Adobe just bought Serious Magic, makers of DVRack, Ultra and Vlog It.

“The purchase of Serious Magic accelerates our vision to make, not just video but all dynamic media, an even more ubiquitous communications vehicle, whether you’re delivering content for the broadcast market, over the web or on mobile devices,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of the Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe, in prepared remarks.

(Via HD For Indies)

Jack Black fans rejoice, Tenacious D has a new album due out next month. And “The Pick of Destiny” pre-orders at iTunes will also be treated to a short film in which Jack and Kyle warp through time and space to fight the Time Goblin. Seriously, what could be better than that? There is a 3-minute preview of the video at the iTunes Store. In classic “D” fashion the video is over-the-top corny and ridiculous, fans will not be disappointed.

Anyway, I said all that to say this…at the end of the video preview, they’ve got this little tagline; “iTunes. Easier than stealing. Almost as cheap.” It’s glib for sure, particularly when spoken by Jack Black. But the statement also rings very true. Making audio and video content sufficiently convenient and cheap is probably the best way for the RIAA and MPAA to combat piracy and illegal filesharing. An outdated business model with inflated pricing and overly-restrictive DRM coupled with a shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude towards consumers, is not.

Digital Content Producer is reporting that Media 100 has shipped version 11.5 of it’s venerable editing software. The latest update adds some features that were potential dealbreakers, things like P2 and HDV support. They also note that Media 100 will support the new Intel Mac hardware in early 2007.

Key features:
*Support for FireWire I/O
*Support for Panasonic P2 import
*Support for HDV acquisition

Brad Hunt, Motion Picture Association of America executive vice president and chief technology officer at the Digital Home Developers Conference:

“I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content.� He also acknowledged the fact that many consumers are already frustrated because they’re having to buy multiple copies of an album or movie to play on different devices. For example, a song you buy on the iTunes Store won’t play on your Nokia cellphone. And a song you buy on MSN Music or the Zune Marketplace won’t play on your iPod.

Lest you think that the MPAA has suddenly gone soft on Digital Rights Management issues, realize that they are just acknowledging technical issues with DRM, and attempting to make content protection mechanisms more cross-platform and interoperable.

Great idea, though I seriously doubt a organization so incredibly mired in outdated thinking will be the one to bring a unified solution to market. What do you think? Any chance there will be a reasonably unified DRM standard in the near future?

Andrew Balis has posted a list of new features and effects filters shipping with the Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 upgrade over at Ken Stone’s fine site. How else would you know that you can now use Shift+Command+[ to toggle through open sequence tabs? Exactly, so go read the article already!

There is also a great overview of all the effect filters included (a lot) and IU’m pretty stoked about the “Preferred” toggle option.

If you’re in search of a more geeky rundown on all the format and professional features added, Mike Curtis has just the thing. He’s also got an excellent document with 15 FCP 5.1.x tips and “gotchas”.

Paul Harrill of Self-Reliant Filmmaking outlines some of his frustrations with screenwriting software Final Draft and Celtx.

High Definition Stock Footage source MotionZoneHD is running a contest for the month of October. The shooter/animator with the most accepted uploads for the month will recieve their choice from 6 different Music 2 Hues Theme Packs (worth $150).

Theme Packs are collections of similar styles of music, and come on 5 audio CD’s as well as a DVD-ROM that contains MP3 and WAV file versions.

This contest is open to all registered MotionZoneHD shooters and animators (they are looking for more users and content so sign up!). Requirements are pretty basic…upload your best High Def clips ensuring they are at least 15 seconds long. Label the clips with your name, description and keywords. More info at MotionZoneHD.com.

I understand that next month there will be another contest with a specific theme for submissions (and they’ll be awarding a nice piece of production equipment), so get registered and stay tuned.

Coming soon to a HD Television near you…LaserTV!

“…Australian company Arasor International and its US partner Novalux unveiled what they claimed to be the world’s first laser television in Sydney today, with a pitch that it would be half the price, twice as good, and use a quarter of the electricity of conventional plasma and LCD TVs.”

