Schneider Optics now offers a full line of Century HD lens accessories ready to complement Sony’s new PMW-EX3 (and EX-1) camcorder. Combining the highest quality materials, meticulous design, and ease of use in an affordable, low cost package, these state of the art optical add ons are designed to expand the capabilities of the standard lens supplied with the camera. Now operators can increase the field of view with no loss of ability to zoom, instantly shift the focal range to telephoto when needed, or enjoy the eye-popping angle of view and remarkable barrel distortion of the widest fisheye adapters on the market.

The Century .75X HD Wide Angle Converter (#0HD-75CV-EX3) is a newly designed, lighter weight optical tool that is ideal for shooting situations that require both a wider angle of view and full zooming capabilities. It attaches neatly to the front of the lens to offer 25% more coverage when set to wide angle, telephoto or anywhere in between. Other Century accessories for the PMW-EX3 include the .6X HD Wide Angle Adapter, 1.6X HD Tele-Converter, Fisheye HD Adapter, Extreme Fisheye HD Adapter, 2.0X HD Tele-Converter, and Achromatic Diopters in strengths of +2.0 and +2.6.

Century Pro Series HD lens accessories are designed to produce crisp, high-resolution images with low distortion, and superior contrast edge to edge. Multi-coated glass elements provide sharp images free of unwanted distortion or chromatic aberration. Units interface directly with the front of the camcorder lens via a secure locking bayonet mount, so installation and removal is quick and easy. The .75X HD Wide Angle Converter, .6X HD Wide Angle Adapter, 1.6X HD Tele-Converter, and 2.0X HD Tele-Converter are front threaded to accept a 102mm filter.

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Zaxwerks announces its latest plug-in for Adobe’s After Effects is the evolution of some of the best parts from its predecessors. Although the company’s other plug-ins offer interesting options for 3D designers, Serpentine gives After Effects artists need ability to create those 3D animationss that are most frequently requested in motion graphics.

Still in version 1 at the time of this article, the plug-in already offers ready solution for any 2D animator who wants to broaden their horizons and “depth” of their designs by adding some real volume into the air 2.5D scene. Of course, some will say that 3D applications — standalone, separate applications — will create real 3D geometry, editable surfaces, and advanced controls, but that requires the user to learn a new set of tools being a different application.

The beauty of Serpentine is that the new 3D user who is already familiar with After Effects will quickly be able to create 3D imagery and animation by using effect controls that they have already mastered.

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CineForm has introduced a new, realtime, renderless color correction tool. First Light will become part of the company’s professional Neo and Prospect product families on both Windows and Mac.

The tool uses CineForm’s Active Metadata architecture to add or adjust color information such as white balance, saturation controls, and 3D Look Up Tables, as metadata layers on top of the base image without flattening or rendering the file. Carrying color adjustments as metadata preserves the fidelity of the source images while maintaining compatibility with AVI and QuickTime applications.

First Light is designed to work on Windows and Mac alongside software tools such as Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Vegas, and most other AVI or QuickTime applications. As color adjustments are made to CineForm files through First Light, color changes immediately appear when the CineForm file is played or scrubbed within the editing or compositing application – no rendering, importing, or other processing is required.

Color information is stored in CineForm files as active metadata, which operates as a non-destructive layer above the base image.

The tools will be available shortly as a public beta release within Neo HD/4K on Windows and Mac, and Prospect HD/4K V.4 on Windows. First Light will be included at no additional charge within CineForm products.

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Jim Jannard, founder of the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company, has announced a new product : the RED Rocket, a PCI-Express card for Mac, PC and Linux workstations. RED Rocket will enable those working with native RED R3D files to decode, debayer and playback high quality, 4K (at 30fps) and 5K (at 25fps) files in realtime. RED Rocket will also accelerate Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Assimilate Scratch, RED Alert! REDCINE, RED Rushes and any application using the REDCODE SDK. The card will sport Quad-DVI and Quad-HD-SDI and will sell for under $5,000.

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NVIDIA Corporation today introduced the NVIDIA®® Quadro®® Digital Video Pipeline, the industry’s first integrated GPU-based platform for broadcasters to acquire, process and deliver virtual effects to video.

The solution offers the fastest graphics computation engine for broadcast production, in a flexible, reliable and cost-effective PC-based platform. By providing a direct path for image processing into and out of the GPU, it allows professionals to incorporate higher quality, graphic-rich broadcasts in real time. It also offers the fastest path for capturing and transcoding HD broadcast-quality video for use in real-time Internet streaming services.

The Quadro Digital Video Pipeline integrates the following:

Quadro SDI Capture card – enables uncompressed video to be streamed directly to Quadro SDI-enabled GPU memory, with the ability to capture up to four HD-SDI Single link sources simultaneously. Supports all SMPTE standard formats (3G, 2K, HD and SD) and includes a monitor out of the primary input.

Quadro SDI Output card – provides an integrated graphics-to-video solution, enabling 2D and 3D effects to be composited in real-time with 2K, HD and SD video. It can be genlocked to external house sync, or synced to the SDI Capture card.

Quadro FX professional GPU solutions – choose from the latest generation Quadro FX 3800, Quadro FX 4800 and Quadro FX 5800. Based on NVIDIA’s revolutionary CUDA parallel computing architecture, Quadro offers advanced features and capabilities, up to 240 parallel processing cores and support for next-generation OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX 10 applications.

Quadro Digital Video Pipeline SDK – includes an extensive software development kit containing samples, APIs and plug-ins that allow applications to easily optimize the graphics and data processing pipelines of the Quadro GPU. This ensures easy programmability and control through the entire Digital Video Pipeline — from capture through final delivery.

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Object Matrix, a provider of data storage software, has today partnered with digital asset management solution vendor Square Box Media Solutions to create a flexible and powerful digital content workflow solution allowing content creators to access their archived content at the click of a mouse.

The integration between the MatrixStore and CATDV products will allow customers who have invested in both Apple and Avid post production software to easily and powerfully manage their assets on a single archive storage solution.

Using The MatrixStore, digital assets are stored on state of the art server hardware with powerful software to provide an easy to use, scalable, secure and cost effective method of archiving multimedia projects. Archives are always available at the touch of a button, and the ease of installation and use mean that businesses are free to concentrate on their core competencies.

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