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Week
of Dec 14 1998
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Dec
18
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Iomega Corporation has begun
limited shipment of its Clik! Mobile
Drives and 40MB Clik! disks. The first
Clik! drive configuration to be available
is the Clik! Drive for Digital Cameras.
The
Clik! Drive for Digital Cameras ships with
the Clik! Flash Memory Reader, a Clik!
40MB disk, an integrated battery, and a
parallel port desktop docking station. In
addition to the digital photo bundle,
other Clik! Mobile Drive bundles are
expected to ship by the end of the month
or early January 1999. These include the
Clik! Drive for Mobile Computers and the
Clik! Drive Plus bundle.
The
handheld Clik! Mobile Drive weighs less
than seven ounces and Clik! 40MB disks are
2`` by 2''. The Clik! Mobile Drive bundle
for digital photography is available at an
estimated street price of $249. Clik!
disks are expected to be available in 2-,
4- and 10-packs for an estimated street
price as low as $9.99 each when purchased
in a 10-pack.
<www.iomega.com>
Replay Networks is developing a
tapeless video recorder which
should be shipping soon. The set-top
device will be available in different
configurations that can record for various
lengths of time (the 6-hour unit costs
$995.) It looks like an interesting
device; it's primary advantage is that
they claim it can record will replaying a
recording. If someone calls while you are
watching a broadcast show you can start it
recording, then after the call start
watching again while the unit continues
recording.
Replay
will start national trials next week of
the free Replay Network Service which
provides an on-screen channel guide
navigated with the ReplayTV remote
control. The Replay Network Service is
delivered to the set-top device using a
standard telephone line. ReplayTV
automatically calls a toll-free local
number during off-hours to access the
service and download updates of local
broadcast information and other
programming information. The free Replay
Network Service also automatically sets
ReplayTV's internal clock and provides
periodic software updates to allow
in-the-field upgrades of
ReplayTV.
Replay
Networks began taking orders for ReplayTV
earlier this month and will begin shipping
to select customers for trial next week.
Volume shipments will begin in the first
quarter of 1999.
<www.replaytv.com>
MediaStudio Pro 5.2 is now
available and is being provided free to
all registered 5.0 users. The new release
new file support, and usability
enhancements which make creating and
editing digital video easier, faster, and
more flexible than ever before.
MediaStudio
Pro users can also take advantage of a
Bonus Pak that includes Intergraphs ViZfx
(34 high-end video effects), Ulead COOL 3D
Ver. 1.0, and provides plug-ins for both
RealNetworks RealVideo and Microsoft ASF
streaming file format support.
<www.ulead.com
web page "MediaStudio
update">
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Dec
17
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Pinnacle Systems has entered into
an agreement to acquire Truevision,
Inc. a supplier of digital video products.
Under
the terms of the agreement, Truevision
shareholders will receive 0.0313 shares of
Pinnacle Common stock for each share of
Truevision common stock. Based on
yesterday's closing price of Pinnacle
Systems stock, the consideration paid plus
estimated transaction costs is
approximately $14.5 million
At
the completion of the transaction, the
Company expects to maintain Truevision's
engineering and customer support operation
in Indianapolis, Indiana and to merge
Truevision's Santa Clara engineering,
sales and logistics operations into
Pinnacle Systems' Mountain View,
California headquarters.
<www.pinnaclesys.com>
I just spent about an hour talking to a
Kodak representative about
digital cameras. At the end I asked
him what digital cameras means for film,
and he said that at the moment it means
they sell more of it. He said that every
time they've bought out a new film format
(110, APS etc) the sales of 35mm film have
gone up, and that currently the trend
remains; they're selling more film even
though they are selling digital
cameras.
One
thing he noted was that he recently went
on vacation taking a digital camera along
with regular cameras. He felt that being
able to view pictures on the LCD display
actually inspired them to take more
photographs using the traditional camera
(as well as the digital.)
Anyway,
it looks like film will be alive for a
little while longer...
