Macgasm has an article on the new VLC version 2.0 breaking DVD decryption in handbrake! Luckily they also have a solution. Run this installer from the VLC web site, it will install the DVD encryption engine in a place that handbrake can use it.Version 2.0 is a great upgrade, but the breaking of handbrake is not a good feature, lets hope they keep the installer available!
Wow, it is so sad to see a great site go down the tubes! 500px has quickly become the premier photography web site in the world. Where you can post and view the best photos from great photographers everywhere.The problem is that they updated the site yesterday and basically completely broke everything that was good about it!First off, now when you go to a photographers link instead of seeing their pictures you go to a new thing called flow, which is basically facebook’s timeline for activity on the site, so you are seeing the photos that the photographer has seen and liked instead of their photos. Well this is about the least professional thing I can think of. I don’t want to send people to my photos and have them see the photos that I like, I want them to see my photos. I can see having the option to see the photos that I like as a part of a social network, but honestly that should be able to be turned off if you don’t want people to know your taste in photos! And there is no reason it should be the first page people are brought too.And equally as annoying they have removed the friends page and rss feed completely. Previously you could follow people on the site and it would add them to your friends page, and you could follow that RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader and you would see all the new photos that your friends have uploaded, and be able to keep up on them, see how many there were, and never miss a photo. Now this feed is completely broken, and the friends page has been removed. Now the only way to see your friends new photos is to go to the 500px front page, and if you are logged in it shows your friends most recent photos, but only a pages worth, with a more at the bottom, but if you click more, then on a photo and go back, you go back to the first page of photos, and there is no way to have marked the ones you have seen as read (which you could with the RSS feed) or know which ones you have missed if you did not have time to go through the web site to find them. Honestly this completely breaks the whole community aspect of the web site, and makes the site almost completely useless!Honestly I am considering deleting my account, because they have ruined the best things about this site completely!
My newest short, the Misadventures of Bear, Episode 3: Macy and the Fish has been released on this very site. Just click on The Misadventures of Bear and you can watch the new episode, which is her first full adventure.This relied heavily on After Effects to remove the puppeteer from the shot, so I hope you enjoy it.
FCP.Co has the announcement of Canon having released a new MXF ingest for FCP X. Download it from Canon here.
Maximum PC has an article on the new H.265 for Ultra HDTV which has 8x resolution or 4320p (7680x4320) or 16x bigger than 1080p. It will also have 35-40% increase in streaming efficiency over H.264, though that likely means a much bigger performance hit on processors and video cards.
Apple has announced the next version of their OS, which now drops the mac name and is just OS X Mountain Lion. This continues bringing OS X and iOS closer together.New features include:Further integration with iCloud, which keeps your mail, calendar, contacts and documents in sync.iChat has become Messages, and includes support for messaging with iOS devices and you can download a beta today. It is still a little rough, but being able to have my iMessages synced across all my devices is very cool.Reminders is now on the Mac and syncs with iOS, though this should have been there from the start.Notes is now on the Mac as welllNotification Center on the Mac access with a 2 finger swipe is just like the iOS version, and looks like it will replace GROWL for notifications on the Mac.Share Sheets allows you to contextually aware share where you are from Safari, Notes, iPhotoTwitter has been fully integrated into the OS, just like on iOSGame Center is now integrated into the OS, and you can supposedly play some games between the mac and iOS.AirPlay Mirroring allows you to mirror your computer to your Apple TV.Gatekeeper is the most controversial new feature, initially is set to only allow apps from the Mac App Store, but can be turned off so you can install your own Apps.Another unannounced feature is that Sotfware Update is now gone and integrated into the Mac App Store. This one I find weird, as you don’t upgrade your iOS device through the app store, you have to go into settings to do the update, so why shouldn’t you have to go to Software Update?Of course it doesn’t come out to till the summer so features will change, and hopefully the color finder icons will return!AND AN IMPORTANT NOTE FOR EDITORS AS FINAL CUT PRO 7 will likely no longer work on Mountain Lion, so it is time to move on.
Photo Rumors has the announcement on the new Lens Baby Edge 80 Optic.This $300 lens attaches to your old Lens baby attachment and has f2.8-f22 12 blade aperture. Lensbaby has a video on the new higher quality lens, and a very cool Swing and Tilt Simulator to show off what it can do!This really puts Swing and Tilt in the hands of a lot more people at a much more reasonable price. Very cool.
Videoguys has info on AJA’s updates to it’s Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini. This is a free upgrade via firmware. • Data Transfer via FireWire 800 - Ki Pro can now be configured for data transfer to FireWire 800-equipped Apple computers, for situations where the unit is not easily accessible for physical data removal. • Data Transfer via LAN connection – Allows transfer of files through standard Ethernet networking for Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini. • Super Out – Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini can now burn timecode and transport state into the video signal, providing at-a-glance status to users monitoring output, without having to check the device itself. It is also convenient for times when video is dubbed from Ki Pro/Ki Pro Mini to another source to track timecode throughout post. A user selectable Super Out (window burn) option for SDI has also been added to both Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini. • Playlist creation – A new feature for the web UI adds flexibility in selecting clip playback order for both Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini. • FireWire 400 (1394a) port enabled—Provides Ki Pro support for camera start/stop commands as well as timecode values; particularly useful for HDV cameras that may lack LTC to SDI timecode outputs. • HDMI timecode support in Ki Pro Mini for Sony NEX-FS100 and other Sony NXCAM cameras. • ExpressCard/34 Support – Ki Pro now supports ExpressCard/34 (34mm wide) memory cards (not ExpressCard/54). Check the AJA Ki Pro support page for recommended cards. • Additional RS-422 Functionality for Ki Pro to support use in post-production applications. • LANC Support – Ki Pro now supports LANC, enabling camera operators to control shooting via LANC-based controllers and LANC enabled cameras. • 1080 Variable Frame Rate Support for certain Canon camcorders, for Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini. • Presets can now be created, saved and recalled for easier interaction with device settings in Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini. • Continued Recording Option – v3.0 adds an option for continued recording upon video input loss. Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini will generate a status change video frame, then pick up recording automatically when a valid video signal is returned.
Macnn is reporting on the latest set of rumors on a new MacPro, and lets hope it is true, and Apple is staying committed to the pro market in at least it’s hardware.They would be powered by the new Ivy Bridge 22 nanometer Xeon processors which can have 8 cores and 20MB cache, making for 16 core machines, with 32 virtual machines. And even more exciting to me is the possibility of returning to NVIDIA and their soon to released Kelper hardware. This would mean CUDA acceleration in Adobe Premiere, and hopefully the next generation Quadros being released for the mac. This could mean that Jobs fued with NVIDIA is over. Wouldn’t that rock!
Ron Mart has an excellent must read hands on with the EOS 1D-X telling about it's new features and how well it fares with it's predecessors.Damn I would love to get my hands on one of these, but many of my lenses wouldn't work since I have an APS-C.