Splice Vine Links - 3/7/10 -3/14/10

Plug-In

The folks over at Digieffects are working on a new plug-in for After Effects called Shapeshifter and they are looking for beta testers. The plug-in promises to go "way beyond basic text extrusion". Judging by the quality of the rest of their product line it should be something worth keeping an eye on. One of their plug-ins I want to try in particular is Damage. It's similar to Twitch by Videocopilot in that it makes your footage look like it has been to hell and back. So it's great for genres like horror and action or any shots that you want to look digitally degraded.


Tutorials

Curious Turtle has just put out a 6-hour training DVD for the incredible planar tracker Mocha by Imagineer Systems. It's for the Final Cut Studio version.



ReadingI'm right there with Michael Coleman and his high hopes regarding Google's ambitious pilot program to provide 1 Gb per second connection to a few select cities. Our computers keep getting faster and faster but it does us no good if our next works are slow. For editors to be able to work remotely we need higher bandwidth so we can move large video files around without it taking forever. Hopefully, this move by Google will put pressure on local telcos to free up more lanes on the information superhighway.


Website

FinalCutters now has the first ever comprehensive directory of Final Cut Pro related products.
This site, created by the innovative company Digital Heaven, has only been around for about a year but they have grown by leaps and bounds. Besides being a huge resource for FCP editors they allow us to peak out of our own caves and view other FCP edit suites from around the world. So many configurations, so little time.



Legal Watch

Will the future of the H.264 codec be pay to play? That's the question that has recently been raised after someone actually read the the Final Cut Pro user license agreement and found a grey area. It implies that users of the popular editing software (as well as users of Adobe Premiere) should be paying a licensing fee if they create videos using the H.264 codec. Apple and Adobe have both declined comment on what could potentially be a thorn in the side of content creators. We'll keep you posted on the developments.