HD Magazine on BBC Technology Web site

At a recent 3-D HD event at Axis Films in Shepperton Studio, we were interviewed about what we thought of the new/old technology of stereoscopic recording. Although Axis rigs were a bit strange with interocular distances running at about 5inches, the Quantel demo showed what a mature interface they have even if coming up with the 3-D part of it must have been a weeks worth of programmers time. Mark Horton their evangelist demo guy hinted that they were working on making 3-D out of 2-D in the not so distant future.

Maybe the most interesting thing we found on the day was the Queen's Coronation of 1953 shot in 3-D and the cameraman who shot it, Arthur Wooster. (see our next Digital Edition for our interview )

See the BBC's report on 3-D and scroll down for the Film Industry Views where you will find our own slightly wooden Julian Mitchell...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7213534.stm

British Telecom Enable 100 Mb/s Online Rate

Openreach – BT’s local access network business - today announced further details of its deployment of fibre at Ebbsfleet Valley in Kent, UK.

From August, Openreach will offer industry a fibre based broadband product at Ebbsfleet Valley that can support data at speeds of up to 100Mbit/s – the fastest headline speed available to residential customers in the UK. This would allow multiple HDTV channels to be watched simultaneously, HDTV gaming, and near instant music downloads. Openreach will offer all its products on a wholesale basis to all UK communication providers allowing for competition at a retail level.

Steve Robertson, chief executive of Openreach, said: “This is our first deployment of fibre rather than copper to residential customers on a new build site. It will enable communication providers to gauge what demand exists for very high speed broadband, and to assess what commercial models may be appropriate in the future. Unlike many other countries, in the UK we offer all our products on a fully equivalent wholesale basis. We are very proud of that commitment, and its clear and positive effect on the overall market.”

Andy Freeman, head of project management at Land Securities commented: “Ebbsfleet Valley, which has been identified by the Government as one of four key ‘transformational’ projects in the Thames Gateway, is the first development site in the UK to initiate fibre to the premises technology to all new homes.”

In the future BT would like to make greater use of fibre in suitable new build sites, and a significant opportunity is presented by the Government’s plan to build 3 million new houses by 2020. But this investment critically depends upon an agreement with Ofcom which is currently engaged in consultation about how best to extend the regulatory framework to accommodate future fibre deployment. All current regulation is based upon BT offering wholesale products over copper.

BT is also committed to increasing broadband speeds over copper, introducing services of up to 24 Megabits from Spring 2008.

Flip4Mac Supports Grass Valley Infinity Camera

PR Release:

Telestream today announced availability of new products and features that expand the company's Final Cut support for Thomson Grass Valley disk-based cameras and media servers. Now available, the new Flip4Mac Infinity Component imports media from Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Series Digital Media Camcorders and REV PRO drives directly into Final Cut Pro editing systems.

"Our components make ingest directly into Final Cut editing systems from disc-based cameras and media servers possible," said Barbara DeHart, VP of Flip4Mac Products & Marketing for Telestream. "We streamline the workflow and preserve the media quality for Final Cut users.

Adding support for the Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Series cameras and HD support for K2|Profile Components further demonstrates our commitment to the Final Cut audience. We are pleased that our partnership with Thomson has allowed us to bring these products to market."

The new Flip4Mac Infinity Component imports MPEG-2 HD and DV25 SD media directly from Thomson Grass Valley REV PRO drives without transcoding the media file. The component produces a .mov file that is placed directly into the Final Cut project bin ready for editing. Users can import and browse REV PRO drives for quick, easy access to media. The component eliminates the need to revert to baseband video, providing a faster more efficient file-based workflow.

The Flip4Mac K2|Profile Component now adds import and export support for high definition HDV 1080 50/60i video files to existing support for standard definition IMX MPEG and DV video and uncompressed audio files. The component enables users to import files directly into Final Cut systems for editing, and then export files directly back to their Thomson Grass Valley servers or to a local file system.

