labDV newsletter
Contents:
- CES 2005: what's up from Las Vegas !
- CES 2005: Five Technologies to Watch in 2005
- Adobe Premiere Elements: for home video editing
- Pinnacle's online Studio guide at StudioHowTo.com
- HDV:high-definition video is coming
- Software at labDV.com: updates and adds
1. CES 2005: what's up from Las Vegas !
With more than 140,000 attendees from 115 countries witnessing the
introduction of thousands of new products and technologies from
more than 2,500 exhibitors, the 2005 International CES reinforced its
position as the world's greatest technology showcase. The 2005
International CES ran in Las Vegas, Nev., January 6-9, 2005.
CNET revealed the Next Big Thing in CE at the 2005 International CES
“These are the products that are setting the standard by which others will be measured in 2005,” said Patrick Houston, CNET’s editor-in-chief. “Our annual Next Big Thing Awards provide technology-forward consumers the best predictions from our team of expert editors to help them make smart decisions as the products begin to hit the store shelves next year”.
Category: Home Theater, Winner: Toshiba HD-DVD recorder
Details are still sketchy (HD-DVD recorder, HDMI output, backward compatible with DVD and CD) on Toshiba's HD-DVD recorder, but pricing and availability have finally been announced. The unnamed unit will be available in the fourth quarter of 2005 for a list price of $1,000.
Category: Computers, Winner: Alienware DHS 2-Series Media Center
Packed into a white, VCR-size box, the Alienware DHS 2 series' run Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 for high-end TV, gaming, music, and computing power. Best of all, it features DISCover Console Gaming software that lets you demo, buy, and download games--on demand--through the Windows Media Center interface. Scheduled to start shipping later this month, the Alienware DHS 2 series starts at $1,650.
Technology Is A Girl's Best Friend Product Showcase
One Digital World display (LVCC Grand Lobby), the Technology Is A Girl's Best Friend showcase features winning products that have been available since January 2004 or that are launching by June 2005. A combination of journalists from top women's media outlets and technology reporters judged product entries based on form, function, overall ease of use, and how these products enhance the daily lives of female consumers.
Honoree Category: Video,
Archos AV420 (Archos Technology, www.archos.com)The ARCHOS Pocket Video Recorder AV400 is the industry's first portable digital video recorder with television recording and scheduling capabilities, and audio, photo and data storage in one pocket-sized device.
Honoree Category: Video,
DVDirect (Sony Electronics Inc. www.sony.com/dvdirect)Sony's DVDirect allows users to convert their camcorder or VHS tapes into DVDs with the simple push of a button -- and without a computer. It's a memory preservation machine.
2005 International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards
The Few. The Proud. The Incredibly Talented.
Here's where to see the innovation that tops all innovation. This annual competition honors outstanding design and engineering in consumer electronics.
Best of Innovations Honoree: Home Theater
HD Digital Video Recorder (Sony Electronics Inc. www.sony.com)The ultimate in DVR, Sony's DHG-HDD500 is a high definition tuner and high capacity (500 GB) digital video recorder with no recording subscription fees and no equipment rental.
Best of Innovations Honoree: Digital Imaging
Sony HDR-FX1 HDV (Sony Electronics Inc. news.sel.sony.com)Sony's HDR-FX1 HDV camcorder is the world's first 1080i HDV camcorder. It records and plays back the highest resolution video of any consumer camcorder available on the market today.
Best of Innovations Honoree: Eco Design
SD Video Camera (Panasonic, www.panasonic.com)Smaller than most cell phones, Panasonic's SD Video Camera SV-AV50 with Flip & Twist LCD protects the environment through reduced energy/resource consumption and high recyclability, all without hazardous chemicals.
Best of Innovations Honoree: Home Data Networking
Niveus A/V Storage Server (Niveus Media, Inc. www.niveusmedia.com)NSSAV1TB - The Niveus 1 Terabyte A/V Storage Server is the first product to deliver high-end home theater design into a scalable, networked storage solution for the digital home market.
Best of Innovations Honoree: Accessories
NevoSL (Universal Electronics, www.uei.com, www.mynevo.com)NevoSL, Model # URC-7140BL0, is a powerful universal remote controller that intuitively delivers complete audio visual and digital media control for the networked home.
And some other innovations introduced at CES 2005 which could have been rewarded
Turn your notebook into a TV and Personal Video Recorder (PVR) with the UltraTV Cardbus 300, the FIRST TV Tuner Cardbus!. With no cables to connect to your notebook, simply slide the cardbus into your PCMCIA slot to pause, rewind, playback, record and view live TV! With the easy-to-use UltraTV PVR applications combined with a recording scheduler and channel listings from Titan TVTM, watching TV on your notebook has never been more fun and simple!