“With a worldwide launch date scheduled for Christmas 2007, under recognisable brands like Mitsubishi and Samsung, Novalux chief executive Jean-Michel Pelaprat is so bold as to predict the death of plasma.”

“If you look at any screen today, the colour content is roughly about 30-35 per cent of what the eye can see…..But for the very first time with a laser TV we’ll be able to see 90 per cent of what the eye can see.”

The tech is basically a projection TV that uses a tunable optoelectronic chip-laser for projection, instead of a standard projection light source. Another recent article on the topic discusses the chip design and specs:

“Novalux’s prototype Necsel devices emit 3 W at 465 nm and 532 nm and 750mW at 620 nm - all from a new package smaller than a matchbox. Necsel lasers’ output is bright, speckle-free, and color-saturated, giving in clear, vibrant images that reach a larger color space than competing lighting technologies.”

One viewer that saw the demo was impressed.

“The laser TV made the plasma look like an old console colour TV. It was so good, the only way i could describe it was that it looked like a wet photo in a developer tray - if you haven’t done photography, that may not mean alot. But the colour depth and
contrast, especially the space shuttle shots where space was REALLY black, and you could see the gold foil crinkles in the cargo bay, was amazing.”

(Via Slashdot)

Videomaker has an understandable, though perhaps overly-simplistic, summary of what DOF is to filmmakers, and includes suggestions on “cheating” a shallow depth of field look with small-sensor camcorders.

“If a shallow depth of field is something that you want to achieve, try these techniques:
*Calculate the depth of field on the shot. Either do the math, or use some of the depth of field calculators available online (see sidebar). Once this is known, adjust the setup as needed.
*Open up the aperture as wide as possible. This will shallow the depth of field, but it can also brighten the image too much. Keep some neutral density (ND) filters handy just in case.
*Mount a longer focal length lens on the camera. Screw-on lens adapters are available for many prosumer cameras. Use a telephoto lens to shallow the depth of field further.”

They also touch briefly on the principle of a Circle of Confusion, again offering a short and simple explanation. For those interested in learning more, Wikipedia has a good writeup on CoC.

(Via Videoguys)

The NAB New York Show will take place October 23-26, 2006. If you are planning on attending, you can get free VIP Expo passes here. FMC Clients, Post + 2005 Conference Alumni, Students, RTNDA Members, NAB Members, and 48 Hour Film Participants are also eligible for an additional $100 off total conference registration fees.

And with the money you’ve saved on Expo admission, now you can afford to register for one of the conference sessions.

Here’s a pretty comprehensive list of free video editing software for all the major OS platforms.

Two tools that didn’t seem to make the list are Blender and AVIdemux.

HD For Indies posted pics of the RED ONE camera prototype configured with the RED-RAIL kit mockup. Seeing it on someone’s shoulder for the first time, it looks like a pretty hefty rig.

Apple’s new iMac line that is equipped with Core 2 Duo processors has been benchmarked. The results show a 10% to 20% improvement over the Core Duo iMac.

(Via Engadget)

Someone at the Red Digital Cinema 4K footage screening at IBC captured the whole thing on video and posted it at YouTube. It just feels wrong to watch 4K images in highly-compressed flash…but I know you’ll want to see it anyway.

The new Apple Mac Pro systems require the use of fully buffered, error correcting server-level memory, which means that DIMM’s cost roughly twice as much. It also seems that the use of memory-chip heat spreaders are necessary to keep the chips cool and reduce system fan noise.

Barefeats has done some analysis on the Mac Pro Quad, and as always they are presenting the test results for your consideration. They found that in some applications there are performance gains when the system memory is spread/installed across BOTH card risers (quad channel mode). Additionally, they suggest that not all memory is created equal, and it might pay off in heat dissipation performance if you choose to go with high quality or OEM memory.

As a side note, what is the minimum suggested Mac Pro memory config? It is suggested that 2GB-4GB is the sweet spot, but not more than 8GB unless you can absolutely prove the need for that much RAM (most probably cannot, those that can already know).

(Via HD For Indies)