Video News

Reprinted from a Media 100 press release:

NEW YORK—Media 100 Inc. announced a significant upgrade to Cleaner 5, the award-winning media
processing software for creating on-demand dynamic streaming media,
that ensures support for streaming media output to QuickTime 5,
RealSystem 8.5 and Windows Media 8 (Windows Media 7 for Mac), the
three major player formats for streaming media on the Internet. The
newest version of Cleaner 5 also includes support for the Sorenson
Video 3 codec, which enables the delivery of high-quality streaming
media for QuickTime. With this announcement, Media 100 is enabling its
customers to create high quality streaming media content in multiple
formats and at multiple data rates for digital media delivery on the
Internet in the latest versions of the three major player formats.

The newest version of Cleaner 5, version 5.1, provides support for
the newly released Sorenson Video 3 codec, both Standard and Pro
Editions. With Sorenson Video 3 Pro Edition, Cleaner 5 will continue
to provide customers with 2-pass variable bit rate encoding. Sorenson
Video 3 has been shown to give users better high-motion video quality
than Sorenson Video 2 at less than half of the bit rate and at up to
three times the speed.

Cleaner is the industry-standard tool for adding dynamic,
interactive streaming media and for delivery on the Internet,
broadband, CD-ROM, kiosks, presentations, and DVD. The application
supports all major video, audio, and still image formats, including
Apple Computer’s QuickTime, RealNetwork’s RealSystem, Microsoft’s
Windows Media Technologies, MP3, MPEG and AVI.

Cleaner 5, version 5.1, will be available this summer as a free
download to current Cleaner 5 customers at www.media100.com. Cleaner 5
is available at an MSRP of $599 through select resellers and from the
Media 100 Online Store.

Reprinted from a Media 100 press release:

NEW YORK–July 18, 2001–Media 100 Inc., a leading
provider of digital media design and delivery solutions, today
announced that its Media 100 i, an award-winning digital media
production solution, and Media 100 ICE solutions, the Company’s high
performance hardware accelerated effects generation systems, are
certified with Apple Computer’s new Next Generation G4 Power Mac.

The high performance 867Mhz system is the first of Apple Computer’s
line to be approved for use with Media 100 i and Media 100 ICE
solutions. This newly-announced platform from Apple provides Media 100
customers with a high-performance interactive streaming media
production environment, ideal for creating high quality, dynamic
content for delivery on the Internet, DVD or broadcast. The new Apple
platform debuted this morning at the Macworld Expo in New York City.

The Next Generation G4 provides Media 100 customers with a higher
performance platform for digital media production. The new dual head
graphics option facilitates production workflow and minimizes slot
requirements, providing the flexibility that Media 100 users need when
customizing their work environment. In addition to approving the
867Mhz G4, Media 100 is currently testing the new 733Mhz and 800Mhz
dual platform system and will publish the results at a later date.
Media 100 also expects approval for the new dual head graphics option
for the dual 800Mhz model.

Media 100 i recently received significant industry accolades,
including the “Best Product Quality” award from Film & Video Magazine.
A unique digital media creation system for broadcast production,
interactive streaming and DVD delivery on the Macintosh, Media Media
100 i enables customers to capture, edit, author, encode and publish
video to DVD, the Internet or Broadcast within a seamless streaming
media workflow on a single platform. Unlike more traditional
approaches to content creation, Media 100 i creates a new workflow
paradigm for Internet broadcasters and web designers within a single
solution.

Pricing and Availability for Media 100 and Media 100 ICE
Media 100
i Media 100 i is now available in the following configurations and
prices:

Media 100 i 7.5 LEDV: $2,995
Media 100 i 7.5 LX: $5,995
Media 100 i 7.5 XS: $9,995
Media 100 i 7.5 XR: $17,995

For more information on how to purchase Media 100 i, and for
dealer locations, please visit www.media100.com, or call
1-800-773-1770.

