Incredible Shrinking Machine
Samsung’s new SCD590 is one of the smallest upright Mini DV camcorders in the world, measuring only 1.60" x 3.74" x 3.70", and weighing less than one pound. It uses Memory Stick media to save still images, and features a 2.5" LCD view screen and a 10x optical zoom. It can also accommodate a supplementary flash via its Smart Shoe.
(800) SAMSUNG
www.samsungusa.com
Suggested Retail Price: $1,199
| Board the SpaceShuttle |  |
Contour A/V Solutions’ new SpaceShuttle A/V Controller is their follow-up to the ShuttlePro. It has a smooth-spinning jog dial combined with a spring-loaded shuttle dial, flanked with five programmable buttons. The USB interface connects to Windows 98, 2000 and XP, as well as Mac OS 8.6-9.2 and X 10.1. Better yet, it’s pre-programmed for Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Media 100 i, Boris FX and many more of today’s editing programs.
(866) 894-1127
www.contouravs.com
Suggested Retail Price: $79
| Back in Black |  |
ACDSee 5.0 features a customizable interface and now supports the playback of video and audio. It also lets you browse through first-frame thumbnails of your video clips. Still-frame extraction from video clips is also supported. ACD reports that ACDSee 5.0 offers numerous speed improvements over previous versions. You can also share and order prints of your still photos with SendPix Image Sharing Service.
(866) 244-2237
www.acdsystems.com
Suggested Retail Price: $50
| Doin’ the Dolby Digital Thing |  |
Minnetonka Audio announces their SurCode Dolby V-Plug plugin for Adobe Premiere. It provides 2.0 channel Dolby Digital audio encoding easily within Premiere 6 or 6.5. The program yields a Dolby Digital bitstream that, when used during DVD authoring, is more compact than PCM audio, but will sound just as good, giving you more room on your DVDs for video.
(952) 449-6481
www.minnetonkaaudio.com
Suggested Retail Price: $299
| Mix XLR in the Field |  |
Azden introduces an easy way to mix two XLR sources with their new FMX-2 field mixer. Requiring a single 9V battery, it provides outputs to both XLR and 1/8" connections, for use with both pro and consumer camcorders without adapters. A monitor jack and peak level output indicators are also provided.
(516) 328-7500
www.azdencorp.com
Suggested Retail Price: $350
| Get ’em back |  |
StuffBak is a service that hopes to improve your chances of recovering lost items. Just stick the label onto your camcorder and register the serial number with StuffBak. Then, if you lose something and someone finds it, they can contact StuffBak and get a small reward. You pay a service fee of $14.95 (plus shipping and handling) to get your stuff back and can sweeten the deal for would-be Good Samaritans with a reward of your own.
(800) 800-8257
www.stuffbak.com
Suggested Retail Price: $10
| Anyone for 24P? |  |
Panasonic Broadcast and Digital Systems much anticipated AG-DVX100 Mini DV camcorder is now available. Featuring three 1/3-inch CCDs, it offers a 24-fps progressive scan mode for more faithful transfer to film, in addition to 30fps interlaced and progressive scan modes. It also features a 3.5" LCD viewscreen and weighs in at just 4.4 pounds.
(800) 528-8601
www.panasonic.com/broadcast
Suggested Retail Price: $3,795
| Draggin’ the Line |  |
A new tool for creating interactive video from MPEG-1s, MPEG-2s, JPEGs or GIFs, DRAGRI allows you to drag objects through a motion path. This provides a more intuitive way to effectively view short video clips frame-by-frame. DRAGRI is designed for use with Web sites and CD-ROMs.
www.dragri-fan.com
Suggested Retail Price: $119
| Hug a Tree |  |
Tree-Pod’s new hands-free mounting system can attach to trees, poles or any other vertical surfaces with either screws or a special grip plate and straps. It features a three-way pan head and can be removed from its mounting surface quickly. Suggested uses include nature photography and videography, outdoor sports and surveillance.
(320) 240-2362
www.tree-pod.com
Suggested Retail Price: $135
| A Chip Off the Ol’ Razor |  |
in-sync is now shipping Blade, a new DV-only editing package with much in common to its older brother, Speed Razor. Blade provides output to file-based and Web-based distribution formats. And for all you animators, Blade can play back .tga files at full speed (as long as your machine is fast enough). If you need to make window dubs, Blade has you covered there, too.
(800) 864-7272
www.in-sync.com
Suggested Retail Price: $499
