Archive for the ‘Video & Movies’ Category

Democracy

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Rating: 4/5

General Info: This application’s primary purposes are: automatically downloading, viewing, and cataloging your video content. Soon to be known as Mira, Democracy is one of the most Mac-like multi-platform programs I have ever used. It just exudes the look and feel of a Mac app. It even uses QuickTime and VLC under the hood to play video. OK, so what really is Democracy? Well it’s a lot like iTunes for video. While iTunes can be used for video podcasts, this takes it to the next level. It trounces iTunes’ video capabilities with several main features. One is an integrated Bittorrent engine. While Bittorrent can easily be used for stealing, it also makes High Definition video cheap to distribute. Another neat feature is browsing of YouTube, Google, and other video sites with the added ability of downloading videos in flash format. Speaking of flash format, Democracy can also play virtually any video format you throw at it. It also features a “Channel Guide” akin to iTunes’ podcast directory. Here’s the biggest weak point. Speeds of the “Channel Guide” have become reasonable, yet the content rating and featured videos remain too static. The selection available on the main page remain the virtually the same day after day. Another problem is syncing with your iPod is not built in … yet, the developers have stated their plans for syncing with mobile devices in future versions. Currently, Democracy is in late stages of beta, 0.9.5.3.

Retail Price: Free and Open Source

Site: http://www.getdemocracy.com/

screenshot



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NAB Live Updates

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

I will be posting the http://macrumorslive.com Live Updates.

12:24pm - “Compressor rounds out the new Final Cut Studio 2. As you see, we’ve put our attention to the delivery side. All these products are included: still $1299. We’ve also made it really easy to upgrade, the move to FCS2 for $499. We’ve made it just $699 upgrade for any version of FCP from the beginning.”
12:19 pm demoing chaptermarking…
12:16 pm From Engadget: [Compressor] now features simplified cluster setup, extended to MPEG-2, H.264, Telestream Episode Pro plug-in with VC-1, WMV, FLV… dynamic filters with timecode overlays, animated motion watermarks.
12:15 pm Compressor demo
12:15 pm Compressor 3 is 3x faster
12:13 pm new iPod and AppleTV presets (of course)
12:13 pm Compressor 3
12:12 pm demo is over
12:11 pm sound effects and music are in surround-sound
12:10 pm Now demoing royalty-free sound effects and musics that come bundled
12:10 pm From Engadget: Take editor — making a comp, select which portion of which take to use. Just grabbed four soundtrack takes and instantly composited them. Demoing sound effects, syncing sound effect with a video HUD, quickly synced a royalty-free sound effect in under 10 seconds. Demoing Conform feature — new edits with cut (or added clips) that would otherwise take hours with a bunch of sound effects and bites can now be pushed through rapidly with grouped approvals of intelligently re-synced edits.
12:03 pm From Engadget: Fade selector tool, built-in waveform editor — including a frequency spectrum view. Draw a box around the problem frequency — delete a portion of sound. He just perfectly removed a bump in a mic from an audio track during dialogue!
11:56 am Soundtrack demo
11:56 am from Engadget: Aligning sound effects and audio with a 3-up video HUD. Advanced take management with composited audio tracks. Also embraces surround mixing at its core — one of the key things, we do this in a single project, stereo and surround mix encapsulated in the same project.” 5.1 support, panning and speaker-to-speaker automation.
11:54 am support for surround sound
11:53 am Soundtrack Pro 2
11:52 am demo is over
11:52 am Apple’s really pushing the 3D stuff it seems. 3d glasses for the audience to demo some of the features
11:45 am From Endgadet: “We’re just getting started. Going to turn my attention now to Motion 3 — this year we’re embracing 3D, extended all the familiar tools into cameras, light sources, navigation of 3D space… create the kind of graphics you want to create. We’re adding paint. Particles, video, pictures, pen — speed, pressure sensitivity — and throw behaviors on the strokes to bring that paint to live. Something shockingly complicated in the past is now easy: match moving.”
11:42 am Motion demo
11:41 am From Endgadget: “We introduced effects plugs — they’ve added dozens of them. GPU-accelerated realtime playback of filters and effects.”
11:38 am comparing Uncompressed HD and ProRez: they look exactly the same according to our source
11:35 am From Engadget: “We took some of the great technology in Shake and brought SmoothCam down to Final Cut Pro, removes camera shaking.”
11:32 am cost of IO-HD $3495 (confirmed by Engadget)
11:31 am demo of Motion integration with Final Cut Pro
11:30 am Motion templates inside Final Cut Pro
11:29 am called the IO-HD
11:29 am available in july
11:28 am Realtime SD-HD conversion
11:28 am hardware encoder box will get into prorez 422 automatically
11:27 am introducing a HD-input device
11:25 am Final Cut Pro can manipulate 4k files
11:25 am Uncompressed HD, Pro-rez 422 format
11:23 am correction: Final Cut Server is cross platform, not studio
11:22 am price for final cut server: $999 for 10 concurent users, unlimited = $1999
11:21 am Final Cut Pro uncompressed HD
11:21 am Final Cut Studio is also being updated
11:19 am a video is playing about the software- Final Cut Server is a cross-platform way to do digital content management
11:15 am Apple Store (UK Store) is down
11:14 am Final Cut Studio is cross platform
11:13 am examples of videos produced in Final Cut
11:13 am Final Cut Server- Media asset manager
11:12 am playing a video
11:10 am Rob Schoeben, VP of Apps and product Marketing is speaking. Have a ton to cover, so we’re going to dive right in
11:08 am Event is starting
11:07 am Reportedly Sony execs at the event - according to Engadget.
10:05 am Please turn of cell phones
9:55 am It is a MacWorld-style conference hall (aka very large). 3 Macs are on stage and set up to the right.
9:54 am People are being seated… “there are a lot of people. we thought we were far back on line, and then a ton more got on line. I think some people are going to be turned away”



