New Vicon Bonita camera sells fast

Vicon, renowned developer of motion capture solutions for the entertainment industry has announced that its new Bonita camera has broken company records by becoming its fastest selling motion capture camera ever. The company says that over 150 cameras were shipped in the first 3 months.

“We’re delighted by this news, especially after the phenomenal success of
the award-winning T-Series,” said Douglas Reinke, CEO and President. “We’ve 
been developing motion capture cameras for 25 years; for Bonita to become 
our fastest selling camera ever is incredible. Its price-point, ease of use 
and positional accuracy make it the first choice for engineering and 
robotics research.”

One Bonita user commented,”Although I’ve used a number of Vicon cameras 
before, I’ve been amazed by the Bonita camera. The lens is so easy to
adjust, which means you can quickly alter the volume for different
 applications without compromising the quality of data captured. It’s motion
capture made easy!”

Key Features of Vicon Bonita include:

• Single PoE (Power over Ethernet) connection to the PC via an
 off-the-shelf Ethernet switch enables easy configuration and system
 connectivity
• A variable focal length lens enables full flexibility within a variety of
 environments
• 68 high-powered LEDs outperform other cameras in its class with better 
illumination of markers
• Small form factor allows you to place the camera in small areas, while
 maintaining performance

For more information, check out the Vicon website.

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SGO profits from an upsurge in 3D | News | Broadcast

11 February, 2010 | By Will Strauss

SGO is reaping the benefits of the surge in interest in 3D in the UK, securing eight deals for its stereoscopic-capable finishing system Mistika.

The UK division of the Spanish manufacturer is in the process of completing £1m worth of sales to broadcasters and facilities, with systems on their way or very recently installed at Framestore, Sky Creative, The Club and Preditors.

Four further deals are to be revealed shortly.

SGO UK director of sales and operations Geoff Mills said: “Stereo 3D has arrived at the cinema and will be available on TV very soon. If facilities have not been asked about it yet, they soon will be.”

Mistika will be added to finishing suites at Framestore for completing effects work on 2D and 3D commercials, film and TV projects.

Sky Creative will deploy its Mistika primarily for stereo 3D work and has already used it for idents and graphics shown during the 3D coverage of a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United last month.

Preditors will add a Mistika to a new finishing suite (Broadcast, 27.08.09) and offer stereoscopic 3D services to music promo, TV and ad clients, while The Club’s Mistika will be used initially for 2D work.

via SGO profits from an upsurge in 3D | News | Broadcast.

Portable Cinedeck lets filmmakers record and edit high-rez footage | DVICE

Portable Cinedeck lets filmmakers record and edit high-rez footage

Cinematographers got sick of lugging around bulky and anvil-heavy recording gear, so they designed the “extremely portable” Cinedeck, a hotshot digital video recorder that’s 8 inches wide and weighs 4 pounds. It digitally records HD footage from any camera that outputs HDMI or HDSDI onto its off-the-shelf solid-state drives.

Besides functioning as a digital recorder and high-rez playback unit, this versatile box’s on-board Intel Core2 Extreme quad qx9300 processor powers a fast Windows PC inside, letting you hook up a mouse, keyboard and a larger monitor to edit together your shots using whichever Windows editing software you prefer.

Shipping next month is the first Cinedeck/Extreme model, capable of handling resolutions up to 1080p. Later this year, the company will roll out versions for 3D shooting, higher-rez 2K film work, and even a model that handles footage from those sweet 1080p-shooting digital SLR cameras. Pricing starts at $7995, so you can see it’s intended for pro use on film shoots.

via Portable Cinedeck lets filmmakers record and edit high-rez footage | DVICE.

HDMI 1.4’s 3D spec publicly released

HDMI 1.4’s 3D spec publicly released

By Nilay Patel posted Feb 5th 2010 at 10:04AM

3D’s happening whether you like it or not — but the good news is that there won’t be any format war to go with the adoption of the new tech. At least that’s the sense we’ve been getting, as most manufacturers are adopting active shutter glasses, delivery will happen on cable, satellite, and Blu-ray, and now the HDMI Licensing group has opened up the 3D portion of the HDMI 1.4 spec so non-licensees can make their gear compatible. There’ll be some changes coming down the pike in HDMI 1.4a, but that’s also due for public release, so really we’ll all be one big dorky family in 3D glasses when this is all over.

