Week of Nov 23 1998   Nov 25 Change to the site: In an effort to improve performance, the latest news page (this page) will now list only the most current items. The past week will be archived through the week, and listed in headline form at the end of the page. This change was made because the news page, by the end of the week, was getting to be almost 100K. Hopefully this change will improve performance without impacting the usefulness of the site.   Although the Aurora Fuse has been compatible with Adobe Premiere 5.x since Adobe first introduced Premiere 5.0, Adobe has only just added the Aurora Fuse to its compatibility matrix. The latest Aurora Fuse drivers are available at Aurora's website. These drivers provide a more accurate implementation of the quality slider when compressing and decompressing motion video or stills and they also work with VideoScope. <www.auroradsgn.com web page "Software">   Media 100 is shipping Media 100 Version 5.0 and the DV Option. Media 100 Version 5.0, for models le, lx, xe, xs and xr, is priced at $5,995, $9,995, $12,995, $14,995 and $19,995 respectively. The DV Option, available on all Media 100 systems, is priced at $2,995. Version 5.0's feature set includes 16:9 frame aspect ratio support for widescreen television, Media 100 codec sharing for QuickTime integration, titling and effects enhancements, and editing features and project management improvements. The DV Option allows users to mix analog and digital signals in the same program and then master to Composite, S-Video and Component analog decks, or DV devices. Transitions can be performed in real-time, with no quality degradation, through the upsampling of 4:1:1 DV media to a 4:2:2 M-JPEG file. <www.media100.com>   Sonic Solutions has added support for the new Super Video CD (SVCD) standard to its Sonic DesktopDVD product line. Partnering with EnReach Technologies Inc., creators of Enreach I-Author Deluxe SVCD authoring software, Sonic will begin shipping complete DVD and SVCD production tools in the Chinese and Pacific Rim markets in early December. DVD authoring is provided by Sonic Solutions' DVD authoring software while SVCD and VCD authoring is provided by EnReach's I-Author Deluxe 1.0 software. MPEG-2 VBR video encoding, as well as MPEG and Dolby Digital audio encoding, is delivered by Sonic Solution's DesktopDVD hardware. China is the world's largest consumer of Video CD players and titles. The SVCD format was developed by the China National Technical Committee of Standards to bridge the gap between the MPEG-1 based Video CD format and DVD. The SVCD format delivers variable bit-rate MPEG-2 video on standard-density CD media. <www.enreach.com> <www.sonic.com>   NewTek has announced Frame Factory, its first professional hardware and software Digital Video and animation solution for Windows NT. This suite allows 3D animation, real time video capture and playback, 2D animation, 2D and 3D video manipulation and video processing. For less than $4,000 the Frame Factory is a 2D/3D digital content creation solution that includes an uncompressed ITU-R-601 video I/O board, LightWave 3D 5.6, and Aura, NewTek's video paint production software tool -- all of which have been optimized to work together. Video I/O includes component (YUV), S-Video and composite with SDI optional. NewTek's Frame Factory for Intel is $3,995. and will be available in Q4 1998. Minimum System Requirements: Pentium II 233MHz with MMX (BX Motherboard), 96 MB RAM, drive system capable of 21MB/sec sustained data rate and available Bus-Mastering PCI slot. <www.newtek.com>   Interactive Pictures Corporation has announced IPIX personal and professional camera kits which feature the Nikon Coolpix 900 digital camera and the Interactive Pictures technology. To create an IPIX image, users take two opposing 183 degree shots using a fisheye lens. The IPIX software adjusts and blends the image together to create a 360-degree image. An IPIX Key (a digital equivalent of film) is used to compress, save, and publish the IPIX image. The camera kits include the Nikon Coolpix 900 with a full-height tripod, IPIX 180-degree rotator, IPIX Wizard software, 12 IPIX Keys, carrying case, a one-year warranty, and toll-free support on all IPIX hardware and software. The Digital Camera Kits are available in packages with or without cameras, pricing ranges from US$650 to $2200. <www.ipix.com>   NOTE: Due to the US holiday, there will be no update for November 26 & 27. Have a great holiday everyone!   