Studio Monthly articles from February 2007

Studio Monthly archives from February 2007

Snafu U.(Cartoon)
February 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Will AVCHD replace HDV?(editor's note)
February 1, 2007... In recent years, CES, that great consumer island of early-adopter toys, has been a bellwether for many formats that eventually migrate up to the pro level. Product intros for the consuming public often telegraph things to come for content...

Going hybrid: does LCOS outshine its competition?(quick cuts)
February 1, 2007... Strike up a conversation about projector technologies, and you'll probably end up discussing the merits of LCD versus DLP. Those two imaging systems have the lion's share of the projector market, though they're not the only game in town. LCOS...

Flash news.(quick cuts)
February 1, 2007... Since so many Web viewers are already using Flash Player 9, but the full developer's version of Flash Professional 9 is yet to be released, Adobe has created a nice interim fix. We went to Adobe Labs, the company's sneak-peek portal, and found...

The Sundance blog.(quick cuts)
February 1, 2007... The Sundance Film Festival may have just wrapped, but you'll feel like you're there when you check out the collected posts of David Michael Maurer, editor of the contending film Four Sheets to the Wind, who blogged daily for us from Park City...

What I'm using now: Canon XL H1 HDV camcorder.(quick cuts)
February 1, 2007... JAMES MATHERS Director of Photography Los Angeles, CA www.migrantfilmworkers.com LIST: $8,999 (street: $4,500-$6,500) WHY I LOVE IT: No one owner/operator can afford to have every format and piece of equipment that might...

HD magic.(DETAILING YOUR STUDIO)
February 1, 2007... The DeckLink HD Studio capture and playback card, now shipping from Blackmagic Design, supports both HDMI and analog component video and lets customers capture high-quality, uncompressed video direct from the HDMI connection on cameras, decks...

3LCD for pro AV.(DETAILING YOUR STUDIO)
February 1, 2007... Hitachi America's CP-X505 3LCD projector offers a brightness of 3,500 ANSI lumens and Hitachi's proprietary PJMan network management software. Featuring a 1000:1 contrast ratio and high-image quality, the CP-X505 offers motion adaptive...

Bargain waterproof discs.(DETAILING YOUR STUDIO)
February 1, 2007... Primera has slashed the prices of its CD-R and DVD-R media protected by the company's unique TuffCoat with WaterShield technology. The company claims that the white, glossy surface on TuffCoat discs not only makes printed images virtually...

Plasmatic.(DETAILING YOUR STUDIO)
February 1, 2007... Samsung's 42-inch PPM42M6H and 50-inch PPM50M6H high-definition plasma displays are designed for a variety of pro applications and feature a built-in RS-232C interface that lets a single computer control multiple displays (with Multi Display...

Synergistic storage.(DETAILING YOUR STUDIO)
February 1, 2007... Archion's new Synergy HD hardware RAID device eliminates the need for wasteful mirroring of storage for protection. Synergy HD for Avid Unity is a full-featured SATA II to FC RAID storage unit designed for networking digital video systems in a...

Maya moves on up.(DETAILING YOUR STUDIO)
February 1, 2007... Autodesk's Maya 8.5 3D animation, modeling and rendering software, which began shipping in January, is now more things to more people: a universal application for both Intel-based and PowerPC-based Mac computers that also runs on the Microsoft...

Canon REALiS SX60: two LCOS projectors in one.(ROI reviews)
February 1, 2007... In an era of increasingly specialized devices, can one projector serve two different high-end markets? That's the goal of the Canon REALiS SX60, which could well be an excellent choice if you're looking for a high-resolution projector optimized...

Nattress Film Effects 2.5: a rich set of filters for Final Cut Pro.(ROI reviews)
February 1, 2007... Film Effects 2.5 from Nattress Productions is a rich set of filters for Apple Final Cut Pro designed to make material that originated in video formats appear as though it were actually shot in film. It's inherently a complicated, not-so-easy to...

Better optimize your images and audio files in Flash.(how)
February 1, 2007... STEP 1 USE THE PNG FILE FORMAT TO IMPORT BITMAPS INTO FLASH JPEG compression is the default compression for all bitmap images exported to Flash Player format, so using uncompressed PNGs gives you better control over the compression...

Record four channels of 16-bit digital audio with the Edirol R-4 Pro portable recorder.(how)
February 1, 2007... STEP 1 SET TIMECODE OUT ON THE CANON XH G1 Set the camera's timecode switch to out. The XH G1's internal timecode is sent out from this timecode terminal as a standard LTC timing signal. Even if you set the SDI Output to on, the...

Color match better in Boris Red 4.0.(PRODUCT MANAGER TUTORIAL)
February 1, 2007... STEP 1 LAUNCH BORIS RED 4.0 AND SELECT MEDIA Select the Flying Jet.mov track in the Timeline window. You'll notice that the foreground jet is greener than its magenta-blue tinged environment. You can use the Boris Red Color Match filter to...

Stability in a shaky world: three of the industry's best small camera stabilizers.(Technology)(Cover story)
February 1, 2007... DECADES AGO, THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY WAS ROCKED, or maybe I should say un-rocked, by the brilliant invention of the "Steadicam" camera stabilization rig. Garrett Brown's gadget created endless possibilities for shooters who wanted to...

Hard drive storage for producers: the more FireWire drives the better?(issues)
February 1, 2007... At least once a week I'm asked, "what hard drive should I buy?" A bewildering number of options make choosing dedicated storage for media files seem like a tough question. For a facility that needs a massive RAID system or storage area network...

Big Foote: members of the band.(STUDIOS ON THE RISE)
February 1, 2007... WHAT'S THEIR GIG? The tag line pretty much says it all: "Making lives better through music." Brothers Ray and Sherman Foote not only live and work by those words, but they founded their audio studio on them in 1994. Big Foote Music, now in...