Splice

One of the most influential and popular science-fiction films of all time is arguably Blade Runner by Ridley Scott. It was released in 1982 and has been a cult classic ever since.

Scott released a Director’s Cut in the early 90s but has continued to polish his masterpiece ever since. His latest version Blade Runner: The Final Cut is scheduled to be released in select US theatres later this month and will be out on DVD in December.

Wired has a great Q&A session with Ridley Scott on their website. You can also listen to or read the full transcript of their interview here.

Tom’s Guide has written an article on the differences between the HDMI and Component formats. It’s true that everyone now assumes that HDMI has better quality but would you be right in thinking that? Read on to find out!

Here’s a funny picture that I came across on Digg.com. It’s amazing that IBM had a 1GB drive 20 years ago! It looks like a big motor or something!

Recently I had the pleasure of working with some P2 footage in Final Cut Pro. It was a great experience and I learned a few tips along the way that I’d like to share with you. These tips are brought to you by HDvision Studio.

P2 Overview
First of all, in case you’re not that familiar with P2 technology, here’s a quick summary. P2 is Panasonic’s next-generation digital video recording system. It was developed to make production workflows more flexible and uses solid-state P2 memory cards that record video and audio data in the MXF file format.

Why is P2 a big deal? For one, it allows professional video cameras to free themselves of complicated and heavy tape drives with expensive recording heads and mechanisms. This means the cameras become smaller, lighter and more affordable. Secondly, it revolutionized the post-production industry by changing the way we captured material. Since P2 records data in digital file form, you can simply transfer and ingest the footage. As an Editor this is a time-saving feature that I love!
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Panasonic announced at NAB that it would soon offer 32GB P2 memory cards for it’s range of HD cameras. They are expected to ship this November for the price of $1800 USD.

The new 32GB cards will be able to hold:

• 32 mins of DVCPRO HD
• 80 mins of DVCPRO HD 24p
• 64 mins of DVCPRO 50
• 128 mins of DVCPRO

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Steve Weller, from the fantastic photography blog Bagelturf, has written a book on Apple’s Aperture called “Get Your Head Around Aperture 1.5″. It has taken Weller over a year to create and packs 61,000 words and 680 images from the Bagelturf blog’s Aperture articles into one convenient, portable, searchable, and printable PDF e-book.

It is currently only for sale on his Bagelturf store for the price of $24.95 USD.

I’ve put up two new sections on our Splice Store. In the Movies category you will now find a selection of the top selling Blu-ray and HD DVD titles for sale. There’s no better time than right now to start expanding your movie collection in HD!

Don’t have a next-gen HD player yet? That’s OK we also have a large selection of DVD movies for sale.

Last weekend I noticed that some text and images on my blog don’t line up properly in Internet Explorer. This is due to some really annoying CSS bugs in IE. I’m working on a fix but until then I should really tell you that if you’re still using IE you need to give Firefox a shot right away.

Firefox 2 is an award-winning Web browser and is faster and more secure than IE. It’s also fully customizable to your online life. I’ve been using Firefox for years now and I’ve never looked back. Seriously, it’s that good!

Click on the Firefox banner to see what the fuss is all about!
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I’m very proud of our local Montreal Final Cut Pro User Group, FinalCutMTL. Not only do they have a great website with some fantastic forums populated by post-production experts and enthusiasts, they also have a very informative blog on Apple related news and products.

Recently they kicked off a series of video tutorials with a Motion 3 video podcast entitled “Réflections dans Motion 3″. Mathieu Marano demonstrates a quick and simple way of creating the ever popular text reflections. This one is in french only. Félicitations les gars! I can’t wait to watch the next tutorial.

Final Cut Studio 2’s new Motion 3 is capable of great things and is slowly catching up to the industry leader in Motion Graphics, Adobe After Effects.

One of my favorite sites for Professional and Consumer DSLR camera reviews is Digital Photography Review. They have just posted a hands-on preview of Nikon’s upcoming D200 successor, the D300.

“Our preview covers the design of the camera, control layout, operation use, displays and menus. Also included is a closer look at the D300 implementation of live view including videos of it in use. We’ve also explored HDMI output and included a couple of 720p video clips to give you an idea of how high definition may change the way we use video output on digital cameras.”

I’ve shot several events this year with a Nikon D200. It’s a fantastic DSLR that produces remarkable images. It’s also an absolute joy to use. However I’m very excited about the new D300 for several reasons.
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