Discrete Cosine

A few Final Cut Studio 3 rumors

Now that FCS3 is apparently in the hands of some outside testers, a few more bits of information are leaking out. AppleInsider has a bit of a roundup - no feature details, but at least more confirmation that an update is in the pipeline.

Evom - a replacement for iSquint?

Cough, is this thing still on? Sorry for the absence, the end of the semester sort of owned me.

TUAW posted a little blurb about a new app called Evom, which is a super simple video conversion app. Similar to the now-defunct iSquint, it'll take anything in, and spit out ipod-compatible video.

It's still in beta, and may not be free when it launches, but it looks pretty slick.

Foundry fix for rolling shutter

FreshDV has an interview with a developer from the Foundry, discussing a demo project they have to correct rolling shutter. It's worth a viewing if you're interested in the pros and cons of CMOS. I've had discussions with folks in the past about the sort of optical analysis necessary to correct rolling shutter in post, so it's pretty cool to see it being done. Also interesting is his guess that within 2-3 years, rolling shutter won't be an issue (in new cameras).

AJA KI Pro brings direct to disk ProRes capture to the field

The AJA KI Pro is a DDR recorder which records from HD-SDI or HDMI directly to ProRes Quicktime files on a variety of media types.

This is a pretty amazing piece of hardware, small enough to travel with. This makes a pretty awesome complement to something like an XDCam EX.

Matrox launched MXO2 Mini and dedicated H.264 accelerator

Apparently it was a long winter in Canada, as Matrox has just announced two relatively awesome products.

The first is the Matrox MXO2 Mini, a stripped down version of their MXO2 PCI-E/expresscard capture box. The MXO2 provides input and output for HDMI, analog component, plus svideo and composite. So, for all the folks who want to capture the 4:2:2 HDMI output for their cheap consumer cameras, this box makes that a reality for less than $500. That's a pretty amazing deal.

At the same time, Matrox has announced the CompressHD. It's a PCI-Express card which offers hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding. Unlike other solutions, it appears to directly integrate into transcoding products like Compressor, so it can plug into existing workflows.

Priced at less than $500, the CompressHD could become a no-brainer addition to many edit suites, assuming it does what it claims. Matrox just jumped a few slots on my "must visit booths" list.

Another Prosumer AVC-HD cam from Panasonic

Panasonic has just announced the AG-HMC40, a small form factor "AVCCAM" camcorder. You get XLR inputs, 1080p recording, and a touch interface.

Think of it as a baby brother to the HMC-150, about which I hear many good things. I'll definitely be checking it out at NAB tomorrow.

Sony capitulates to the collapse of capitalism

I'm a few days late in posting this, but it's exciting none-the-less. Sony, recognizing that budgets aren't likely to grow any time soon, has released a pair of low-end HD studio cameras, with one model breaking the $50,000 barrier.

The HXC-100 and HSC-300 are both triax-based "industrial" style cameras, which can accept existing large lens kits. They're switchable between SD and HD, and support both 1080i and 720p.

Basically, these are no frills HD studio cameras, which have been lacking in the Sony line. We've used the D35, D50 and D55 cameras in our studios, and have been very happy with the quality and mostly happy with the reliability.

There's very little additional information available about these cameras, but hopefully more will appear at NAB. The prices ($69k for the HSC-300, $45k for the HCX-100) are supposed for a "basic system," though it's not clear what that includes. I'm going to assume that it's camera+CCU, sans lens.

Install iMovie 06 on a machine with iLife 09

I just unpacked some new iMacs which ship with iLife '09. When trying to install iMovie 06 on these machines, I was prompted to install iLife 08 first. Solution?

Open a terminal and type "touch /Library/Preferences/com.apple.iLife08.plist"

Done.

Canon using dSLR sensors in camcorders?

Gizmodo has a rumor that Canon will be using the chips from their dSLR cameras in a future XL-H1-style camera. Certainly wouldn't be surprising, but it'll be interesting to see what form this product takes.

Scopebox 2.1

Scopebox 2.1 has just been released, bringing a wide range of changes, including better HDV and QT performance, interface tweaks and a number of usability enhancements (bugfixes). A free download for Scopebox license holders, so go grab your copy.

RAID is not backup

Stumbled upon this article regarding a lawsuit filed against Promise Technology. It seems that online backup firm Carbonite was using Promise gear to store their data (mistake number one). They were relying strictly on RAID to keep the data safe (mistake number two). An alleged firmware bug caused the arrays to get trashed. So customers lost data, and Carbonite is suing Promise.

Just a good reminder that RAID Is Not Backup.

Whaa? Cisco acquires Pure Digital

I was rather surprised to learn that Cisco has acquired Pure Digital, creators of the Flip Video line of cameras. These cameras have been hugely successful, but it's surprising to see Cisco getting into that field.

The $590 million dollar purchase price is also pretty surprising. Obviously Cisco thinks there's a lot more value to be found in the Flip line. I've been more inclined to consider them a nice transition product on our way to properly video enabled cell phones.

Microsoft Embracing H.264

Was that a pig that just went by my window?

Ben Waggoner from Microsoft made a post on the quicktime-users mailing list yesterday announcing that Silverlight 3 (currently in beta) will support H.264. This extremely exciting, as previously Silverlight was Windows Media only.

Take a look at this post from Ben, detailing some of the media-related changes. This means it'll now be possible to deliver the exact same file in Flash, Silverlight and a podcast.

ProApps press conference on March 24th?

MacRumors is reporting that some dude in Germany thinks there'll be a proapps oriented press conference on March 24th. Normally these rumors are pretty "meh," but lots of people are itching to see an update to Final Cut Studio, or some sort of statement from Apple about their long term feelings on the proapp sector.

Hi there, my name is rolling shutter

If you want an example of just how bad rolling shutter can be, take a look at this video shot on a Canon 5D Mark II. Wow, that's some craziness.!