Japan develops ‘touchable’ 3D TV images http://bit.ly/cCu9kB
Touchable in the sense that the images react to being touched, poked, distorted etc, by using cameras to determine where hands are. They are not claiming (as far as I can see) that the viewer can “feel the image”
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RT @ccrask: HUGE NEWS via @ NewTeeVee MPEG LA: H.264 Streaming Will Be Free Forever http://dlvr.it/4Gp93 No reason not to be HTML5 as the default but the open source purists will find a way.
It’s late. Read the article. It’s good news.
‘Interoperable Master Format’ Aims to Take Industry Into a File-based World http://bit.ly/bvF6Vk
A group working under the guidance of the Entertainment Technology Center at USC is trying to create specifications for an interoperable set of master files and associated metadata. This will help interchange and automate downstream distribution based on metadata carried in the file. The first draft of the specification is now done based on (no surprises) the MXF wrapper. (Not good for FCP fans, as Apple has no native support for MXF, without third party help).
Main new items: dynamic metadata for hinting pan-scan downstream and “Output Profile List”:
“The IMF is the source if you will, and the OPL would be an XML script that would tell a transcoder or any other downstream device how to set up for what an output is on the other side,†Lukk explained.
The intention is to bring this draft spec to SMPTE, but first, ETC@ USC is urging the industry to get involved. “We need industry feedback and input on the work that the group has done thus far,†said ETC CEO and executive director David Wertheimer. “Anyone who has interest in this topic should download the draft specification and provide feedback to the group.â€
Flash Video On Android Is Terrible http://bit.ly/bjjoZg or http://bit.ly/aUGBpZ
I know, I’m a Flash hater and always posting just how bad it is. And you’re right, I’m no fan of Flash on OS X – it’s been a dog for years and even with hardware H.264 acceleration it’s only marginally better. I also don’t like Flash because it is still controlled by one company and not an open standard.
That said, there’s a lot of value still in Flash, but seriously Adobe, you’ve been promising Flash on a smartphone for a long time now and complaining that Apple won’t let it on their iPhone, except you haven’t actually delivered something worth putting on an iPhone yet.
Above I’ve quoted two different reports of the current state of Flash on Android. It will get better before final release, but from the reports that needs to be a quantum leap.
RT @iDiyas: Apple patent opens new frontier for gaming-documenting http://bit.ly/a7si9G
I’m not even sure why this interests me, but it does. Taking “action snaps” from your game at crucial moments and making them into a cartoon. Now Apple patents a lot of ideas that don’t make it into products, so this may never come to anything, but it is interesting.
Imagine an Enhanced Reality game – where extra elements are overlaid a live camera view – and getting a comic record of the adventure.
The Future of Picture Editing http://bit.ly/aNRLVA
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Zak Ray when I travelled to Boston. I like people who have an original take on things and Zak’s approach to picture editing – and his tying it to existing technologies (that may ned improvement) – is an interesting one.
And yet, despite such modern wonders as Avid Media Access and the Mercury Playback Engine, modern NLEs remain fundamentally unchanged from their decades-old origins. You find your clip in a browser, trim it to the desired length, and edit it into a timeline, all with a combination of keys and mouse (or, if you prefer, a pen tablet). But is this process really as physically intuitive as it could be? Is it really an integrable body part in the mind’s eye, allowing the editor to work the way he thinks? Though I can only speak for myself, with my limited years of editing experience, I believe the answer is a resounding “noâ€. In his now famous lecture-turned-essay In the Blink of an Eye, Walter Murch postulates that in a far-flung future, filmmakers might have the ability to “think†their movies into existence: a “black box†that reads one’s brainwaves and generates the resulting photo-realistic film. I think the science community agrees that such a technology is a long way off. But what untilthen? What I intend to outline here is my thoughts on just that; a delineation of my own ideal picture-editing tools, based on technologies that either currently exist, or are on the drawing board, and which could be implemented in the manner I’d like them to be. Of course, the industry didn’t get from the one-task, one-purpose Moviola to the 2,000 page user manual for Final Cut Pro for no reason. What I’m proposing is not a replacement for these applications as a whole, just the basic cutting process; a chance for the editor to work with the simplicity and natural intuitiveness that film editors once knew, and with the efficiency and potential that modern technology offers.