Excite and Seattle FilmWorks
have announced an agreement to give Excite
users free photo scanning and Web
posting when they purchase film processing
from Seattle FilmWorks. When Excite users
process film through Seattle FilmWorks,
the photos can also be digitally scanned
and made available to via the Web at no
additional cost.
"Since
we introduced Pictures on Disk and
PhotoMail, our efforts to promote photo
computing have focused on enabling
customers to use the Web to share their
photos with friends and family," said Gary
Christophersen, CEO, Seattle FilmWorks,
Inc.
<www.filmworks.com>
<www.excite.com>
 
Tribeworks has updated the
iShell Editor (they're multimedia
authoring tool) to version1.0fc5. To
download it, first go to the website and
click on Member Login. Once you get to the
Trial Area, look for the Download Software
link.
The
iShell Guide also has been updated and can
be downloaded from the Documentation
section of the Trial Members area.
<www.tribeworks.com>
DirectXtras has announced
DirectConnection Xtra, a Scripting
Xtra for Macromedia Director and
Authorware that lets you control
the process of establishing a dial-up
connection with another
computer.
DirectConnection
Xtra can:
- Check
whether there is an active dial-up
connection to the Internet.
- Connect
and disconnect your applications to the
Internet on an as-needed basis. No
interaction from the user is neccecary.
The process can take place in the
background.
- Connect
and disconnect other dial-up
connections.
- Create,
delete and modify dial-up connection
profiles.
- Get
and set dial-up connection properties.
DirectConnection
Xtra is available for Windows 9X and NT,
at $49/developer; one time licensing fee.
A fully functional trial version of
DirectConnection Xtra can be downloaded
from their Web site.
<www.directxtras.com>
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Dec
16
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The VRML Consortium has expanded
it's charter to include multiple
technologies for 3D on the Internet.
Previously, the Consortium would only
consider VRML-based proposals; but
now the invitation is open for other
technologies to be considered for
standardization. The goal of the new
charter is to create a suite of
interoperating standards targeted at
specific market segments. To reflect this
new expanded charter, the consortium is
now called the Web3D
Consortium.
The
Web3D Consortium has also initiated an
internal process to define an
interoperable set of lightweight and
extensible component 3D standards to
flexibly address the needs of a wide range
of Internet and broadcast applications.
This process has the backing and support
of key industry members and is expected to
promote interoperability with standards
such as DHTML, XML, DOM and MPEG-4 to
encourage the ubiquitous deployment of
reliable 3D content.
The
Web 3D Consortium invites new members and
participation from companies who wish to
tender standard proposals for immediate
attention, and to be involved in the
definition of standards to drive the
future direction of 3D graphics
technology. Interested parties should
contact Deepak
Kamlani.
More information is available at the Web
3D Consortium's Web site
<www.vrml.org
or www.w3d.org>
GRAPHICS
Extensis Corporation has announced
PhotoGraphics 1.0, a tool for
creating re-editable basic vector shapes
and text on a path within
Photoshop. PhotoGraphics will let
users create editable vector shapes that
can be filled and stroked with drawing
tools such as line, pen, ellipse,
rectangle, polygon and starburst. The
opacity of each object can be set
independently and vector shapes can be
edited at any time, even after they have
been rasterized.
The
plug-in can also create multiple text
blocks on a path with independent control
over placement and formatting of each
block on the path. Users have control over
character level formatting and can specify
baseline shift, kerning, tracking,
leading, color and more for characters on
an individual basis.
PhotoGraphics
1.0 also provides text formatting options
not available in Adobe Photoshop such as
multiple independent text blocks,
character style sheets, super and
subscript, all caps, small caps, full
justification, and horizontal and vertical
scaling. Multiple illustrations can be
saved within a Photoshop document,
allowing them to be exchanged among users,
reopened and re-edited at any time.
Additionally, users can set the level of
anti-aliasing for any object from a
sliding quality scale that provides
superior text and edge smoothing
results.
English
versions of PhotoGraphics 1.0 will be
available January 25, 1999 for $149.95.
French, German and Japanese versions will
be available Q2 1999. Extensis
PhotoGraphics is compatible with Adobe
Photoshop 4.0 and 5.0, Windows 95, 98, NT
4.0, and Power Mac OS 7.5.5-8.5.
