Thank you everyone who wrote and tweeted us congratulations on hitting Year 5 of this Newsletter! But time does not stand still and we're looking forward . . .

. . . to DaVinci Resolve 12 Public Beta.

I've had the pleasure of being a private beta tester on Resolve 12

It's an impressive release—but the new User Interface (again) takes some getting used to (again). The new perspective tracker has already saved me from having to keyframe a few Power Window tracks whose shape changes over time. The new mass of Color Page keyboard shortcuts is a boon to productivity.

The new Curves interface is a big improvement—the more I use it the less resistance I have to its new design. It also makes me wonder how the heck Avid has decided not revisit the Symphony curves in over a decade? Is there an app that hasn't completely revisited their approach to color correction? Avid is long overdue.

Blackmagic has implemented a name change

DaVinci Resolve is now the free version and the paid version will be named DaVinci Resolve Studio. It actually makes sense, since 'Studio' almost completely encompasses the extra features of the paid version. 

Now, with almost 200 new features (and many more tweaks) it'll take a little while for all of us to fully digest this update. But here's what Blackmagic emailed some of its beta testers on Friday:

"We are getting close to releasing the first public beta and so this private beta testing phase is now almost over!"

At NAB, Blackmagic promised a July 2015 ship date for the Version 12 Public Beta. This is the last week of July. The release looks to happen shortly. Just remember:

Resolve 12 Public Beta should be approached as beta software

Here are three quick tips I've been following that have kept me from getting backed into a corner:

• Be prepared to downgrade to Resolve 11
  
  
• Create backups of databases before opening them in Resolve 12—or better yet...
  
  
• Create brand new, fresh databases and import your Resolve 11 projects into those newly minted databases

We'll see you again next week. Until then...

• Color My World with ChromaGen glasses - 1 in 12 men, and 1 in 200 women have some degree of color blindness. ChromaGen glasses is a new product that claims to help colorblind people see more colors. Read about one Florida man who tried them on for the first time and the difference he saw. (tampabay.com)
  

• The FIFA Movie: How Bad Is It? - Gérard Depardieu, Sam Neill and Tim Roth can’t save this movie about the history of the FIFA World Cup in ‘United Passions.’ The movie is bad. How bad could it be? "The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the film made $140 in its opening weekend at Cinema Village" Ouch. (fivethirtyeight.com)
  

• Quantel Survey Sees A Slow Transition To 4K, IP Video - "Of more than 1,000 respondents, only 34 percent described 4K as "relevant now." Click through to read what respondents said about the future of High Dynamic Range Video. (studiodaily.com)
  

• Technicolor: HDR Adoption For 4K UHD Needs To Be Open - "We don’t believe our content-owning customers are best served by creating proprietary HDR grades that only work within certain closed ecosystems." (hdguru.com)
  

• OS X Bug: Unfettered Root Privileges - in 10.10. (arstechnica.com)
  

• HEVC Patent Pool Issues Its Bill - the next generation codec, h.265, has a mess of patent holders. A group of manufacturers have pooled their patents together to help adoption. But patent trolls who make their living off patent income? They want a better deal and have issued their terms in a second patent pool. Click through for the rest of the story. (hdguru.com)

• Assistant Editing Lessons From The Trenches - editors and assistant editors do it all on the PBS series, ‘Frontline.’ Including color correction and grading. 5 Lessons with a lot of crossover for the full time colorist. (aotg.com)
  

• 11 of the Most Interesting Lenses in the History of Photography - you’d need a bank loan to own any one of these lenses.  (petapixel.com  via @Robbie Carman) 
  

• [video] Ridley Scott And The Art of Storyboarding - Jim: I think one of the most fascinating things about our craft is the opportunities it affords us work with, and learn from, great filmmakers. Ridley Scott is a case in point. I love Ridley’s description about facing a blank storyboard to plan his next movie. (youtube.com)
  

• [video] Be Bold - if you're feeling unmotivated today, watch this video. And as you do, keep in mind that the person you are watching overcame one BIG life-changing challenge. So, watch. And be inspired. Be bold. (youtube.com)

• [software] Realmac's Deep Dreamer Public Beta for Mac - "Google’s neural imaging network has an uncanny ability of taking ordinary images and turning them into something you’d normally only see if you were sleeping (or under the influence of banned substances). Now, creating your own fun and trippy images is simple." (9to5mac.com)
  

• Selling A Bag Of Williamsburg, NYC for $20K - "What could be cooler than owning a sample of air from the trendiest zip code on the planet? So on Monday night, I listed a sampling of Williamsburg’s finest oxygen on eBay." Click through to find out what happened. (neatorama.com)
  

• 9 Optical Illusions That Prove You Can’t Always Trust Your Brain - always a good time. (sobadsogood.com)
  

• [video] Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Comic Con 2015 Reel - until now, I've had minimal expectations for this next installment of Star Wars. This video managed to raise my expectations a touch. (youtube.com)
  

• Dance Of Thrones: 80’s Dance off - if your brain freezes the way mine did while watching this, blame the Tao Treasurer; she put it in here. It's also an example of a ridiculously pointless use of UHD. If you manage to make it to the end, you will laugh. (youtube.com)

• Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, HDMI 2.0a In 2015 Audio Video Recievers - To trick out your grading suite: "The inclusion of object-based surround sound capabilities and updated inputs supporting HDMI 2.0a with HDCP 2.2 copy protection, mark some the latest advances in a spate of recent AVR unveilings. Targeting retail deliveries this month and into the fall are new models from: Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer and Yamaha." (hdguru.com)
  

• [video] SpectraCal: How To Create LUTs and Use A LUT Box - "Create a color calibration to load into an inline 3D LUT box. Provides instructions on connecting to a 3D LUT box, such as a Fujifilm IS-Mini or AJA Video Lut-box, as well as how to select the proper calibration settings prior to creating the 3D LUT."  (wolfcrow.com)
  

• Apple Retina Laptop Shootout - "here is a Storage, CPU, and GPU shootout between the fastest MacBook 12" Retina, fastest MacBook Pro 13" Retina, and fastest MacBook Pro 15" Retina." I've been told that Resolve 12 is able to run on non-Retina and smaller-than-15" laptops; so this shootout is relevant to mobile Resolve users and students. (barefeats.com)

• [videos] Controlling Drone Cameras with Oculus Rift - I'm shaking in anticipation. (premiumbeat.com)
  

• Rhinos Get Camera Implants In Their Horns - to fight against poachers. Kind'a like Periscope. How long before they start streaming to YouTube? (petapixel.com)
  

• Study: Watching Cats On The Internet Is Good For You - "Prof. Myrick's study provides empirical data on the various benefits to consumption of Internet cat content, although it may yet be some time before the FDA approve Henri Le Chat Noir for use as an anxiolytic."
  
  Apparently they got paid for this study. And then someone else got paid to write about. And the next-level irony is not lost on me, either. (arstechnica.com)