For anyone in Park City during Sundance and Slamdance these next few days, the HD House conference will be running for a full four days from January 19-22. Mike Curtis of the infamous HD For Indies will be kicking off the event with a freeform discussion about all things HD, and the rest of the conference promises to offer a wealth of presentations and technical advice for directors, producers, cinematographers, and videographers working with HD. For a full rundown, check out the conference program and schedule.

Long time Apple host card maker ATTO debuted it's new Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) adapter Tuesday at Macworld Expo. Designed for the Mac Pro, the PCI Express card gets high-end users connected to RAID storage over one of the fastest connections possible. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's great for video editors.

I won't bore you with all the details of SAS technology. Suffice it to say, SAS offers speed improvements over traditional SCSI, while eliminating some of it's hassles (now, what did I do with that terminator?) At around 3Gb (Gigabits not bytes) per second data transfer, SAS is a relatively affordable option for HD video editors, and provides reliability as well.

ATTO has been supporting the Mac platform for nearly 2 decades, and generally make great products. You can bet their new cards will have been tested specifically for the Mac Pro, and will perform as advertised. Click READ for a link to the product page.

Manufacturer Snell and Wilcox claim their Kahuna switcher is the first machine capable of combining both HD and SD sources. Other combo switchers support only one format at a time, and usually require a reboot to move from standard to high def. Kahuna was designed for flexibility from the ground up, which makes it a great choice for stations like Thailand's iTV.

Independent TV of Thailand just installed the Kahuna, and will use it in a strictly SD capability for now. As they gradually gain HD equipment, the switcher can be upgraded via software to handle 'dual' definition. Once iTV makes the complete jump to High Def, they simply shut off the SD features, and use the Kahuna in HD.

Anyone who works in live TV can tell you the importance a good switcher. for those of you who haven't had a chance to experience the shear joy that is broadcast (wink, wink) a switcher is a machine that controls which of nearly a dozen sources is currently on the screen. With the push of a button, the tech director can switch (hence the name) from video tape, to a satellite feed, to a studio camera and back again.

Switchers are an absolute requirement for virtually all TV worldwide, including HDTV, which is not an easy pill for most stations to swallow. The prospect of having to replace all your equipment at once would simply be financially impossible. That's what makes the Kahuna so cool.

Click READ for a link to the Kahuna information page including a video presentation.

The title is misleading because I am pretty sure that Pro Tools is not on Linux as of yet. But good news Mactel-based audio people! DigiDesign has released Pro Tools 7.3 which is now compatible with Macs equipped with Intel processors. Pro Tools is the industry standard with audio. I know many sound designers who were not going to upgrade to the new Macs till Pro Tools became compatible.

For more info on new features, check out these video one & two (Flash video). Besides compatibility, there aren't any major new features, a lot of interface improvements. Free upgrade for existing users.

Telestream, the developers of Flip4Mac, have updated their professional Mac compression software Episode to 4.2. In the new version, Episode adds support for C-1 encoding (the SMPTE-standard video codec) and WMA Pro audio plus HDV and IMX encoding and support for 5.1 audio encoding. It also includes a channel mapping filter for surround sound, the ability to add bumpers and trailers to encoded clips, and Apple help. Telestream claims the Episode Engine is the only server-based encoding solution for Intel Xserves that offers native SD and HD encoding of all QuickTime formats plus Flash 8, Windows Media, H.264, and MPEG-1/2.

Episode comes in two forms: desktop (from $395) and workgroups (from $6500). Upgrades are free.

(via Tuaw)

Today, Panasonic introduced the new shoulder-mounted AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD camcorder. The camera comes with 5 hot-swappable P2 card slots. The camera records in the new AVC-Intra codec which has the same data rate as DVCPro HD but needs less memory. AVC-Intra supposedly doubles the storage capacity of the DVCPro HD. Panasonic says the new codec gives 10-bit 4:2:2 images at both 1920x1080 i/p and 1280x720p (480i and 576i are also options), they compare the image quality to the D-5 HD format. If you were wondering about the compatibility in NLE's for the Codec, Avid and Apple were on hand at the press briefing to promise their support for the codec. The camera is slated for a January release and is priced at $27,000.

This camera will directly compete with Sony's XDCAM which uses the mpeg-2 codec. At the press briefing, Panasonic made sure to stick it to its competitors, an actress playing a a dingy, bubbly, blond newscaster declared loudly, 'It's toodle-oo to MPEG-2!"