<www.extensis.com>
The release version of the new DPS
Spark 2.01 software is now available.
Note that if you have been using DPS Spark
2.01 Beta 1 (not beta 3) make sure you
take special care with uninstalling that
old version. The uninstaller that came
with beta 1 will wipe out all the
multimedia settings (codecs, sound drivers
etc.) of your system. DPS has a special
uninstaller you can download for that will
safely clean up the beta 1 version.from
dps.
<www.dps.com>
MAGAZINE
Megapixel.Net is a Digital Still
Camera Web Magazine available in
English and French. The latest edition
includes reviews of the Nikon CoolPix 900,
Mavics FD-71 and Ricoh RDSC 4300 as well
as an article about Art and Digital
Photography.
<www.megapixel.net>
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Dec
15
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I just received the Director 7
package, and was looking forward to trying
out the Multiuser Server software
which is included with it.
After
opening the package and thumbing through
the documentation I could find no mention
of the server. Inserting the CD revealed
that there was an installer for the
server, which installed the software and a
Read Me file. Opening the Read Me revealed
no documentation; only a pointer to a
Macromedia website page which contained no
documentation for the server...
<www.macromedia.com>
Visited the local Best Buy store
over the weekend. They had a Panasonic
HDTV set (about $6,000) as well as a
Toshiba Widescreen TV ($2,000 but
they don't sell it, it was only there as
part of a demo for DVD.)
Personally,
though I really like the idea of a
widescreen TV for watching movies, I was
underwhelmed by what I saw. The Panasonic
was showing a DVD movie beside a regular
projection TV, and maybe something was
off, but I actually liked the image
quality of the "regular" set better.
Certainly the HDTV set showed no
resolution improvement. Of course, DVD
isn't really HDTV, but I was surprised how
the other set looked better.
The
Toshiba set, which like the Panasonic HDTV
is a projection system, doesn't offer the
resolution of HDTV, but it is widescreen.
Unfortunately, here again the image
quality was only average, though this was
in a regular store environment and I hear
these sets are very susceptable to light
reflections.
One
thing I was really surprised about; they
were using a demo DVD which had short
clips on it, and along the bottom of the
screen where titles which exhbitied very
noticeable compression artifacts!
Ouch!
I
then went to another store and saw
Sony's new flat screen Vega
TV. One model is $1,500. The image was
sharp and bright. Previously I'd been
thinking I'd like a widescreen TV but if I
had two grand burning a whole in my pocket
right now I think I'd be tempted to get
one of those.
WebTV says it is rethinking it
descision not to support Java and
RealAudio. This is probably good news for
the owners of these boxes; or is it? With
so little memory I wonder how useful these
plug-ins will be? Just what is
"PersonalJava" and will it run all
applets? And if it doesn't, then what use
is it?
<www.webtv.com>
MAGAZINE
Play Incorporated has released
Play Ink: The Magazine of Play, Its
People and Its Culture.
Play
Ink gives readers a News Flash with
current pieces of information about
company events, as well as the "Vital
Statistics" of all of Play's products.
Additional features include details on how
to make a high-quality television
commercial for $50 and The Blaster Space
Chick Comic Strip.
[That's
what the news release at the website says.
Unfortunately, there's no information on
the site about how to get a copy of the
damn thing! -Ed]
<www.play.com>
Adobe Systems has announced the
immediate availability of an enhanced
version of Adobe Premiere 5.1 called
Premiere RT 5.1. The application
will only be available as a
software/hardware bundle from two video
board manufacturers: Pinnacle
Systems and Matrox Video Products
Group.
Adobe
Premiere RT software's real-time
capabilities, enabled by an expansion of
the Media Abstraction Layer in Premiere
5.1, allow video editors to add
transitions, apply filters and create 2D
and 3D video motion without having to
render the effects. Hardware developers
who take advantage of this new API can
offer their Adobe Premiere RT customers
significantly improved performance for
faster processing time and enhanced
creative freedom, enabling a wider range
of unique video effects - all of which,
until now, have only been available from
video editing systems costing tens of
thousands of dollars more.
