News roundup: Leica, LucidLink, LumaTouch, ShotPut Pro, SmallHD, Sony, and more

The latest updates from Sony, Leica, LucidLink, and more including new products, firmware upgrades, industry acquisitions, and longer movie release windows.

Two stories from Sony to start. First, there's a new flagship Xperia smartphone launching tomorrow. The Xperia 1 VII, to give it its likely name, boasts the interesting tagline 'Powered by Alpha', and a teaser video features plenty of shots of the Sony a1 camera. Could be interesting. As is the fact that the Sony FX3 has actually been replaced by the FX3a, not that you'd know it apart from the 'new release' tag on a few reseller sites. The change is a new LCD panel that boosts the panel resolution from 1,440,000 dots to 2,359,296 dots.

LucidLink has integrated the latest multimodal AI from Moments Lab into its latest platform. This automatically generates rich, time-coded natural language descriptions of footage, enabling teams to instantly identify compelling scenes, classify themes and generate editorial content from editorial video.

Brut, an official media partner of the Cannes Film Festival, used the combination to streamline its coverage of the Cannes Film Festival. “Covering Cannes means capturing magic as it happens and getting it in front of our audience instantly,” said Guillaume Lacroix, CEO and co-founder of Brut. “With Moments Lab’s MXT-2 and LucidLink’s seamless access, we’re able to work across time zones and borders without missing a beat.”

Imagine Products' ShotPut Pro has had a few useful new additions. A raft of UI improvements have been implemented to make every step of the workflow smoother, there are new PDF reports, new source options include a built-in speed test and ability to perform a drive index, and it's now easier than ever to view your job history.

The Freedman Group, who already own RØDE amongst others, has announced the acquisition of Lectrosonics. Founded in 1971 and headquartered in New Mexico, USA, Lectrosonics has been at the forefront of UHF wireless audio technology for film, broadcast, and high-end theatre applications for over five decades. The company received an Academy Award in 2017 for its revolutionary Digital Hybrid Wireless Technology – further cementing its status as the gold standard in professional wireless audio and the equipment of choice for audio professionals worldwide. 

Leica has issued a firmware update for its SL3 mirrorless camera (above) that adds the ability to record in Cinema 4K and Cinema 6K in ProRes 422 HQ internally to a CFexpress card. This is a huge boost compared to the 1080p Full HD PreRes support it initially shipped with.

SmallHD has just updated its firmware to v6.1. Alongside a range of bug squashing endeavours, it adds the following improvements and alterations:

• Simplified the customization process of User Function Dials on Quantum 32 monitors
• Renamed “Backlight” to “Luminance” to more accurately apply to all panel technologies
• Improved the “Lift” manual adjustments for post-calibration color control
• Added an explanation to the user after the monitor fails to load a custom No Signal icon
• Improved image clarity with color gradients
• Faster startup speed for on-camera monitors

LumaTouch has partnered with CNN Academy in a concentrated effort to advance mobile storytelling techniques and support training across all of CNN Academy’s training simulations, master classes, courses and workshops. The immediate result is that the company's professional multitrack editing platform for mobile devices, LumaFusion, will become the exclusive video editing application taught across CNN Academy training programs.

And finally, movie release windows are changing again. Just as the world has got used to a 45-day release window, new research from Ampere Analysis shows that this is slipping to nearly double that. Wide-release movies distributed domestically by the five major US studios last year took an average of 87 days post-release in cinemas to reach subscription streaming platforms. It's not across the board, but the simple rule of thumb seems to be the bigger the budget the longer the hold.