– Spinning south

Toronto’s Spin Productions is planning to expand southward, with a new u.s. facility set to open this summer. Stay tuned for more details.

-Pebble Beach expands

In addition to expanding and moving its offices, Regina-based Pebble Beach Interactive was recently nominated for a prestigious CODIE Award for best use of visual arts.

Pebble Beach has staffed up its graphics, animation, programming, special effects and management operation and moved into a new 6,000-square-foot facility.

The company’s Ideas and Inspiration: An Introduction to Contemporary Canadian Art title won the first-ever Multimedia Award at the Saskatchewan Showcase awards and is nominated along with Microsoft’s Encarta World Atlas and Deadly Tide, Corbis’ Leonardo da Vinci and Houghton Mifflin Interactive’s Inventor Labs.

The cd-rom is being considered for use in high schools in b.c., Alberta and Nova Scotia.

-Avid, Intel alliance

Avid Technology and Intel have formed a strategic alliance toward providing Avid audio and video editing products on the Intel architecture.

The agreement has seen Intel purchase 1,552,632 newly issued shares of Avid common stock, giving Intel about 6.75% ownership in Avid; in turn, Avid will develop content creation products for the Intel platform. Avid currently releases several products for the platform, including mcxpress for Windows nt, NewsView and Elastic Reality.

In other Avid developments, the company recently unveiled Version 3.0 of its Jester digital ink and paint software. The new version features an integrated, customizable paint module, a redesigned interface and compatibility with Avid’s Open Media Framework.

The company’s Film Composer editing system was recently employed in the making of The English Patient, a job which won Walter Murch an Oscar for best film editing, marking the first time a digitally edited film has been recognized in the best editing category.

-NAB ’97: New Quantel language

Quantel will use the occasion of NAB ’97 to showcase the opening of its application-specific hardware to external programmers.

Software developers using the platform-independent Java programming language will be able to write applications for the entire family of Quantel products. The combination will require no changes in hardware and the Quantel interface will remain the same, with the Java space represented by an extra menu box.

Also at NAB ’97, Mountain View California-based Pinnacle Systems will unveil the dvextreme, the first 3D digital video effects generator to offer full broadcast-quality, multiple-channel video processing in a Windows nt-based system.

For broadcast and post-production, dvextreme provides up to three complete video manipulation channels with 10-bit digital video processing and custom special effects capability.

dvextreme includes Pinnacle’s proprietary effects technology Particlefx, which gives users the ability to create effects like blowing sand, melting video radial bursts and swirls; and Painterlyfx, which allows users to apply textured surfaces and a painted look to video in realtime.

-SGI Opens wide

Silicon Graphics has announced new licensees of its Opengl 3D graphics applications programming interface. Companies signing on as new licensees are Compaq Computer, 3D graphics chip makers 3Dfx Interactive and Rendition, European graphics subsystems company elsa gmbh, Number Nine Visual Technologies, and InterDimension Multimedia.

Intel and 3D graphics add-in board manufacturer AccelGraphics are upgrading licences. Opengl, created by sgi, is an operating system-independent 2D and 3D graphics api that enables pc, workstation and supercomputing hardware vendors to provide high-performance 3D graphics solutions and software developers to save development time and cost.

-Meetings by Sony

The Broadcast and Professional Group of Sony has developed a departmental video conferencing system with built-in multipoint capability for three sites and a motion-sensitive, object-tracking camera.

The TriniCom 3000, priced at about $16,000, allows users in three different locations to develop and edit information, documents or design specifications simultaneously. Sony’s ‘Trilogy’ allows three compressed, full-motion, split-video pictures to be simultaneously displayed on a single monitor, or each location can switch between multipoint sites or turn on voice-activated switching.

-Discreet upgrade

Discreet Logic has announced support for sgi’s Onyx2 graphics workstation for its visual effects editing and broadcast production products. Discreet’s Inferno, Flame visual effects and compositing systems, fire online editing system, frost broadcast graphics system, and vapour virtual sets system will all support Onyx2.

-April Fools

As a humorous heads-up to questions of government Web page regulation, Bill Sweetman, Ideaguy and founder of HipHype, an online and offline pr firm, set up a page for the ‘Canadian Internet Licensing Board.’

The site (www.cilb.com/) directs Web developers in adhering to proper Web site protocol, including a licence application form and Cancon requirements. The site, which received over 11,000 hits in 24 hours, was conceived as a way to demonstrate the absurdity of Internet regulation and as a great April Fool’s gag.