Friday, June 06, 2008

Toon Boom launches Pencil Check Pro

Randy Boyes | 06/06- 11:37 AM

Flexible line testing software

Montreal (June 4, 2008) – Emmy award-winning Toon Boom Animation Inc. today announced the launch of Toon Boom Pencil Check Pro, the most flexible line testing software available in the industry. Pencil Check Pro completes the animation pipeline by offering a wide array of capture options, an efficient line testing process and an advanced feature set.

Plug and capture

Pencil Check Pro supports a full range of devices from scanners to DV / HDV cameras, webcams and digital cameras. Pencil Check Pro performs all capture operations from a unique interface and has a real-time preview for devices equipped with live video stream.

Easily learn animation principles

Sketch key poses directly in the software, playback instantly and use the audio track capabilities while filling the exposure sheet. Draw the in-betweens, clean the animation and prepare your work for inking and painting. Finally, add camera motion to deliver a complete line test of your animation.

Beyond line testing

Easily control the colour and opacity of Xsheet columns for accurate preview. Enjoy the digital exposure sheet and use its annotation columns to add comments and sketches. Maximize a highly integrated pipeline with Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, Digital Pro and Harmony.

“Toon Boom has always been committed to animators, developing leading-edge technology to support their creative process. As a testament to that, Pencil Check Pro offers an extensive feature set designed around a user friendly interface, and is fully compatible with Storyboard Pro, Digital Pro and Harmony,” shared Joan Vogelesang, President and Chief Executive Officer at Toon Boom.

Pencil Check Pro is available online and retails at $399.99 US. Educational pricing is also offered: $299.99 US for a single license, and $2499.99 US for a 10-unit lab-pack. For more information, please visit http://www.toonboom.com/products/pencilcheckpro/

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Friday, June 06, 2008

Zacuto releases lightweight locking lens support for HD video cameras

Randy Boyes | 06/06- 11:32 AM

Zacuto, a leading provider of HD video cameras and accessories is announcing the release of their new Locking Lens Support for securing and stabilizing lenses attached to Zacuto support systems. The Zacuto Lightweight Locking Lens Support will handle those long and heavy prime or zoom lenses and prevent the lens from rotating.
Components of the Lightweight Locking Lens Support

* Q-Mount – mounts to 15mm rods from underneath – without removing equipment
* 1” Male Rod – a short 15mm rod between Q-Mount and Zupport (also allows adjustment for lens height)
* Zupport – Support for under lens - attaches to 15mm rod and Universal Zip Gear
* Universal Zip Gear – surrounds and secures the lens. Press on the gear locking housing and tighten. One minute installation.

See Zacuto’s Lightweight Locking Lens Support
store.zacuto.com/product.php?productid=332&cat=0&page=1&featured

The Locking Lens support has many functions. It can also act at a Zamerican quick mini style mount, or a lens support for lenses with ¼ 20 female screws.

Price
Lightweight Locking Lens Support #Z-LLS $340

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Friday, June 06, 2008

Zacuto rolls out Z-Focus follow focus accessory for HD video cameras

Randy Boyes | 06/06- 11:20 AM

Zacuto, a leading provider of HD video cameras and accessories has released their own follow focus unit – the Z-Focus. Zacuto chose an important event - the 2008 NAB show - to introduce this important new addition to their full line of products. The Zacuto line is allowing cinematographers to use low cost, light weight HD camcorders for their filmmaking.

The Zacuto design team has thought through all the important issues - allowing their follow focus to be used with any camera and integrating easily with other Zacuto support accessories.

The Z-Focus mechanism employs a set of gears that connect to and spin the focus ring or Zacuto zip gear on the camera lens, thus producing an extremely accurate follow focus that allows the operator or assistant to pull accurate focus. The integrated magnetic white disk allows the focus puller to create distance marked for repeatable focus pulls.

Notable Features of the Z-Focus

* Completely gear-driven design for slip free, accurate movement.
* Worm gear adjustment screw to allow user to tighten gear play
* Interchangeable drive gears
* Magnetic dry erase marking disk
* Standard accessory port for Zacuto or Chrosziel follow focus whip or speed crank
* Lightweight design

The Z-Focus is supplied with Industry-standard 15mm lightweight rod mount. An available accessory, the FF-Adapter (Z-Focus Studio Adapter $255) – converts your Z-Focus to 19mm/15mm Studio rods (perfect for RED camera packages.) This accessory makes the Zacuto Z-focus work exclusively for studio rod spacing and for the use of other studio rod equipment.

Also standard is .8 pitch drive gear. However, Fuji .6, Canon .5 and a 1 inch wide .8 pitch drive gears for photo lenses can be specified when ordering.

