-JULY 2000-
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DSound Releases Mac VST Version of Stomp'n FX Filters
JULY 31 —Windows audio software developer DSound has brought over one of its effects sets to the Macintosh. Stomp'n FX Volume 1 is a collection of pedal emulators (with interfaces to match) consisting of Chorus, Flanger, Autowah, Compressor, Noise Gate and EQ.

Panopticum Ships FX 1.0 for After Effects
JULY 31—Panopticum today announced it's shipping Panopticum FX 1.0, a set of plugins for After Effects on the Mac. It includes filters from four previously released sets of plugins, including Fire 2.5, which was just released itself last week. The new package includes AnimaText 1.1, a tool for creating text effects; Fire 2.5, which creates combustion effects; Lens Pro 2, a set of tools for creating lens effects; and Tools 1.1, which includes eight filters.

Brief: Toshiba Offers Rebate on 3 Megapixel Camera
JULY 31—Toshiba today announced that it's offering a $100 mail-in rebate on its PDR-M70 digital camera. The camera, which has a 3 megapixel resolution, will now sell for $799 with the rebate. It includes a built-in speaker and microphone for recording and playing back up to 60 minutes of digital audio. It also has an AVI function for capturing up to five minutes of video at 15 frames per second with audio on the SmartMedia card. It also comes with USB connectivity. For more information, visit http://www.toshiba.com. —Dave Nagel
Aurora Capture Cards Bundled with Organic FX
JULY 28—Aurora Video Systems has started bundling Pixelan's Organic FX with its Igniter Mac-only video capture board. In addition, Aurora's Fuse board will be bundled with Organic FX Lite. Organic FX is a set of more than 250 fluids, bursts, erosions, ruptures, climatics, vapors, strokes, washes and live textures that visually evolve during the effect. Organic FX are derived from natural forms, rather than algorithms, a process that's supposed to create more natural effects. OrganicFX Lite includes 50 of the Organic FX effects.

Echo Fire Adds Digital Voodoo Support
JULY 28—Synthetic Aperture has added new input device support and several other enhancements to its Echo Fire 1.1 software, a package for displaying After Effects and Photoshop documents on an NTSC monitor. New device support includes Digital Voodoo D1 Desktop, Aurora Fuse and Igniter and Media 100 systems. The Digital Voodoo D1 Desktop card (which we'll be reviewing in the next month or so) offers direct output to both a computer monitor and an NTSC monitor with extended desktop functionality. In other words, the NTSC monitor acts as a second desktop, allowing users to work in programs like Photoshop in NTSC.

 
FilmLogic Plugs in to Final Cut Pro
JULY 27—Focal Point Software today announced the latest beta build of its FilmLogic 3.0 software. The new version, 3.0b1, now supports Final Cut Pro, while previous versions supported only Media 100 and Adobe Premiere. FilmLogic is a software application designed for filmmakers who are shooting 35 mm or 16 mm film and want to edit electronically while finishing on film, working with non-linear editing systems to track all the elements that go into the making of the final film. A bit like an extended electronic codebook, it follows the relationship between the original camera negative, the transferred video tapes and the captured clips in the editing system.

Appian Promises Mac AGX Dual-Monitor Cards by Year's End
JULY 26—Appian Graphics, a manufacturer of multiple-display graphics cards, today announced that it's started manufacturing its own graphics chip—the Appian AGX, a high-end graphics processor with support for multiple monitors running at 1,600 x 1,200 at 75 Hz each, all on a single chip. The company earlier this year entered the Mac multiple-display graphics market with the Jeronimo 2000 Mac. And, as it turns out, they plan to follow it up with cards powered by the AGX for the Mac this year.

Cinema 4D XL Gets Free Update to 6.1
JULY 26—Maxon Computer has announced a new update to Cinema 4D XL, its high-end 3D modeling, rendering and animation package. The new version is immediately available for free download to registered users (with addenda to documentation). Maxon's calling 6.1 a major update to Cinema 4D XL 6, which was introduced three months ago. New features include a different plugin architecture (along with a new software development kit), new interface schemes and improved use of camera tracking data.