It’s a good article and a good read. Raises the question though – if Apple (or Adobe/Avid) really innovated the interface would people “hate it” because it was “different”?
3-D filmmaking’s radical, revolutionary potential http://bit.ly/bxJb5S
I’m not a huge fan of 3D – I don’t mind it but I don’t generally seek out 3D versions of a film because:
This Salon article considers what we could do with 3D other than what people are doing with 3D.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s think about what might happen if 3-D movies embraced only the first or the second parts of that description — if they became more intimate and character driven, or if they went in the other direction and became more structurally and stylistically abstract, even trippy.
The result could be genuinely revolutionary. It could let us experience movie storytelling — and movies, period — in a new way. It might even give rise to a new art form, one that’s related to its ancestor, cinema, but that takes off in new directions and does things we can’t even imagine yet because so few people in the entertainment industry have been willing to look beyond entertainment as they’ve always known it.
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BBC: HTML5 Is Not Ready For Video And Sailing Off-Course http://bit.ly/ckjcQS
The corporation’s future media and technology director Erik Huggers writes:
“The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand, I have concerns about HTML5’s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.â€
I think it’s widely agreed that HTML5 is not a complete replacement for every use of Flash at this time of the technology’s development, but this attack is hard to separate from the fact that there is a long-standing agreement between the BBC and Adobe to transition the BBC’s video to Flash.
The BBC is invested in a long-standing strategic relationshipsigned with Adobe late in 2007, allowing it to move its media delivery away from RealMedia to Flash. So it’s Flash on which one of the world’s most popular VOD services is now built – BBC iPlayer served 100.2 million online requests in June.
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One of the reasons my direct posting here has been light lately is that we’ve been working on a small documentary, partly for the exercise but mostly to a) have demo material for prEdit that isn’t 10 years old and b) prove to myself the prEdit is indeed a great new workflow for documentary editing. Plus a documentary gets made to store the memories of the early 60’s drag racing community.
Inevitably one of the tapes ends up with breaks every few seconds. Final Cut Pro always, always breaks HDV into individual clips, regardless of your settings, so parts of this interview were simply lost. So I tried capturing in Premiere Pro CS5. A little surprised to have to preview on the camera (not inside Premiere Pro CS5) but the capture happens and the entire interview is captured in one piece with no dropped frames.
I’m composing hymns to Premiere Pro’s greatness, until I try an export. (All captured media is being converted to ProRes 422 for the master and editing formats.) Adobe Media Encoder crashes when it hits one of the glitches that tripped up Final Cut Pro. Rinse and repeat and we’re not getting an export. Even an attempt to playback causes Premiere Pro to disappear.
Well, not of picture anyway, but AME will export the audio by itself without a problem. So, while it’s not perfect, I now have that important interview (and the one we travelled furthest to get) with about 99% of the audio intact and laid up with what video I have and I’ll be able to use the interview in the doc.
So thanks to the ability to capture all my HDV material Premiere Pro CS5 at least got me usable material.
Powerful new transcript workflow tool – paper cuts without the pain – from Intelligent Assistance (my day job). http://bit.ly/9nQv07
We just launched prEdit, our pre-editing tool for developing paper cuts (a.k.a. radio cut) from transcripts. prEdit:
“prEdit marks a new generation of postproduction tools,† say I. “Video editing by text is a whole new way of working that will take weeks out of developing a paper cut.â€
prEdit is available now from AssistedEditing.com and carries an MSRP of $395, discounted for an introductory special to $295 until August 31st. The prEdit workflow is described at http://assistedediting.com/prEdit/workflow.html and a video overview is available at http://assistedediting.com/prEdit. The first 80 seconds provide an overview.
The video is now available at YouTube  http://youtu.be/3fV388QsVVA?a