Media 100 ICE and Ultra ICE for Adobe After Effects 5 pricing
starts at $3,750. Macintosh-base After Effects support is available
for existing customers as a download from the Media 100 website,
www.media100.com. Detailed information on CPU performance requirements
and compatible cameras and graphics cards is available on the Media
100 website.

Complete configuration approval guidelines for both Media 100 i
and Media 100 ICE and Ultra ICE is available on the Media 100 website
at www.media100com.

Reprinted from a LaCie press release:

MACWORLD NEW YORK CITY (July 18, 2001) – LaCie reinforced its lead in the mobile storage market today with two major announcements on its highly successful PocketDriveä line. By combining the new FireWire-to-IDE bridge developed by LaCie with high-performance ATA 66 disks, the 10GB, 20GB and 30GB PocketDrives now provide transfer rates of up to 35MB/s—twice as fast as traditional FireWire disks. The new 48GB PocketDrive, which is making its debut at LaCie’s Macworld Booth #1913 this week, will also achieve transfer rates of up to 35MB/s.

Measuring only 3.5″ x 5.75” x 1″ and weighing less than a pound, LaCie’s PocketDrives provide Gigabytes of capacity in an exceptionally small form factor. The new 48GB PocketDrive can store more than 20 hours of MPEG-2 video, more than 70 hours of CD-quality audio or a stack of text documents more than half-a-mile high.

Offering a combination of high capacities, mobility and convenience, the LaCie PocketDrives have quickly become very popular among content developers, illustrators, audio/video professionals and people on-the-go. With both Universal Serial Bus (USB) and FireWireâ (IEEE 1394) support, or “U&I” (LaCie’s acronym and trademark for the dual-support capability), the versatile drives provide users with an easy means of expanding the storage capacity of USB-equipped computers such as Apple iMacs, and iBooks; and FireWire systems such as the Macintosh G4 workstations and G4 Cubes, PowerBooks and the iMacDV systems.

The FireWire and USB buses make the LaCie PocketDrives hot-pluggable–they mount automatically as soon as they are connected and can be removed or swapped without having to shutdown or reboot the system.

In addition, because the PocketDrive is compatible with all FireWire or USB-equipped machines, users can quickly share the contents of the entire drive with others–regardless of their operating system. The capacity and performance of LaCie’s pocket-sized hard drives also make them ideal for full backups of an internal drive, including a bootable operating system.

Available now through LaCie authorized resellers and mail order partners, the LaCie PocketDrives have SRPs (after the $30 mail-in rebates) of $249 for the 10GB hard drive, $349 for the 20GB drive, $449 for the 30GB drive and $849 for the 48GB drive. In addition to the USB and FireWire cables, the drives include a small international power supply adapter for worldwide use, and LaCie’s Silverlining Pro drive management software. Silverlining Pro is the most comprehensive drive management software on the market and the only driver able to manage USB, IDE, SCSI and FireWire peripherals at the same time.

Reprinted from a Boris press release:

NEW YORK - July 18, 2001 - At Macworld today, Boris announced Boris GRAFFITI
2.0, a major upgrade to the company’s award winning graphics and titling
application. The first company to bring 2D and true 3D compositing into
non-linear editing, GRAFFITI 2.0 is the only integrated vector-based titling
package on the market. GRAFFITI 2.0’s vector tools allow easy creation of
sophisticated animations such as text on path, with exceptional sharpness.
Along with flexible animation tools such as Type On and Title Containers for
auto-animated rolls, crawls, fades, shuffles and zooms, GRAFFITI 2.0 allows
users to map text to 3D shapes, and extrude and composite in three
dimensions. GRAFFITI 2.0 also supports the addition of third-party Adobe
After Effects filters.

Feature highlights in Boris GRAFFITI 2.0 include:
Vector Text provides razor-sharp clarity at any scale, as well as the
ability to export animations to .swf (Flash).

Expanded Title Animation Both the path shape and the text position for Text
on Path can be animated over time. “Type On” features one click type-on
animation of progressively applied skew, tumble, spin, rotate, scale,
opacity, and position to a text page, alone or in combination, so individual
characters can easily fly/spin/fade/zoom/shuffle on or off the screen.

