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looks to be trying to steal the thunder of some other plugins like US, Excalibur & Veggie toolkit.....bit overpriced tho, considering less functionality on the surface
Sorry I didn't see this thread earlier. I didn't have time to check the forums while out at NAB 2009. (...and still catching my breath) ;-)
Just to clear things up, Production Assistant is based on some of the Ultimate S technology and was create by VASST for Sony (hence the
Powered by VASST logo on the box). It is specifically solving a different problem than US, Excalibur & Veggie toolkit. While the former are interactive tools or batch rendering tools, Production Assistant is all about hands-off process automation.
If you create standard format videos like daily shows or weekly shows or even same day events, Production Assistant can reduce hours of editing and assembly down to minutes. It pays for itself in the first day or two of use. It does this by allowing you to create templates with media slugs of your projects and then selecting a template and only the media that changes from project to project and it assembles a new project from the template substituting the real media for the slugs. We have already developed a workflow that was shown at the NAB Vegas Users Party last Monday night that creates skydiving same day event videos with only inserting the memory card and naming the folder to capture the media. The next thing you have is a complete project complete with intros, music, etc. ready to burn to DVD... totally hands off and fool proof!
Production Assistant also has process automation capabilities not found in other tools. You can create process workflows like adding network bugs or logos, then an 16:9 animated underlay to 4:3 media, then capturing representative thumbnails, etc. and save all of those steps as a preset workflow. Then with one click of a button process hundreds of files applying each process in the workflow and then rendering to multiple output formats. Once again saving hours of valuable editor's time and paying for itself in the first couple of uses.
There will be quick start videos published on the Sony site once the product is available so you can see the workflows that this tool addresses. It does not negate the need for tools like Ultimate S or Excalibur. While it does contain some of the interactive tools from Ultimate S, it is all about hands-off automation which no other tool addresses.
Hope that helps clear things up. Feel free to ask more questions.
~jr
www.johnrofrano.com
www.vasst.com
