Week
of May 18 1998
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May
22
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updateStage,
web publisher of developer information on
Macromedia Director, has assumed
distribution of Red Eye Softwares
Xtras effective May 16. Current Red Eye
Xtras now distributed by updateStage
include:
Popup Xtra - Displays native system
hierarchical popup menus with
fully-customizable properties
Audio Xtra - Records and plays
sound, and includes the ability to
graphically represent a sound's
waveform.
Dialogs Xtra - Displays native
system Open and Save file dialogs for
applications that must access or store
data.
InstalledFonts Xtra - Assesses the
system's installed fonts.
Product information, demo downloads and
electronic ordering are available on the
updateStage web site.
 
Puffin
Designs
is shipping Commotion 1.5, it's
paint, and rotoscoping application. New
features include a Motion Tracker which
lets you create an unlimited number of
points to track objects over multiple
frames, enhanced wire removal, Cineon
import/export, recordable painting and
write-on effects, and support for
QuickTime 3.0.
Commotion lists for $2,495.00. The 1.5
version upgrade is $249.00.
Puffin has already shipped Commotion
Player NT, which allows users to play
back uncompressed, resolution-independent
footage in real time on a PC running
Windows NT. Player NT is being marketed as
an adjunct for Adobe After Effects,
Lightwave, and 3D Studio Max users who
need realtime playback of multimedia,
video, or film resolution images directly
on their desktop system.The Commotion
Player NT has a suggested list price of
$399.
MacWEEK
has a beta
review
of Macromedia Fireworks.
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May
21
|
Announcements are coming thick and fast in
the world of Digital Television and HDTV.
Following in the footsteps of Panasonics
two
digital
televsion's,
Toshiba, according
to
Yahoo,
has announced a progressive scan DVD
player as well as a digital televsion
($7,300).
The progressive scan DVD is particularly
interesting; we never quite understood
whether the DVD format had the resolution
to support the upcoming Digital TVs and
this new feature seems to answer that
question.[Maybe I'll have to hold
off buying a DVD player even
longer-Ed.]
E4
has announced the CoolDVD Mac DVD Playback
card, which is expected to ship June 30 at
a cost of $279.
This is an MPEG2/DVD card that enables
Macs with DVD-ROM drives to play DVD-Video
(the current DVD-ROM drive Apple ships
with G3 Macs cannot be used to playback
DVD-Video.)
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May
19
|
Adobe
has released Premiere 5.0 Street
price is $599 and registered users of
earlier versions of can upgrade for $199.
Included with the upgrade are Digigami's
MegaPeg, Microsoft's NetShow ASF,
RealNetworks' RealVideo encoder and Terran
Interactive's Media Cleaner EZ program.
DirectXtras
has posted a beta of XtrAgent,
an Asset Xtra for Macromedia
Director which enables the use of
Microsoft's "Agent" technology in Director
applications.
XtrAgent adds a new type of cast member -
Agent - an interactive animated character
that can be drawn on top of all other
sprites and windows and even outside of
the stage area. It can talk using a
built-in Text-To-Speech engine, and
understand voice using a speech
recognition engine.
XtrAgent is for Windows 95 & NT only.
DirectXtras also offers a cross-platform
Text-To-Speech Xtra called
'Xpress'.
The final version will be available on the
first of June at a list price of $399.
Until then pre-orders receive a discounted
price of $299.
Information
about Microsoft Agent
technology
can be found at Microsoft's web site.
Metrowerks
revealed last week that the company has
licensed its CodeWarrior Java
compiler for Mac and Windows to
Macromedia for integration into their
multimedia authoring tool products,
including Director.
Kevin Ellis, Senior Product Manager, for
Macromedia's Director Product Line said
"We chose to integrate the CodeWarrior
Java compiler with Director 6.5,
because of CodeWarrior's superior
performance characteristics."
MacWEEK has a favorable review
of Macromedia's Flash
3.
An article
in PCWeek
covers Intel's strategy of using
multimedia and 3D technologies to sell
their high speed chips (and hopefully
deter users from buying the cheaper
machines.)
Panasonic has announced two
digital
televsion's,
one that includes a tuner and supports
1080i (about $6,000) and the other which
is a monitor that supports 480i (MSRP
$1,799.95). The latter would require an
optional DTV Receiver/Decoder to receive
an HDTV signal that costs about
$1,700.
An article
on CNET
covers Panasonics Digital TV
announcements.
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May
18
|
E4's
CoolDVD Mac SCSI DVD-ROM upgrade
will begin shipping on June 15. Estimated
retail price: $549.
Hylas
is a web site dedicated to digital
imaging.
Web Developers might want to check out
Netscape's
Open
Studio,
a web site that descirbes itself as "The
Technical Resource for
Developers."
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