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Week
of Aug 10 1998
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Aug
14
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Ricoh is including Kai's Power
SHOW and LogoMotion with the
new RDC-4300 digital camera. The
Ricoh RDC-4300 digital camera features 1.3
megapixel resolution, capturing
high-resolution images at 1280 x 960. The
palm-sized camera includes a 3x optical
zoom lens and a 190° rotating
lens.
<www.ricohcpg.com>
 
Pinnacle Systems is now shipping the
DV/1394 interface option for the
company's ReelTime family of video
editing and video special effects
products. It's priced at $1,695.
(Ouch!)
<www.pinnaclesys.com
web page "ReelTime">
Evelio Perez-Albuerne has written a
starfield extension for Ray
Dream Studio. The extension creates a
procedural starfield background over a
full 360 degrees and the algorithm
provides distortion-free stars even at the
north and south 'poles' of the background
sphere.
The
current release is beta 1 and is free. It
only works with the Windows version of RDS
and expires on 9/30/98. The final release
version will probably be shareware.
<www.ultradrive.com/rdx_starfield.htm>
Free Speech Internet Televsion
seems to be the Internet equivalent of
community access television. It seems to
be a personal project, though they hope to
fund it in the future; perhaps through
advertising. For the moment they are
offering 25 megabytes of disk space on a
RealVideo server for non-commercial
sites.
<www.freespeech.org>
DIDN'T
WE KNOW THIS ALREADY?
The Industry Standard has an
article that is based on a report from
Forrester Research that concludes
that "TV viewers are a lazy bunch" and
that they don't want to interact with
television in Internet-type activities. Or
as the article puts it, only if the
interaction requires "a simple flick of
the remote control."
<www.thestandard.net
article "Interactive
Programming Must Cater to the Couch
Potato, Says
Report">
For those interested in low-cost
video and television production, an
article on Videography Online
should provide some insperation. It talks
about PBS programs that were produced
using low-cost camcorders. About 85
percent of the program was shot used a
Sony DCR-VX1000, while other shots
came from a Hi8 camcorder.
<www.vidy.com
article "Public
Television's P.O.V. Demonstrates the Point
Of Video">
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Aug
13
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The DV (Digital Video) format
promises high resolution images and
lossless transfers between camera and
computer, but is anything lost when you
run a frame through a DV compressor
multiple times? That's what our fearless
DV experimentor Kent Borg wondered,
and he's written a report
<DV
Compression
Experiments>
Turns out you might want to think more
carefully before recompressing that clip
multiple times...
 
Digidesign has announced Project
II, a standalone, 24-bit digital audio
card designed for use with
sequencing/digital recording software
packages for Apple Power Macintosh and
Microsoft Windows NT systems. The card is
an affordable alternative to Digidesign's
Pro Tools|24 system.
A
Digidesign audio interface is required for
use with the card. Compatible audio
interfaces include Digidesign's 882|20
I/O, 888|24 I/O, and ADAT Bridge. Two
audio interfaces can be connected to
Project II to support up to 16 channels.
The card also permits the recording and
playback of up to 32 tracks depending on
the capabilities of the software used with
the card. Project II can be upgraded to
Pro Tools|24.
Project
II will be shipping in Fall, 1998.
Digidesign is introducing Project II with
a special North American tour
starting in August 1998.
<www.digidesign.com
tour information "Project
II">
We missed this in July, but Sony
announced that Community Place
Conductor Version 2.0, a VRML
authoring tool, is scheduled to be
released in September 1998 in Japan and
shortly afterward in the United States.
Community Place Conductor Version 2.0
conforms with VRML97 and includes visual
event flow editing, keyframe animation and
behavior editing. It will be available for
Windows 95/98 and NT.
With
the uncertain future of Cosmo Software,
Sony's continuing interest in VRML could
be the last best hope for wide success of
VRML.
A
preview version is available at the
Virtual Society on the Web website.
<vs.spiw.com/vs/downld1.html>
And this is so weird we couldn't ignore
it!
Sony has halted shipments of
Handycams with infrared
technology because when they are used in
daylight they can "see through" clothing.
According to CNET, people wearing
swimsuits look almost naked.
Frustratingly,
no model numbers were listed...
<www.news.com
news report "Sony's
camera a little too
candid">
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Aug
12
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Digidesign has a free download of
their audio recording tool: Pro Tools v
3.4. As a friend pointed out, this will
only encourage you to buy their hardware
so you can really edit audio...
<www.digidesign.com
download page "Pro
Tools v
3.4">
Canon is now shipping the
Powershot A5, a small, light weight
digital camera with a resolution of 1,024
by 768 pixels. The camera costs about
$700, and can be connected to a computer,
or the CD-200 Digital Printer. The
printer produces 4 by 6 inch prints.
<www.powershot.com>
Even if you aren't interested in Canon's
products, you might like to check out
their site for the section on the history
and workings of digital
cameras.
<www.powershot.com>
The Web Standards Project, is a
collective effort of web developers and
end users with the stated goal of stopping
the fragmentation of the web by persuading
the browser makers that common standards
are in everyone's best interest. In other
words, can't we all get along and do
things the same way?
It
is a noble effort (though we wonder if
even the Justice Department could do it!)
Find out more at the Web Standards web
site.
<www.webstandards.org>
Truevision is offering its
BRAVADO 2000 for Windows 95/98 with
a full version of Ulead Systems Media
Studio Pro 5.0 for $649 (the retail
value of Media Studio is $595). BRAVADO
2000 with Ulead Media Studio Pro, joins
Truevision's BRAVADO DV 2000 and BRAVADO
2000 for Windows, which both ship with a
full version of Adobe Premiere 5.0.
