At the LA Final Cut Pro User Group meeting in January, Digital Heaven Cofounder Martin Baker previewed AutoMotion. AutoMotion, it turns out, is a new way to automate text-based animations in Motion projects. In a technologically clever interpretation of the workflow, users can create a single Motion Project as a template – the pattern for all the following animations. This was demonstrated as being particularly efficient for lower-third variations across a program.

Taking the template and merging it with a tab-delimited text file, each line in the text file fills the template, creating a new project for each line. autoMotion simply requires the user to connect the line in the Motion project being used as the template to the corresponding column in the tab-delimited text file. Once connect – a five second process – 40 new Motion Projects where created and saved.

Being fairly simple Motion projects, they opened in Final Cut Pro an previewed in real time over motion video. A round of applause greeted the demonstration.

The editing and updating capabilities available through AutoMotion are where a lot of the value lies for the average editor who’s producer or director may rethink an color or font, or simply want to make changes. In AutoMotion this is absurdly easy compared with modifying 40 lower third titles in a project. When the source template project was edited the changes rippled through all the results. Or, as Martin demonstrated, add an additional template to the AutoMotion project and assign that to some of the imported (from text) titles.

For the techno-geek, the cool thing is that Digital Heaven are creating and modifying Motion project files, which are expressed in XML, while Final Cut Pro et al play the result as a movie or clip and Motion opens it as an editable project. The power of QuickTime at work and a very clever use of it by Digital Heaven.

AutoMotion for Mac OS X is now shipping. The software is available for download purchase from the Digital Heaven online store for US$395. A 30 day fully functioning demo version is available.

More information at Digital Heaven.

Martin Baker was interviewed on Creative Planet’s Digital Production BuZZ on the January 26th show about autoMotion and Digital Heaven’s other software products.

The third Digital Service Station location is at Secret Headquarters, Inc in Culver City, California. The third branch will offer Digital Service Station’s post-production and editing services to the Westside of Los Angeles. We’d tell you where they are, but then it wouldn’t be a secret!

Digital Service Station is the one-stop-shop for transferring material from tape to digital media, and back out to tape again. Think of it as like a Kinko’s™ for digital input and output and as an alternative to renting a deck.

Digital Service Station provides editors, independent producers and production companies the equipment and experience needed to facilitate editing and post-production projects-from self-service equipment rentals through fully assisted editorial and color correction services. Digital Service Station branches are located in Burbank, Culver City and San Francisco.

Greg Huson, co-owner of Secret Headquarters, will manage Digital Service Station’s Culver City branch, and will offer the full spectrum of Digital Service Station services-using Avid Symphony, Adrenaline or Final Cut Pro systems-as well as DVD and VHS viscode dailies, short-run dubbing, BetaSP and Digibeta to DV transfers. In addition, Secret Headquarters will offer HDCam, Panasonic DVCPRO-HD and D5 equipment to Digital Service Station customers.

AJA video added another PCI Express card to their lineup with the release of the KONA LSe, to join the KONA 3 (e) and Kona LHe. The KONA LSe is the perfect choice for professional editors working with Final Cut Pro who only require Standard Definition output and uses a PowerMac G5 dual- or quad-core PCI Express. It has the same feature set as the KONA LS, but with the new high-performance 4-lane PCI Express (PCIe) bus interface. The KONA LS remains available for non PCI-Express configurations.

The KONA LSe is a 4-lane compatible card with 12 bit analog in and out that can be software selected between Component or Composite/S-video or 10 bit SDI input with two independent SDI outputs. Audio is handled as AES I/O with sample rate conversion on input or balanced analog audio. AES and analog audio is limited to two channels while embedded audio on the SDI can take advantage of six channels of audio support.

RS-422 device control, Genlock and a broadcast-quality TBC (with VHS support) round out the feature set. The KONA LS supports all popular standard definition formats: 8/10 bit uncompressed, JPEG and DV25/50. 3:2 pulldown can be applied to for 24P timelines for playback.

As well as Final Cut Pro the KONA LSe supports output from Adobe After Effects, Autodesk Combustion and Apple’s Motion using the supplied AJA QuickTime drivers. The KL-Box-LH is an optional extra.

The KONA LSe will ship March 20th with a list price of US$995.

Toolfarm, one of the easiest places to get After Effects plug-ins and other effects tools have announced that their one day sale is back on from February 27 to March 10, 2006. The same rules as other one-day sales apply:

• one product per day will be discounted 50%.
• you must buy in the 24 hours the discount is offered from the Toolfarm.com online store.
• orders before or after the daily advertised sales period will not qualify for the discount – no exceptions will be accepted.

Except this time there is an exception: Knoll Light Factory will be offered each day during the sale at 50% off the MSRP.

Products to be offered – the order does not indicate the day they’ll be offered – include:

2d3 Boujou Bullet

Conoa SuperPak

Darkling Simulations DIN

DigiEffects Aurorix/Beserk Bundle

Digital Trove PRIME

Re:Vision Effects Effections Plus

RealViz ImageModeler

Red Giant Software Magic Bullet Suite

The Foundry Tinderbundle

Tivity Software Xtivity.

Check the Toolfarm website each day during the sale to find out what’s on sale that day and to buy it.