Now you might be thinking a quad core CPU will kick the snot out of a dual core CPU due to the fact that it has twice the power. Charlie White over at DigitalVideoEditing.com has decided to put that theory to the test as he benchmarked two HP workstations. One of these cutting edge computers was running dual Dual-Core 5160 Xenons and the other was sporting dual Quad-Core 5300 Xenons. Essentially it was 8 cores vs. 4in this battle of the brute. And if you were rooting for the quad core, well you would be right as the dual core didn't have a chance even with a slight Ghz edge of 3Ghz over 2.66Ghz for the quad. For the full details check out the table in the article. But in After Effects tests the two were neck and neck since After Effects is not even aware of those extras cores sitting idle in the background.

In his continuing interviews with the Red camera staff, Mike Curtis interviews two important people on the software side of things: Graeme Nattress and Stuart English. Very interesting read even if you have been following everything like I have. My favorite question and answer is this:

Mike: It has been said that with Redcine, you can convert to offline, edit, then come back and convert for online - but other than manually coming up with a list to re-convert (which could be ridiculously daunting on a feature), how will conform be more realistically doable? As in automated? I see this as a HUGE potential stumbling block to the proposed workflow."

GN: We're looking to automate this with RED Pull List, which will take a NLE EDL or XML file, and create a new project in REDCINE with just the clips you need to tweak or re-render out to a higher resolution. RPL is still in early stages of development, but I think you can see how this will help enormously.

Another indication of how good the Red team is about giving what filmmakers need.

Sony has announced a new HD camera, F23, that will be available in Japan around May 2007. This announcement would be exciting news if there wasn't another camera promising better specs and pricing. Of course, I am talking about Red camera.

Anyways, let us take a look at some of the available specs on the F23. According to Sony, F23 will be the new flagship of the CineAlta line, replacing the HDC-F950. Specs:

• RGB 4:4:4
• Support for 24P
• 3 2/3" CCD sensors
• HDCAM SR format
• Film-magazine-like loading system.

No price yet but most likely between 100k-150k. This info gathered from the press release, Mike's post, and this PDF Link.

Switch is a sound audio conversion software for both Windows and Mac platforms (it is possible to run it with Unix). The app can be as simple as drag and drop or as fancy as command line automation (allows up to 32000 files to be converted in one batch). It works with almost all audio formats. MP3 encoder supports constant or variable bit rates from 8 to 320kbps with optional error correction and stereo modes. WAV encoder supports sample rates between 6000 and 196000Hz in PCM as well as a number of other audio codecs. Prices start at $39.

If Avid is your game and you are in the Los Angeles area, swing by the DV Expo between November 14th - 17th. That is where Avid will be showing off it's new tools including Media Composer on Intel Macs and Avid Studio Toolkit which features simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray authoring. There will be two pre-conference education classes focused on Media Composer as well. Should be worth your while if you use Avid to make a living.

When you're part of a feature film, it is good to know where you fit in the post-production process. Outside-Hollywood.com has a handy work flow diagram including the 5 main departments involved in the whole process. The diagram can look a little overwhelming but give it a good look over. Just a little glimpse into the pro world.

Waaay back in September, 2005, Canon announced its first foray into the high definition camcorder market with the XL H1. A quick two month wait and the XL H1 went on sale in November. Fast forward to now, November 2006, as CamcorderInfo has posted their review. With very high scores, this camera sure did impress David, as it should commanding an $8,999 price tag. All is not perfect as the three biggest weaknesses of the camera are 1) lack of 24P (24F is just weird) 2) Large Size and 3) small viewfinder. Everything else is gravy though. So if you are into incredibly detailed reviews with lots of photos, including color charts, then what are you still doing here? Go read the review. It will probably take a year to get through it.

How exactly does the MPAA know where a pirated movie originated from. DVDs have always had secret watermarks but did you know theatrical film releases did to? On certain frames there is a dot-pattern which identifies where the original originated. These are called CAP codes and different companies use different symbols. For example, since 1982 Eastman Kodak has printed a series of numbers along the sprocket holes every 100 frames and Deluxe Laboratories places a pattern directly in the frame (see the screenshot). I imagine they will be moving on to bigger, better anti-piracy measures since this info is out in the wild. Of course the MPAA was never quick to adopt.

Earlier Russell posted about how to create a space scene with NO CGI. Devon Delapp, proprietor of the aptly named DevonDelapp.com, and TV writer, wrote in to give us a heads up on his neat lil' article about a pretty neat lil' process. Film nerds know how costly it is to shoot a car sequence (especially single cam.) Fortunately for all of us, Delapp diagrammed a process for shooting a car scene without a green screen. Sure, that takes all the fun out of post, but shooting with a 20 person crew, some lights and mirrors makes for a fun shoot. Granted, it's probably outside the production level for most readers of the beloved Guru, but it's well written, interesting and at the least, gives you an idea of how lucky we are with the advent of cheap and effective chroma/color keying.