Studiodaily has this post this morning, but don’t get too excited its old news. It’s called a Hybrid Disc, and it’s been a possibility since High Definition Players were available. At one point playback was only supported on a G5, but then as HD DVD players began supporting burned discs, they functioned there as well and now subsequently with Blu-ray.
Basically you can make a short High Definition DVD and burn it to a standard DVD-R. This works because it functions based on format and file structure, the disc is just the storage medium - so in simplest terms, if the play back device supports the storage medium and you have the correct file structure you’ll get a functioning disc. Of course you’re limited to 4.7GB over the 25GB or even 50GB of Blu-ray, but you can do it. I think Jim may have actually written a tutorial on how to do this for HD DVD in the past - maybe we’ll swing something together for Blu-ray as well.
Matthew Bennett(Matthew’s site) posted some amazing tests with a DVX and Andromeda kit to achieve 1000fps.Check the vid here. 1000fps Andromeda Hack.Matthew is a editor/motion graphics designer in Toronto who has been shooting tests with the DVX Andromeda mod , EX1 and RED One . The test looks super smooth and man makes you want to get working with some cameras like this. Some still shots and clips are also at REDUSER that Matthew has posted.Original post on Reel stream forumsforum link, by the way anybody know what happened to them. (reelstream)? Edit: Seems Matthew had fun with AE and some slow acting so it is actually not a hack at all and was faked . Ah Matt is looks good anyway . You got me .Per Matt fourm post.
My first post was a fraud… that clip was faked with slow acting, AE’s timewarp filter, compositing and particles in AE.
The idea popped into my head to post it with that story, and I couldn’t resist.
The phantom hd camera has been my wet dream lately, so I thought I’d just try and do a simulation with the andro. I guess it sounded plausible, though, no?
Anyway, to get a ‘1000fps’ faked effect, you can use these shots as a reference. Like say for the cereal shot, I shot myself with the open boxes, and moved very slowly, shooting at 23.98. I rendered that in sculptor, took it into AE 8.0, and applied the timewarp filter to slow it down to 25 percent. Timewarp draws new interpolation frames, to further smooth out my already slow-mo acting. Then, I used trapcode’s particular to create a stream of ‘cereal’ particles, and composited that into the shot, using masks and duplicate layers to hide the birthplace of the particular stream. Voila, simulated 1000fps.
The Screen Actors Guild has released the following press release in regards to the current contract negotiations. At the current time actors are continuing to work beyond the expiration of the current SAG contract. With any luck this course will hold until an agreement is met, another large scale work stoppage this year would be devastating for many below-the-line workers across america. AFTRA is suggesting that dual card members vote down the current deal, which could potentially drag the situation out for a while. I’ll keep on eye on the situation as it develops… but for now, back to editing.
Screen Actors Guild Continues to Negotiate
Members Continue to Work Past Contract Expiration
Los Angeles, June 30, 2008 – The Screen Actors Guild national negotiating committee has bargained with the AMPTP for the last 42 days and remains committed to negotiating a fair deal for actors as soon as possible.
The AMPTP today delivered a last-minute, 43-page offer that upon initial examination appears to be generally consistent with the AFTRA deal, particularly in its provisions relating to new media. The union is reviewing the complex package and will prepare a response to management once that analysis is complete.
The parties are scheduled to meet Wednesday, July 2, at 2:00 p.m.
“This offer does not appear to address some key issues important to actors. For example, the impact of foregoing residuals for all made-for-new-media productions is incalculable and would mean the beginning of the end of residuals,” said Screen Actors Guild National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen.
The Screen Actors Guild Codified Basic and Television Agreements covering television programs and motion pictures expire tonight at midnight. Work will continue and all SAG members should report to work and to audition for new work past the expiration date until further notice from the Guild.
Other Screen Actors Guild agreements, including the Commercials Contract, Basic Cable Live Action Agreement, Basic Cable Animation Agreement, Television Animation Agreement, Interactive Media Agreement, Internet Agreement, and Industrial Educational Contract are unaffected by the status of these negotiations, and members should continue to audition and work under them as usual.
Apple has released the 10.5.4 update for Leopard with a bunch of updates and fixes under the hood. As always if your mid project or do not need a current fix wait for the poor souls eager enough to jump on the new updates. If you have a test machine then go for it. My usual steps are to clone my drive before an update, disconnect all external devices except the keyboard and mouse, get the update via the web download on Apple’s site versus the software updater(there are a few different builds when updates come out) and repair permissions as a just-in case.
Additional Information
What’s included?
The 10.5.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.
Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server.
Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.
Addresses an issue that may result in a partially installed X11 application.
Improves L2TP VPN client reliability.
AirPort
Addresses AirPort reliability issues with 5GHz networks.
Addresses AirPort issues that may result in slower performance in Logic Studio or MainStage.
iCal
Improves overall iCal reliability for meeting requests, cancellation notices, delegation, and syncing with iPhone.
Resolves an issue that prevents deleting an iCal event without notifying the creator.
Addresses an issue in which events in all calendars affect availability. A checkbox now enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups.
Resolves a UI issue preventing delegated calendars from showing up as a separate window.
Addresses an issue with copying and pasting attendees from one event to another.
Resolves an issue in which iCal may not delete events after a specified time interval, even when set to do so in iCal preferences.