Compositing Tools include 27 Apply modes for each layer in Boris GRAFFITI,
motion blur, advanced particle filters, and SmartView to dynamically update
views of animated parameters in the timeline.

Audio Import and Playback Scratch audio track includes timeline waveform
display and level controls to enable easier reference and synchronization to
audio during effect animation design. Real-time playback of scrub audio and
sync audio during Preview to RAM.

Third Party Plug-ins from many leading packages developed for Adobe After
Effects may now be used with all NLE systems supported by Boris GRAFFITI
2.0. They appear in the Boris GRAFFITI Filters menu, and behave like any
other Boris filters.

Unparalleled Integration while not a new feature, remains a crucial
advantage in Boris GRAFFITI 2.0: it is the only effects solution that allows
this range of features directly inside non-linear editing applications. Open
GL and Dual Processor Support on both Windows and Macintosh computers means
faster effects creation and faster rendering. Boris GRAFFITI 2.0 also
features Altivec enhancement on Macintosh G4 computers.

Boris GRAFFITI 2.0 supports Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Apple Final
Cut Pro, Canopus Rex/Raptor/Storm Edit, DPS Velocity, Fast studio.DV, IMC
Incite, in-sync Speed Razor, Ulead Media Studio Pro, United Media Online
Express. Boris GRAFFITI Professional 2.0 supports all Boris GRAFFITI hosts
and adds support for Avid Xpress, Avid Xpress DV, Avid Media Composer, Avid
Symphony, Discreet edit*, Fast purple, Fast silver, Media 100 i, Media 100
iFINISH, Panasonic DV Edit, newsbyte, and Postbox, and Sony ES-3.

Boris GRAFFITI 2.0 will be available in Q3 2001 through resellers worldwide,
with an MSRP of $495.00 USD. Boris GRAFFITI Professional 2.0 has an MSRP of
$995. Upgrades from previous versions of GRAFFITI are $199.

For more information about Boris FX 2.0, including an online feature tour,
visit http://www.borisfx.com/products/GRAFFITI.

Reprinted from a Pinnacle press release:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. –(Jul. 17, 2001)– Pinnacle Systems, Inc. today
announced an advanced DV-based editing and authoring solution that the
company says reduces the cost and production time to create broadcast quality
video and publish interactive DVDs.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE’s powerful processing engine increases productivity by
reducing the time consuming process of rendering and gives videographers the
artistic tools to perfect the combinations of digital effects and 3-D objects in
real-time. Users can combine two digital video streams with titles, graphics, and
3D objects and apply up to ten digital video effects simultaneously in real-time.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE is a real-time DV editing and DVD authoring solution. It
features a hardware DV capture and effects card with digital and analog video and
audio inputs and outputs. Pinnacle Pro-ONE includes Adobe Premiere 6.0,
Pinnacle’s Hollywood FX-RT, TitleDeko RT for video editing and Pinnacle
Impression DVD-SE for DVD authoring.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE includes Hollywood FX RT, giving the user over 200
sophisticated, real-time, keyframeable, multi-layer effects with 3D animated
objects, such as “page peel,” “ripple,” “nightline” and “sports block”.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE gives the user independent slow motion control of two video
clips simultaneously in real-time, an ideal effect for sports or fashion videos.

Pinnacle Pro-One gives the user independent, keyframeable adjustments for
brightness, contrast and saturation of two video clips simultaneously in real-time,
an ideal tool for image correction.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE includes TitleDeko RT, giving the user access to broadcast
quality titles with keyframeable real-time motion control and transparency,
independent of other real-time effects.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE includes Impression DVD-SE, designed specifically to speed
the workflow of professional and corporate DVD creation. Impression lets users
combine edited videos with full DVD menus designed in Photoshop, and build
complex interactivity without any complicated programming.

Pinnacle Pro-ONE will be available later this summer in the U.S. via major
computer retail stores and professional video resellers at a suggested retail price
of $1299.

