Storm : unleashed for the Mac

After a lot of speculation in the pro video and film industry, Storm, The Foundry's new RED Digital Cinema workflow product, has been launched.

Storm brings a focused and easy-to-adopt tool to digital camera workflows on a suitably equipped Mac, offering a consistent and reliable way to review, organize, prepare, edit, conform and deliver RAW RED media, on a laptop or workstation on and near-set.

The Foundry’s Storm
The London-based company claims Storm will address the growing complexity of shooting digitally in one intuitive and easy-to-use solution, and is going to appeal to a wide audience. The file-based high-definition RED One camera is widely used in the production of TV, commercials and music promos, as well as being a major player in the digital cinematography world.
“Storm has been built from the ground up at The Foundry to address a new and growing market,” said Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry. “We have enjoyed a very collaborative alpha and beta period and believe there is a real hunger for the tools that Storm provides. We look forward to continued input from customers and expanding Storm's features and role in the market.”
“Clients love to see shots previewed on set,” said Simon Blackledge, VFX Supervisor and Head of Post at Space Digital. “Storm helps me show them what is possible, confirm what we have and what we need to deliver the director’s vision, and deliver just the right content to editorial. It is a real time saver.”
The Foundry said the tool can ingest RED media in a fast and simple process and from there can be used to perform a multitude of tasks including using tags to identify and search for key frames or clips, create user-defined bins based on tagged media, as well as display and edit multi-track video and audio to compare takes, establish baselines and verify editorial intent. You can also navigate and grade media via the Artist Color panel to apply effects.
Storm is able to playback RED media (when using the RED Rocket card) in real-time and offers integration with Final Cut Pro to allow users to edit and then re-conform back in Storm from original RED media maintaining all looks, tags and metadata references.
Available now, Storm costs $375. It requires a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or iMac with at least 2GB RAM running Mac OS X 10.6.4 or later. Storm is optimized for RED R3D footage and will use a RED Rocket card if one is installed. Free 15-day trial licenses are available.