Pinnacle
Systems will bundle two real-time products
with Premiere RT software, ReelTime and
ReelTime NITRO. Both products support two
channels of D1 broadcast-quality video,
and include titling, transitions, chroma,
luma and linear keying, plus over 400
special effects. ReelTime costs $4,995 and
ReelTime NITRO $8,995
Matrox
is bundling Adobe Premiere RT software
with the Matrox DigiSuite and DigiSuite LE
cards. The DigiSuite platforms offer two
streams of D1 video - up to
uncompressed-quality - plus 32-bit
animated graphics in real time without
rendering. Transitions, DVEs,
color-correction, keying and video filters
can be applied simultaneously to multiple
video and graphics layers in real time.
Matrox is offering a "Dream Suite" bundle
that includes a DigiSuite LE card, Adobe
Premiere RT, Inscriber CG and Boris FX for
$4,995. Matrox DigiSuite with Adobe
Premiere RT, Inscriber CG and Boris FX is
priced at $9,995.
<www.adobe.com>
Rumors are cirulating that Apple
will announce QuickTime 4.0 at the
January MacWorld. They may also
announce or demonstrate Final Cut,
the video editing package they bought from
Macromedia.
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Dec
14
|
Reader Matt Snider reports that his
local camera store (in Texas) had a
Canon representative visiting over
the weekend. The rep said that Canon plans
no changes to the Optura DV camera
for 1999. The sku will remain the same and
no new variations of this product should
appear, as far as the rep knows at
present. No price drops are planned
either.
<www.canondv.com>
Matt also reports that Radius will
soon introduce Edit DV 1.5 for
Windows. It is supposed to be a
feature-for-feature match of the Macintosh
produce supporting QuickTime 3 for Windows
and is supposed to be QuickTime 4 ready.
Edit DV 1.5 Windows will include the PCI
DV IEEE-1394 Firewire card and cable.
Radius was going to introduce this in
February, 1999 but the Canon rep already
has a sku for it and expects it to be
introduced in early January. The product
has a huge amount of backorders
already.
<www.radius.com>
The B3 beta build of VR SceneWorx
is now available. VR SceneWorx allows you
to design and compose QuickTime VR
multi-node scenes that are playable on
both Macintosh and Windows. It's due to
ship this month, and will sell for $89.99.
At this point they are primarily
interested in looking for problems, though
feature suggestions are welcome for future
versions.
<www.vrtoolbox.com>
Sven
Technologies has has announced
SurfaceSuite PRO Link for LightWave
3D. The software is designed to
increase workflow integration between
SurfaceSuite PRO and LightWave 3D by
eliminating the need for file conversion
and file import and export.
SurfaceSuite
PRO, which was introduced in August, is an
Adaptive Texture Mapping application for
3D production artists, animators, and
designers. Adaptive Texture Mapping
facilitates efficient, photorealistic
texture mapping by treating texture maps
like sheets of rubber that can be placed,
warped and blended on a model in real
time. This technique is useful for
texturing tasks ranging from complex
facial animation to simple texturing of
primitives.
SurfaceSuite
PRO works with most 3D modeling
applications, including LightWave 3D,
Softimage 3D, Maya, and 3D Studio MAX.
<www.sven-tech.com>
ONLINE
MAGAZINE
VirtualCode Magazine has just
published it's first issue. The magazine
has articles on a wide array of knowledge
such as, web development, Director,
Authorware, JavaScript, Java, C, C++, VB,
Delphi, and more. The magazine accepts
submission of articles from it's viewers
and requests for articles. The site also
does code contests and offers prizes to
the winners.
I
took a quick look at the site: I saw
articles on JavaScipt and Delphi in the
first issue. It looks like it coude be
interesting.
<www.VirtualCode.com>
MY
SHOPPING LIST
I've created a short list of books and
software that I thought was interesting.
Very little of this is multimedia related,
but if you're having trouble finding the
perfect gift, maybe this page will help
you!
<Shopping
List 1998>
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