For more information, visit www.pinnaclesys.com

Reprinted from a LaCie press release:

Hillsboro, OR (July 13, 2001) – Leveraging its 3-month lead as the first to ship a 24×10x40x CD-RW drive with both USB and FireWire connectivity, LaCie announced today that the volume of drives being sold has enabled the company to slash the price of the drive to an unprecedented $299 after the mail-in rebate. In addition to its blazing-fast write speed, LaCie’s new CD-RW incorporates advanced “BURN-Proof (Buffer Under RuN) technology and provides users with the convenience of being able to easily transfer the drive between FireWire and USB-equipped computers. LaCie will feature the drive at Macworld, Booth 1913, next week in New York City.

With the ability to write CD-Rs at 3.6 MB/s (24X)— the industry’s highest CD recording speed– the LaCie 24×10x40 CD-RW can burn a complete 650MB CD in about 3 minutes. The same drive can be used to rewrite CD-RW discs at 1.5 MB/s (10X)–the industry’s fastest rewrite speed. The LaCie CD-RW drive also provides 40x playback and fast, 150ms access.

LaCie includes advanced BURN-Proof technology with the drive to eliminate the possibility of buffer overruns and ensure error-free recording at 24x speeds–even when lower-performance PCs are used. The advanced BURN-Proof technology also allows users to burn CDs in the background while working on other applications.

To achieve USB and IEEE 1394 (U&I) functionality, LaCie incorporates both a FireWire controller and a USB controller in the new 24×10x40x CD-RW drives. When the drive is connected to a FireWire interface, performance is more than 12 Mbytes/second. When the USB interface is used, the LaCie hard drives deliver a sustained performance of up to 750Kbytes/second. Designed with true plug-and-play capabilities, the FireWire and USB buses make the LaCie drives hot-pluggable–they can be removed or swapped without having to shutdown or reboot the system. The drives mount automatically as soon as they are connected, giving users the convenience of being able to add, remove or swap the drive without having to restart the computer.

With iTunes support, the LaCie 24×10x40x drive can be used to create custom audio CDs for that can be played back in a car or home stereo system. LaCie’s FireWire 16×10x40x CD-RW and 8×4x32x PocketDrive CD-RW have also been certified for iTunes support

LaCie’s 24×10x40x CD-RW can be used with most types of CD-R and CD-RW media, including the latest 16x 700MB CD-R discs which provide 6 additional minutes of audio storage or 50MB of data storage, compared to standard 650MB/74-minute CD-R discs. When quality 16X CD-R media is used, it will be checked by the drive and burned at 24X, when possible. If media is not 24X-capable, the drive will automatically downshift to 16X. All LaCie-branded 16X media is 24X compatible and higher-performance media has already been introduced by LaCie and other manufacturers.

The LaCie 24×10x40x CD-RW is available through LaCie’s accredited resellers and mail order partners at an incredible $299 after manufacturer’s $30 mail-in rebate. The 24x CD-RW drive comes in LaCie’s new SE2100 casing and includes BURN-Proof technology, FireWire and USB cables, international power supply, LaCie Recording Utilities and three CD-R discs. An ultra-SCSI version is also available.

The LaCie Recording Utilities CD package includes all the necessary software on a single CD-ROM for both PC and Macintosh environments: Adaptec Toast (with BURN-Proof support) for Macintosh systems, and Adaptec Easy CD Creator for Windows 98SE/NT/2000/Me. With the release of Linux 2.4, FireWire is supported in the Linux operating system. Other Linux users may download X-CD-Roast from the Internet.

by Alan Sheckter, Videomaker news editor

Since it’s release in late-1997, the feature-packed Canon XL1 Mini DV camcorder has been considered by many to be the top-of-the line consumer video camera. Now, Canon is poised to release its first upgrade to the popular model, the XL1S. Available in late August, with a suggested list price of $4,699 (the XL1 debuted at $4,699), the XL1S includes a standard 16x optical zoom lens (which includes Canon’s optical image stabilizer and automatic focus feature). In September, Canon will offer buyers the XL1S with an optional 16x manual lens at the same $4,699 price.

