AJA Ships 24-fps Capabilities for Kona SD Card

Australia's Blackmagic Design, in conjunction with AJA Video, released Kona Film, a new software upgrade for the Kona SD card that provides 24-frame editing capabilities in Final Cut Pro. The update offers real-time reverse telecine during digitization, and 24-frame playback with 3:2 insertion.

The Kona SD card is compatible with Mac OS 10.2 and takes advantage of the new operating system's Quartz Extreme technology, which transfers calculation for on-screen graphics from the main PowerPC chip to the graphics card, resulting in faster performance. The card also offers six channels of 48/96 KHz AES/EBU audio with sample rate conversion on each input. Additional channels will be available in a future update. The Kona SD card does not offer real-time effects capabilities with Kona Film.

Kona Film is now shipping as part of Kona SD v2.15 and is available as a free upgrade for existing owners.

www.blackmagic-design.com

MEDIA 100 Offers OMF Support for 844/X

Media 100 announced version 1.5 software for its 844/X multi-stream effects and editing system, first introduced at NAB this year. New features include AAF and OMF support, (including OMF import from Symphony and Media Composer and OMF export to Pro Tools), a new After Effects plug-in that allows Media 100 project and bin files to be opened directly in the Adobe application, the ability to import Photoshop files while maintaining layer and matte information as separate 844/X layers, and EDL export capabilities. The new software should be available before the end of 2002 and will be provided to all 844/X customers through their Platinum support contracts. The 844/X is capable of playing four streams of uncompressed, 10-bit, standard-definition video, each with an associated matte key, as well as additional elements, for a total of ten channels in real-time.

The company also announced the latest version of its two-stream system, Media 100 i. Version 8 is OS X-native and includes many new features, including 24 real-time audio tracks, eight graphics tracks and improved integration with Boris applications.

www.media100.com

MACKIE CONTROL Supported by Steinberg

Mackie Designs announced that Steinberg has made support available for Mackie Control, the company's new touch-sensitive control surface, in recent releases of their popular Nuendo, Cubase SX and Cubase SL systems. Other systems supporting Mackie Control include Mackie Broadcast Professional Soundscape 32, Mackie Mixtreme and Mark Of The Unicorn's Digital Performer.

Nuendo version 1.6.1 with Mackie Control support is available for both PC and Mac platforms. Nuendo users can download the upgrade from www.nuendo.com. Existing Cubase users can download the SX version 1.03 and SL version 1.03 software updates at www.steinberg.net.

In a separate announcement, Steinberg reported that Cubase SX for OS X would be available on October 10.

www.mackie.com

LIGHTWORKS Ships Touch

Lightworks Inc. announced that it had begun shipping its next-generation Touch editing system in early September. The system is currently being used on several features including Universal's Bruce Almighty, and Johnny English and Leo in the U.K.

www.lwks.com

FINAL CUT PRO Wins Emmy

Final Cut Pro was honored with a 2002 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for its impact on the television industry. The award, conferred on August 21, was Apple's second Emmy. The first was received in 2001 for the company's invention and popularization of FireWire.

HANS ZIMMER Joins Euphonix Board

Euphonix announced that composer Hans Zimmer has joined the company's board of directors. Zimmer, who won an Oscar for The Lion King in 1994, is head of music for Dreamworks SKG and co-owner of the Media Ventures scoring facility in Santa Monica. Zimmer is also an active board member of the German audio company Steinberg.

www.euphonix.com

RORKE Announces ImageSAN, for OS X

Rorke Data announced the first file-level Storage Area Network (SAN) management application developed for Mac OS X, allowing OS X-based editing systems to easily share media. According to the company, current file-level SAN applications are complex to administer, but ImageSAN appears as a local drive and is thus very easy to install and use. ImageSAN does not require a server for workgroup-level needs, and thus reduces cost. The system can be configured to provide safe redundant storage and can integrate with both Rorke or other storage products. It is approved for use with equipment from Matrox, Pinnacle, Media 100, Sony, Inscriber, Incite and, in addition to OS X, is compatible with Windows NT, XP and 2000. Rorke says the system works with Final Cut Pro under OS X and will soon work with Avid products under OS X, as well. Starting in Octorber, Rorke will offer upgrades from SANs made by other manufacturers. Check with the company for details.

