Peder Norrby( Trapcode)has done it again with this slick new plug-in for After Effects called Horizon. The plug-in allows you to make Quicktime VR like experiences in After Effects with
Floating Point Support
Offers support for Floating point mapping of .exr image maps in After Effects CS3
Equirectilinear Image Mapping
Familiar to 3D artists, “equirectilinear” images are maps that provide full 360-degree coverage of a sphere. Horizon will map these images seamlessly onto the background.
Gradients
Built-in gradient modes provide up to 8 colors for generating colors on the virtual sphere.
Coverage Controls
With controls for horizontal and vertical coverage of the sphere, you can determine how much of the virtual sphere to map—especially useful for using non-panoramic images or video.
Controlled Zoom
Mapping in Horizon depends on the Field of View in After Effects, so you can create a zoom effect by animating the field of view of the After Effects camera. Tracpcode products are distributed and supported by our friends over at Red Giant software.
Apple just released 10.5.3(420 mb download) as always be careful to jump right on it and let others go through the heartache of learning what is broken/fixed. Never update a production machine during a project especially quicktime updates .One thing I always do is I never touch software updater I always go out to the combo updater from the Apple website . Why? Because each update is a little different(delta/combo) from the updater to the download from the support page and knock wood have not had any issues in a long time from doing the combo updater from Apple.
As for the 10.5.3 update this is what Apple says on it.The Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, and 10.5.2 Leopard. It includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. For detailed information about security updates, please visit this website. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is packed with over 300 new features, installs easily, and works with the software and accessories you already have.Kbase article
Bug fixes to be focused on :
Audio Applications
Video Applications
802.1X
Active Directory/Directory Services
AirPort
Back To My Mac
Graphics
Installer
Mail
Spaces
Time Machine
As always BACK UP YOUR MACHINE REGULARLY its your own fault in this day and age if your not backing up your systems. Drives are dirt cheap and with Time Machine and a slew of other applications like Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper there is no excuse not to have some workflow in place.
Quick note Adobe has added more to their great beta offerings this time with Soundbooth,Dreamweaver and Fireworks. I am a big Soundtrack Pro guy but my buddy Dennis Radeke has been getting me to check out Soundbooth more and I do like some of the feature set in it.Some of the new Soundbooth in the CS4 beta
“The Soundbooth beta showcases a host of new features for creative professionals to complete their audio production tasks more efficiently, including the new multiple track support which allows users to edit multiple audio clips on a number of tracks, and the new ability for users to match volume levels across audio files. Also included is the capability to preview MP3 compression settings before saving them and a new speech recognition technology that lets users create transcripts of dialogue tracks quickly and search them for words and phrases within a timeline.”
Looks good and man just think if Apple had a open beta like this how much better user information they would get.It is good to see Adobe so hungry on the development side of things it will only advance the application offerings and stability of the applications when they actually do launch.Here are some the links.
Hmmm something new to try on Tuesday’s post some inspiration on to you guys/gals that I find around which gets the creative juices going. Refused.tv looks to be a kick ass collective of directors (one of my favs is Rob “Whitey” McConnaughy and Aggressive) who are doing amazing work on the music video, commercial and visual effects front. I must fan out a little on Whitey’s work since he has made some of the all time best snowboard videos under Kingpin production with Brad Kremer (now with Mack Dawg productions amazing snow/skate vids as well). Whitey took most of his snow stuff off his site (too bad ) except for this gem of the Chris Coulter intro Chris intro .
So take some time to check out Refused’s site and check out some really good work from all the talented directors and let’s hope one day Whitey, Brad and the OG M3/South Lake crew will get back together for another kick ass snow flick. PS Whitey always had the best soundtracks in his videos. Links- Whitey’s SiteAggressive’s Site.
In a hurry but wanted to post this before I forgot. Opencut.org is hosting it’s first contest, registration started last week. It’s a cool concept, instead of explaining I’ll just repost an email I got from Torrey Loomis at Silverado Systems last week -
I wanted to extend an invitation to you to participate in OpenCut - the world’s first open source film competition.
We are providing an entire set of 35mm film quality assets shot on the RED ONE Digital Cinema camera–including all video, audio, as well as storyboards and scripts. OpenCut will provide the material, and entrants will provide the editorial.
We are kicking off OpenCut with a short subject called “Susannah” which was directed by Evan Nicholas and executive produced by Joe Carnahan of “Smokin’ Aces” and “NARC.”
Entrants to the competition register at http://www.OpenCut.org and then send a blank hard drive to OpenCut. Our film personnel will transfer 170 Gb of RED ONE material along with supporting media to the hard drive.