Price:
Z-Focus (Z-FF-1) $1110

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

VICON announces MX T-Series camera

Randy Boyes | 06/05- 03:04 PM

MX T-Series quadruples motion capture camera resolution

VICON, developer of Academy Award®-winning motion capture systems, announced the VICON MX T-Series. The T-Series includes an all-new camera design and new Giganet device with cameras available in a variety of resolution options, including the T160 (16 Megapixel), T40 (4 Megapixel) and T20 (2 Megapixel). The T160 16-megapixel camera represents a four-times resolution increase over existing professional optical motion capture solutions.

This revolutionary resolution boost is made possible by VICON’s proprietary Avalon sensor; VICON is the only optical motion camera developer that designs its own camera sensors. “The MX-T Series represents the biggest leap in technology to date for our new release motion capture systems. Not only is the resolution boost significant, but along with the new streamlined camera design and Gigabit Ethernet connections, this system is blazing fast. More speed means our customers get an improved preview mode, meaning better diagnostics making the system easier to set-up and operate,” said Robin Pengelly, Senior Vice President, Entertainment Division, VICON.

The external styling of the camera has been completely reworked and the new mechanical design now makes the 18mm VICON lens a standard fit. Additionally, the system now supports remote focus and aperture setting with Canon mount lenses for the MX T-Series camera, allowing a single operator to adjust focus and aperture settings remotely via the VICON Blade software, resulting in significant time savings when changing setups between shoots.

The new cameras also support 2D on board tracking so that the processing of 2D tracking points is now done in the camera. This makes the reconstruction of 3D data much faster and more accurate, and frees up processing power from the PC. With Gigabit Ethernet connections, the MX-T Series systems allow for the transfer of data at 1000MB/second in preview mode, ten times faster than the current 100MB/second rate.

The T-Series cameras are backwards compatible with VICON MX and MX F-Series cameras, and can be used in combination in the same capture volume. With the 16 Megapixel resolution of the VICON T160 camera, performers can be captured with more markers, and smaller markers can be used allowing them to be closer together. In this way, details such as hands and face can be captured with accurate detail in much larger volumes than ever before. 

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

Telescope Launches New Streaming Video Format for Ads

Randy Boyes | 06/05- 02:40 PM

Dynamic ‘InSkin’ effective way to monetize video on internet

Telescope, the pioneer in participation media services, announced that the first US advertiser has gone live on May 31 using the patent-pending InSkin format, which enables real-time ads to be served to a dynamic frame that wraps around a web site’s media player and provides publishers with a completely new incremental advertising revenue stream. InSkin ads are viewable during the entire time a consumer watches an online video, without the interruptions associated with pre-rolls or mid-rolls.

Telescope is the marketer for the InSkin Advertising Platform in the United States. InSkin has had success in the U.K. since its 2007 launch, working with McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Honda, Warner Bros., Activision, Kia Motors, 20th Century Fox, Emap and Dennis Publishing, among others, with click-through-rates (CTR) up to 19%.

“InSkin responds to the growing online video inventory challenge by offering a new solution for our clients, and we will work closely with them to ensure that the InSkin platform delivers value across a wide range of sites,” said Allen Kalman, Vice President of Business Development at Telescope, Inc. “Advertisers and video publishers will experience new levels of consumer interactivity with InSkin, which also helps to combat banner blindness and pre-roll impatience that has affected many online video consumers.”

The InSkin format works with a web site’s existing video player and ad trafficking system and enables viewers to pause the video and peal over a rich-media ad spot. Once the ad is closed, the video resumes playing where it left off.

The InSkin format enables ads, or multiple spots, to be served at timed intervals for long-form video content, without creating viewer interruption. Clients can combine various interactive features – including games, RSS feeds, product purchases, and click-throughs – and enjoy full monitoring of the viewer experience to provide advertisers with accountability. InSkin ads work equally well for user-generated video and for Flash-driven widget applications.

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

NVIDIA announces Gelato® Pro 2.2 rendering software

Randy Boyes | 06/05- 02:23 PM

Powerful, no-cost GPU-accelerated software download

NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies,
today announced NVIDIA® Gelato® Pro 2.2 rendering software, the Company’s
advanced GPU-accelerated rendering software for professionals, is available
as a no-cost download at http://www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. Well suited for rendering
of 3D digital content and design, Gelato Pro software now replaces the basic
version of Gelato software, which was previously available directly from NVIDIA.

“NVIDIA Gelato Pro 2.2 software is extremely powerful GPU-accelerated
rendering software and we are excited to support the creative community by
making it freely available,” said Dominick Spina, senior product manager,
Digital Film Group, NVIDIA. “Now all artists and designers with NVIDIA
Quadro graphics cards can enhance their production pipelines with Gelato
Pro—without a licensing fee.”

Gelato Pro 2.2 will be the final version of NVIDIA Gelato rendering
software. Moving forward, the NVIDIA Gelato and mental images rendering
teams will focus on the development of mental ray software, reinforcing
NVIDIA’s investment in, and commitment to, accelerated rendering.

