Week of June 29 1998 Jul 3 NOTE: There will be no update for July 3 as we prepare for the July 4th celebration. Have a great weekend everyone!   Jul 2 PHOTO Ricoh Japan is holding a digital photography contest that is open to anyone, and offers prizes of Ricoh equipment. Unfortunately, as of last night, the link from the Ricoh web site was broken. <www.ricohcpg.com>   Still haven't figured out QuickTime VR? The Learning Alliance produced a short web based course on QuickTime VR for Apple. This has now been updated for Apple's QuickTime Authoring Studio and is available at their website (it's free.) It's described as a self-paced course in creating QTVR panoramas, objects, and scenes. QTVR development benefits greatly from: understanding the photographic and geometric principles which underlie immersive imaging familiarity with the nuances of QTVR development processes aying close attention to details - like other multimedia development processes <www.letmedoit.com web course "QuickTime VR">   FORMS Looking for a source for release forms, etc.? The NPPA has a archive of forms supplied by various professional photographers and by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). Note that neither the NPPA, ASMP, nor the contributors of documents to the site endorse, recommend, or make any representations or warranties about the legal, financial, or business effects or consequences of use of these educational documents. Forms available include: Model Release (adult) (ASMP) Model Release (minor) (ASMP) Property Release (ASMP) Stock Photography Delivery Memo (ASMP) Stock Photography Invoice (ASMP) <sunsite.unc.edu/nppa/biz/forms/>   Jul 1 AUDIO MacSourcery and Audio Ease have jointly released version 2.4 of BarbaBatch Batch Audio Processor. BarbaBatch 2.4 adds support for the QDesign streaming audio technology, enabling users to prepare audio content for Internet broadcast while maintaining optimal sound quality. BarbaBatch also supports Real Audio 5.0 as well as Ensoniq Paris 24 bit and Dyaxis MacMix digital audio formats. BarbaBatch can process audio content stored in a range of formats including CD-audio, MPEG, Sound Designer, AIFF, WAVE, NeXT/SUN, and VOX. The software can perform gating, normalization, look-ahead peak limiting, fade-in and out, channel processing and dithering. BarbaBatch offers batch conversion, is AppleScript-able and can also utilize any ProTools™ II and Audio Media™ II cards on 68K Macs. BarbaBatch 2.4 retails for $395. A demo of BarbaBatch that converts up to 30 seconds of audio can be downloaded from MacSourcery's web site. For more information, contact MacSourcery at sales@macsourcery.com or at 1-760-747-5995. <www.macsourcery.com> More information about Qdesign codec is available at the QDesign website <www.qdesign.com>   MetaCreations Poser 3 anatomical modeling program has been receiving some very favorable reaction both from users and the press. The Learning Resources page for Poser 3 at MetaCreations website includes the Advanced Techniques Manual in PDF format. This file is also included on the Poser 3 CD. The Advanced Techniques PDF contains not only tutorials to guide you through several advanced operations but also details the following topics: Advanced Posing and Animation Morph Target Creation Bending Parameters and Blend Zones Creating Custom Figures Using Poser with Ray Dream Studio 5 and the Ray Dream Poser Plug-In Using Poser with Painter 3D Using Poser with Bryce 3D There's also links to Third Party Developers: Zygote Media Group, Biovision Motion Capture and House of Moves Motion Capture <www.metacreations.com resource page "Learning Resources">   Lakewood Software has released QT Gallery 1.0, a QuickTime 3.0-powered image browser and graphic design tool. For a limited time, QT Gallery is on sale for $29.95 U.S., a 40% savings off the list price. Interestingly, QT Gallery was developed using SuperCard. A demo version is available at their website. <www.lakewoodsoftware.com>   Jun 30 The MacOSRumors website has been reporting that Iomega will demonstrate or announce the Buz box for the Mac at the upcoming New York MacWorld. Details are hazy; it's reported that the price will be higher than the PC version, and it's also reported that Premiere 5.0 will be included. The latter seems strange given that the price of the Buz for Windows is $200, the Mac version surely can't be that much more expensive...so how can they include an $800 application. Maybe it's the LE version. We're looking forward to a Mac version for no other reason than the fact that the current Buz won't work with our PC model. <www.macosrumors.com> <www.imoega.com>   A beta of VideoScript, a language for digital video processing is now available, with commercial release expected in Spetember. VideoScript provides commands for analyzing video and images in real-time and enables the creation of special effects, motion detection and other tasks. One example of the use of VideoScript is in a digital security system which detects movement from a camera and e-mails the time-stamped images. <www.videoscript.com>   PDAs As the owner of a now unsupported Newton, I was intrigued when I learned about the CrossPad. This device is about the size of a clipboard and you place a piece of paper on top of it and then write on the paper. The pad captures up to 50 pages (more if you don't write on every line!) which can be transfered to a PC and then recognized, stored, transfered etc. It sounds interesting, though the only user report I've heard is from someone whose hand writing proved so poor the pad was virtually useless! <www.cross-pcg.com product info "CrossPad">   Jun 29 GEO Interactive has announced Emblaze VideoPro, a tool for creating high-quality, streaming Web video without programming, plug-ins or special server software. VideoPro converts AVI files of any length that can be viewed on any Windows platform using popular browsers, including 3.0+ versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. Emblaze VideoPro for Windows 95 and NT will ship in mid-July with a street price of $295. <www.emblaze.com>   AUDIO An Apple Technote describes problems controlling volume on NuBus-based Power Macintosh's ( 6100-, 7100-, and 8100-) after installing Mac OS 8.1. The volume control in the Monitors & Sound control panel will not control the volume of speakers or headphones connected to the sound out jack. but works fine for the internal speaker on the computer. If you are using external speakers, the volume control on the speakers can be used to control the volume. Also, some applications have a separate volume control that can be used to adjust the volume. Apple says they plan to fix the problem in a future release. <www.apple.com Tech Note "Problems controlling volume on NuBus-based Power Macintosh's"   Get QuickTime 3.0 ImageReady beta Cosmo VRML plug-in | Multimedia Workshop | Industry News | Online Reference | Contact Us | Find | Copyright 1998 by Multimedia Workshop. All rights reserved Send news or comments to : news@m2w.net All trademarks, service marks, and graphical logos appearing on this website are the property of their respective owners, and are used for identification purposes only. No endorsement of Multimedia Workshop by the trademark owners is intended or implied.