We have received word that seven different New York-based e-commerce sites selling camcorders have settled with the New York State Attorney General’s office for engaging in fraudulent business practices. (Two of these companies are going out of business completely. Of the remaining five, two are leaving New York State, but all have agreed to be bound by New York law and be monitored by the New York Attorney General’s office.)
According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, “These companies engaged in the worst kinds of consumer fraud, from classic bait-and-switch schemes to blatant lies and bullying sales tactics.” These tactics included advertising at extremely low prices and then trying to upsell accessories, but if the person ordering turned down the accessories, the product that they were trying to order was claimed to be backordered, or the company would simply cancel the order.
We have received reports from readers who have been burned by unscrupulous mail order companies in the past, so we hope that this settlement agreement ultimately makes it easier for customers to find good deals from legitimate merchants.
If you have dealt with one of the listed companies, you may be able to get restitution; claims will be administered by the New York Better Business Bureau. The window for claims will be open from July 1 to December 31.
Boris FX has announced the release of Boris Continuum Complete 6 which includes 15 New Filters, New 3D Objects, Exchange Keyframe Animation with Adobe After Effects. BCC 6 AVX is based on Avid’s AVX 2 plug-in architecture with support for Avid Media Composer, Avid NewsCutter and Avid Symphony. A special AVX 1 version of BCC 6 AVX for Avid DS will be released in the near future.
BCC 6 AVX adds nearly 200 plug-in filters to Avid editing and finishing systems. The new release features 15 new effects including Extruded Text, Extruded EPS, Layer Deformer, Cartoon Look, Lightning, and Swish Pan. In addition, BCC 6 AVX delivers unique workflow enhancements such as the ability to animate BCC filters in Adobe After Effects and transfer the animation to the Avid timeline – while preserving After Effects keyframes. Read the rest of this entry »
Other World Computing (OWC(r)) http://www.macsales.com, a leading PC and Mac technology company, announced today lower pricing of up to $300 and a new 0TB “Add Your Own Drives” Kit for the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 desktop hardware RAID storage line. Featuring Hardware RAID 5 redundancy to protect against data loss, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 has four SATA hard drive bays for up to 8TB of storage; a “Quad Interface” of FireWire(r) 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA ports for Mac and PC compatibility; and data transfer speeds of up to 300MB/s. With this combination of features, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 offers the highest level of data capacity, performance, and reliability in a Plug and Play desktop ha rdware RAID solution. Read the rest of this entry »
When we hit NAB, there was this feeling in the air that the new & the future will be 3D. Panasonic actually revealed their take on the issue at NAB, and recently I was thinking about how impressive this technology actually is. So I thought that I’d mention the prototype they announced as the Panasonic “3D Full HD” camcorder.
It’s looks crazy and it shoots crazy but will it work?
According to Panasonic, the camera will operate by placing two cameras side by side into a single chassis. Most 3D movies are generally done by mounting two cameras together, so this would be a slight variation with the same idea. The video from both camcorders are then linked together and exported as 3D video.
So I’m not entirely certain if this is a new technology that I’m interested in seeing get developed. Why to be honest? Why should I? What benefit does 3D have? I feel like there is no point, but who am I really… Just a guy that shoots video every single day.
I just found this post on Gizmodo that I thought I’d share with you before the weekend. In one of those rare shots of Michael Jackson as “just an ordinary guy”, he’s checking out the camcorders at an interview in Ireland. First the Sony F900 Sony then the HVR-Z1U.
ViewSonic, makers of electronics like TVs, monitors and digital signage, has seen the mounting tons of electronic waste filling landfills every year and is working towards being a part of the solution instead of the problem. ViewSonic representatives say that all of their displays released since last summer feature a power-saving mode, which should give the user up to 56% savings in energy costs. The electronic billboards and LCD TVs now use up 40% less power than plasma TVs of the same size. Read the rest of this entry »
AOL wrote: “Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth.”
The news of Michael Jackson’s trauma was instantaneous, moving so fast, that many people weren’t sure where the news was coming from, or what condition the pop star was in. One thing was clear, though, Jackson’s death is admittedly the largest single event ever to hit the internet. The global expanse was amazing, eliciting instant responses from heads of state like former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who said: “We lost a hero of the world.”