Priced at $495 each, the Flip4Mac Infinity and K2|Profile Components are available for immediate online purchase from http://www.flip4mac.com.

Latest Apple Mac Pro Spec

From Apple PR:

CUPERTINO, California—January 8, 2008—Apple® today introduced the new Mac® Pro with eight processor cores and a new system architecture that delivers up to twice the performance of its predecessor*. The new Mac Pro combines two of Intel’s new 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors running up to 3.2 GHz, powerful new graphics and up to 4TB of internal storage to offer the ideal system for creative professionals, 3D digital content creators and scientists. The standard 8-core configuration starts at just £1,749 (inc VAT).

“The new Mac Pro is the fastest Mac we’ve ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With 3.2 GHz 8-core Xeon processing, a 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz memory, the new Mac Pro uses the fastest Intel Xeon architecture on the market.”

The new Mac Pro features the latest Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors based on state-of-the-art 45nm Intel Core microarchitecture running up to 3.2 GHz, each with 12MB of L2 cache per processor for breakthrough performance and power efficiency. With a new high-bandwidth hardware architecture, dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses and up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory, the new Mac Pro achieves a 61 percent increase in memory throughput**.

Every Mac Pro comes standard with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of video memory. The Mac Pro includes a new PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot that delivers up to double the bandwidth compared to the previous generation, and supports the latest generation of graphics cards from NVIDIA, such as the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of video memory, or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of video memory and a 3-D stereo port for stereo-in-a-window applications. With support for up to four graphics cards, the new Mac Pro can drive up to eight 30-inch displays at once for advanced visualisation and large display walls.

The Mac Pro is the most expandable Mac ever, featuring four internal hard drive bays with direct-attach, cable-free installation of four 1TB Serial ATA hard drives, totaling 4TB of internal storage and support for two SuperDrives. With optional 15000 rpm SAS drives that can deliver up to 250MB/s of RAID 5 disk I/O performance, the Mac Pro is ideal for film and video editors. Combined with SATA or SAS drives, using an optional Mac Pro RAID card offers the ultimate data protection and disk I/O performance on the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is easily and conveniently accessible in front and back so users can connect external devices with five USB 2.0, two FireWire® 400, two FireWire 800, optical and analogue audio in and out, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and a headphone jack.

Every Mac Pro includes Leopard™, the sixth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system. Leopard is packed with more than 300 new features and introduces a brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock; a redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and Time Machine™, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac. Featuring an improved scheduler and other multi-core technology, Leopard is a perfect companion to the Mac Pro, making applications faster and helping application developers take advantage of multi-core systems.

The new ultra-thin aluminum Apple Keyboard now ships with every Mac Pro and built-in Bluetooth 2.0 makes it easy to reduce cable clutter with the optional Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple Wireless Mouse.

Pricing & Availability
The new Mac Pro is shipping today and will be available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers.

The standard 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of £1,749 (inc VAT), includes:
• two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;
• 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and
• ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

HD Magazine's Digital Edition Issue 3

Issue Three of our Digital Edition has the low down on the high octane new HD movie 'Cloverfield' with interviews from DP and DIT.

Also news of the re-emergence of 3D with our visit to 3ality in LA with an explanation of current 3D production.

Other videos include a Hollywood DP panel; shooting nuggets from the set of Speed Racer; Amnon Band speaks about the importance of the consumer; Star Trek get sets for their new frontier Bluray and HD DVD; the new Casio stills camera which does 60 and 300 fps!

See the issue here........................................

RED One camera used for Ringo Starr Video

Ringo Starr's new video Liverpool 8 which is the title track of his new album was shot with a RED One camera.

See a heavily compressed version here:

New Super 8 Camera!

Retro Thing website reports a new Super 8 camera being launched by Swedish company Ikonoskop. The DS8 is a version of their existing 16mm A-cam and uses 16mm film but just flips the reels to exposed the other 8mm.

The company in Sweden has announced that the company needs order for at least 25 DS8 cameras for the projects to make financial sense.

Email info@ikonoskop.com for more details