SGI’s new Webforce and reality pricing

Webforce is not a new Saturday morning toon/toy line, it’s a product line from Silicon Graphics for cooking and dishing ‘media-rich’ content on the World Wide Web. The new troop of stations and servers (based on the Indy and Indigo2 and challenge systems) mix high-bandwidth visual computing power with intuitive authoring tools. Netscape’s Navigator and Netsite server software, a global fave, will be bundled with Webforce systems. WebMagic Author, ‘a dynamic WYSIWYG Hypertext Markup Language,’ digital media tools and MovieMaster combine for a digital audio and video authoring solution that incorporates dedicated hardware and software. Pricing starts at $16,624.

And on the 3D front, sgi sliced the price of fast graphics by 40% when it introduced the Reality Station late last month. Folks who want Reality Engine2 graphics (realtime 3D graphics and texture mapping, etc.) can get it in March for $143,000.

sgi also has a new card providing audio processing and high-speed serial ports on one board. The new Audio/Serial Option for the Onyx graphics supercomputer and Challenge server families will be available in May ($7,552).

sgi also recently combined its solids modeling skills with its digital media and collaboration packages in a low-cost modeler that creates a powerful, new def desktop. The two new Indy Modeler systems are additions to the SiliconWorks solution geared to engineers, and are touted as a way to bridge the cad/cam gap between less-costly-but-slow pcs, and faster-but-expensive workstations.

World competition via international fibre link

CBC is using VideoRoute International to transmit its March 7 World Figure Skating Championships live broadcast from Birmingham, Eng. cbc will be the first Canadian network to use this transatlantic fiber-optic cable broadcast service available from the Stentor alliance.

Vuitton brings VR to TV

Medialab, a cgi/new media division of France’s Canal +, is going to add a bit of vr spice to the next America’s Cup coverage. Computer images of the regatta will be used along with traditional video coverage for a live, real-time expanded view of the race. The cgi portion will feature 3D images of the yachts, their positions, unlimited camera angles and visualization of skippers’ strategies and distance/speed/course/right-of-way displays.

medialab’s realtime 3D software clovis will be used. Tracking beacons aboard the boats will supply data to clovis for continuous updating of its cgi output, which directors will mix with their real footage. This techno feat is attributable to the sponsorship of the event’s official organizer, luggage tycoon Louis Vuitton, and to the aid of sgi, cei and Trimble.

Agfa refocus

Agfa’s motion-picture film division is concentrating its development and manufacturing energies exclusively on its polyester-base films. The xt camera negative films will no longer be produced, and Agfa’s triacetate-based color print and optical sound recording film are being phased out. Agfa cites the polyester-base film’s lower cost, higher quality and environmental friendliness as behind the new strategy.

Introducing Night Suite Nonlinear D1

Toronto-based Adcom Electronics just launched a new non-linear video editor. The system, Night Suite Nonlinear D1, works with two channels of full-field video and offers users selectable jpeg compression ranging from 50:1 to 2:1. Other features include a built-in digital audio station with eight channels of audio (real time), and soft delete capabilities.

Pricing starts at $63,200. Adcom began shipping the system at the beginning of the month.

Pinewood’s new sound

Pinewood Sound has a pair of Studer’s Dyaxis II digital audio workstations, the first to hit Vancouver. One of the systems is installed in an adr suite at Pinewood’s Stage Seven facility on the North Shore Studios lot, presently in use on the abc series The Commish and The Marshal. The music, sound design, effects/editing setup is in the downtown facility.

Martin Short and evil aliens

Microforum recently released some slick new cd entries, including MAABUS: The Ultimate Adventure, a three-cd game with a very chiller wrap. No flash in the pan, the dreamscape game with a sound-shifting music track took almost 25,000 man-hours, developed by 15 senior staff. maabus contains over 1,100 3D animations.

Claudio Baiocchi, Microforum vp and the game’s writer/producer, says it’s a classic good-versus-evil plot. Players on a tropical isle must save the world from a radiation end with the help of a robot sidekick. Multimedia PC is the initial platform; a full-screen mpeg version will follow shortly.

The company’s other recent release is the interactive Martin Short HomeSafe cd (based on an award-winning film) that covers child-proofing concerns.

3D TV tag

Paying the price for 3D tv technology fell to Samsung last month, when it sent a cheque to Calgary and Australia-based Xenotech, in the first stage of an information transfer schedule. Under the licence agreement, Xenotech will reap A$1 million plus royalties for all Samsung product based on Xenotech’s 3D technology. Xenotech has developed 50′ tv displays that support full-motion video from computers, video recorders and 3D tv transmission.

The first markets will be arcade and computer games, workstations, training simulators, cad and ad/promo purposes.

Power strips with a dif

The mega power distribution conditioning units from eta are finally available nationally in Canada through William F. White. Popularized by answering location shooting prayers, the various models incorporate a unique mix of features, such as the PD9 – configured to handle up to eight voltage converters in a one-rack space.

Electric Image 3D accelerator

Pasadena, ca.-based Electric Image has added Apple’s Quickdraw 3D api and metafile format to the list of formats supported within its flagship animation system. In addition to speeding up rendering time, the api enables interactive texture-map placement.

Human-assisted encoding

A Santa Clara, ca. company introed the first mpeg encoding system that lets warm-blooded types get their mitts into the digital video-compression process – for us$95,000. Minerva Systems’ Compressionist allows art and science to interact realtime, letting operators control digital and analog video and high-quality audio with the Minerva encoding engine, a Mac-based host system and mpegmaker software.

No mo’ tape

Two Providence Journal Broadcasting stations will become ‘the world’s first’ tapeless newsrooms, from capture through to transmission. nwcn in Seattle and khnl, the new Honolulu nbc affiliate, are installing Avid’s disk-based server production system and hope to be running a tape-free networked operation by summer.

Last November, when cbc Windsor retooled for a comeback, its analog systems were replaced with Avid’s NewsCutter disk-based edit systems and AirPlay playback, making it the first Canadian station transmitting news direct from disk.

A quiet gizmo

Noise Cancellation Technologies has a new product line, the ProActive 1000 Series (headsets with or without communications capability), useful in electronically reducing low-frequency background noise, such as the equipment and fan hum in studios and suites, and location buzz.

Close-up and Aspheric

Fujinon has another new snappily-named lens in its broadcast product lineup, the S15X6.1ESM, a studio lens for half-inch format three-ccd cameras. The only lens of its kind to boast Aspheric Technology (at), the new studio offering promises improved focus tracking, corner registration and brightness. Its focal length is 6.1mm to 91.5mm, with a 15x zoom ratio. The max aperture is F1.4 to 82mm and F1.6 at 91.5mm, its mod is .75m.

Previous new additions to the Fujinon pro line incorporating at were two 10-pound eng zoom lenses with long focal length and broad wide-angle capability, the A36X10.5ERD and A36X14.5ERD.