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Week
of Dec 7 1998
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Dec
11
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Astarte will be demonstrating
several DVD related products at the
January MacWorld in association with
Wired, makers of MPEG-2 encoding
hardware. Products to see at MacWorld will
include:
- DVDirector,
a DVD authoring tool designed for
corporate video departments, training
groups and video production
companies.
- DVDirector
Pro, which includes MPEG-2 encoding
hardware from Wired Inc.
- ASTARTE
A.Pack, Dolby AC-3 encoding software.
- ASTARTE
M.Pack, an MPEG software encoder, now
including MPEG-2 capabilities.
- Wired
MediaPress, hardware MPEG-2
encoding.
<www.astarte.de>
Accom, Inc has acquired most of the
assets of Scitex Digital Video,
Inc., a subsidiary of Scitex, Inc.
SDV, headquartered in Redwood City,
California, develops, manufactures,
markets and sells digital video
manipulation equipment and non- linear
video workstations. SDV was formed in late
1995 through Scitex's acquisition and
subsequent merger of ImMIX, Inc. and
Abekas Video Systems, Inc.
The
purchase price paid by Accom for the SDV
assets was approximately $10 million (less
than half what Scitex paid.) In addition,
Accom will issue to Scitex warrants to
purchase up to approximately a 10%
ownership interest in Accom.
Accom,
headquartered in Menlo Park, California,
designs, manufactures, sells and supports
digital video production, disk recording
and editing tools, and its ELSET virtual
set systems.
<www.accom.com>
 
Servlet Central is an online
magazine covering Server-Side Java.
Each issue contains articles and columns
written by people using servlets,
Enterprise JavaBeans, object request
brokers, and other server-side Java
technologies to build next generation
applications, Intranets, and web sites.
The theme for the current issue is "JSP,
Security, and Sessioning."
<www.servletcentral.com>
COMPETITION
The deadline for Communication Arts
Magazines 5th Interactive Design
Competition is January 15th, 1999. Any
interactive project created for digital
distribution on floppy disk, CD-ROM,
interactive kiosk, online service or the
World Wide Web is eligible.
Selected
entries will be reproduced on a CD-ROM and
distributed to over 70,000 creatives
worldwide.
Submission
guidelines and FAQs and an entry form can
be found at:
<www.commarts.com
"Guidelines"
and "Entry
Form in PDF
format">
Yesterday I mentioned a rumor that I had
come across about Canon releasing
an XL2. I listed it primarily
because I've been interested in the
XL1, but the ongoing problems and
limitations of the lens in that camera
makes me wish Canon would fix it, and the
idea of an XL2 made me hope... Well, it
looks like the rumor might have actually
been a joke. I guess we won't know for
sure...until a few weeks go by!
One
thing I would note, Sony has been selling
the VX1000 Dv camera for two years or so
now, with no sign of them replacing it.
Compare this to still digital cameras,
where the life span of a camera before
it's replaced by a new model seems to be
about three months! For my next purchase,
maybe a DV camera will be a better
investment than a still digital
camera!
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Dec
10
|
The Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) has approved the Distributed
Authoring and Versioning
(WebDAV) standard which is designed
to make it possible for web users in
distant locations to write, edit and save
shared documents regardless of which
software program or Internet service they
are using.
"With
WebDAV, users will be able to save and
manage documents on the web in a
consistent way. This will move the web
from a read-only medium to a read-write
medium," said Mark Ryland, director of
standards activities at Microsoft Corp.
"We expect WebDAV to be a big success and
we've committed to support it broadly in
our products."
The
new standard is voluntary, but it's to be
widely adopted, since major web technology
vendors -- including Microsoft, Netscape,
Novell, IBM, Xerox, FileNet and PC DOCS --
cooperated in the working group to develop
the standard. Apache, the public web
server, will have WebDAV support.
The
new standard contains a feature that
prevents more than one person from working
on a document at the same time. Overwrite
protection will lock out all but one
author at a time. Also included is a means
of storing and retrieving what is known as
"metadata" -- encoded information about a
web document such as the author's name,
copyright, publication date and keywords
used by Internet search engines to find
and retrieve relevant documents.
<www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav>
<www.ietf.org>
CNET reports that Forrester
Research is predicting high-definition
television (HDTV) will fail to
offer an affordable digital TV experience.
Instead, the company believes that
standard definition digital television
(SDTV) will succeed because the
televisions will be significantly
cheaper.
<www.news.com
news item "Report:
HDTV's high cost will kill
it">
If you're looking at getting a digital
camera, one factor effecting your decision
might be which kind of memory card is the
best: CompactFlash or
SmartMedia. The question might be
getting easier to answer.