Gelato software is a GPU-accelerated, final-frame renderer for the creation
of high-quality computer-generated images using NVIDIA Quadro® graphics
cards. Originally developed to render film and broadcast visual effects and
animation, Gelato software can be used with 3D software applications that
require advanced rendering such as game development, CAD, industrial design,
and architecture.

Features of the Gelato renderer include sub-pixel antialiasing, true
displacement, high-quality motion blur, depth of field, support for NURBS,
subdivision surfaces, particles, and ray tracing, including global
illumination effects and ambient occlusion. The fully programmable Frantic
Films’ Amaretto plug-in provides advanced rendering functionality with
Autodesk’s 3ds Max software; complementing the Mango plug-in for rendering
with Autodesk’s Maya software.

Features of Gelato Pro 2.2 software, which until now required payment of a
license fee to access, include the Sorbetto™ interactive relighting engine,
network parallel rendering, multi-threading, 64-bit support, and DSO
shadeops. Gelato Pro also supports Joe Alter’s Shave and a Haircut software
for computer-generated hair and fur effects and includes support for
Autodesk Maya 8.5 and 3ds Max 9.0, offering improved stereo rendering, fog
lights, and significant performance improvements.

NVIDIA Gelato Pro 2.2 software supports Windows XP and Linux operating
systems and runs on any NVIDIA Quadro graphics solution.  Gelato is
available for download at http://www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. As a freely
downloadable product, NVIDIA will no longer be developing or supporting
the Gelato software products.

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

proDAD GmbH announces its Mercalli video stabilization plug-in

Randy Boyes | 06/05- 01:49 PM

New plug-in offers affordable, automated stabilization

proDAD GmbH, a popular maker of video effects plug-ins for the professional video editing market announced the availability of its Mercalli video stabilization plug-in for popular Windows®-based Non-Linear Editing (NLE) software applications.  The Mercalli plug-in provides an elegant solution to the common problem of shaky video shot in the field where it’s not always possible to use a tripod or monopod to capture a scene.  Mercalli differs from other post-production video stabilization tools as it does not require the user to struggle with baffling mathematical theory in determining the most appropriate settings to correct shaky video.  The user simply selects the video to be stabilized on the timeline within the NLE software, selects a profile for correction, and Mercalli does the rest.  The user can see the effects in real-time and make fine tuning adjustments on the fly.

“Every event videographer and video editing professional has experienced the pain of trying to correct shaky video” said Andreas Huber, General Manager of proDAD GmbH. “Mercalli is a breakthrough solution as it’s intuitive to use, fully automated, and produces spectacular results.  And if that wasn’t enough, Mercalli integrates seamlessly into your NLE as with other proDAD plug-ins,” Mr. Huber added.

Mercalli is offered in two distinct versions.  Mercalli Lite is offered for stabilizing Standard Definition (SD) and Digital Video (DV).  Mercalli Expert will stabilize High Definition (HD) and High Definition Television (HDTV) video in addition to SD/DV.  Mercalli also includes a bonus “Video Shaker” plug-in that allows the user to add shake to video when it’s desired.

Mercalli is compatible with the following Windows-based NLE Applications:

·Adobe® Premier Pro/Elements
·Adobe After Effects
·AVID® Liquid
·Canopus® Edius & Neo
·Sony Vegas/Vegas Pro

Mercalli Lite retails for $59.00 and Mercalli Expert retails for
$119.00; both products are currently available from the proDAD
webstore located at http://www.prodad.com

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Red Giant Introduces Trapcode Horizon

Randy Boyes | 06/03- 12:06 PM

Unique tool linking After Effects camera to 3D

Red Giant Software, publisher of a line of professional digital video tools, including Magic Bullet, Knoll Light Factory, and all Trapcode products, today released Trapcode Horizon. This new Adobe After Effects plug-in is a unique mapping tool that ties the After Effects camera to a 3D world. After Effects users can use Trapcode Horizon to create photorealistic backgrounds and QuickTime VR-like experiences.

Red Giant Software also made available Composite Wizard 1.4 and Image Lounge 1.4. These new versions add support for Adobe Creative Suite 3 and Mac Intel. Each product updater is available for $49 USD. To learn more, please visit these links:

Trapcode Horizon: Key Features

Gradient and Image Map Modes
Choose from gradient or image map modes in the plug-in, each offering a unique way to provide interesting backgrounds. Gradient mode offers both point and line generation. Point mode generates smoothly blended color regions from up to 8 points on the virtual sphere, while line mode creates converging lines of colors that are perfect for generating a sky gradient.

3D Camera Integration
Horizon ties automatically into the After Effects 3D camera, so that the background image is always correctly drawn from the active camera’s field of view. The automatic camera motion means that other 3D effects like Trapcode Particular and Form will move correctly with background and provide the viewer with a much-needed orientation in 3D space.

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