Aiming High

By Cynthia Wisehart

Preproduction was done in secret, because parkour is barely legal. The filmmakers were as elusive as the athletes one step ahead of anybody in authority...

Prospectors

By Cynthia Wisehart

This week, three things happened that intersect. I got an eloquent letter from a reader a brief, lucid history of our industry and his career from the...

Shoot Expertise: Hands-on HPX

By D. W. Leitner

This year's NAB saw the launch of two new full-size P2 HD progressive-scan 2/3in. camcorders from Panasonic: a four-slot AG-HPX500 and a five-slot AJ-HPX3000....

Shoot Tools: Anton Bauer

By Charissa Young

Accessories can quickly turn a small camera into an unwieldy Frankenstein's monster. Expand the physical dimensions of your...

Shoot Tools: Hitachi

By Charissa Young

Available toward the end of the year, the Hitachi SK-HD1000 HDTV digital production camera series employs 2/3in. CCD imagers with full-raster HDTV pixels (1920x1080 or 1280x720)...

Shoot Tools: Sachtler

By Charissa Young

The Artemis camera stabilization system is very modular—users choose the arms, springs, etc., to fit a specific camera. The DV Pro FX version takes out some of the guesswork...

Shoot Tools: Reflecmedia

By Charissa Young

Unveiled at NAB, the new Basematte, Chromatte Tape, ChromaFlex EL, and LiteRing adapters expand Reflecmedia’s line of Chromatte products. The existing Chromatte gray reflective background...

Shoot Tools: Schneider Optics

By Charissa Young

Schneider Optics offers a screw-on filter package designed to enhance the optical performance of DV camcorders, improving contrast and penetrating haze. Available in three sizes...

Shoot Tools: Formatt Filters

By Charissa Young

The Formatt HD/DV Soft Effects glass filter is designed to soften the harsh outlines that high-definition video can expose--thereby appeasing talent leery of exposing their age lines to an HD lens...

Edit Review: Apple Final Cut Studio 2

Reviewer: Jan Ozer

Apple Final Cut Studio 2 is like the proverbial elephant and the blind man your impression depends upon where you touch it. For this review, I'll touch...

Edit Review: Apple Motion 3

Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

In new version 2, Apple Final Cut Studio is an extremely powerful, even intimidating suite of professional video production applications. The effects/ compositing/motion-graphics...

Edit Review: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended

Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

Introduced just before NAB among a flurry of new product announcements that includes Premiere Pro CS3, Adobe's new version of Photoshop has been buried...

Edit Review: ViewCast Niagara GoStream

Reviewer: Tom Patrick McAuliffe

Until recently, streaming media often entailed capturing footage, taking it to the edit suite, encoding it, and then sending it to a streaming-media service...

Edit Tools: Google

By Charissa Young

Known among producers as a great basic set-design and previz tool, Google SketchUp Pro uses 2D drawing techniques to facilitate...

Edit Tools: NewTek

By Charissa Young

The TriCaster Studio live production and virtual set system, which NewTek claims is the first at less than $10,000, features up to six live camera inputs with 3D digital video effects, two digital disk recorders...

Edit Tools: Caligari

By Charissa Young

Caligari's TrueSpace 3D modeling, rendering, and animation software is ideal for beginning 3D artists or for previsualizing scenes to be shot in live action. Version 7.5 includes brand-new character...

Edit Tools: Noise Industries

By Charissa Young

FxFactory Pro 1.06 is a visual effects package designed for Apple Final Cut Studio 2, offering more than 100 GPU-accelerated plug-ins based on the FxPlug architecture. A new plug-in development tool...

Edit Tools: Autodesk

By Charissa Young

If you're interested in learning professional animation software but wary of the investment, a new version of Autodesk Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) provides free access to the popular Maya 3D...

Edit Tools: EditShare

By Charissa Young

EditShare, a shared-storage system that was originally designed as an alternative to Unity for Avid users, is network-attached storage for almost all popular pro editing systems. Connecting via Gigabit Ethernet...

Display Tools: DNP

By Charissa Young

Your screening room no longer needs to be sealed off from light. DNP's Supernova Infinity enables projection even in brightly lit...

Display Tools: Doremi Labs

By Charissa Young

If your facility sends video signals via high-def or standard-def SDI, Doremi Labs’ DSDI-20 DVI-to-HD video converter is a good solution to integrate computer display-based content...

Display Tools: Communications Specialties

By Charissa Young

Instead of using multiple cables—such as component video plus audio—to send DVD player or other source material to an HDMI display, Communications Specialties’ Model 2100...

Display Tools: VBrick Systems

By Charissa Young

Seen at last month’s InfoComm, VBrick Systems’ new VBCast family of multimedia streaming products spans diverse applications, from streaming presentations to remote broadcast...

Display Tools: Chief Manufacturing

By Charissa Young

Turn an ordinary desktop into an efficient dual-monitor workstation with Chief Manufacturing’s dual-monitor mount. The FGL220 allows you to use a laptop as a primary or secondary mounting screen...

Display Tools: BTX Technologies

By Charissa Young

The BTX Technologies CD-HDMIFFP female-to-female HDMI panel-mount adapter provides a flexible interface between any compatible digital audio/video source (such as a set-top box...

Dream Job: Call of the Drum

By Kristinha M. Anding

Jeremy Chevrier says the djembe of Western Africa is called the unity drum because the sound of the drum, played at weddings and other ceremonies, brings...

Mark In

One day, historians of storage technology will make note of 2007. Just about 50 years after IBM stored 5MB on the first refrigerator-sized hard drive...