Some of you might know what Tilt Shift Photography is. Some may have even played around with it. I carry my DSLR around with me pretty much everywhere just in case I see something interesting. I’ve also been playing around with making some of my pictures look like Tilt Shift images.
Well, someone has taking this to a completely new level and has taken a ton of photos at a monster truck rally… enough to make it look like stop motion. Then they ran the entire image sequence through a Photoshop Batch file to create the Tilt Shift effect.
The result? It looks like a very elaborate miniature stop motion video!
I’ve been a Photoshop user for years and am currently using their latest version, CS4. I also use their motion graphics program, After Effects. They make a great combination.
Recently, Dan Goldman (who works in Adobe’s “Skunkworks” division) shared a video of some of Adobe’s newest technologies.
If this is a sign of things to come in video editing and visual effects, we’ve got some powerful tools coming our way.
As a visual effects artist, I’ve had the tools to do the tracking shown in the first half of the video (using different tools). But the second half of the video is what really “grabs” my attention. You’ll see what I mean.
“Being a Mac user is like being a Navy SEAL: a small, elite group of people with access to the most sophisticated technology in the world, whom everyone calls on to get the really tough jobs done quickly and efficiently.”
It appears that the second shoe may have dropped in the Blu-ray and HD-DVD format war. It was reported yesterday in the Financial Times (article) that Paramount could be dropping their support for HD-DVD and siding with the Blu-ray camp. Paramount says they plan to continue with HD-DVD, but their wording has become much less committed than last year when they were going to be exclusive HD-DVD.
Paramount can defect because a clause in its contract with the HD DVD camp allows the studio to switch to Blu-ray if Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. dropped its support of Toshiba’s standard, the newspaper reported today, citing unidentified people familiar with the plan. Warner Bros. said on Jan. 4 it would drop its support of HD DVD.
The information on this is changing rapidly, and we’ll keep you posted as it changes.
For those who may be a little confused over the Blu-ray/HD-DVD hype, allow me to briefly explain some of the similarities and differences.
Similarities Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD support the same resolutions (1080p, 1080i, 720p, etc) Both use the same compression codecs (H.264, MPEG-2 - enhanced for HD, SMPTE VC-1) Both are backwards compatible and will play standard def DVDs Both support Dolby TrueHD and the other Dolby variations
Differences Like standard DVDs, there are single layer and double layer discs. Here is the size breakdown of each:
Data Capacity Blu-ray: Single Sided: 25 Gigs of data Blu-ray: Double Sided: 50 Gigs of data Blu-ray: Quad Layer (prototype) 100 Gigs of data
HD-DVD: Single layer: 15 Gigs of data HD-DVD: Dual layer: 30 Gigs of data HD-DVD: Triple layer prototype: 45 Gigs of data
Video Capacity (for double layer disc) Blu-ray: HD: up to 8.5 hours, SD: up to 23 hours HD-DVD: HD: 5.1 hours, SD: up to 13 hours
As you can see above, Blu-ray can hold much more data than HD-DVD which is better for many reasons. While both will technically play the same resolution movies, Blu-ray has more space on the disc. With that extra space, you can do a few things.
One, you can bump the resolution up (Blu-ray would be able to add more resolution simply because it has more room on the disc) Or, two, take that extra space and add much more bonus material on each disc. Both are big advantages to consumers.
Also, Blu-ray uses Java as its interactive programming application. HD-DVD is based on HDi, a Microsoft format, that makes use of XML and some scripting. Java, I believe, is a superior application language for interactivity.
Some will argue that learning Java is more complex and will cost more. While it might be more expensive in the initial stage, BD-J will offer much more in the long term. After all, Java has already been chosen for many cellphones and mobile devices.
On a post production side, the reasons we decided to use a Blu-ray pipeline is the added storage space (to backup much more data per disc), the driver support from Apple (they sided with Blu-ray long ago and there are rumors of a Blu-ray drive to be included in the new Macs at Macworld 2008 next week). Not to mention, Blu-ray titles have been outselling HD-DVD content by at least a 2 to 1 margin.
In the HD-DVD camp, there isn’t much left. Immediately after the Warner announcement, the HD-DVD group cancelled their big CES announcement. And poor HD-DVD advocates, Toshiba and Microsoft, will be one of the big losers in this. Microsoft has invested in HD-DVD in their X-BOX and the only way to play Blu-ray on a Vista computer is via third-party software.
It will be interesting to see what Apple has up their sleeve at Macworld regarding built in Blu-ray support. An AppleTV with built in Blu-ray player, maybe? Only time will tell.
