I got this tutorial from bluewin.ch about in and out effects. I’ve been meaning to post a tutorial on this but never got around to it, so this is kind of nice of him to do this for us. I think it does a good job of showing how the effects work.
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Posted in Blu-ray, Tutorials | 4 Comments »
April 26th, 2009 at 6:30pm
This is a tad late, so I apologize.
All in all, I felt NAB was pretty disappointing. As far as Blu-ray news goes, Sonic wasn’t there and I didn’t make it to the NetBlender hotel so I can’t comment on what happened there. Sony had their BluCode encoder, which looked interesting and they had their Ensequence reps talking about On-q (which added BDLive functionality, but other than that had nothing new). And Apple of course was completely quiet.
Non Blu-ray news I found interesting was Adobe’s choice to add Flash to set top players. When I first got into Blu-ray stuff I thought it would have been awesome to just use Flash as the interface so this is pretty cool, but a little late. I think it will be interesting to see if TiVo and others will pick up this technology and see what they come up with. They also announced something like 75% of computer users have downloaded Flash 10 in the 5 months it’s been out. That’s an amazing accomplishment for the Adobe team. Aja came out with the Ki Pro, which is a video capture device for HD cameras that records in Apple’s ProRes codec. It’s pretty cool.
That’s pretty much it. Sorry it’s a bit disappointing. It was obvious 2009 was not the year of Blu-ray for NAB.
Posted in Blu-ray, News | 1 Comment »
April 19th, 2009 at 10:46am
NAB starts tomorrow in Vegas, is anyone planning on going? I’m driving up Tuesday afternoon and will be at the show Wednesday and Thursday.
Hopefully we’ll see some nice Blu-ray products.
Posted in Blu-ray, News | 1 Comment »
March 31st, 2009 at 2:24pm
Sonic has come out with a new version of Designer. Here’s what they say is new:
What’s new in Scenarist Designer PS 2.6?
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- Faster Export Processing - Exporting your designs is now faster than ever. Version 2.6 saves huge amounts of time by enabling users to choose their export format(s) before they optimize their designs. For example, users designing 24-bit BD-J graphics no longer have to wait for palette optimization and dithering to complete before they can export.
- Streamlined Dithering and Palette Set-up Controls - Tired of waiting for the preview window to load before making dithering or palette changes? The wait is over! Version 2.6’s new start-up dialog enables users to load a previously saved palette or carry out per-page or global palette optimization. The dithering algorithm and percentage can also be set in the start-up dialog so your design is optimized the way you want it from the very beginning.
- New Photoshop® Scripts - Version 2.6 includes three all-new productivity scripts designed to help you create Designer PSDs faster. These scripts dramatically decrease the amount of time taken to flatten layers and automatically build Interactive Graphic (IG) and Presentation Graphic (PG) structures.
- Adobe® Photoshop CS4 Support - Version 2.6 supports the latest version of Adobe Photoshop - CS4 - so you can create menu designs that benefit from the very latest Photoshop technology.
- Windows® XP/Vista 64-bit Support - Version 2.6 includes a 64-bit plug-in for use with Photoshop CS4 64-bit Edition (Windows XP-64 and Vista-64 only).
- New “Layer Options” Feature - Save time and start authoring at the same time as designing. Version 2.6’s new Layer Options feature lets you specify Button and Button Object Group (BOG) attributes as well as author simple navigation commands within Photoshop. Simply select a Button or BOG and run the “Set Layer Options” Script to start authoring button functionality (Note: Scenarist BD 5.1, available soon, is required to take advantage of this feature).
- Scenarist BD 5.1 Support - Scenarist Designer PS 2.6 takes full advantage of the latest efficiency enhancements available in Scenarist BD Professional 5.1 including the ability to update and add Pages to existing Interactive Graphics. Please see the Scenarist BD 5.1 beta release announcement for details (Scenarist BD 5.1 beta is currently exclusively available to Scenarist BD Professional users with SonicCare coverage).
- Smart Layer Groups - Got a group of layers you don’t want to export? Simply drop them into a Group prefixed with “I:” and Scenarist Designer PS will ignore them. Similarly if you label a layer in a Button Group “B:”, and don’t give it a Designer prefix, it will also be ignored when you export your design.
- “Trim to Layer Set” Feature - A new feature that lets you crop and export multiple layers to a size equivalent to the bounding rectangle of the group, making the alignment of images during authoring much faster and easier.
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March 24th, 2009 at 8:52pm
NetBlender has announced a few free seminars at NAB this year including:
- Blu-ray Disc Demystified - presented by Chris Armbrust
- Making Sense of AACS and Blu-ray Replication presented by Bruce Nazarian
- Understanding Audio for Blu-ray presented by DTS
You can register for them on their website here.