HDMI

via Engadget HD.

Intel teases six-core Gulftown, discusses tera-scale computing — Engadget

Intel teases six-core Gulftown, discusses tera-scale computing

By Vladislav Savov posted Feb 4th 2010 5:29AM

The 32nm dual-core Clarkdale processors that recently made their debut are about to pave the way for Intel’s next performance crown chaser, the six-core Gulftown. You might’ve known that already, but Intel’s decided to furnish us with the above slide detailing the particular differences between the two dies, with the most notable being the whopping 1.17 billion transistors that the new CPU will be composed of. The major attraction of Clarkdale chips lies in their power efficiency and competent integrated GPU, but the Gulftown focus will be firmly on the high end. Hence, there’s no integrated graphics, but the built-in memory controller supports three channels of DDR3 RAM and even plays nice with lower-powered 1.35-volt sticks. There’s also confirmation that the forthcoming hex-core chip will fit inside the familiar LGA-1366 socket, so if you bought a high end Core i7, worry not, you’ll be able to replace your still blisteringly quick CPU with an even faster beast. Quad-core variants — by virtue of disabling a pair of cores — are on the cards as well, while Intel also took the opportunity to delve into questions of 1Tbps+ bandwidth interconnects and its 80-core processor project, but you’ll have to hit up the links below to learn more about those.

AnandTech

via Intel teases six-core Gulftown, discusses tera-scale computing — Engadget.

3D has hit the mainstream computer

By Paul Miller posted Feb 1st 2010 at 9:33AM

You could say 3D has hit the mainstream computer today (or something similarly bombastic and partially untrue), as Acer has just released its GD235HZ 120Hz LCD, specially prepped for working with NVIDIA’s 3D Vision active-shutter glasses system. The 23.6-inch, 16:9 display retails for $399, and while it’s going to be great for 3D gaming for the next few months until you grow bored of Avatar and frustrated by Left 4 Dead 2, the 1920 x 1080 resolution is going to really come in handy once the first crop of 3D Blu-ray movies starts hitting. Of course, the NVIDIA 3D Vision kit is sold separately for $199, and requires a compatible NVIDIA card, but that’s a small price to pay for total spatial immersion, right? PR is after the break.

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via Engadget HD.

No-glasses 3D display with 64 viewing angles

No-glasses 3D display with 64 viewing angles to debut at CeBIT

By Richard Lawler posted Feb 2nd 2010 at 2:54PM

Singaporean outfit Sunny Ocean Studios is pledging to put all of the autostereoscopic 3D we’ve seen so far to shame with a new 27-inch display offering 64 viewing angles it will show at CeBIT. A serious upgrade from the 8 or 9 viewing angle lenticular displays we saw at CES this year, the company claims it’s ready to refit regular displays for 3D and also assist in 2D-to-3D image conversion. We’ve got all of the usual questions lined up like how will this affect resolution, what’s necessary to render the necessary 64 different frames for each viewing angle and of course, how much does it cost, but founder Armin Grasnick says his company can handle screens of up to 100-inches quickly and inexpensively, likely by not wasting precious R&D funds on website design. The current state of 3D is glasses all the way, but we could get a peek at the next step March 2 in Germany.

via Engadget HD.

41 Diabolically Awesome Demo Reels | Aetuts+

Nov 20th in Roundup by Topher Welsh

Wow… it took forever, but I’m here to bring you more demo reels then ever before! Maybe you are hurting for some graphics ideas, or just need to whet your inspiration palate? There’s no better way to throw away an afternoon. Enjoy!