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My NAB Predictions

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

NAB is a trade show that is run yearly. Apple has an annual keynote at NAB, but its far from a MacWorld Keynote.

Here are my predictions for this years keynote:

Hardware:

I think that on the hardware front, the idea of full HD will come up a lot.

MacBook Pro:
I think that Apple is bound to do something to the macbook pro. I think that they my raise the resolution of the screens to full HD. Apple may also raise the ram limit from 3GB to 4GB. It may also be possible that there are speed bumps, from 2.33 to 2.66.

iMac:
If Apple raises the resolution of the 17″ MacBook Pro to Full HD (1080p +), then I’m sure they will also do the same on the 20″ iMac. Same with the ram, if the macbook pros ram is raised to 4GB, then I’m pretty sure that the iMacs will be too.

Cinema Display:
I think that they will raise the resolution of the iMac, Macbook Pro and Cinema Dsplays to 1080p+

Software:

Final Cut:

No doubt that Apple will release a new version, I would guess with full HD support, with more support for DVC Pro and P2 Cards, and other HD formats. Possible “Final Cut Extreme” with more support for film and hollywood style editing.



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PhotoStickies

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Rating: 4/5

General Info: PhotoStickies is a nifty app that lets you view various web cams on your desktop. It includes a very nice list of web cams like?Ǭ†views of New York City. You are not confined to viewing their web cams. You can use any link to a live web cam to view it on your desktop; for example, you can set up a?Ǭ†camera at your house?Ǭ†to broadcast?Ǭ†and view it while your at work or?Ǭ†away.?Ǭ†For each web cam you have a little control panel for adjusting color, orientation or the window, information about the web cam,?Ǭ† and opacity. It seems like a great program from what I have seen so far and it is well worth the $12.

Retail Price: $12

Site: http://www.devon-technologies.com/

Photostickies



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Designed by Leo Mancini