News for November 2005

Former Buena Vista President dies…

Irving Ludwig has died aged 95. He was the former president of Buena Vista, and was behind the release of many Disney classics, such as Fantasia and The Jungle Book.
Read on for the full press release…
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Posted: November 29th, 2005
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digitalintermediates.org launches “4k” digital intermediate email group…

With the Telecine Internet Group taking care of all things Telecine, and the Cinematography Mailing List covering shooting, there seems to be a gap for an email list dedicated to all things digital intermediate.
With this in mind, digital intermediates .org is proud to announce the launch of “4k”, a free subscription service to allow people to discuss DI-related topics from the comfort of their in-box. Said topics will include things such as asset-management, dust-busting, conforming, effects, color grading, and output.
The way it work is as follows: you register for a (free) account, and any time anyone posts a message (either by email or in our forum), you’ll receive the message as an email. You can reply or post new messages by email or directly in the forum, whichever is more convenient. Your messages will then be sent to everyone on the list. Your email address is not shown to anyone, however, you can contact people privately using the email links in the forum.
Full details here
Seeing as this is brand-new, expect a little bit of inertia in the early stages while we work out some of the bugs.

Posted: November 18th, 2005
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Cleaner XL 1.5 announced…

Autodesk today announced version 1.5 of its transcoding software, Cleaner XL (along with version 6.5 of Cleaner for the Mac).

New Cleaner features include:
New output formats:
• Flash video support (.flv and .swf) with On2 Flix Exporter
• DivX Pro encoder
o DivX 5.2 for Cleaner XL 1.5 for Windows
o DivX 6.0 for Cleaner 6.5 for Macintosh
Updated codecs:
• Updated Kinoma version 3 exporter
• H.264 encoding through QuickTime 7 and support for Real 10.

Cleaner XL only new features:
• Support for Autodesk Backburner
• Command line script support for pipeline automation
• New Input formats:
o DPX, Cineon, OpenEXR
o Wiretap support on input

Other enhancements for Cleaner XL 1.5 include the addition of 4:2:2 and two pass encoding for MPEG-2
Cleaner 6.5 for Macintosh, adds many of the new codecs supported in Cleaner XL 1.5 in addition to Apple QuickTime 7.

Clearly, many of these will make Cleaner a much more versatile tool within most DI facilities.

The windows version is out now, and 6.5 for Mac will follow later. Pricing is at around €700 per license, with upgrades from €140

Posted: November 17th, 2005
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Digital intermediates seminar in Mexico…

I know a couple of people have gone over for this specially, but for anyone else who’s in the area (Mexico city), Kodak Mexico is hosting a seminar on digital intermediates.

The topics include:
– introduction of Kodak’s new film stock for Digital Intermediates
– digital color management and calibration with Kodak’s Display Manager
– color grading using CHROME Imaging’s Matrix system of 2K material
– printing and projection


More information…

Posted: November 17th, 2005
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Warner Bros. Create first 4k DCDM…

Warner Bros. Technical Operations (at least, a combination of two fo its subsidiaries, Motion Picture Imaging and Global Digital Media Xchange (sic)) have created what they claim to be the first ever 4k digital cinema distribution master to conform to the DCI’s specs, for Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride”.

Well, it’s a little bit of hot air, after all, it’s not like they did the first ever 4k digital intermediate (in fact, there’s nothing to suggest it was even posted at 4k, but there you go).

The most amusing thing about this is that there is nowhere yet that can play it at 4k, barring a few specialist places (and a couple of places in Japan). So it’s a bit like inventing the telephone, but not having anyone to call…

Read on for the full press release
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Posted: November 16th, 2005
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