HP Z400 workstation By John Virata The Hewlett-Packard HP Z400 is the company's entry level workstation. While it doesn't have the whiz bang design features of the HP Z800 reviewed in March, it still does not disappoint as the benchmark numbers will surprise you. ...Read More »

iTech SolarVoice 908 By Joshua Virata Bluetooth headsets have become more and more popular throughout the years and now more and more cell phones have been able to take advantage of this technology. In this review we'll be looking at a brand new Bluetooth headset from iTech, the SolarVoice 908, one of the first solar charging headsets on the market. ...Read More »

An afternoon of fun, NFL football, and the Canon 7D DSLR By John Virata This past weekend we were able to spend an afternoon with the Canon folks at the San Diego Chargers/Philadelphia Eagles NFL football game in beautiful San Diego California to attain some first impressions on the new Canon 7D DSLR. Canon invited several journalists to shoot with the Canon 7D and Digital Rebel T1i. ...Read More »

Reaper DAW By Mike Jones Much like video editing systems, the tools for crafting, mixing, and multi-tracking digital audio projects - be they music, audio or sound for video endeavours - have reached a very mature stage in their development and evolution as technologies. The Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) market has grounded itself in all-digital workflows and common production practices whilst, at the same time, diversified into an array of major players. ...Read More »

Telestream's ScreenFlow 2 By Kevin McAuliffe As an instructor and online trainer, I need a screen capture program that will not only be very easy to use, but also produce excellent looking end results. Windows users have a ton of options, but for us Mac users, the outlook was pretty barren. More than a year ago when I started doing video tutorials I came across ScreenFlow, and liked it a lot. Well, Telestream is back with version two of this great program. Let's see if it's worth the upgrade. ...Read More »

Epson PowerLite 1716 LCD projector By John Virata The Epson PowerLite 1716 is a portable, wireless-capable LCD projector with a 4:3 aspect ratio targeted at mobile presenters and those on the go who need to present content in an effective manner. The PowerLite 1716 features a three chip Epson 3LCD optical engine that has a native hardware resolution of 1024x768, and features USB, component, and SVGA connectivity. ...Read More »

Speeding Premiere Pro CS4's H.264 Encoding with NVIDIA QuadroFX and Elemental Accelerator By John Virata High definition video editing and HD video encoding are two of the hardware intensive tasks that can be done with a computer. It takes a lot of power to complete these types of jobs, oftentimes rendering your computer limited in functionality while it encodes video. NVIDIA's Quadro line of graphics cards can help to speed up H.264/AVC encoding in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 with an assist from Elemental Technologies' Elemental Accelerator. ...Read More »

Microsoft ships Windows 7- should you buy it? By Matthew David Did you hear? Microsoft is releasing a new version of Windows - should you buy it? Windows 7 is here. In this article you will find out if Windows 7 is worth the wait and whether or not you should upgrade. Or is Windows 7 just another Vista? ...Read More »

PhotoAcute Studio By Robert Jensen Most of you have heard of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, where you shoot several shots of the same scene, each at a different exposure, then combine them in software to produce an image with extended dynamic range that brings out details in both the highlights and shadows. ...Read More »

Sorenson Squeeze 6 By Kevin McAuliffe These days, it seems as though every company has an application for taking your edited files and processing them for the web, and many of those applications are included with the editing bundle you purchased. Adobe has Adobe's Media Encoder, Final Cut Studio has Compressor, and there are the standalone applications such as Episode, and even QuickTime can do it as well. ...Read More »

X-Rite's Color Munki Photo By Joshua Virata Ever had the problem where you have a picture on your computer and then print it out and the color doesn't turn out the same? I can tell you from experience that that has happened to me many times before. But now I don't have to worry about this problem thanks to ColorMunki Photo by X-Rite. ColorMunki lets you calibrate displays, projectors and printers so that the colors in your pictures or media are accurate every time. ...Read More »

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows By John Virata Adobe's Photoshop Elements is one of the most full featured image editing applications on the market thanks to its constant updating of existing features as well as new features. When an application reaches version 8, it causes users to wonder what could possibly be added to an application that already has a lot of depth. ...Read More »

MAXON CINEMA 4D R11.5 By Ko Maruyama MAXON Computer released their newest version of CINEMA 4D, the 3D application that has quickly become the favorite of broadcast designers and animators. The name of the newest version, R 11.5 gives the illusion that the update is a minor upgrade from previous R11.2 version. However, the multitude of new features in R11.5 makes the upgrade feel like a integer release. ...Read More »

