Cambridge, Massachusetts–October 16, 2009   GenArts Inc., the premier provider of specialized visual effects software for the film, television and video industries, announced today GenArts Sapphire™ version 3.02 (v3.02) for Avid Systems. The upgrade extends support for Avid’s AVX2 plug-in interface to Avid DS v10.2.1 and later.

This improves conform compatibility with effects generated from offline and online editing systems, allowing all Avid systems to seamlessly conform to DS and Symphony systems. GenArts Sapphire v3.02 also supports floating licenses and license rentals for all Avid systems.

While the prospect of creating sophisticated visual effects on Avid Media Composer and Symphony made the AVX2 plug-in interface popular among offline editors, it also created frustration for online editors using Avid DS systems, which only supported AVX1. Now, with Avid’s recent release of DS v10.2.1 supporting AVX2 effects, GenArts Sapphire v3.02 for Avid makes it possible for the Sapphire effects used in any Avid project to work on any Avid system. Visit http://community.avid.com/forums/p/76089/425464.aspx for more details on the Avid DS v10.2.1 update.
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(Oxford, UK–October 13, 2009) Vicon, developer of motion capture products, today launched Bonita, a small, affordable optical capture camera for tracking and analyzing motion. Bonita is capable of capturing 240FPS while being small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Vicon has also announced the launch of Tracker, a robust object tracking software providing unparalleled data accuracy for integration in 3D applications.

“Our 25-year history for technological innovations and our experience perfecting camera calibration and 3D reconstruction techniques has led to the development of Bonita and Tracker,” said Doug Reinke, CEO and President, Vicon. “These two very exciting introductions have been designed to be powerful, easy to use, cost-effective and are tailor-made for those working in industrial engineering, robotics, human factors engineering, virtual engineering and academia.”

Bonita is Vicon’s smallest optical capture camera that has been engineered to be powerful, accurate, reliable and affordable. It’s easy to set up and accurate enough to capture with positional accuracy down to one millimeter in a 4m x 4m volume.
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(Toronto, Canada–October 9, 2009) Building on the successful launch of Fusion™ 6.0 this summer and the upcoming release of Generation® 2.0, eyeon Software Inc. has introduced a new a la carte pricing structure for software purchases.

The new pricing model will allow artists and facilities to select from a range of purchasing options, with a variety of upfront costs and annual subscription fees.

A la carte pricing is available for both Fusion and Generation, with a new Superscription option for Fusion that includes both Imagica’s keyer, Primatte® and Re:Vision Effect’s optical-flow based retiming solution, Twixtor. With the imminent release of Generation 2.0, the new site-pricing offer is already being well-received.

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(October 1, 2009) Leading rendering solutions provider ArtVPS has announced the immediate availability of version 0.3 of Shaderlight, its flagship interactive rendering plug-in for 3ds Max. Shaderlight 0.3 boasts a number of enhancements over previous versions.

Overall speed has been increased by 100 percent for complex production scenes, and early image quality of glossy materials and area lights has been significantly improved. Other benefits include increased image resolution and the addition of a message window to track log messages during interactive rendering.

Shaderlight delivers dramatic productivity and creativity improvements over traditional ray-trace engines. Intelligent pixels understand where they fit in a 3D image and what to do if something changes, enabling users to change materials, environments, lights or textures – the MELT elements – of a full resolution image at any stage of the rendering process without having to re-render.

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(London, UK–October 1, 2009) Digital Heaven, one of the leading creators of software for Apple’s Pro Apps, today announced the release of Disksomnia 2.0 – a new version of the popular free disk utility for Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express.

This new version adds compatibility with Mac OS X Snow Leopard among other refinements.

Disksomnia solves the common problem of some external disks ignoring the disabled sleep option in the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences. For video editing, where media files may be spread around multiple external disks, waiting for the disk to wake up again can be problematic, especially when playing an edited sequence.

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(Hollywood, California–September 29, 2009) Prime Focus, one of the world’s largest visual entertainment services groups, is proud to announce the launch of View-D™, a proprietary 2D-to-3D conversion process that allows filmmakers to efficiently create stereoscopic 3D movies from source material shot on virtually any medium.

View-D™ will be introduced at international launch events in Mumbai, London and Los Angeles to unveil the Prime Focus global rebrand, in which Post Logic and Frantic Films VFX will be brought together under the Prime Focus name.

“3D moviemaking has proven to be more than a passing trend — it’s rejuvenating international box offices and giving filmmakers a new storytelling technique that enriches the movie-going experience,” said Michael Fink, CEO, Prime Focus VFX. “Prime Focus is a visual effects facility, so we’ve been calculating 3D space from 2D images for years, and developed the technology behind View-D™ after having worked on several stereo 3D shows. With View-D™, we’re offering the industry an exciting new production method to convert both library titles and new releases to terrific stereoscopic quality in considerably less time than other methods.”
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(Amsterdam-IBC–September 24, 2009) ARRI announced a new range of 35mm-format digital cameras at IBC 2009 – codenamed Alexa – that will advance digital production to the next level.

Designed around a newly developed CMOS sensor with unsurpassed sensitivity and dynamic range, the cameras will couple superb image quality with simplified, flexible, integrated workflow concepts for efficient postproduction. The Alexa product lineup, starting at a price tag of approximately €50k, will be available for sale commencing the second quarter of 2010.

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The world’s most advanced film and video editing systems — coming soon

Discover storytelling on the cutting edge and be more productive and creative than ever before. The new Media Composer 4, Symphony 4, and NewsCutter 8 are coming soon and offer many new timesaving features, powerful capabilities, and creative enhancements to put you ahead of the pack.

Whether you cut films, TV shows, commercials, or other digital media, you can work faster, integrate into more workflows, and arm yourself with even more dazzling effects and creative tools. And with prices starting at just $2,295 USMSRP, these Avid editing systems have never offered so much for so little. Here’s a look at just some of the new key features that await you.

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