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MillimeterMark In
May 1, 2007 12:00 PM
To power Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering rich interactive applications, Microsoft Expression Studio includes Expression Web to create websites, Expression Blend to design rich media, Expression Design to create visual elements, and Expression Media (right) to unify the workflow across the suite and provide digital asset management.
A Multimedia Future
Should your future production plans include video for the Web? The necessary high-speed connections will be there. According to recent Nielsen//NetRatings data, U.S. broadband penetration broke 80 percent among active Internet users for the first time in February.
Print magazines, meanwhile, are an example of old media finding it necessary to become relevant for the Internet era by doing their own video production, using Internet TV service providers such as Brightcove (www.brightcove.com). Time.com recently relaunched its website, boosting video content via an inhouse studio that will also produce original web video content for the company's stable of 150 magazines.
Helping the move to media on the Web are major players in the software tools market, including Adobe and Microsoft. Each now trumpets rich interactive applications (RIA) for computers and television, as well as cell phones and other nontraditional delivery formats.
Adobe has a lead position due to the pervasiveness of its Flash player — claimed to be installed on the vast majority of web-connected computers. YouTube, for example, relies on Flash; the huge popularity of the site is partly due to the fact that videos immediately start playing without downloading an extra application.
In March, Adobe released initial code for its Apollo Project, due for final release in the fall. Apollo will enable the creation of a single desktop app for both Windows and the Mac OS; it combines Adobe Reader, Flash player, and Apple's Safari browser engine. An Internet video program, code-named “Philo,” is the first major Apollo app in the works. Philo will exist in a new space that blends the Web and the desktop, accessing local file systems even when not attached to the Internet, yet integrating closely with media-rich websites when connected. Apollo builds upon Adobe Flex 2 — Adobe's application development solution for creating and delivering RIAs.
At NAB 2007, Microsoft launched two new products to stake its own claim to that rich-media space: Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering RIAs; and Microsoft Interactive Media Manager, a server-based product to manage digital content from creation to distribution. Silverlight has already turned up powering the interactive video in websites such as those at Fox Movies (www.foxmovies.com) and TVGuide (video.tvguide.com).
“It's a whole new market for anyone involved in video production,” says Sean Alexander, director, user experience/server tools, Microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't shy away from directly taking on Adobe's well-entrenched content creation tools, either. To power Silverlight, this past December,Microsoft announced its own toolkit,Expression Studio, planned for delivery in the second quarter of 2007. Expression Studio includes Expression Web (for creating websites), Expression Blend (for designing rich interactive experiences for Windows), Expression Design (for the design of visual elements for the Web and Windows), and Expression Media (for digital asset management and to unify workflow across the suite).
To find a place in the Internet of the future, get interactive.
Digital Content Producer’s The Briefing Room
Mammoth HD Footage Library Releases 22 Royalty-free Collections
The Mammoth HD Wildlife Gallery adds Wayne Crawford’s South Africa Series, with elephants, rhinos, cape buffalo, and leopards, and Art Levy’s Moose Collection. J.Michael Media’s scenics include the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Autumn and Arches National Park.
MHD’s Rights-Manged Library sees the addition of Cary Anderson’s ‘Bears of the Tongass,’ an hour’s worth of screeners covering black bears and grizzly bears fishing for salmon. …
Habana Avenue Blazes Across the Starting Line with Aerosmith in NASCAR Open for ESPN
Habana Avenue put the pedal to the metal recently when it help create Aerosmith’s rockin’ NASCAR season open, which precedes every race broadcast on ESPN. The high-octane, 12-camera HD shoot took place during the band’s concert gig at the MGM Grand Arena, Las Vegas. …
Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink HD Capture Cards Qualified by Apple for Final Cut Studio 5.1
Blackmagic Design announced qualification of DeckLink HD Extreme and DeckLink HD Pro by Apple for use with its Final Cut Studio 5.1 software. Apple qualification of capture cards is achieved through rigorous testing and analysis to ensure that devices such as DeckLink HD Extreme and Pro are compatible with current Apple hardware and software. …
Autodesk Incinerator 2007 Turbo Boosts Digital Color Grading Process
Autodesk has introduced Autodesk Incinerator 2007, a new release of its Incinerator clustering technology for the Autodesk Lustre 2007 digital color grading system. Incinerator 2007 boosts the Lustre 2007 system’s interactivity and processing power by using the latest multi-core CPU technology, Infiniband networking technology, and GPU acceleration. Incinerator 2007 is ideal for realtime color grading of high-resolution commercials and feature films. …
What control platform is used for the “800 Light Years” show?
E/T/C UK’s OnlyView control software
To celebrate the re-opening of the landmark St. George’s Hall building in Liverpool, England, the Liverpool Culture Company commissioned large-format projection specialists E\T\C UK to design and produce the “800 Light Years” show. The outdoor sound-and-light show is the first to use E\T\C’s OnlyView control software to run and control eight HD Christie S 20+ video projectors. OnlyView produces images and effects in realtime without any delays for rendering. Because the production space is limited by the building’s gardens, the projectors had to be located less than 76ft. from the building. Two towers were constructed to house the projectors, lighting, and sound. The projectors were fitted with 1.45X-1.8X zoom lenses and ran as four double-stacked pairs for optimum brightness. They were also angled at 25 degrees to squeeze every last inch of additional throw out of the beam paths, which produces severe keystoning and image distortion. This is all corrected in OnlyView, which also does all the edge blending to produce the single image. OnlyView also allows complex animations and window-in-window effects to be applied within the main projections.
