-New talent forum

Students of interactive media will have the opportunity to showcase their work in an international forum at the New Talent Pavilion at MILIA ’98, the international content market for interactive media.

Thirty teams of artists or authors from areas including games, multimedia and enabling technology, provided they are enrolled in a high-level interactive media course, will have the chance to participate in the Pavilion during the show, to be held Feb. 8-11, 1998 in Cannes, France.

This year’s New Talent Pavilion at milia featured 27 projects from 59 students representing 11 countries including Canada.

The deadline for entries is Nov. 17, 1997. For information, check the milia Website at www.reedmidem.milia.com.

-Getty gets Energy

U.K.-based Getty Communications has acquired l.a. stock footage company Energy Film Library. With the acquisition, Energy joins Fabulous Footage, a Toronto-based, North American-wide stock footage company acquired by Getty last spring to form what Getty intends to be the world’s leader in the field.

As part of the deal, Getty has committed to funding a two-year shoot program to combine with the existing libraries of Energy and Fabulous Footage.

Energy has been involved in a number of online footage distribution initiatives, including an alliance with Sprint for the distribution of its footage over the telco’s high-speed drums network service and an association with ibm to develop a visual search system for nonlinear searching of archives.

-TVA Avid about news

Montreal broadcaster tva is gearing up to become a pioneer in tapeless newsrooms with the design of its new broadcast facility based on Avid Technology’s server-based Digital News Gathering System.

tva will support its new 24-hour news channel Le Canal Nouvelles, launching in September, and eventually its network operation with the Avid system, which represented an investment of about $3 million.

The lcn newsroom was built around the Avid nonlinear workstations and production server. The server system includes 10 NewsCutter editing systems, four AirPlay mp playback systems, a Silicon Graphics-based MediaServer and 48 hours of FibreChannel storage.

Each workstation will have a high-speed connection to the server and all media will be stored centrally on the server’s raid-enhanced hard drives allowing news people to simultaneously edit stories while content is still being recorded onto the server.

-Also at TVA

Montreal-based Keops Technologies has won the contract for the installation of an automated commercial broadcast system on tva’s lcn service. Keops’ Condor broadcast system monitors and controls the transmission of commercials and other programming as well as acting as an integrated computer management system that can be used by a number of departments including traffic, advertising, programming and sales.

The nt-based system allows for upgrades for additional applications and is able to interface with current applications. Keops already has systems in place at Quebec broadcasters Videotron, TV5 and Tele-Quebec, and deals in the works with others.

-Miranda screens new product

Montreal-based Miranda Technologies took the opportunity provided by siggraph to debut its Screen-16 video windowing system.

Screen-16, used in video production and editing environments, runs on Windows 95, nt or 3.11 and displays up to 16 realtime uncompressed video windows simultaneously. Screen-16 can accommodate both analog and digital video applications, and video windows can be positioned, overlapped and independently sized using the system’s resizing filter.

-Post notes – Postport

Toronto commercial post house Postport has officially become a member of The Post Group. The Post Group is currently expanding its facilities to make room for Postort staff and the shop’s Quantel Editbox.

-Magnetic moves

Toronto’s Magnetic hosted a small party July 31 to mark the closing of its Queen Street location. Magnetic has consolidated the facilities into the Magnetic North offices.

-Rainmaker results

Vancouver’s Rainmaker Digital Pictures released its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 1997 and reported revenue of $11.5 million for the six-month period ending June 30, 1997, a 67% increase over the $6.9 million reported for the same period last year. After tax earnings for the period increased 28% to $1.4 million from $1.1 million for the same ’96 period.

While the Gastown Post & Transfer division claims the greatest proportion of overall revenues at 42%, the fastest growing division is Rainmaker Interactive (10% of revenues or $1.2 million), which improved 1,700% in the period from activities with dvd and mpeg compression. Rainmaker Imaging contributed $1.4 million in revenue during the quarter, while Rainmaker’s l.a. facility accounted for $2.5 million. Gastown Post’s contribution was $4.9 million and Gastown Film Lab accounted for $1.5 million.

Looking ahead, the company has been awarded work on Dreamworks skg’s Mouse Hunt, Westbay Entertainment’ Wrongfully Accused, Columbia TriStar’s Medusa’s Child, mgm miniseries Creature and American Z’etrope’s Outrage mow, produced in Vancouver by Pacific Motion Pictures.

-Appointments

Equipment supplier William F. White has appointed Rohit Bhatt to cfo and Larry Sacchetti to the position of vp/gm of the Toronto office while Paul Roscorla will assume the position of vp/gm of the Prairie region at W.F. White Calgary.

-IMAT elections

Subsequent to its general election, the Interactive Multimedia Arts and Technologies Association has announced that past president Adam Froman will take over from Paul Royes as imat president. Froman is a consultant with Deloitte & Touche specializing in strategic planning for the telecommunications and new media industries.