desktop post: products

Accelerating HD for Idol 

Compositing Choreography 

By Michael Goldman

When Steele Inc., Santa Monica, Calif., took the job of filling a Mexican soccer stadium with 40,000 screaming fans for a Spanish-language :30 spot promoting...

Step by Step: Extreme Decks 

By Ellen Wolff

Matte World Digital, Novato, Calif., is well-known for creating synthetic environments, amassing a long credit list that includes Cats & Dogs, The Last...

Tools for FX and DI 

By Robert Nederhorst, Digital Domain
By Michael Cioni, PlasterCITY Digital Post

Iridas: Making Effects Work Quick and Easy to Check Back in 2000, you couldn't find an app to do any type of professional, uncompressed frame playback...

Making Sahara Glow 

By Michael Goldman

Paramount's Sahara, directed by Breck Eisner and starring Matthew McConaughey, is an old-fashioned adventure thriller in which heroic characters, lost and desperate under a brutal desert sun, manage to maintain ...

Is Realtime Real? Part 2 

By S. D. Katz

A movie and a game from the same title are like Siamese twins. They may share some vital organs, but they're still two distinct personalities...

The iPOD and HD 

By S. D. Katz

Here's a stunt that sums up desktop video in 2005. Blackmagic Design, the I/O card manufacturer that's setting the bar in price/performance, was looking...

Breaking the Comfort Zone 

By Michael Goldman

Marvin Rush points with pride to twin Apple Cinema HD Display monitors ablaze with colorful imagery from a scene he's directing for an upcoming episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Rush, a longtime Star Trek franchise veteran, has served as the show's DP since its inception four years ago. Today, however, he's directing an episode titled “Through the Mirror Darkly, Part 2” while his A camera operator, Doug Knapp, takes over his DP duties....

HDV@Work 

Is Realtime Real? Part 1  

By S. D. Katz

They come at you from every side, just as quickly your fully automatic weapon cuts them down. In the distance you see the muzzle flash, the late report...