www.rorke.com

HUGE SYSTEMS Announces Shared Storage Server

Huge Systems, a manufacturer of high-performance, low-cost storage for real-time DV, SD and HD applications, announced its HugeMediaLibrary, a rack-mountable, all-in-one storage and server unit that provides shared access over Gigabit Ethernet connections. Designed for real- time media, it supports both traditional networking protocols and the new iSCSI disk and tape protocols. With Gigabit Ethernet, multiple users can access DV and standard definition video files simultaneously. When 10 GB Ethernet becomes available, the sytem can be upgraded to provide multiple streams of uncompressed HD. The base system can directly connect six DV workstations and support real-time access to two streams each (a total of 12 streams). Both MACs and PCs can share files. The system operates in RAID 3 mode, meaning that any drive can fail and the server will continue to operate with all media available at full speed. Drives can be automatically rebuilt while users continue to edit. The system should be shipping by the time you read this. Prices start at $9,995 with 480 GB of storage.

Reflecting recent reductions in hard drive costs, Huge also significantly reduced prices on its MediaVault family of disk arrays. The HugeMediaVault-1000-DualMax, originally priced at around $10,000 when it was introduced as the first "terabyte on a desktop" system, is now available for $4,984. The higher capacity HugeMediaVault-1200-DualMax, which offers 1.2 TB of storage space, is available for $5,224. Both offer uncompressed HD throughput.

www.hugesystems.com

DIGITAL FILM TOOLS Releases zMatte

Digital Film Tools released zMatte, a $350, full-featured blue and green screen keyer for After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and most Avid systems. Using proprietary matte extraction techniques, zMatte can quickly create mattes with minimal parameters. If a scene was shot correctly, there is little to adjust. If not, the program offers a wide range of tools to correct problems, including blur, shrink and wrap functions. Once a key is pulled, the foreground can be color matched to the background using sophisticated color correction tools. The program operates as a plug-in through the native effects interface in Avid Media Composer, Symphony, DS and Xpress DV systems.

Digital Film Tools is an offshoot of Digital FilmWorks, an L.A. based visual effects facility specializing in feature and television special effects.

www.digitalfilmtools.com

PINNACLE Releases Liquid Silver Version 4

Pinnacle Systems released Liquid Silver 4, a new version of the company's PC-based editing system for MPEG2 and uncompressed video. Pinnacle has three editing systems in its Liquid product line -- Blue, Silver and Purple -- all of which share the same interface. The product line was originally created by the German company FAST; FAST Silver was reviewed in our March/April 2002 issue.

Key features in the new version include media management for networked editing support, speed change capabilities with the timewarp editor and advanced color correction that can be monitored using a selection of full-frame vectorscopes.

Other Pinnacle products bundled with Liquid Silver include Commotion, the company's paint and compositing application, TitleDeko Pro, a character generator, and Pinnacle Impression, which is used to author advanced DVD titles. Pinnacle also offers turn-key Liquid Silver systems built around Compaq EVO W8000 workstations.

www.pinnaclesys.com

New Version of DIGITAL FUSION

New features in this release include floating point image processing, which increases the accuracy of color correction; advanced tracking with unlimited track points; grid warping and integrated scripting. The program lists for $4,995. Upgrades from version 3.1 are $495.

www.eyeonline.com

LACIE Launches SilverKeeper

Apple users can now protect their data more easily with free backup software from LaCie. SilverKeeper can be used with any storage device that will mount on a Macintosh desktop, including internal hard drives, removable Firewire, USB or SCSI drives and Apple Disc Burning-compatible CD-R/RW and DVD-R/RW drives.

Compatible with both Mac OS 9 and OS X, the program can run unattended backups on specific days and times, or at system shutdown. It can also compare folders to ensure that they contain the same files. The program is bundled with all LaCie storage devices and is also available as a free download.

www.silverkeeper.com

BORIS Ships Continuum Complete Effects Plug-Ins for Avid Meridien

Boris Continuum Complete, a powerful set of compositing, image processing, keying, color, distortion and temporal effects tools for Final Cut Pro and After Effects is now available as an AVX plug-in for Avid Meridien systems, making the filters accessible through Avid's native effects interface. Film grain, light zoom and smoothly ramping motion effects offer editable, customizable presets to streamline effects creation. The package will soon be available for Avid Xpress DV and DS. Any owner of a Boris FX product can purchase the program for $999.

www.borisfx.com