While recruiting a writer for our animation project, learned about Austin’s Power House Animation. Exchanged a few emails with one of their animators, Brad Graeber, and like what I have learned about the company. These guys do nice work. Here’s link to one of Brad’s projects.
As one of our projects is built around an animated character, have been paying much more attention to the evolution of 2D and 3D animation software packages this year.
When someone mentions that kind of software, the first city that comes to mind is probably not San Antonio. But for some reason, SA is home for some interesting 2D and 3D animation software tool companies.
In the 2D camp, there is Bauhaus Software. Bauhaus is starting to get some press attention for release 2.0 of their Mirage application.
On the 3D side in San Antonio is the much more well known Newtek. In addition to their popular Lightwave 3D package, they seem to have made a splash at NAB this year with their new video presentation package Tricaster.
Millimeter taped a demo of the package.
That Video Toaster just keeps on evolving. Newtek must be doing something right as they received another EMMY Nomination for the product.
Homer, out.
My formal education turned me into somewhat of financial modeling geek. After many years, still not entirely sure if that is a good or bad thing. But one thing for sure is that I now jones for a good serving of econometrics every now and then.
Billy Beane’s techniques as described in the Michael Lewis book Moneyball and his application of these theories to the sport of baseball is changing the way some teams are managing their rosters, in all sports.
In this spirit, I went searching for information on the development of econometric models being applied to the teams that are put together to build entertainment properties — like movies for example.
While researching the Macromedia and Adobe merger, realized that it has been over six years since building my first Flash site. Time flies, even though Flash version 2.0 was not that much fun.
While working on a marketing site for a new project in development, also realized that I have still yet to find a fool proof Flash Detection Script.
Sometimes I get lazy and convince myself that detection scripts are no longer needed since Flash penetration is so high now. And then Mr. Murphy steps in and a person I am pitching something too is not able to view the pitch because of a Flash plug-in problem. Very embarrassing.
Till that magic pill is found, here are two pretty solid approaches for detecting the Flash plugin. One is from Macromedia. The other from Moock.
Currently putting together a short trailer to assist with the pitch of our animation project. Trailer requires some archived news footage, so have been searching for sources. Found two pretty good online resources so far:
The AP Television Network Library and the The BBC Motion Gallery.
From initial use, BBC is superior in that they have many clips online to sample before you order. AP has shot lists, but no video.
One of the things exposed to at SXSW was an early look at the next update to Flash Video.
What I understood Nick Hippe, the Macromedia rep on this panel, to say is that new version of Flash Video will not rely on Sorenson as its compression partner. They wouldn’t/couldn’t talk about who the new codec was going to be (forward looking statements were nowhere to be found on any of the panels) but the beta they showed was impressive.
Biggest plus I saw was the addition of an alpha channel in Flash Video that the authoring program could manipulate in real time. That opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.
A smaller, but still important, issue the new release is supposed to help the audio/video sync issues which many have found frustrating in longer Flash Video segments.
Hopefully this upgrade will arrive late 05, though no promises on delivery date.
If you are planning for a theatrical or national television release for a project, and your budget can’t afford film or true HD, should you continue to shoot in DV and DVCAM, or make the jump up to HDV?
A good side by side review of the Canon XL2 and the Sony HDR-FX1 in the March issue of DV takes a good look at the tradeoffs.
Article is by Adam Wilt whose own site has more valuable info on the topic.