New Gear

The Tools for your Titles
Boris Title Toolkit is a set of plug-ins for Adobe After Effects that generates circular text, stylized rolls and crawls and vector shapes. A centralized style palette with font browser allows you to manipulate your fonts easily. The program is based on a vector rendering engine.
(888) 772-6747
www.borisfx.com
Suggested Retail Price: $249

Build a Great Video

Software Architects' GreatVideo! 2.0 reads and converts DVD-VR format discs recorded on set-top players to QuickTime-compatible video formats. The program burns to DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW discs. It also allows advanced control over the bitrate and frequency of keyframes used in MPEG-2 encoding.
(425) 487-0122
www.softarch.com
Suggested Retail Price: $100

Into the Fire

Focus Enhancements' FireStore FS-3 is a portable hard drive that connects directly to DV camcorders. The device records footage directly to the hard drive in your editor's native format (among supported editors: Avid, Apple, Adobe, Canopus and Matrox), allowing footage to be edited immediately when you return to your computer.
(408) 866-8300
www.focusinfo.com
Suggested Retail Price: $1,695

Cruisin' on the Shuttle

Pre-configured for dozens of applications, Contour Design's ShuttlePro V.2 works with both Mac (OS 10.1 or later) and Windows machines running Windows 98, SE, Me, 2000 or XP. V.2 sports a black case, alloy jog dial with three finger holes and two additional buttons. The unit uses a USB connection. All of its buttons can be mapped to any function on your editing software that has a keyboard shortcut available.
(800) 462-6678
www.contourdesign.com
Suggested Retail Price: $110-130

Edit on the Run

Lowepro's CompuTrekker AW backpack, designed for photojournalists, holds a notebook computer and a camcorder, and features reinforced construction and shock-absorbing foam padding. The outer fabric is water-resistant to protect its contents from moisture.
(707) 575-4363
www.lowepro.com
Suggested Retail Price: $179

Make a Pitch

Pitch-A-Paks are self-contained presentation albums that hold media samples. Models are available to hold an audiocassette, a VHS videocassette, a CD or a DVD, an audiocassette and a VHS videocassette, an audiocassette and a CD or a DVD, and a CD or a DVD and a VHS videocassette.
(407) 348-3102
www.pitchapak.com
Suggested Retail Price: $11-$12

Edit and Encode

MainConcept's MainActor 5.1 video editing software includes Smart Rendering, background rendering and real-time previews. Additional features include chromakey and compositing capabilities, and of course, output through MainConcept's famous MPEG-2 encoder.
(216) 378-7655
www.mainconcept.com
Suggested Retail Price: $199