Nov 24 RealNetworks has shipped the final release of RealSystem G2, which includes RealServers, RealPlayers and RealProducers. RealVideo G2 includes Intel's Streaming Web Video technology which creates automatic multi-rate streaming video content and delivers video performance and quality improvements to consumers. RealAudio G2 delivers 80% improved frequency response and stereo and near-CD quality capabilities over connection speeds ranging from 28.8Kbps up to corporate T-1 lines. RealSystem G2 implements Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), as the standard client/server protocol for streaming media, and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) as the standard integration and layout language for multi-stream media presentations. RealSystem G2 also includes native support for most existing media file formats on the Web today including ASF, AVI, JPEG, MPEG, VIV, and WAV. <www.real.com>   RealNetworks RealProducer G2 and RealProducer Plus G2 are creation tools designed to produce and publish streaming media for RealSystem G2. RealProducer and RealProducer Plus replace RealEncoder and RealPublisher. RealProducer provides wizards to simplify the creation of Web pages with embedded streaming media and the uploading of the media. An Email wizard lets users add RealAudio and RealVideo clips to email as an attachment or URLs. The RealProducer Plus includes transcoding of compressed QuickTime and MPEG-1 files, the ability to address multiple input capture devices on a single machine and run multiple encoding sessions, scriptable batch encoding of entire directories of content, and the creation of RealAudio and RealVideo files that can scale dynamically to any connection rate and are backwards compatible to RealPlayer 5.0 users. Initially available for the Windows platform only, both RealProducer G2 and RealProducer Plus G2 are expected to be available on the following platforms in the first quarter of 1999: Macintosh, Digital Unix, HPUX, Linux, Solaris, SCO UnixWare, and IRIX. RealProducer G2 is immediately available for a free while RealProducer Plus G2 costs $89.95. <www.real.com web page "Producer Plus">   RealNetworks and Excite have integrated Excite's new Audio/Video Search as a branded component on RealNetworks RealPlayer G2. By simply typing a request into the Excite search box integrated into RealPlayer G2, relevant, RealNetworks-compatible RealAudio, RealVideo and multimedia clips will be retrieved using a Web browser and displayed on a co-branded Excite search results page. From this search results page, consumers can view or listen to a variety of clips on the topic searched. <www.excite.com>   QSound Labs and RealNetworks have released iQfx, which integrates QSound's new 3D streaming Internet audio solution into RealPlayer G2. Based on QSound's first Internet software product iQ, iQfx converts mono signals to stereo and stereo to 3D. iQfx will automatically download into the RealPlayer G2 application and is one of the first third-party implementations of the "RealPlayer Add-in" (RPA) architecture of RealSystem G2. Details on RealNetworks RPA Program are available on RealNetworks Web site. iQfx is immediately available and can be purchased at their website. <www.real.com web page "RPA Program", web page "iQfx">   Crescendo PLUS 4.0 Beta 6 for Windows 95/98 and NT is now available. Crescendo is a MIDI plug-in. New features include LiveSynth, a brand-new look and feel with enhanced 3D controls, and updated compatibility to support Windows 98, NT 5.0, Internet Explorer 5.0, and Netscape 4.5 browsers. <secure.liveupdate.com/ OR www.liveupdate.com/dl.html>   Nov 23 Just for fun, I wrote up a review of From the Earth to the Moon, the HBO miniseries which is now available on DVD. It's cool! <review of "From the Earth to the Moon">   AOL is in talks with Netscape. They may even buy the company (what would this do to the future of the browser?)   Microsoft says that Windows 98 users needn't worry; Java will still be available and supported. However for Sun and Macintosh users the story is different. Microsoft is going to remove the Java support from Internet Explorer for thos platforms. [Could this be pay back time?-Ed] <www.microsoft.com>   Looks like streaming QuickTime isn't the only thing up Apple's video sleeve. Emediaweekly reports that Apple has distributed a beta of Final Cut, the video editor that was originally developed by Macromedia, then sold to Apple. Most of the article is devoted to the question: why does Apple want to get into this market. Partciulary since the tool seems to compete with Adobe's products. I always thought that Apple bought Final Cut partly to kill it for Adobe (no, I'm not generally a conspiracy buff.) That seems unlikely now. The new Mac expected to be announced early next year is uspposed to include Firewire support. Maybe Apple is plannning to jump into the DV format in a big way? <www.emediaweekly.com news article "Apple's Final Cut in beta, finally">   As mentioned last week ElectricImage (a division of Play Inc) has announced Amorphium, a 3D program that seems intended for the casual user, and is priced at $149.95. It's due in mid-December for Mac OS and Windows 95, 98 and NT. When writing about it last week I didn't even know that ElectricImage had merged with Play. The merger happened some months ago, so I guess I'm a bit out of touch! ElectricImage is also finally expected to ship a Modeler along with an update to ElectricImage Animation System. The modeler has been under development for years... Interestingly, they have dropped the price of Animation System 2.9 to $2,295 (a big drop from the $7,495 price.) They are also discontinuing the ElectricImage Broadcast version which output lower resolutions and had been priced a little more than the new price for the entire package! It looks like Electric Image is up to some interesting things. <http://www.electricimage.com>     Canon XL1 review DV codec tests Get QuickTime 3.0 Edit DV unplugged ImageReady trial   | 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.