Author: Topher Welsh

Topher Welsh is a post production artist working mainly in the fields of motion graphics and visual effects. He is a freelancer out of Tacoma, Washington, and also runs www.VisualFXtuts.com, which provides a daily fix of tutorials from any and all applications in the visual effects industry. His personal website is found here: www.Toe-Fur.com.

via 41 Diabolically Awesome Demo Reels | Aetuts+.

Panasonic shows 3-D camcorder with solid-state recording

At CES Panasonic unveiled a prototype high-definition 3-D camcorder that records to solid-state memory and will be available for live sports and entertainment productions later this year. The company said it would begin taking orders in April, whereby the twin-lens camcorder will be made-to-order at a suggested retail price of $21,000.

In Panasonic’s new 3-D camcorder, the lenses, camera head and a dual SDHC/SD memory card recorder are integrated into a single, lightweight body.  The camcorder also incorporates stereoscopic adjustment controls, making it easier to use and operate than current 3-D camera systems in which two cameras are fitted to a rig in parallel, or vertically intersect across a half mirror. External recorders are also required.

The twin-lens system adopted in the Panasonic camcorder’s optical section allows the convergence point (the point at which the left and right-camera lenses’ optical axes converge) to be adjusted by the operator on the fly. Functions for automatically correcting horizontal and vertical displacement are also provided.  Conventional 3-D camera systems require these adjustments to be made by means of a PC or an external video processor. This new camcorder, however, will automatically recalibrate without any need for external equipment, allowing immediate 3-D image capture.

The camcorder’s solid-state memory file-based recording system makes it lighter than current 3-D systems, facilitating handheld-style shooting.

Right and left HD video streams of the twin-lens 3-D camcorder can be recorded as files on SDHC/SD cards, significantly reducing maintenance costs, and making it ideally suited to shooting in extreme environments as it is resistant to temperature extremes, shock and vibration. And users can take advantage of a file-based workflow, with instant, random access to recorded content; easy plug-in to both Mac and PC-based platforms; and longer recording capacity.

In addition to a camcorder, Panasonic also plans to offer a professional-quality 3-D HD LCD monitor for field use as well as a professional HD digital A/V mixer for live event production.

via Panasonic shows 3-D camcorder with solid-state recording.

Cineform Tech Blog » Blog Archive » Neo4K / Neo3D (Mac) Support Tangent Wave CP300 Control Surface

Neo4K / Neo3D (Mac) Support Tangent Wave CP300 Control Surface

The latest addition to CineForm’s continuing manipulation of of real-time Active Metadata comes in its support for the Tangent Wave CP300 control surface within Neo3D and Neo4K.  used together, CineForm First Light and the Tangent Wave CP300 literally take you behind the scenes, providing unprecedented access to real-time source manipulation.

(Initial support for the Tangent Wave panel is available on Mac, with Windows support coming in the next few weeks).

The power of the CineForm First Light / Tangent Wave CP300 combination lies in the ability to now leave CineForm First Light running in the background while your NonLinear Editing program (NLE) containing your First Light-controlled clips runs in the foreground. With this configuration, a vast majority of the manipulations you would normally make directly in the First Light interface can now be made using the Tangent Wave CP300 control surface, leaving everything in place and negating the need to switch back and forth between First Light and your NLE. This method of working saves time and hassle and allows you to more intuitively create a high quality final outcome.

Overview

There are three “virtual pages” of CineForm First Light controls currently available on the Tangent Wave CP300 control surface: “Color”, “3D”, and “Right Only”. These pages are accessible via the buttons labeled 1, 2 and 3 in the image below. Pressing one of these buttons will switch the panel to the page corresponding to that button. In the display screen on the control surface that appears immediately above these buttons, a title for each corresponding page is listed. There will be an indicator above the title of the page that is currently selected.

For each of the pages, the knobs, buttons, wheels and trackballs of the CP300 will perform a First Light function that is unique for that page. A brief description of the available pages and the functionality found on each of these pages is as follows (further details regarding each page will be given later in this instruction manual):

via Cineform Tech Blog » Blog Archive » Neo4K / Neo3D (Mac) Support Tangent Wave CP300 Control Surface.