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February 27th, 2009 at 11:41am
I’d love to go to this, but once again wouldn’t be able to. Sofatronic is having a workshop in London on March 19th. Here’s a list of what’s included for the day:
| 09.00h |
Breakfast - Meet and greet |
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| 09.20h |
Opening - Short introduction, schedule (sofatronic) |
| 09.30h |
Keynote - How’s Blu-ray doing today? (Screen Digest) |
| 10.00h |
Technical Introduction to Kaleidoscope - |
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(BD-J, GUI, integration into workflow) (sofatronic) |
| 11.30h |
Plugin Module Architecture - |
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How they work with Kaleidoscope (sofatronic) |
| 12.30h |
QC - How to make sure the discs works (BluFocus tbc) |
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| 13.15h |
Lunch break |
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| 14.00h |
Live Modules - |
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How to integrate BD-Live in Kaleidoscope (sofatronic) |
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| 15.30h |
Coffee break |
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| 15.45h |
CDNs - Delivering digital content (Akamai) |
| 16.30h |
Introducing the Kaleidoscope-Live CMS portal (sofatronic) |
| 18.00h |
End of workshop - |
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| 19.00h |
Networking Dinner - |
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Our invitiation for some decent food and chit-chat |
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with other participants and our panel of speakers |
You can find out more here.
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February 27th, 2009 at 11:35am
NetBlender has released version 1.7 of DoStudio. New features include BD-50 discs and Managed Copy. They’ve also announced that they’ve shipped over 200 titles. Pretty impressive. Check it out here.
Posted in Blu-ray, News, Tools | 1 Comment »
February 25th, 2009 at 10:00am
Sonic has released a new version of their software. Here is a list of what’s new:
- Multi-angle Clip Handling - Version 5.0.2 features full support for the use of multi-angle Clips in multiple PlayItems.
- PlayItem Seamless Connection Limit Enhancements - It is now possible to seamlessly connect an unlimited number of PlayItems to Arrival Time Clock (ATC) delta entries.
- Clip Info Arrival Time Clock (ATC) Delta Limit - The number of ATC delta entries is constrained to the spec maximum of 16 per Clip instead of 16 per project.
- BD-J Object Parameter Handling - Version 5.0.2 supports BD-J Objects with a “number_of_parameter_bytes” value of zero.
- Binding Unit Data Area (BUDA) Clip Support - Version 5.0.2 maintains the location (on BUDA or on Disc) of all Clips in projects created in version 4.5.3.
- Title Key Generation - Version 5.0.2 consistently creates AACS files that reference the correct number of titles when a project is created using non-sequential Title ID’s.
- Version 4.5.3 Project Compatibility - It is now possible to open projects created in Scenarist BD version 4.5.3, including those that contain an ‘online.crl’ file.
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February 2nd, 2009 at 5:12pm
Scott from 22 Grey Street made a nice little web app that will convert your Scenarist subtitles to DoStudio subtitles. If you didn’t know, Scenarist subtitles are nothing more than an XML file with a PNG for each subtitle. Well this little program takes the XML (which is the BDN file) and converts it for you to a DoST file. You use the exact same PNGs so I imagine this is a very fast process.
I love the fact that it’s also online so that you don’t have to download a separate program or anything like that and you can use it on any operating system.
We just bought Softel Swift which will allow you to export the Scenarist subtitles pretty easily and I also have heard Subtitle Workshop will do it, but I don’t have any experience with it if you are looking for other subtitling options.
Check it out here.
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January 22nd, 2009 at 9:51am
For those interested, there is a seminar in Barcelona February 10-12 coming up. It sounds like speakers from BDA, Sonic, Technicolor, Sony DADC, Sony Creative Software, Blu-Focus, Blu-labs, Sun, Imagion will all be there speaking on a wide variety of topics. You can find out more at their website if you want to see a schedule of events, list of topics, or just want to learn more.
Also note that NetBlender is offering 10% off their product at the event. More information is available here. They also have a couple menu samples that are kind of fun to watch. I always like seeing what others are doing with menus since that’s primarily what I do.
Unfortunately I won’t be at the event, but I hope I can hear about it from anyone who can.
UPDATE: I just got this email that the event was cancelled:
“The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has decided to postpone the BD Authoring seminar planned for February 10-12 in Barcelona to a later date. This decision is linked with the number of registrations at this stage, resulting from the significant travel restrictions in many companies in the UK and in Mainland Europe. It is a regrettable move as the feedback received about the initiative in general and the program content was very good, the range of speakers very impressive. The BDA will inform the Authoring Community, BD producers and Content Owners about a possible new date by the end of the quarter.“
Posted in Blu-ray, News | 1 Comment »