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Apr 10, 2000 QuickTime 4.1.1(+?) Apple has released QuickTime 4.1.1, but you might want to wait before downloading it. Just as the previous release introduced a problem with URL links in QuickTime VR movies, this release seems to have added another problem with linking to some URLs (and this problem is unrelated to the problem with QuickTime VR which has been fixed in this release!) Go figure.
NAB It's NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) week, so there could be lots of interesting announcements this week. ICE,
a developer of a hardware card for video and graphics
acceleration has announced Final Cut Pro 'On ICE,'
which integrates Ultra BlueICE hardware, BlueICE SDI Video
card, ICE's accelerated effects, and MOTU's 1224 digital
audio system. The Ultra edition of Final Cut Pro 'On ICE'
lists for $10,995 and is targeted for release in June 2000.
Other configurations and upgrade pricing will be made
available at a later date. Final Cut Pro 'On ICE' captures
footage in uncompressed SDI video with synchronized 24-bit
AES / EBU audio. Over 50 ICE'd visual effects for adding
transitions, color correction, blurs and light effects for
title treatments that render through the acceleration of the
Ultra BlueICE hardware. ICE
has also announced a partnership with Sonic
Solutions, a provider of DVD publishing solutions, to
accelerate Sonic Solutions' MPEG-2 encoding
technology. ICE'd MPEG-2 encoding will integrate with Sonic
DVD Fusion for Avid and Media 100 users, and Sonic
DVDit!
Lucent Technologies' New Ventures Group has launched face2face animation, inc., a new company that will license software for automated lip synchronization. Based on technology developed at Bell Labs by Eric Petajan, who joins face2face animation as chief scientist, the face2face software will enable animators to create more lifelike characters in one-tenth the time of the traditional animation production cycle. The face2face software is based on the emerging MPEG-4 standard. The software will be available in the summer of 2000 in downloadable formats from the face2face Web site. The company will charge customers on a per-frame of processed animation basis without requiring any initial investment in software. Animators can use face2face software in conjunction with the most popular animation programs - including SoftImage. After
creating a face character, animators videotape an actor
speaking the lines, and the recorded lip and facial
movements are then processed by the face2face software for
automatic lip synchronization to a selected animated face
model. Multiple animated characters can be synchronized
simultaneously. The software is multi-platform, running on
Windows, SGI, and Linux.
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