SanDisk
Corporation, inventor of CompactFlash,
has announced that Agfa has decided
to switch to CompactFlash for there
digital cameras, and will announce a
digital camera using CompactFlash in
January at the Comsumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas.
<www.sandisk.com>
 
Recent rumors of HyperCard's death
may have been premature. In a recent
interview Steve Job's said that these
rumors were wrong.
Rumors are also circulating that
Canon will announce the XL2
in a couple of weeks (at CES?), a
replacement for the XL1 DV camera.
[It may be wishful thinking; see
report for Dec 11-Ed]
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Dec
9
|
 
OZ.COM (formerly OZ Interactive)
[what's with these companies
changing there name to Internet
addresses?-Ed], has announced
Fluid3D -- a visual communications
system for the development and deployment
of broadcast-quality, streaming 3D
animation across the Internet. Fluid3D is
integrated with RealNetworks RealPlayer G2
and enables streaming broadcast of 3D
computer animation over the Web within
RealPlayer.
Installing
Fluid3D support into the standard version
of the G2 player requires a one-time
download (350 Kb) that can be installed
and used immediately.
Fluid3D
uses a compression scheme for animation
data that is optimized for streaming
delivery over low-bandwidth connections.
Fluid3D allows artists to create content
using Kinetix 3D Studio MAX and Avid
SOFTIMAGE 3D. Support for other authoring
tools and formats will follow in the
coming weeks. Fluid3D Content Exporters
enable 3D animation to be saved to
Fluid3D's binary file format. Support for
the conversion of VRML 2.0 models as well
as NewTek LightWave 3D and Alias/Wavefront
Maya formats are currently in
development.
Fluid
3D uses OZ' Anim-X CODEC, a proprietary
technology for the compression and
optimization of animation data. Fluid3D
also utilizes a highly compressed binary
format -- providing approximately seven
times the compression of GZIP -- for
storing the geometry and textures needed
to render 3D in real-time on a PC.
Fluid
3D consists of three parts:
- Fluid3D
for RealPlayer G2
- Fluid3D
for RealServerG2: A server-side plug-in
for RealServer G2
- Fluid3D
Content Exporters: Free content
exporter plug-in
Fluid3D
for RealPlayer G2 will be initially
available for the Windows 95/98/NT 4.0
operating systems, with support for the
Mac OS to follow in Q1 99. Fluid3D for
RealServer G2 is available for Windows NT
4.0, with support for Solaris and other
flavors of UNIX in development.
Beta
versions of content exporters are
available at no charge to registered
members of the Fluid3D Developers Program.
Pricing of Fluid3D for RealServer G2 will
be made available at final release.
<www.oz.com>
Meanwhile, Flatland Online, Inc.
has announced 3DML
(Three-Dimensional Markup Language) and
the Flatland Rover software. 3DML
is a new markup language developed by
Flatland that will allow web page builders
to create three-dimensional content on the
Internet. The Flatland Rover is a web
browser extension that displays content
created with 3DML.
Pages
created with 3DML (called "spots") are
fully navigable, fully customizable
virtual environments that incorporate
image, text, animation, sound and
hyperlinks. According to Flatland, 3DML
requires no previous experience with 3D
modeling or programming, and is as easy to
learn as HTML. Flatland provides high
level building blocks, such as billboards,
lampposts, walls, trees, houses and
hyperlinks.
Flatland
Rover is a software application extension
for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Internet Explorer. The Flatland Rover, as
well as tutorials and 3DML building guides
are available online.
<www.flatland.com>
CONFERENCE
INTERACT '99 the Seventh IFIP
Conference on Human Computer Interaction,
30 August - 3 September 1999, Edinburgh,
Scotland has a call for papers. Deadline
for full papers: 25 January 1999. Full
Instructions for Authors are available via
the website.
<www.bcs.org.uk/hci/i99>
CNET reports that IBM has
launched new image sensor chips for use in
consumer and professional digital still
cameras. According to the company the
new chips use a "full-frame pixel design,"
that eliminates wasted pixel space that
can cause poor picture quality.
<www.news.com
article "IBM
sharpens "eyes" of digital
cameras">
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Dec
8
|
Electrifier, Inc. (formerly Lari
Software Inc.) is shipping Electrifier
Pro, a new multimedia authoring tool
which supports a variety of media types
including bitmap and vector animation,
digitized audio, synthesized music (MIDI),
video, 3D, and VR panoramas. Electrfier
Pro also includes what they call
No-Bandwidth media that includes fire,
clouds and ripples, though these might
also be thought of as effects rather than
actual media. There are also over 150
special effects such as emboss, blur, and
fade.
