In the Pro Tools Expert 2017 Christmas Competition we offered the chance of winning a copy of Non Lethal Applications' Video Slave 3 Pro, as one of 31 great prizes on offer worth over $16,000 in total. We can announce that Michael Huang is the lucky winner.

Video Slave Pro

Video Slave 3 offers seamless playback of movies in sync to MIDI Timecode. It works with all major DAWs including Pro Tools, Logic Pro X, Nuendo, Cubase and Studio One - or any other device that can generate timecode as a source. Video Slave 3 can be used either on a wired MIDI connection or through network MIDI.

Video Slave's sync engine provides stunningly fast locking times and tight sync guaranteed: in many cases, it's better than using the video engine built into your DAW. Let your DAW handle the audio and use Video Slave 3 to do all the heavy lifting with video effortlessly.

Features

• AJA and Blackmagic device support 

• Improved and updated video playback engine leveraging the power of your GPU even more

• New visual event type: flutters

• Visual event list printing

• Sophisticated ADR workflows with a tight integration to Pro Tools

• Extended audio capabilities with configurable output busses (play audio tracks the movie contains with up to 8 channels per track to output busses with automatic up- and downmixing)

• Movie exporting to H.264 and Pro Res optionally including wipes, beeps and selected audio tracks

Versions And Upgrades

Video Slave 3 is available in three versions - Standard, Pro and Dub, which give a range of features to suit your budget and the DAW you are using. There are also subscription and upgrade options.

Review Of Video Slave 3

Post-production specialist Alan Sallabank reviewed Video Slave last year and found it to be a brilliant advance from Video Slave 2. In his conclusion, Alan wrote...

The new features and hardware compatibility of Video Slave 3 are a natural development of an already brilliant software package. The already reliable playback is further enhanced, and the new ADR list management and Pro Tools integration make the software quick and simple to use.

I've recently completed post-production on two movies, and although I didn't have to record any ADR for them, I still used Video Slave 3 extensively to keep track of recuts and versions.

If your work involves picture at any point, Video Slave 3 can help you. I'd be lost without it, and thoroughly recommend this latest version. 

For more read his full review.

Supports The Cargo Cult's Spanner 3

Non-Lethal Applications have released Video Slave 3.3, which includes a raft of improvements and fixes along with a brand new integration with The Cargo Cult's new Spanner 3, bringing a really cool "heads-up" style display of pan data alongside the already super-reliable video playback.

One of the major issues when trying to match panning to movements on screen is not being able to look in two places at once, especially when working in surround formats. Although we have two eyes, it's not particularly easy to keep one eye on your panner and the other on the screen.

Video Slave 3.3 works with Spanner 3 to superimpose coloured bands on the video, which represent the channels and panners available in Spanner.

This will prove extremely handy in the world of reversioning. Quite often, especially on animation, we do not receive the original Pro Tools session and have to reverse engineer the new language to have the same panning as the original. This integration of Spanner into Video Slave will make this task an awful lot easier.

Michael Huang Wins Video Slave Pro

Michael Huang is a freelance sound editor/re-recording mixer based in Los Angeles, working in film, and TV, he describes himself as, "a jack of all trades that does everything from sound editing, dialogue editing to ADR recording". A few of his recent projects are the Netflix animation show "Stretch Armstrong & the Flex Fighters", the youtube red show "Paranormal Action Squad",  and a Chinese animation show "Battleclaw", that's been viewed more than 500 million times online in China. Michael says - 

"Even with the latest version, Pro Tools is still quite picky when it comes to video format supported, with Video Slave, I can now use more variety of video format without having to first convert to Pro tool's preferred ProRes or DNxHD format.  The ADR function of Video Slave also will greatly enhance my ADR recording experience for both me and the talent."

If you would like to win a prize like the Video Slave Pro software, then go over to our Win Page and see what prizes we have on offer.