On reel-exchange.com
Digital Events, Denver
Digital Events is a boutique, regional film, post, and motion design company that now does work on a more national stage—recently adding companies such as MTV, VH1, and GMC to its client list. Working in various types of film and video formats, including 35mm, HDCAM CineAlta, and even MiniDV, the company does projects ranging from television and movie production to animation, motion graphics, and advanced DVD interfaces. Check out Digital Events’ demo reel and full profile at reel-exchange.com/members/d9e4f6be/profile.
Want to be a part of Reel-Exchange and its growing community of global collaborators? For the free trial offer, email Reel-Exchange’s Community Manager Craig Erpelding at register@reel-exchange.com or visit reel-exchange.com and click on the “Register” link.
Skillset
Advanced MIDI Orchestrating and Sequencing Techniques
June 9
New York
$249.95
manhatpro.com
Richard Sussman, who has more than 20 years experience composing for film and TV, teaches this hands-on workshop to explore the musical and expressive techniques of using changes in volume, articulation, and tempo, as well as some basic principles of classical orchestration, to breathe life, creativity, and feeling into your sequences. All of these techniques will work with either hardware synths and samplers or Virtual Instruments.
DV Revolution Workshop
June 15-17
Santa Monica, Calif.
$795
www.dvcreators.net
This three-day course begins with the “Secrets of Shooting Great DV” workshop, which covers secrets, techniques, and tips to get world-class results from DV camcorders, lighting, mics, and accessories. Day two of the program teaches you how to take the raw footage from day one and transform it with Apple Final Cut Pro, and day three focuses on today’s digital delivery techniques for the finished product. The three days can be taken individually for $275 each class.
Shooting for Video Film Style
June 22- 24
Wilkes-Barre, Penn.
$425
www.videocameraclass.com/CameraClass.html
Designed for aspiring camera assistants and DPs alike, this weekend workshop will teach the essentials of camera operation and will get you caught up to where you need to be in order to understand just what cameras are capable of doing when used by an experienced operator. The course will allow all attendees hands-on experience with indoor and outdoor setups, and will cover camera formats and aspect ratios, composition, and camera movements.
Media Resources
Creative Screen Spotting: Effective Mounting Solutions for Retail Digital Signage
By Dale Smith, Peerless Industries
www.tdsg.net/resources.html
Expert advice on placing displays for effective digital signage
Open Architectures in 21st Century Post
By Mark Horton, Quantel
www.quantel.com/site/en.nsf/HTML/whitepapers
Combining software with powerful hardware gives post houses the edge in a range of applications.
NABlog
Leitner’s Mondo NAB: Tuesday
By David Leitner
Leave it to Cinematography Mailing List’s (CML) ringleaders to restore my levity with an absurdist touch of their own: camera test equipment from the Strip; namely, a genuine Las Vegas showgirl resplendent in gold lamé with a huge blue plume erupting from her head. Folks, there is no digital cinema camera “shoot out” like this anywhere in the world. Geoff Boyle, the U.K. DP who founded and runs CML as a “virtual pub,” begets an Internet forum like none other in the industry. Likewise, CML’s NAB beer bash, held at Media Underground—an impressive real-world studio across the tracks (Interstate 15) from the hubbub of NAB—is reason alone for any cinematographer or videographer to attend NAB. …
Advanced Encoding from Thomson
By Trevor Boyer
Late last year, Thomson started talking about an encoder product known as “Tiger,” which it had sold to its Technicolor unit for encoding of HD DVD and Blu-ray content. At NAB, Thomson was showing the encoder, although without the feline name—at this point, it’s just “HD H.264 Encoder.” This is designed with the hardcore compressionist in mind—someone at a major DVD encoding house who’s looking for a powerful way to preserve as much quality as possible in high-def disc deliverables. …
Make It Go Away…Quickly
By Dan Ochiva
Waiting until your files are finished compressing beats watching paint dryalthough just barely. Kulabyte is offering a solution, and you won’t have to buy into specialized hardware that ends up going out-of-date before you’ve paid it off. The software-only product takes advantage of today’s multicore processors to deliver a claimed more than 12 times improvement in compression speed over industry-standard codec times for the two initially offered codecs: H.264 and Flash. …
Sony in 3D
By Cynthia Wisehart
Nearly five years ago at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival’s technology gathering, Vince Pace brought a 3D rig that was two Sony F900s—maybe they were F950s—literally taped together … with tape. Since then, Pace and James Cameron have been chasing the 3D dream with a conviction that only deep pockets can enable. The Sony press conference opened with a far more polished version of Pace/Cameron 3D. It’s called Fusion, and it’s had a successful workout by the NBA. So successful that the NBA is considering extending the reach of the All Star games with international 3D broadcasts. The idea that movie theaters could also be used for these types of special presentations has been around since the beginning of digital cinema. Is this progress? Stay tuned, so to speak. …
NAB 2007 Podcast: Class On Demand President Paul Holtz
By Jan Ozer
Apple Final Cut Studio has several completely new modules and dramatic interface changes. Ditto for Adobe CS3. In this podcast, Class On Demand President Paul Holtz discusses the online and DVD training his company designed for these applications, and how they compare to materials offered by lynda.com and Total Training.