Toshiba Satellite P505 notebook computer By Heath McKnight The Toshiba Satellite P505 is one of the best Windows-based laptops I've had the pleasure of reviewing. With its beautiful, large display, excellent Harmon/Kardon speakers, large hard drive,and blazing fast processor and graphics, this is a top-notch laptop that will fit virtually anyone's mobile computing needs. From the student all the way to professionals, this is a great system. ...Read More »

FIRST LOOK: JVC HM-100u By Heath McKnight The JVC HM-100u ProHD camera may be small in size, but it's packing three Full HD (1920 x 1080i/p) CCDs that capture great image quality, and it uses Sony's SxS/EX technology to deliver a tapeless workflow on affordable SDHC media cards. Plus, if you're a Final Cut Pro user, you can shoot directly to QuickTime for even faster importing and editing. ...Read More »

Coremelt Complete V2 By Kevin McAuliffe You can never have enough plug-ins. Trust me, as an editor/graphic designer you always have clients that want something "cool," but have really no idea what they are looking for, so you end up finding yourself going through the plug-ins on your system to try and put something together to really "wow" them, your plug-in collection needs to have three traits. ...Read More »

Book Excerpt: MacMost.com--Guide to Switching to the Mac By Gary Rosenzweig So you've decided to buy a Mac. Congratulations! Macs are great computers and your Mac will soon be a valuable tool for work, recreation, and communication. Perhaps, however, you're not sure which Mac to buy.You are not alone.There are many choices.Most people who switch to Mac have this same question. Which one? You've got three major choices in a desktop machine: the Mac mini, the iMac, and the Mac Pro. And you have three choices in a notebook: the MacBook,MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. ...Read More »

iZotope RX Noise Reduction Tips By Jeffrey P. Fisher As an audio-post-production professional, I'm often called upon to clean up the dialogue from the documentary, corporate, and narrative videos that come my way. The work requires a lot of patience and access to both basic and advanced audio tools. For me, the one must-have gizmo for audio cleanup is iZotope RX. This tutorial looks at ways this indispensable tool solves typical noisy problems that conspire to ruin your video soundtracks. ...Read More »

Roxio Creator 2010 By John Virata Roxio Creator 2010 is a jack of all trades suite of media creation, archiving, and management tools all hooked in via a single launch point. The Swiss army style software has been around for many years, and seems to be one of the last integrated suites of its kind standing. ...Read More »

Honl Light Modifiers By Robert Jensen Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. That 'keep it simple' ideology is what led photojournalist David Honl to develop a versatile, easy to carry, line of light modifiers for your hot shoe flash that simply mount to a strap that wraps around the front of the flash head. No muss, no fuss. ...Read More »

Trapcode's Particular 2 By Kevin McAuliffe As editors and motion graphic designers know, there are a lot (and I mean a lot) of plug-ins out there, and you often find the same type of plug-in across many different plug-in packages, and a very, very popular plug-in is the Particle Generator. Just about every plug-in package has one, and even After Effects itself ships with a few. ...Read More »

Sony Sound Forge 10 By Jeffrey P. Fisher Sony Creative Software has reached a major milestone with its September 2009 release of Sound Forge 10. Few applications survive all the way to high version numbers. But not only has the latest version of Sony's audio recording and editing program survived, it continues to thrive with a bevy of new features that keep you wondering how you ever worked without them. ...Read More »

Third Party Plug-Ins/Apps For Final Cut Pro By Heath McKnight Time for another edition of my third party plug-ins and software apps for Final Cut Pro (FCP). This time around, I take a look at the powerful and easy-to-use (with a ton of codec options) iFunia Video Converter Pro, FxFactory 2.1 and idustrial revolution's Volumetrix 2 transitions, and FxFactory 2.1 and DVShade's EasyLooks 2.5 and LiveToon 1.0. ...Read More »

Pegasys, Inc.'s TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress with Leadtek SpursEngine Hardware accelerator By John Virata TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress is a video encoder application along the lines of Sorenson Squeeze, Apple's Compressor, and Adobe's Media Encoder. It has been around for quite a while, but doesn't seem to get the press that the other tools get, despite the output quality being very good. The application offers support for NVIDIA's CUDA technology as well as Leadtek's SpursEngine hardware accelerator. ...Read More »

