According to Michael Arrington, Tagworld is to launch a video service tomorrow. What caught my eye was:

Alternatively, videos from YouTube and other video sharing sites can be “bookmarked” directly into the My Videos area, and/or directly into the user’s TagWorld page for streaming to visitors.

That is something that I have surprisingly not seen before, and I think is a great feature. Currently, Tagworld, is a social bloggin, tagging, photo, and storage site. They have also introduced just recently a music service which looks quite good, but I haven’t had time to play with.
We’ll see what the morning brings.

Technorati Tags: tagworld, video

Yes, it is finally here. Take a look at the new Adobe After Effects® 7.0 Professional, Premiere® Pro 2.0, Audition® 2.0, and Encore® DVD 2.0. The seamlessness workflow they advertise is simply amazing. Check out the SWF “See it in Action” videos on each page.
Unfortunately, I fail to catch in what way the recently aqcuired Macromedia products intergrade. We may have to wait for the next release to see them merge.

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting
Technorati Tags: adobe, premier, ae, audition, encore

Now that Adobe and Macromedia have finally merged, we are going to be seeing the fruits of this mighty union. Labnol.blogspot provides screenshots of the new Premiere Pro 2, Encore DVD 2 (the article missguidingly states After Effects 7), Audition 2, part of the Creative Suite Productions Studio that Adobe is expected to annouce on January 17. Premiere will now feature DVD authoring straight from the timeline, and can embed videos into PDFs.
Being a fan of Macromedia products, I hope none of them get scrapped by Adobe (except for Freehand).

Technorati Tags: adobe, premiere, macromedia, audition, encore

Veoh has announced a Skate Video contest, whose winner will pocket $5,000. What you must do:

- Download and install the Veoh software (its free)
- Register and sign in- Check out the Skateboard.com channel for access to hundreds of videos on all things skateboarding- When you are ready, publish your video, tell your fans and if your work is the most popular skate video by April 30, 2006 you can win $5,000
> Official Rules.

Veoh is a video sharing client that functions more like a TV then community video sharing site. Uploading you videos is easy, and doesn’t require you to have Veoh running all the time (although a little Veoh service will run silently in the background as a system process for some reason, even if you ar’t using the app… so you can’ abort it).

Technorati Tags: veoh, contest, video, skate

[Blogsome deleted my previous post… looks like it’s not fully compatible with FireFox 1.5]

Google Video store is now officially live (as of last night.
Read Solution Watch’s in-depth (as always) review. For current video providers, check out the Google Blog.

Frankly, it’s rather an anti-climax, considering the amount of hype it’s been getting lately. Soundly, Google has always been simplicity itself, but looking over Google Video, you feel they could have jazzed it up a bit on the interface. The whole thing looks a bit disspointing. However, it does look very easy to buy you video (haven’t tried it though)
Also, there is talk of little cross-platform compatibility, only working right now for Win2000/XP. What’s up with that Google?

Technorati Tags: google, video

Doom9 has released a detailed codec comparison review for ‘05. Check it out here.

The conclusion?

Best quality per fps

Even with a dual core machine, you can see by the FPS numbers on page one that while there are fast codecs, there are those that could use a good kick in the behind to get moving.

With its 100% lead over the winner in the ASP group, the award still goes to NeroDigital ASP. Both ASP finalists also deliver a good performance in this category, and the Ateme encoder does best when it comes to AVC encoders.

(via Digg)

Technorati Tags: codec, video

Mozilla has finally released information about their Fireflix ads contest. And yes, the prizes are awesome (there better be a Firefox tshirt or cap for just entering ).

Prizes:

Mozilla has put together a great set of prizes for contest winners. We have three grand prize packages. The first place winner will receive a $5,000 coupon to B&H, the professional’s source for photo, video, and pro audio. Thanks to prize sponsor 9X Media, we also have a multi-screen display to give away. We’ll also be awarding an Alienware media center PC.

Face it, Firefox is not just a browser… it’s a lifestyle.

Technorati Tags: firefox, flicks, contest, mozilla

Found this cool gadget via we-make-money-not-art.com called RGBy (created by Shinya Matsuyama and Makoto Hirahara) that allows you to capture color from around you, so you can carry it with you.

From site:

It’s like a “one-pixel camera” as Kuwakubo puts it. RGBy was recently featured in the recent Digital Stadium show, for which Kuwakubo served as a curator. In his comments, he suggested a possibility of a one-pixel video camera. Sounds very cool.

There is a switch and red, blue, and green LEDs on the bottom surface of the cube. When the switch is pressed, the LEDs emit light sequencially and the device detects the strength of reflected light to determine the color. If put on a multi-colored surface, it avarages the colors.

RGBy will be presented at DAF Tokyo soon.

Don’t miss the video.

I came across an amazing piece of software today via Digg called Recolor, a tool that, with a little work, turns black & white photos into realistic color. Take a look at the examples provided… simply brilliant.
I ran the becahball tutorial included and it worked like a charm. More complicated photos require more work, but with the results, it is totally worth it.
I believe that this is the easiest method to do this, faster than photoshop and similiar processes.

This is based on a process discussed here which can also be applied to video (see bottom of page). Recolor doesn’t appear to support video at the moment.
LegendFilms and Off Color Films are sites that specializes in restoring color into old movies.

The author asks to you register it to encourage him to keep working on it, and he hopes to release a shareware version some time in the future.

Here is the link for direct download.

Technorati Tags: recolor, black, white, photo

Yesterday I was informed about the launch of Boltfolio, a new addition to online video sharing. However, Boltfolio is not limited to video, supporting images, audio, and blogs as well. A multimedia sharing community portal created by Bolt targeted mainly at young people.
This is the first video site I have come across that actually feels like Flickr. It features the same easy system of tagging, commenting, and editing content info. It’s even got a monthly upload limit (100MB).

At the moment, the video is kept in whatever format you upload it in. Flash recoding should launch sometime this week.

A great feature is their support for real-time capture of video
and audio (via webcam and/or computer mic). They should also add a simple editor feature (like most digital cameras now have) to cut out bits because unedited videos can become long… and boring.

Unfortunately, when posting the video to your blog, you only get a thumbnail thing (like below) that links to the video’s page at Boltfolio.

Video: My House by MetalGuru

However, it is a great addition to the video sharing market. (link to my list of video sharing services)

Technorati Tags: bolt, boltfolio, video, sharing, flickr