Interactive lecture series

Medialinx h@bitat, the new media training facility at the Toronto-based Canadian Film Centre, has partnered with the Design Exchange, also in Toronto, to assemble The Interactive Arena, a lecture series on the confluence of design, new media and technology.

The series features some of the bright lights from the digital world, beginning with a lecture from virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier, and The Last Broadcast – a feature which used satellite broadcast technology for its initial theatrical run – from digital cinema mavens Stefen Avalos, David Beard, Ester Robinson and Lance Weiler.

Paul Levinson will discuss Intellectual Property in the Digital Age on Jan. 14, and on Feb. 10, the featured speaker is scientist Barbara Hayes-Roth, founder of Extempo, an organization that develops interactive ‘Imp’ characters for entertainment, e-commerce and corporate uses.

On March 10, the series will feature Ellie Rubin, founder of the Bulldog Group, and in April, guest speaker is Robert Greenberg, ceo of New York and l.a.-based design and production company R/GA Digital.

*ICE blasts off

ICE has begun shipping its ICEblast standalone effects editing system, which is positioned as a cost-effective desktop production method throughout the post process.

ICEblast allows effects to be added to material – video and film clips, title treatments and logos – used in Avid systems like Media Composer and Xpress as well as Media 100 and Adobe After Effects.

ICEblast is said to streamline the effects process using the realtime playback engine from Puffin Designs, which makes Commotion effects and paint software. With a ‘smart preview’ capability, the product allows effects artists working on a portion of an effect to review changes without rendering the whole clip. ICEblast is priced at about $9,000, including the BlueICE hardware card, ICEfx for After Effects and an ICE’d Boris AE licence.

*Softimage, Nintendo strike deal

Montreal-based Softimage has announced a deal with Nintendo to create game development tools for the Nintendo 64 home video game console.

Nintendo is working with Softimage 3D as a key development tool, and under the development agreement the two companies will partner to define the Nintendo Intermediate File Format V2.0 and game development environments.

Softimage, owned by Avid Technology, will create new tools to support NIFF 2.0 based on Softimage|3D Version 3.8, new features of which include an animation sequencer, color reduction and game filter.

*New from Eyeon

Eyeon Software has launched Version 2.5 of its Digital Fusion post-production software, which the company says allows greater speed and new features for applications including film special effects, 3D animation enhancement video production and hdtv production.

*Matrox launches Release 2.5

Matrox Video Products Group has announced its Release 2.5 for the DigiSuite platforms, which promises a boost to productivity for Adobe Premier rt and in:sync Speed Razor running on the platform.

Premier or Speed Razor with Matrox DigiSuite or DigitSuite le cards allows users to edit two streams of D1 video up to uncompressed quality with 32-bit animated graphics in realtime.

New features in Matrox Release 2.5 include a high-speed compositing engine allowing numerous layers and a Video for Windows software codec that allows users to read and write DigiSuite compatible files without having DigiSuite hardware in their system.

Matrox is shipping its ‘Realtime Dream Suite’ nonlinear editing bundle with the Matrox DigiSuite le card, Adobe Premier rt editing software, Inscriber Technology titling plug-in and Artel Software Boris FX 3D DVE plug-in at a cost of about $7,500.

*Leitch drives a hard bargain

Toronto-based Leitch has introduced a 18GB Fibre Channel disc drives, reducing the cost of storage for its VR300 broadcast video server. The company’s new FCR-301 disk arrays hold 10 18GB Fibre Channel disc drives, doubling the array’s previous capacity.

Leitch says the new drives represent a cost-effective storage advance, touted as representing a 44% reduction in the cost of storage.

*Also driving

Avid Technology has added steam to its storage drive offerings with a new 18GB 10K (i.e. rotational speed of 10,000 rpm) MEDIArray drive for use with its Avid Mediashare F/C work group storage solution, Media Illusion and Avid Symphony.

The 18GB 10K drive offers a 40% improvement in drive performance and transfer rates over previous 7200rpm drives and can be configured in either rack-mount or desk-side units into base configurations of 36GB. The MEDIArray drives are available now priced at about $19,500 for 36GB rack-mount and $21,140 for desk-side.