Addresses an issue in which To Dos cannot be marked private.
Safari
Addresses a potential performance issue when loading secure web pages.
Resolves issues that may be encountered when accessing secure web pages with client certificates that reside on a smart card.
Spaces and Exposé
Addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space.
Fixes an issue in which dragging an application from the list of application assignments in Spaces System Preferences does not assign the application to the desired space.
Resolves an Exposé issue that may result in only a subset of windows being shown.
Awesome new term listings are up at FXPHD.com for the July 08 term and man what a stellar listing of training you can take. Some of the highlights for me are the Stop motion /Miniatures , Afx 301 with Mark Coleran/Mark Christensen on screen UI , Tim Clapham back with C4D/AE goodness,RED ,Nuke, Matte painting and just way to many good ones to keep listing. All together there about 15 brand new classes with some popular classes being revisited for those new to FXPHD. Those of you worried about having access to some of the higher end software like Nuke and Maya do not worry FXPHD has VPN access for some of the classes on both Mac and PC.
I have said it many times that since joining FXPHD over a year ago that it has been a HUGE plus for me and have made a bunch of friends and contacts. The classes are beyond high end and no one is doing anything near the level that FXPHD does . Being able to have contact with other industry pro’s is tremendous bonus . People have asked to just have access to the forums alone , that says something for the community, professors and staff at FXPHD. Do yourself a favor and check out the info on the main page and keep and eye out for the 0 week class which will probably be up in a week or so .
Renowned providers of online training for VFX professionals - Fxphd – have teamed up with The Foundry to bring you ‘The Compositor’s Guide To Nuke’. fxphd.com professor, Sean Devereaux, takes you through the core elements of this powerful compositing application.
I have been a post grad at FXPHD since early 2007 and the level at which they do everything is at a higher caliber then anything out there for training in the visual effects,post production,3d and motion graphics field. The new summer term is coming up in about a week so check out the 0 or zero week sneak peek that will be up on the site(link below). FXPHD partners with so many great professionals in so many mediums from Stu Machwitz(Prolost),Mark Christensen(Flowseeker) and way to many heavy hitters in the post ,vfx and 3d industry.The training on Nuke has been especially good being that Shake has been left to wallow (even though still heavily used by me and alot of others). The Foundry has stepped it up nicely with Nuke 5 and a nice revamp to the UI and so many other features I will just let you be the judge . If you are into learning about editing,compositing,RED,Maya,Motion tracking ,3d, Color ,Cinema 4d(the list goes on) it would be in your best interest to check out FXPHD.COM
I have been waiting a few months for this to come out while keeping tabs on the development stages of this customizable playback software.Tweak Software is releasing RV, the company’s first commercially available software package, announced Seth Rosenthal, founder and president. RV is a highly customizable cross-platform image and sequence viewer that is capable of playing back uncompressed film resolution clips. Free downloadable trial versions of the software are available upon request at Tweaksoftware.com
RV is a real-time, film resolution, high-dynamic-range image and sequence viewer for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The application can play back uncompressed film resolution sequences, and includes native support for stereo 3D. RV combines a flexible architecture and a hardware accelerated compositing pipeline with a lean, polished design tailored to professional digital artists.
Key Features of RV:
Real-time playback for desktop, dailies and projection
Customizable, extensible architecture
Real-time hardware color correction
High dynamic range, floating point image pipeline
Advanced color management with support for OpenExr style linear-light scene-referred workflow
Native stereoscopic 3D support
RVIO—a stand alone batch image-processing tool to convert, conform, slate, color correct and composite image sequences
Comparison, tiling, compositing and playback of any number of sources
Multi-channel audio with real-time floating point re-sampling
Open source session file format (with Python/C++ tools)
RV is the first application to be commercially released from Tweak Software. It was developed by artists, for artists, to handle the company’s own high-end VFX projects. Founders Jim Hourihan and Seth Rosenthal spun off Tweak Software from Tweak Films in 2007. Tweak Films earned a VES Award for work on the memorable New York tidal wave sequence in The Day After Tomorrow and a Hong Kong Film award for VFX on Hero. The company established a reputation for tackling R&D intensive projects and has developed several proprietary VFX tools since it was founded in 2001.“High-end shops typically rely on home-grown playback tools that are hard to replace because they are deeply entwined in artist workflows,” explained Rosenthal.
“RV is very customizable and that makes it the first effective replacement for those proprietary viewers. But more importantly, if your work is all about images, you should have a great image viewer. Jim has a long history of creating refined tools for artists, and he designed RV from the ground up to be the kind of tool we wanted to use ourselves. RV has spread quite quickly in its pre-release form just through word of mouth, and based on feedback from our early adopters, we are taking the right approach.”RV is coming to market in a release version 3.4, having undergone multiple generations of development for internal use at Tweak Films. To date, RV has benefited Tweak’s projects as well as projects for a select group of major effects facilities, including WETA Digital, which adopted a pre-release version in 2006. RV is currently available directly through Tweak Software Tweaksoftware.com at the price of $299 per node locked license and $369 per floating license.
This is about 10 months old but man every time I find the link in my bookmarks I just have to laugh and cry at the same time. Here is to the saviors of long VFX nights and even shorter deadlines. The life of a Digital Grunt so sad but so true.
Matthew Bennett(
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