to prevent inappropriate streaking or weird artifacts at frame borders. Twixtor also adds an option to automatically enhance dark imagery or imagery with poorly defined edges. With the new features, many pieces of footage that were previously difficult to track become well behaved .

For a comparison of the previous versions of Twixtor 3 and Twixtor 4.5, see our comparison page: http://www.revisionfx.com/auxdocs/TwxDemos/TWXnuevo.htm.

ReelSmart Motion Blur (RSMB) 3.2 uses the new pixel tracking found in Twixtor 4.5.

New in Twixtor 4.5 Sparks:

* Completely rewritten motion estimation engine. Twixtor is much more accurate, tracks objects farther, and exhibits fewer artifacts when there are objects crossing in the scene.
* Support for marking material so that Twixtor does not motion-interpolate inappropriately across a cut or other transition, allowing Smoke and Fire users to quickly setup a retiming for a long sequence with multiple cuts without having to cut it into pieces first.
* Contains an option to remove motion blur when slowing footage.
* New warp modes Forward Warping and Inverse Warping with Smart Blending (as seen in RE:Flex) to avoid artifacts at the edges of the frame.
* Option to switch between Source time, Output Time, Foreground and Background views.

New in RSMB 3.2 Sparks

* Completely rewritten motion estimation engine.
* Adds Crop Box to avoid non-valid black edges to spill into the safe-area.

Pricing

* Twixtor Sparks is priced at $795.00. Upgrade from Twixtor 3 to Twixtor 4.5 for $149.95.
* RSMB Sparks is priced at $189.95. Upgrade from RSMB 1.9.10 for $55.00.

Availability:

* Available for Irix systems: Inferno 4.7, Flame 7.7, Flint 7.7, Fire 4.7 and Smoke 4.7 and later.
* Smoke, Flint and Burn versions for Linux of RSMB and Twixtor are being developed and are planned for release in early summer 2005.

Twixtor and ReelSmart Motion Blur continues to be available for Apple Shake and Final Cut Pro, Avid Editing Systems, Autodesk Combustion, Eyeon Digital Fusion, Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Quantel systems and others.

Demo material and software, along with pricing and exact compatibility for all versions of Twixtor and RSMB are available at http://www.revisionfx.com.

Twixtor and ReelSmart are trademarks of RE:Vision Effects, Inc. Sparks, Inferno, Fire, Flame, Burn, Flint, Fire are registered trademarks of Autodesk Discreet. All other references to trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.