Electrifier
Pro is different from many of the existing
authoring tools because it is built upon
QuickTime's playback engine. This makes
all it's content playable in QuickTime 3,
but also means that the organization and
structure of projects must be based upon
QuickTime playback -- so while you can
create interactive materials, how you go
about this is very different from how you
might create somthing in a tool such as
Director or Authorware.
A
Mac version is currently available, though
the company has said they are working on a
Windows version. Electrifier Pro costs
$595 and a 30-day trial version is
available.
<www.electrifier.com>
Macromedia is shipping Director
7 studio and Dreamweaver 2.
<www.macromedia.com
web page "Director">
<www.dreamweaver.com>
In a short article Emediaweekly
looks at RealNetworks new Real
System G2 and the media types it uses;
including SMIL and the Real Time Streaming
Protocol (RTSP).
<www.emediaweekly.com
article "Streaming
standards get
Real">
ThingWorld.com, formerly
Parable, has announced Streaming
Media Things, which use Windows
Media Technologies to add streaming
audio and video to multimedia created
using their authoring tool
ThingMaker. Streaming audio and
video used in ThingMaker created Things
will have interactive functionality as
well as provide authors with the ability
to lock, copyright, collect, and control
access. This will enable content companies
to control access to content by locking
and hiding the stream's source URL into
the tamper-resistant file format of a
Thing. For example, content providers
could create and distribute pay-per-view
Things that include secure access to both
a free preview and a multimedia offer to
purchase an entire video.
A
preview of this content is available at
MSN Web Events, Microsoft's streaming
media portal site, and at ThingWorld. A
client run time -- ThingViewer 1.2, which
is currently in beta -- is required to
view content. Full release of ThingViewer
1.2 is scheduled for the first quarter of
1999.
No
word on when an updated version of
ThingMaker, the authoring tool, will be
available, or what it will cost.
<www.thingworld.com>
<webevents.msn.com>
StageTools is looking for some
beta-sites for their OnStage!
product. OnStage! is a software product
designed for motion picture and video
producers or directors that will help them
work out the flow of their productions.
OnStage! is a nonlinear idea editor, where
scenes are edited in much the same way as
words are edited on a word processor.
OnStage! can also be used as a virtual
animation stand to perform pans and zooms
on high-resolution images.
If
you are interested in working with this
tool contact: Bill Ferster
<bferster@stagetools.com>
<www.stagetools.com>
Media 100 Inc has certified PCI
expansion chassis from MAGMA
and SBS Bit 3 Operations for use
with Version 5.0 of the Media 100(r)
product line.
The
certified chassis provide new hardware
options that overcome the three-slot
limitation of the Macintosh G3 systems.
MAGMA's PCI-7-DX-400V adds seven
full-length PCI slots in a separate
desktop enclosure. The PCI-7-DX-400V
system includes a 400 watt power supply
and one high volume cooling fan. Pricing
for the MAGMA PCI-7-DX-400V expansion
chassis is $1,235
SBS
Bit 3 Operations ME21 and ME22 include a
PCI host card, an enclosure housing a
backplane with seven available PCI slots,
a backplane controller card, a heavy-duty
power supply, and a 4-foot interconnecting
cable. SBS Bit 3 prices, for models ME21
and ME22, are $1,196 and $1,596
respectively.
<www.magma.com>
<www.sbs-bit3.com>
<www.media100.com>
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Dec
7
|
Apple says Matsushita Electric
Industrial Co., Ltd. and its
subsidiary, Matsushita Electronics
Corporation, have licensed Apple's
FireWire technology for use in
their semiconductors, consumer products
and other applications.
FireWire
was invented by Apple in the early 1990s
and was adopted by IEEE as a standard
(IEEE 1394) in 1995. FireWire has been
adopted by major camcorder manufacturers,
such as Matsushita, as the standard for
transferring digital video from digital
camcorders to other devices such as
personal computers.
<www.apple.com/firewire/>
Artel Software has released version
2.0 of Boris AE. it's plug-in set
for Adobe After Effects. Boris AE offers
44 filters, including new particle and
light effects. Boris AE retails for $495,
registered users can upgrade for $395. A
demo version is available.
<www.borisae.com>
Strata is shipping VideoShop
4.5, which adds support for Apple's
QuickTime 3.0 and DV. Registered users if
version 4 can upgrade for $89; for other
versions it's $189.
<www.strata3d.com>
The SuperCard News site is
dedicated to news about the Macintosh
multimedia authoring tool.
<"SuperCard
News">
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