<www.truevision.com>
RealNetworks, Inc., and Inktomi
Corp. have announced a strategic joint
development, marketing and distribution
agreement that they claim will enable
network providers to deliver
RealAudio and RealVideo
files to consumers at higher speed and
quality while simultaneously reducing
network congestion.
The
joint Inktomi and RealNetworks solution
will integrate the native streaming
capabilities of RealSystemG2, with
Inktomi's upcoming version of Traffic
Server, a scalable and flexible
network cache.
Traffic
Server uses multiple geographically
distributed servers, and intelligent
on-demand caching to move RealAudio and
RealVideo files closer to users at minimal
network cost, improving the response time
of media received at their desktops.
<www.real.com>
<www.inktomi.com>
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Aug
11
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Aurora Design has lowered the price
of their Fuse video capture card by
$40 to $699. The product was introduced
three months ago. Bundled with Adobe
Premiere LE, it features 9MB/s maximum
data rate (2:1 minimum compression ratio),
full-frame full motion, 4:2:2 YUV
colorspace, hardware acceleration of
renders, runs on any 604 or G3
processor-equipped PCI Macintosh, multiple
clip window support, and real-time
adjustment of video parameters.
This
board looks good; though it doesn't
include audio digitizing circuitry (which
is usually required to ensure
synchronization of audio and video.)
<www.auroradsgn.com>
Macromedia and Narrative
have announced a co-marketing agreement in
which the companies will participate in
joint marketing activities that will
concentrate on Internet advertising,
branding and commerce solutions. In
addition, the two companies announced
plans to enter a technology integration
agreement to further enable transactional
Internet advertising.
Narrative
Enliven Services is a suite of end-to-end
modular offerings that combine
industry-leading rich media advertising
technologies with comprehensive ad
delivery, reporting and transactional
services. Enliven adds
advertising-specific enhancements to
content authored in Macromedia Director
enabling measurement, lead management and
e-commerce inside Director ad content.
<www.macromedia.com press release
"Macromedia
and Narrative Announce
Agreement">
MacCentral has the first of a
four-part series looking at the future of
QuickTime. The first part is titled
"Whatever happened to QuickTime TV,
QuickTime IC?" and covers those
technologies.
<www.maccentral.com
article "Whatever
happened to QuickTime TV, QuickTime
IC?">
Both Fox and Paramount
yesterday announced support for open
DVD (both companies had previously
only supported the protected Divx format.)
Both companies have only announced a
limited number of titles; Paramount
starting in October, and Fox in November.
The prices also seem higher than the
current prices offered by companies such
as Warner.
Don't forget that Radius is giving
away Radius EditDV Unplugged at the
moment, but officially it will cost $99
sometime in the future. You might want to
get a copy today -- just in case!
<www.radius.com/Products/unplugov.html>
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Aug
10
|
Kent C. Williamson is a filmmaker
who recently shot a dramatic feature
motion picture using a Canon XL1 DV
video camera. We reprint his experiences
with this camera in our reviews
section.
<m2w reviews section Canon
XL1 Field
Report>
[I
am intrigued by the XL1, but continuing
reports of problems with focus using this
camera worry me. I'm not sure if these are
the cameras fault, user error, or a
combination of both.
I currently have access to two video
cameras; an 8mm camera which features a
traditional manual lens focus, and a Hi8
camera which features auto-focus and a
small rotating switch you can use to
manually focus the camera. The problem
with these cameras, as I discovered
recently while trying to shoot fast moving
airplanes, is that it's very hard to know
where the lens focus is (with traditional
manual lenses, you can simply crank it all
the way in one direction and you know
where you are.) Since the XL1 uses a servo
controlled lens I'm thinking that it's not
for me...-Ed]
The DVD playback problem reported
last week has a happy -- and simple --
ending; it turns out that while installing
the TV tuner, the scan rate of the display
had been changed. It was this lowering of
the scan rate which caused the jitter in
the DVD image. Turning the scan rate up to
75 MHz took care of the
problem.
MacCentral reports a rumor that
Apple is thinking of buying
GoLive CyberStudio. I hope it's not
true; I don't think Apple is focusing much
on application software these days; why
would they want to buy another HTML
editor?
<www.maccentral.com
news item "Rumor:
Apple to buy GoLive
CyberStudio?">
VideoScript 1.1b1 is now available.
It fixes bugs and adds new image
processing functions. VideoScript is a
tool for analyzing video and images in
real-time.
<www.videoscript.com>
Microsoft has released DirectX
6.0, a set of application programming
interfaces (APIs) that enables software
applications to interact in real time with
the graphics chip, the audio chip, and
input devices such as the joystick, mouse
and keyboard.
DirectX
6.0 includes substantial improvements over
DirectX 5.0, released last August. Most
notable are the improvements to Direct3D,
the API within DirectX that supports 3-D
graphics accelerators. In addition,
Microsoft will add a new API called
DirectMusic to DirectX this fall, which
will substantially improve the quality of
music that accompanies video games.
DirectMusic is available to DirectX
developers now as part of the DirectX 6.0
software development kit.
<www.microsoft.com
web page "DirectX
6.0">
PictureTalk this month will host
three 45-minute live Web seminars
using PictureTalk Web seminar software to
present slides, software demonstrations,
and live quizzes and polls to audience
members. The first seminar is to be held
at 11 a.m. Pacific time on August 12, and
will feature Evan Schwartz, a contributing
writer for WIRED magazine and former
editor at BusinessWeek. Schwartz will
discuss strategies and tactics for
successful Web marketing, and will present
some of his latest findings on Web
marketing trends.
Internet
users who would like to register for a
seminar should visit PictureTalk's Web
marketing seminar page:
<www.picturetalk.com
web page "Marketing
Seminars">
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