Sub-ware

Prisms 3D animation software, developed by Toronto’s Side Effects Software, has been used in a number of Hollywood hits of late, including the 20th Century Fox yuk-fest Down Periscope.

The submarine exteriors in the film were miniatures, and Prisms was used to track underwater scenes so elements such as turbulence, bubbles and torpedoes could be added by l.a.-based effects company vifx with its own proprietary software.

Prisms was also used in John Woo’s Broken Arrow to animate the film’s stealth bomber shots and in Robert Rodriguez’s bizarre From Dusk Til Dawn for a scene featuring a swarm of bats.

Avid launch

Tewksbury, Massachusetts’ favorite industry, Avid Technology, has announced the launch of two new pci-based digital non-linear online video editing systems, mcxpress for Macintosh and Windows nt platforms.

mcxpress for Macintosh is based on software from Avid’s Media Composer and runs on a Power Macintosh 9500 or 8500 equipped with the Avid Broadcast Video Board. u.s. book value for the turnkey system is $29,995 and $14,995 for a software and board bundle.

mcxpress for Windows nt evolved from Avid’s Real Impact and runs on Truevision Targa 2000 pci and 1000 pci component and composite video boards. Complete systems begin at us$15,000; a software-only solution will be available at an introductory price of us$4,995.

Eddie for Hiroshima team

Quebec-based editors Denis Papillon and Dominique Fortin, together with John Soh, have picked up an American Cinema Editors Association Eddie Award for their work on the miniseries Hiroshima, coproduced by Montreal’s Telescene Communications and Tokyo’s Daiei Co.

The miniseries was edited in Montreal at Montage Metaphore under the supervision of Mark Conte, the executive in charge of post-production, and director Roger Spottiswoode, and used three Avid systems and the help of a dozen Montage Metaphore staff.

The Eddies were presented March 16 at l.a.’s Beverly Hilton International.

Moves

Cine-Byte Imaging, a Toronto digital film and video facility, has settled into its new location at 543 Richmond Street. The new digs feature broadcast-quality video output from Mac, pc and sgi-based software and will soon be home to a high-resolution film scanner.

Other moves

As of July 1, Vision tv will move its master control, traffic, packaging and tape library to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto.

Bell Centre

The Bell Centre for Creative Communications, an interactive multimedia training facility located at Centennial College in Toronto, will develop a curriculum for the Bay Area Multimedia Technology Association.

The Bell Centre will provide courses for a learning center recently opened by California-based bamta, a global alliance for networked multimedia formed in co-operation with nasa. Initial course offerings will focus on programs designed to integrate the business and creative aspects of networked multimedia.

Sonic learning

London, Ont.-based Fanshawe College has acquired a Sonic Solutions workstation for use in its two-year-old Digital Applications program, associated with the college’s Music Industry Arts program. The addition of the workstation to the mia Media Lab will allow complete coverage of 24-track digital editing, full automated mixing, non-linear digital playback, cmx autoconform, adr/foley recording and cd premastering.

Prisa picks up the pace

Prisa Networks, a San Diego-based developer of high-speed digital networks for motion picture and tv studios, has launched a new networking hardware and software system to overcome ‘information bottleneck’ in film and tv production.

The system, which includes the NetFX-HIO64 Network Adapters and NetFX Loop Hubs, was developed for Silicon Graphics Onyx supercomputers and Challenge video servers, and together with the NetFXGIO64 Adapter Cards, allows the movement of data at more than a gigabit per second.

The network adapter works with the Netfx single workstation adapter on SGI Indigo2 and Indigo2 impact workstations, providing transfer of video files at a rate Prisa says is more than 100 times faster than many of the systems currently used by studios.

Model One

Berkeley, Calif.-based Pacific Microsonics is now shipping its Model One HDCD Processor, a two-channel analog-to-digital, digital-to-analog converter and digital signal processor for performing hdcd process encoding and decoding.

A Capella

Vancouver’s Digital Courier International has released Version 2.0 of the Capella PC Audio Codec, the first audio card on the market to record and play back MPEG Layer II audio from hard disc or encode and transmit audio in realtime. Capella reduces the amount of space used by audio files on hard drives, and its realtime communications interface allows realtime transmission of audio over a digital network.

Peach of a contract

Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Division, an arm of Matsushita Electric Industrial, will supply nbc with equipment for the network’s coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.

The Panasonic D-3 digital composite format will serve as nbc’s main recording format, and the Panasonic D-5 digital component format will be the medium for graphics creation and storage for the games. Panasonic will supply more than 1,000 videotape recorders and 200 digital video cameras to cover Olympic events.