TwinhanDTV Ter (D+A) is an advanced TV card that supports ATSC protocol & NTSC system at the same time. It not only turns your PC into a digital teleTwinhan immediately but also a powerful person video recorder. In addition, TwinhanDTV (D+A) supports HDTV receiving, you can enjoy shaper picture and DVD video quality on your PC!
Eyetop DVD is the first portable, personal, private, wearable DVD entertainment system. The system includes: high quality Eyetop video glasses with stereo earbuds, portable DVD player with rechargeable battery, custom carrying bag to store and use the system on the go. The Eyetop audio/video glasses have a screen embedded in the lower center part of the right lens, enabling wearers to watch video action while simultaneously staying in touch with their surroundings.
The PureAV RemoteTV AV55000 by Belkin lets you transmit high quality audio video wirelessly to a TV in another room, offering a range of up to 350 feet and without interruptions. High quality is achieved using the 5GHz frequency range. Pricing $499.99 USD.
2. CES 2005: Five Technologies to Watch in 2005
Media servers, portable entertainment, hybrid white goods, innovative gaming and telematics are hot technologies to watch, according to the annual Five Technologies to Watch report issued today by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Each year, the publication explores five technology trends poised to shape the consumer electronics industry in the year ahead.
Media servers, the first technology highlighted
in the 2005 Five Technologies to Watch report, contain a hard disk drive for storing digital media
and allow distribution of those files to other devices located throughout
the home. The publication stipulates that with more than 52 percent
of U.S households expected to have home networks by 2008, the infrastructure
for media servers is firmly in place. However product interconnectivity,
bandwidth capacity and copyright issues remain the largest barriers
to mass adoption. As these issues are resolved in the near future,
the market for media servers is expected to grow rapidly, allowing
consumers to store digital media, including photos, movies and music,
on one device and listen to or view it on another.
3. Adobe Premiere Elements: for home video editing
Adobe ships a consumer version of Premiere for US $99.99 from the
online store. Adobe® Premiere® Elements software offers the
perfect combination of creative control and reliability for home video
editing. It automates tedious tasks so you're free to create cool effects
and transitions and easily burn DVDs.
Whenever you trim, rearrange, or delete scenes, Adobe Premiere Elements automatically shifts the video clips to fill in any gaps, saving you the time and tedium of readjusting your footage.
Context-sensitive How-To's can guide you through every step of the editing process, from transferring footage to burning DVDs.
4. Pinnacle's online Studio guide at StudioHowTo.com
By following just a few simple tips and tricks, you’ll be able
to make your movies look like they were created by a pro. Each easy-to-follow
lesson will teach you tricks you can use throughout your moviemaking
career.
Lesson 1
With these easy-to-follow techniques and Pinnacle Studio Plus, your next birthday party video can be as much fun as the party itself.
Lesson 2
Learn about master shots and cutaways, so you can share vacation videos that friends and family will love.
Lesson 3
Now you can use big-studio special effects like animated slideshows, picture-in-picture, and chroma key to make movies that come to life.
5. HDV: high-definition video is coming
Supported by Canon, Sharp, Sony, and JVC, the new HDV format is coming
to prosumers, and will be soon for consumers.
HDV format is high-definition video on a DV cassette tape:
- includes 720p (progressive) and 1080i (interlaced) specifications
- video is recorded in MPEG-2 (profile & level: MP@H-14)
- audio is recorded in stereo MPEG1 Audio Layer II (48kHz-16bits-384kbps)
Sony and JVC are shipping HDV camcorders for prosumers, the Sony HDR-FX1 ($3,600) and JVC JY-HD10U ($2,800).
Sony Media Software announced special promotional pricing (US $149.95;
a savings of US $349) on CineForm's Connect HD
application software for new and existing users of Sony's award-winning Vegas® 5 video
and audio editing software. The incorporation of Connect HD into the
Vegas 5 platform will enable users of the newly announced Sony professional
HVR-Z1U HDV camcorder, HVR-M10U VTR and the recently announced Sony
HDV HDR-FX1 consumer camcorder, to capture, edit, and export HDV in
the 1080i format.
In addition to offering a high-quality, high-performance codec that greatly improves the HDV editing experience within Vegas, this updated version of Connect HD enables capturing and export of HDV content directly from and back to the HVR-Z1U and other HDV camcorders.
Connect HD is built around CineForm's Visually Perfect™ high-definition editing codec, CFHD, which provides unmatched performance and visual quality. During capture, the Connect HD capture tool transcodes the incoming HDV signal on the fly into CineForm's proprietary wavelet-based compression format. The resulting AVI file offers a more efficient editing configuration than HDV's native long-GOP MPEG, though users who wish to edit with HDV MPEG files will still be able to do so. In addition to the customized version of Connect HD, an updated version of Vegas 5 software will also be released, with HDV-specific enhancements in the near future.
