REDCine 3.1.8; Widescreen LCD; Wilt Sells Out

• REDCine 3.1.8 was released today; it exports QuickTimes with audio. To the right of the timeline there are now four buttons, one for each track the R1 can record; buttons are enabled for any track used in any of your loaded clips, and pressing a track button outputs the corresponding track as a 32-bit, 48 kHz mono track in your QuickTime exports. 

Sweetening the Depresso

Suddenly, Hollywood Seems a Conservative Investment, writes Brooks Barnes in The New York Times. His thesis? “Wall Street, real estate, the art market — all of those other supposedly stable investment areas — are now such a mess that Hollywood is one of the safer places you can park money.” But, he goes on to say, it’s not the established players as much as indies who can exploit these shifts in economic fortunes. “The big studios probably won’t be able to rely much on this pitch. Their upfront needs are too big ... and Wall Street and the real estate market may sort themselves out before their current slate deals expire. ... But for independent producers — especially ones that operate in a transparent manner — the strategy could offer a lifeline.” He does warn that it’s not the art-house pics that will get this funding; you still need to have a commercially viable pitch. Remember, there’s a reason it’s called “show business”, not “show art”.

Review: Canon Vixia HF11 AVCHD camcorder

The $1199 Vixia HF11 ($850 street price) is a one-chip CMOS consumer HD camcorder recording 1080-line AVCHD to flash memory, either its own internal 32 GB buffer or an SD / SDHC memory card. It lacks a viewfinder; it offers no manual control other than a fiddly little joystick and a short-throw zoom rocker; it has limited image tweaks, yet its CMOS sensor and “DIGIC” image processor yield remarkably good images, and its high-bitrate AVCHD codec records those images as faithfully and transparently as do codecs on much more expensive, professional camcorders. Yes, it’s a great little vacation cam, and if you’re willing to work within its limitations, it can also serve professionally.

NAB 2009: no RED tent

RED Digital Cinema’s Jim Jannard has announced that RED will skip NAB 2009. A delay by a supplier means “too many non-working prototypes at NAB” (no snide comments, please), so RED will skip the big industry confab in favor of their own “RED DAY” event(s).

Both Avid and Apple skipped NAB 2008, and Apple is dropping trade shows altogether in favor of other, more Apple-controlled marketing channels, like Apple Events and customer contact through Apple Stores and the Apple website. RED has often been compared to Apple (mercurial, visionary CEO; “thinking differently”; rabid fanboy community), and this only amplifies the parallels. It’ll be interesting to see if RED returns to IBC or to future NABs, or if they’ll depend on RED owners and third parties like accessory vendors to spread the word henceforth.

So if you want to see the 18-85mm in the flesh (in the glass?) this NAB, or any of the other RED bits that might help you decide on a purchasing plan, better hope that Element Technica, Redrock Micro, Air Sea Land Gear (a.k.a. Toys4RED), and/or View Factor have enough kit in their booths to feed your hunger.