The surprise that news of the death of the self-proclaimed King of Pop could be felt so worldwide isn’t surprising, as he was recently listed as the 6th most well-known person in the world. What what was surprising, though, was how fast the news spread and how it triggered so much activity that the internet wobbled from the heavy traffic.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Twitter received 5000 tweets a minute at the peak of the flurry. From Facebook to Yahoo Instant Messaging, the story was told not by a television or radio “Breaking News” interrupt, but by the person next door, across the street and around the world.
Matrox Graphics today announced the availability of the Matrox M9138 and Matrox M9148 DisplayPort graphics cards. Expanding the M-Series product line, these new triple- and quad-monitor cards offer a remarkable 1 GB of memory, and with support for independent or stretched mode at resolutions up to 2560×1600 per output, users can drive business, industrial, and government applications on an exceptional multi-monitor platform. Read the rest of this entry »
Want to get those hard to reach shots that only a jib can provide? Is there not enough money in your pocket to afford to purchase one at a store? Well, here’s a solution that might be just what you’ve been looking for. These step by step instructions will provide you with the knowledge to build your own jib at home and give you a reliable yet affordable jib that can be used on your next video shoot. Thanks to Bob Plate, a long time Videomaker reader, you can make your very own jib for under $60. To find the instructions and to view a video of the jib in action go here: www.videomaker.com/article/14079
Non-Linear Editing applications have become very mature at this stage. So much so, that I think we need to stop calling them Non-Linear Editors. When was the last time you edited a project linearly? It seems odd to define a software category as the opposite of something that no one is doing anymore anyway. It’s like saying horseless-carriage instead of car. How about just “Editing Software?” I know it doesn’t sound nearly as cool as “Word Processor”, or “Database Application”, but it’s descriptive.
In the same vein, does it make sense to base editing software on the film paradigm anymore? Do we really need bins, clips, and razors when most new people coming into editing have never even touched film before? In today’s environment, where the whole process is digital, and we’ve even stopped using tape, what need is there for “footage?”
As more and more people are drawn into the world of video production, whether just for fun, or as part of their business, visual literacy is becoming just as important as written literacy. And as these people learn editing, maybe it’s time to abandon the whole film based timeline paradigm for editing software, in terms of something different.
There are a few companies making some dramatic departures from the timeline. Take a look at this clip from the newest version of Apple’s iMovie 09 and you can see how the traditional 3 point editing structure is being replaced by drag and drop. The fact that the kid who made this tutorial is probably about 12 years old, shows just how ubiquitous video production is going to be as this YouTube generation grows up.
Another interesting editing paradigm can be found in LoiLo’s Loiloscope software, which takes full advantage of the graphics card, not just to render the final video, but in the editing interface itself.
I can see a lot of useful tools and interesting workflows, will “film-based” editing be relegated to pros only, or will we all be moving to a “drag and drop” future?
Reprinted from a Boris FX press release
When we hit NAB, there was this feeling in the air that the new & the future will be 3D. Panasonic actually revealed their take on the issue at NAB, and recently I was thinking about how impressive this technology actually is. So I thought that I’d mention the prototype they announced as the Panasonic “3D Full HD” camcorder.
AOL wrote: “Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth.”
The news of Michael Jackson’s trauma was instantaneous, moving so fast, that many people weren’t sure where the news was coming from, or what condition the pop star was in. One thing was clear, though, Jackson’s death is admittedly the largest single event ever to hit the internet. The global expanse was amazing, eliciting instant responses from heads of state like former 
Want to get those hard to reach shots that only a jib can provide? Is there not enough money in your pocket to afford to purchase one at a store? Well, here’s a solution that might be just what you’ve been looking for. These step by step instructions will provide you with the knowledge to build your own jib at home and give you a reliable yet affordable jib that can be used on your next video shoot. Thanks to Bob Plate, a long time Videomaker reader, you can make your very own jib for under $60. To find the instructions and to view a video of the jib in action go here: 
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