At a set date, all hard drives are shipped back to the contestants. They have 30 days to complete their cut including all color correction, audio fixes, and anything that would need to be accomplished for a completed project.
At the end of the competition, all finished entries are uploaded to VUZE which is generously hosting files in HD for all entrants.
Judging will take place through July 6th and a winner is announced on July 7th.
The winner of OpenCut will receive a prize package from Silverado Systems including a brand new AJA IO HD. Further, the winning editor will be listed as the official “editor-of-record” at IMDB and the winning short will be submitted to film festivals around the country throughout 2008. We will also be finishing the winning entry on SCRATCH in native 4k resolution.
You can find out more information here:
http://www.opencut.org/
We’d love to have as many students register as possible before departing for the summer. The competition is open to students, amateurs, and professionals–and you can participate as an individual or in a group. Further, the competition is open internationally.
Please let me know if you would like more information.
There are a bunch of companies out there making some wonky things as far as storage for media goes but I came across a site that has some interesting stuff. Geekstuff4u.com does have its share of nick-knack usb trinkets and other toys but this device which allows you to basically roll your own SSD mini RAID in a RAID 0 or 5 has some interesting possibilities. DIY SSD SATA RAID lets you take CF cards and RAID them together to make a fast little CF RAID system . One thing is ya sound great about time we can if only we could do this and make our own P2 or SxS cheaper I am all for it. Alas the companies that be have there schemes of how they RAID there cards on hardware and software side of things so its not that simple. Pictured below it shows the device working with off the shelf CF cards from SanDisk but claims it will work with any CF card and transfer speeds vary. I wish there were a little more information on how the RAID is configured with this device and what control you have over the RAID scheme but this does give me some ideas (to bad it seems only SATA 1.0 interface right now) .
I finally broke down and bought a new mac this past week, even though I can feel new ones (hopefully with bluray) around the corner. It seems so silly to make a purchase like this so close to the wwdc but I couldn’t wait any longer.
Just finished installing Final Cut Studio 2 - blazingly fast - 35 minutes for the whole kit-and-kaboodle
Put the computer together for about $5600 including shipping and all miscelaneous fees, an equivalent setup from straight from apple would have been about $10,147.
I just finished shooting a feature in NH for the past month, I had everything shipped there and paid no sales tax. An additional savings of $450 based on my states sales tax.
I was so pumped that I saved so much by assembling it myself so I went a little crazy with other bits and pieces.
Blackmagic Design MultibridgePro
Blackmagic Design HD Link Pro
30″ Cinema Display (for 2k Monitoring)
All necessary cabling to make everything connect.
Total with Tax and Overnight Shipping = $4,275.32
Grand Total = 9,956.63
Not bad at all.
Inspiration is a good thing and when something comes along that inspires me wether it is music , art , video etc I have to share it. Even though Justin posted this on his site in April Motionographer.I feel the need to post it and share the work of Carlos Lascano. Carlos has a work in progress that blows my fuc**n mind seriously this guy has so much talent. So take some time out of your busy day to watch A Short Love Story in Stop Motion.I think I broke Quicktime watching it so much again today and choosing Sigur Ros makes me think Carlos has a great taste in music as well. Enjoy. A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.
The Bullet a new training DVD for AE and 3D(C4D,Max and Blender) integration from good buddy Andrew Kramer and crew at VideoCopilot.net has been released today with alot of man hours behind it. Andrew has been dropping hints and screen shots for this project for the past few weeks and his comments has been piled high in anticipation of the DVD. Hats off to the VideoCopilot crew for all the work they constantly provide to the community alot of which is for free .Check out the promo for The Bullet HERE.While your on the site check out the special edition training DVD
Own a piece of Video CopilotSpecial Edition DVD • 1-65 Free Online Tutorials in full quality• Includes iPod ready video files• Basic Training Tutorials, Presets & Project files
• Over 20 minutes of never before scene footage
Promo
HERE. I just hope his new release doesn’t overshadow the premiere of Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…..
In my quest to find a portable, solid and inexpensive dolly set up for work and skate/snow personal projects veteran skateboard cinematographer Jason Hernandez(if you have not seen his work pick up some of the Transworld Skateboard vids for proof of awesomeness oops can’t forget John Holland so double the awesomeness) and his dad Carlos have a great set up called EazyDolly. For the spec breakdown on the page it looks like it will be in 2 models one coming in on 23 in wide 12′ track and the other on 28 1/2 . The prices are great as well $460.00 will get you EazyDolly with 12′ track , $545.00 will get you the same but with the camera base and add $80.00 for each additional 4′ of track.I am pretty certain Jason made the little demo video on the TWS site as well for EazyDolly check it HERE.
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