The Ulead
HD Plug-in for the Sony HDR-FX1 camcorder will give videographers
a way to natively capture, edit, and output
high-resolution HDV 1080i content within MediaStudio Pro 7, Ulead's professional post-production
video editing suite. With the Ulead HD Plug-in, MediaStudio Pro 7 will
handle HD video content seamlessly without requiring additional tools
or interfaces.
6. Software at labDV.com: updates and adds
Now there are 182 software available from labDV.com, most of them are freeware. And like we promised, we've reinforced our processes to maintain this software database, so here are the last changes.
New software added in Januray
In authoring, Easy Media Creator from Roxio and WinDVD Creator from Intervideo have been referenced.
In CD autorun utilities, two old (but useful) freeware have bee added: MDVD Go! with Cryogen patcher and Zoom Player Launcher from Sarah Jane's DVD site.
In Avisynth section, the great work from Video tools has been added bbmpeg 1.24 beta 17a Flask plugin and Link2 + new WRPR codec.
In video codecs, two alternative has been added, QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player. Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia file without having to install RealPlayer or RealOne Player.
In DVD copying, the new DVD Identifier retrieves and interprets the pre-recorded information that is present on all DVDR/RW.
In video editing, a bunch of tools to cut and merge AVI and MPEG files are now available: 123 Audio Video Merger merge audio or video files that are divided in a lot of parts into a single file, CAmel MPEG Joiner is for MPEG videos and VCD Cut Pro is an easy way to cut/join mpeg files. New commercial software have been referenced: Edit Studio from Pure-Motion, MainActor 5 from Mainconcept, Pinnacle Studio 9, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, Ulead VideoStudio 8 and Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7, and Movie X One Plus. Some trial copies are available for download from labDV.com.
In encoding (MPEG) section, Enc (from jonny) is able to encode, make a size prediction at a given quantizer and make a compressibility test with (almost) every codec (and particularly with Xvid and DivX). As input an AviSynth file is required. Last VirtualDubMod Version needed. mpegable X4 Live is a new MPEG4 encoder from Dicas Digital.
In video players, a bunch of new software have been added: BSplayer is a Windows player that plays back all kinds of media files ( avi / mpg / asf / wmv / wav / mp3...) and specialises in video and divx playback. A Pro version is available. Core Media Player is an audio and video media center allowing you to organize and play audio and video files. The Moonlight-Elecard MPEG2 Player is a fully DirectShow compliant software for PC. It is a real time, software-only MPEG Player, providing high resolution, full quality decoding of MPEG1, MPEG2 streams, based on Moonlight-Elecard MPEG2 Video Decoder and Moonlight-Elecard MPEG2 Demultiplexer. MPEG4IP Player (wmp4player) is the player from the MPEG4IP project. These binaries have been distributed for evaluation testing and development reference only (it reads DivX files). mpegable Player is a Windows application to play MPEG-4 and 3GPP movie files or network distributed streams. VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. This is the windows version, you'll find versions for Mac-OS X, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and other platforms from Videolan site.
And the very first Linux software made available from labDV, GeeXboX is a full operating system, running under Linux and based on the excellent MPlayer. No need of hard drive, you just have to put the GeeXboX bootable CD into the CD-Drive of any pentium-class computer to boot it.
In subtitle utilities, we have added a lot of new tools: DivX Subtitle Displayer is a DivX subtitler,
Lemony is a full subtitling software, SubRip is for the most popular format of subtitle streams from DVD, Sub Station Alpha is a real-time video titling, subtitling and karaoke, Subtitle Plugin for VirtualDub is to inlay SSA subtitles in VirtualDub. SubTitle Tuner adjusts the amount of time lines appear in subtitles and Time Adjuster is a useful tool as well.Last, but not least, Subtitle Workshop is the most complete, efficient and convenient freeware subtitle editing tool.
Latest software updates
- Audio (compression and editing)
- MP3 Cutter 4.534
- Authoring DVD and (S)VCD
- Nero 6 Reloaded Pack 4 1.4.0.27
- Nero 6 Reloaded Pack 2 3.0.1.18
- Nero 6 Reloaded Pack 1 6.6.0.5
- Nero 6 Reloaded Pack 3 4.3.11.1
- DVD copying
- DVD Decrypter 3.5.2.0
- cladDVD .NET 3.5.6
- DVD Identifier 3.6
- Video editing
- MainActor 5.2.13
- VirtualDub 1.6.0
- Virtual VCR 2.6.9
- AMCAP 9.04 Build 43.4
- iuVCR 4.9.2.354
- VCD Cut Pro 4.14
- Encoding (MPEG)
- TMPG Encoder 2.524
- Video players
- Zoom Player 4.03
- Geexbox 0.98.5
- Core Media Player 4.02
- DivX Player 2.6
- mpegable Player
