Founded in 1993, Magic Eye is a post-production and production company based in Cologne, Germany. They do post-production for prime-time shows for all of the major German TV stations as well as commercials and on-air design. Their work involves developing concepts, planning, shooting, and post-production, including heavy compositing, editing, and motion graphics. For their TV work, Magic Eye also provides consulting services for the recordings, working closely with the production company, director, producer, and technical staff to ensure optimal workflows. Particularly with new projects, they tend to be involved early in the production process, and they are often present in the control room when shows are actually filmed, to ensure that they are able to get all of the shots that are needed for post-production.

Magic Eye chooses tools based on their needs for actual projects. They use Media 100, Avid Media Composer, and Adobe Premiere Pro for editing, but they rely on Media 100, in particular, for multi-cam projects that have a tight schedule.

“Media 100 is the best tool for fast turnaround multi-cam projects, and it is extremely reliable,” comments Florian Peters, co-owner, Magic Eye. “The audio tools are solid and quickly available, and the multi-cam setup is optimized for our needs. Also, the ability to work with ProRes is a big timesaver, and the performance on modern CPUs is impressive.”

Nearly all of Magic Eye’s projects are HD-based, typically ProRes, and recorded on EVS systems or comparable multi-stream studio recorders. Most of their files live on shared storage, which works nicely with their Media 100 systems. In addition, their Media 100 editing suites are outfitted with AJA video I/O hardware.

“Media 100’s integration with AJA is much more robust than any other video editor on the market, which makes video output to broadcast extremely reliable. A/V sync is perfect – during the edit as well as when outputting to disc or tape,” says Florian.

Magic Eye frequently takes advantage of Media 100’s ability to export timelines to Adobe After Effects. They also appreciate Media 100’s media management. Florian comments, “Media 100’s organization of media files makes archiving projects, moving media files to another storage medium, or exchange footage with 3^rd-party applications hassle-free.”

Media 100’s roots are as a video editor for broadcasters and Magic Eye values many of these broadcast-oriented features. For example, Media 100 is one of the few editing platforms that allows you to step through fields of interlaced footage while displaying the first, second, or first & second fields when in stop mode. In addition, it accurately handles the color spaces of different codecs, and you can easily mix and match different resolutions and aspect ratios of clips in the same timeline.

Magic Eye regularly taps Boris RED for compositing and effects within the Media 100 timeline, including image stabilization and skin retouching. In addition to Media 100’s built-in color correction tools, Magic Eye uses Boris RED’s 3-Way Color Grade and masking tools, giving them a quick and easy way to enhance shots with great results.

 

Media 100 is typically the first tool that junior editors learn at Magic Eye. “One of Media 100’s strengths is that it is easy to learn,” comments Florian. “It is easy to understand and difficult to break. Plus, now that Media 100 is free, anyone can load it on their personal laptop and have instant access to the application for both practice and work.”

Florian concludes, “Media 100 has been a reliable pillar of our company, and over the years, we have used it for post-production of hundreds of TV shows with millions of viewers. While no system is flawless, when working with Media 100, we have never lost critical work, and never missed a critical deadline - even on the tightest schedules.”