Ray Flash hot shoe flash ring-light adapter By Robert Jensen Designed to work with several on camera hot shoe flashes from Nikon and Canon, the Ray Flash ring light adapter is much more affordable, and portable, than the typical ring light made for studio strobe use. ...Read More »

Toolfarm's Professional After Effects Camera Training By Ko Maruyama The 3D world in After Effects has always been a difficult composition space to navigate. Even if you are familiar with world navigation in a 3D application, working with the camera in After Effects may not behave the way you might expect. Like any application, there is a workflow which will make working with these tools easier to understand. Toolfarm's new training shows you how. ...Read More »

AOC F22 22-inch widescreen LCD display By John Virata With more people foregoing the traditional desktop computer in favor of notebook computers, many of these same users are also buying external displays to complement their notebooks. What the external display essentially does is gives the user two computers in one; the portability of a notebook with the expanded visual real estate that desktops have. AOC, a third tier display manufacturer offers up the F19 and F22 series of designed LCD displays. These displays are not your plain vanilla display. ...Read More »

Production Assistant for Sony Vegas Pro: From a Final Cut Pro User's Perspective By Heath McKnight Sony Creative Software introduced Production Assistant for Vegas Pro as a way to streamline post-production, and I have to say, it's a terrific plug-in, created along with VASST. As a Final Cut Pro editor, I take a different look at the software, and I also discuss Vegas Pro version 9. ...Read More »

Apple's Color 1.5 By Kevin McAuliffe As everyone knows, the inclusion of FinalTouch (renamed Color by Apple) into Final Cut Studio 2 was shocking. A few months before Apple announced it, I looked at purchasing FinalTouch as a separate, stand alone application for a post facility I was working for. ...Read More »

Adobe Story First Look Preview By Heath McKnight Adobe Story is the newest application from the company that brought us Photoshop and other great apps. Adobe Story is a great new way to develop and write screenplays, teleplays, and video scripts. It's a fully featured app that is highly compatible with many of the popular screenwriting and pre-production software. Best part? It works "in the clouds," ie, it's Internet-based as well as a standalone app. ...Read More »

Lens Align Pro Focus Calibration System and Long Ruler Kit By Robert Jensen Most people who take photographs using a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera buy a camera body, a lens or two, and shoot away, happy with their results. However, some people are not so happy. If you've been around the various camera forums on the Internet you've read countless postings over the years by less than happy owners of Brand X or Brand Y camera's stating that it was consistently focusing in front of, or behind, where it should be. ...Read More »

Apple's Soundtrack Pro 3 By Kevin McAuliffe Soundtrack Pro 2 was a great application. You could harness its power for not only Final Cut Pro timelines, but for any editing application that could export an OMF file. What Apple had essentially given us was a professional, production-ready application to take any audio project to the next level. But, I had one concern. Where would it go from there? ...Read More »

The Sony Vegas Pro Production Assistant By Jeffrey P. Fisher As editors we are always looking for ways to be more efficient so we can focus on what we do best: telling stories with sound and visuals. But let's face it, there are a lot of mundane and routine tasks when editing that swallow our time but don't call upon our collective creative inspiration. ...Read More »

Sony Vegas Pro 9 By Jeffrey P. Fisher When a software program matures into its ninth iteration, you expect big things from it. I've been on-board Sony Vegas when it was an audio-only, version one application. It's been really interesting to be a part of the software's growth. As my go-to app for many years, I was excited to give the newest version a test drive. This review looks at Sony Vegas Pro 9.0b 32-bit (VP9), the second (free!) update since its release at NAB earlier this year. ...Read More »

Mecablitz 58 AF-1 Digital flash By Robert Jensen Metz (or Mecablitz) may be an unfamiliar name to a lot of you but for many decades its been the workhorse flash for a lot of pro photographers around the world. Metz is made in Germany and marketed in the US by Bogen Imaging Inc. ...Read More »

Final Cut Studio's Motion 4 By Kevin McAuliffe Star Wars Episode 1 and Apple's new Final Cut Studio have something in common, and that is the hype. Final Cut Studio has been hyped for more than a year, and every time someone blogged about its release coming up, nothing happened. Well, mid-way through July, Apple snuck Final Cut Studio (not called 3, just Final Cut Studio) onto its website, and needless to say, the tidal wave began. ...Read More »