While the XL1S’ exterior is nearly identical to the XL1, expect some major changes on the inside. According to Canon, key improvements are in several areas: picture quality, shooting modes and enhancements, variable zoom speeds, zebra levels, picture adjustments, white balance, audio controls and an improved, optional XLR microphone input adapter.

Canon Product Development and Support Senior Manager Joe Bogacz said all the expressed needs that may have prevented cinematographers and broadcasters from using the XL1 have been addressed in the upgraded XL1S. Watch for a complete review of the XL1S in an upcoming issue of Videomaker.

by Alan Sheckter, Videomaker news editor

Apple Computer announced July 3 that it would stop making its Power Mac G4 Cube, less than a year after it was introduced.

Despite winning design awards, poor Cube sales was blamed for the decision, after sales dropped from 9.5 percent of Apple’s computer sales last September to only 1.6 percent of its sales in March. The Cupertino, Calif. Company has no immediate plans of upgrading the Cube.

The 8-inch, clear-plastic Cube is pre-installed with videographer-friendly features such as iMovie 2 digital video-editing software, and two FireWire ports for easy digital camcorder connections.

And just 4 ½ months ago, Apple further equipped the Cube with a CD-RW drive and iTunes jukebox software.

It’s been reported that customers have been more apt to spend a little more and buy the Power Mac G4 minitower, according to an Apple spokeswoman.

by Alan Sheckter, Videomaker news editor

Contour Design, a leading provider of ergonomically designed computer products, announced new application settings for its audio and video-editing tool, the ShuttlePRO, June 26.

To get the latest application settings (predefined commonly used keystroke commands) visit the company’s Web site: www.contourdesign.com.

With the MSRP of $125, the company said that the ShuttlePRO, a USB Macintosh product (a Windows 2000 version is planned), is the most cost-effective jog and shuttle controller for video and audio editing on the market. Its ability to navigate quickly, settings for more than two dozen commonly-used applications, and user flexibility to change the settings, is expected to enhance personal productivity.

ShuttlePRO application settings support the following Macintosh applications: Acrobat Reader 4, Adobe After Effects 4.1, Adobe Illustrator 8, Adobe PhotoShop 5.5 and 6.0, Adobe Premiere 5.1 and 6.0, Apple CD Player, Apple DVD Player, Apple iMovie, Apple iMovie 2, Apple Final Cut Pro 1.2.5 and 2.0, Apple Sherlock 2, BorisFX 5, BorisRED, BorisGrafitti, DigiDesign ProTools 5.1, Emagic Logic Audio, Internet Explorer, Macromedia Director 8, Macromedia Flash 4, Macromedia Flash 5, Media100I, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, MOTU Digital Performer 2.72, Netscape Communicator, QuarkXpress 4.1, QuickTime Player, Steinberg Cubase VST/32 5.0

by Alan Sheckter, Videomaker news editor

Plugin Galaxy for AE, a collection of 20 After Effects plugins containing 129 different animatable video effects, was announced July 3.

The product is compatible with Adobe After Effects 4/5, Adobe Premiere 6, Final Cut Pro and Pinnacle Commotion 3 on Windows and Macintosh computers.

Plugin Galaxy for AE effects include transparency manipulation, blurring, texture and pattern generation, noise creation, mirroring and warping. It also includes metal, chrome, neon, pop art, glass, rainbow, sunshine and star effects.The software lets you enhance, colorize and add edges to your animations and videos as well as encrypt them. It also includes some rarely-found effects like feedbacks, grids and zooming. All of these effects can be animated over time to produce stunning motion effects.

The 120-plus basic plugin Galaxy for AE effects are manipulated with the help of sliders, check boxes, color settings and preview coordinates, giving users access to thousands of potential video effects.

Plugin Galaxy for AE, as well as a version for Adobe PhotoShop, is available at http://plugingalaxy.com for $99.

The Plugin Site, a graphics, video and Web software developer located in Nuremberg, Germany, also created the Plugin Commander, Edge & Frame Galaxy and HTML Shrinker products and co-produced Alpha Magic with Pinnacle Systems.