News for May 2005

Blinkx.tv search engine…

blinkx.tv
The Blinkx.tv search engine, currently in beta stage, allows people to search for video clips. The clips indexed by the engine can be searched using keywords or a “conceptual search”, theoretically allowing users to find a particular sequence of a particular programme. The site indexes over 40,000 clips, from a number of different broadcasters including the BBC, HBO, and NBC.
The service is entirely free to use, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the content is free. There are also rumours of Microsoft, Google, and Apple developing similar systems

Try it now:





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Posted: May 29th, 2005
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Cinepaint Digital Film library…

Cinepaint
The creators of Cinepaint maintain an online library of digital image sequences preserving archive film.
At the present time, there is only one production available, “Tom Tight Et Dum Dum” (1903), but nonetheless, this remains an important project. If you are able to contribute archive film, or perhaps even scanning time, check out the site.
Tom Tight Et Dum Dum

CinePaint Digital Film Library

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Posted: May 29th, 2005
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GraphicsMagick & DPX…

Bob Friesenhahn is developing the freeware program GraphicsMagick to include file formats used by the majority of digital intermediate processes. He is looking for people with technical expertise in this area to help him out.

GraphicsMagick

For the past couple of months, I have been working to develop
high-quality support for the latest SMPTE DPX format. This would
include support for Cineon Log encoding. While there is some DPX
support (written by David Hodson) in the GIMP and CinePaint packages,
the support is focused on the most common uses of DPX in film rather
than being a “from spec” implementation which attempts to support the
many variations possible within the specification. Other than David’s
work, I have been unable to find any free support for DPX. A number
of people in the film and video industry have sent me sample DPX
files, and GraphicsMagick has been able to read all of them.

Posted: May 28th, 2005
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Roll camera…

Another interesting, if perhaps not extremely useful, gadget.
Remington’s “Eye Ball R1” camera is basically a rubber ball with an “omni-directional” lens in it. It can be throw or rolled, and transmits images back to a receiving unit wirelessly. It’s designed for military use, and there aren’t any specifications on things likecolour space, frame rate or resolution, and in fact it may not even be possible to use the footage it generates as a shot in a film..
Eye Ball R1

more info…
wired.com article…

Posted: May 26th, 2005
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Standard data resolutions…

The following figures are the industry accepted digital equivalents for various analogue formats, and the standard formats for several native digital formats. These are typically derived from the average resolving power of each format, as well as using a number that is easy for computers to work with (any number that is a power of two: 256, 2048, 4096, etc.)

Format Picture aspect ratio Standard pixel resolution Pixel aspect ratio
Apple iPod video 1.33 320×240 1.0
Apple iPhone video 1.5 480×320 1.0
Sony PlayStationPortable 1.76 480×272 1.0
SD video (PAL, DV) 1.33 720×576 1.067
SD video (NTSC, DV) 1.33 720×486 0.9
SD video (PAL, square pixels) 1.33 768×576 1.0
SD video (NTSC, square pixels) 1.33 648×486 1.0
DVD video (NTSC, 4:3) 1.33 720×480 0.9
DVD video (PAL, 4:3) 1.33 720×576 1.067
DVD video (NTSC, 16:9) 1.78 720×480 1.185
DVD video (PAL, 16:9) 1.78 720×576 1.69
Blu-ray 1.78 1920×1080 1.0
HD video @720* 1.78 1280×720 1.0
HD video @1080 (certain types**) 1.78 1440×1080 1.33
HD video @1080 1.78 1920×1080 1.0
DVC Pro HD @59.94i 1.78 1280×1080 1.5
16mm 1.37 1712×1240 1.00
Super-16 1.65 2048×1240 1.00
“Academy” aperture (2k) 1.37 1828×1332 1.00
“Academy” aperture (4k) 1.37 3656×2664 1.00
Cinemascope (Squeezed, 2k) 2.35 1828×1556 2.00
Cinemascope (Squeezed, 4k) 2.35 3656×2664 2.00
Cinemascope (Unsqueezed, 2k) 2.35 2048×872 1.00
Cinemascope (Unsqueezed, 4k) 2.35 3656×1556 1.00
Full Aperture (2k) 1.33 2048×1556 1.00
Full Aperture (4k) 1.33 4096×3112 1.00
8-perf “VistaVision” (3k) 1.5 3072×2048 1.00
8-perf “VistaVision” (6k) 1.5 6144×4096 1.00
Red (16:9, 4k) 1.78 4096×2304 1.00
Red (2:1, 4k) 2.0 4096×2048 1.00
Digital Cinema (4k) 1.9*** 4096×2160 1.00
Digital Cinema (2k) 1.9*** 2048×1080 1.00
SHV (UHDTV-2) 1.78 7860×4320 1.00

*DVCPRO HD (at 720p60) is actually 960×720, with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.33

**These include DVCPRO HD100 (at 50i), HDCAM, and 1080i HDV formats

***Digital Cinema specifications allow for a variety of aspect ratios, but footage must be letterboxed to fit the standard area

 

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Posted: May 26th, 2005
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