Review/First Look: Voodoo5 5500
JULY 26—As I was on my way to my last scheduled interview at Macworld, I was mentally composing the lead paragraph of my show wrap-up story, and it was going to go something like this: "While many companies offered interesting products, all of them combined were overshadowed by Apple's announcements of standard multiprocessing CPUs, the G4 Cube and a new mouse." That's what I was thinking, anyway, until I saw the pictures coming from the two new display cards from 3dfx Interactive, the Voodoo 5 4500 and 5500. I've been doing Mac graphics professionally for more than a decade, most of that in video, and I have to tell you, I've never seen anything like this before.

Focus: The Future of Form•Z—Seven Questions with Founder Chris Yessios
JULY 26—Last month Auto•des•sys, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, announced a major change in in the way it will market Form•Z, the company's flagship product and the modeler that helped make desktop 3D a commercial reality back at the time of its launch in 1991. Now, of course, rendering applications ship with increasingly powerful modelers of their own, all wrapped up in a tight, integrated package. On the other hand, Form•Z continues to challenge other developers with innovative new features that keep the program at the vanguard of modeling and making Form•Z an integral part of many a desktop artist's repertoire of tools.

Formac Brings 3Dlabs Graphics Chips to the Mac with New ProFormance Board
JULY 25—3Dlabs and Formac, two graphics card manufacturers, have been working quietly to bring R3 graphics processors over to the Mac platform. The product of their collaboration is the new ProFormance 4 board, a graphics card that uses GLINT Gamma G2 (geometry processor) and dual 128-bit GLINT R3 processors. The new 256-bit card has 64 MB of onboard memory and can power two monitors from a single AGP port. The card accelerates 100 percent of OpenGL geometry and lighting in hardware. This is the first card on the Mac to offer this feature.

 
Mac Swift3D Set for September Launch
JULY 25—Following months of anticipation, Electric Rain today finally announced a Macintosh port of its Swift3D software, but users will still have to wait until September to get their hands on it. Swift3D is a piece of software that allows users to create and work with vector 3D objects that can be animated and placed into Flash files.

Flash To Get Major Overhaul in Version 5
JULY 24—Macromedia says it's giving Flash a major overhaul, including a whole new interface, for the new version due out in September, with a Flash 5 player scheduled for an August release. The company says the new interface in Flash is the first implementation of a standard interface that will appear in all Macromedia authoring products. Tools will also be consistent across all of Macromedia's authoring line (including a new Bezier pen tool), as will menu organization and keyboard shortcuts. (Flash 5 will also have customizable shortcuts.)

Curious Labs Sets Fourth Quarter for Relaunch of Poser
JULY 24—Curious Labs says it will ship version 4.0.3 of Poser beginning in the fourth quarter. Curious Labs was cofounded by some of the original developers of Poser from Fractal Design and MetaCreations, which began unloading its catalog of software titles earlier this year in favor of pursuing Web technologies.

Boris FX Announces Boris RED2
JULY 24—Boris FX today announced Boris RED2, a resolution-independent 3D compositing and title-effects plug-in suite for nonlinear editing systems on the Mac. Boris RED2 adds such new features as export to Macromedia Flash, rotoscoping and vector-animated paint tools, bringing resolution-independent vector graphics and Web distribution to NLE systems.

The Foundry Ships Tinderbox 1 for AE
JULY 24—The Foundry, a software developer based in London, has started shipping Tinderbox 1, a set of 20 filters for Adobe After Effects. It includes blurs, effects and tools for working with mattes, including one called T_Dilate, which allows compositors to grow or erode matte edges at the subpixel level. The company says it designed the package for speed and consistency to to aid in workflow, and, to this end, the filters share a common interface, with 11 major parameters shared across all 20 plugins.

DV Companion for Final Cut Pro Updated
JULY 21—This week's Macworld saw the release of the latest version of "The DV Companion—The Intelligent Assistant for Final Cut Pro." Updated to include the latest features in Apple's most recent release of Final Cut Pro, the Companion includes some new features.

Main Event Launches Scripter Personal Edition
JULY 21—One of the most powerful and unique features of the Mac OS is one that many people don't take advantage of: scripting. Users don't know that it's there, and others think it's over their heads. Main Event Software is hoping to change that with the release today of Scripter Personal Edition, a scaled back version of their flagship product aimed at beginning and intermediate scripters, who want an authoring tool to write AppleScripts but who do not need a full-featured development environment.

Emagic Ships Logic Audio Platinum 4.5
JULY 21—Emagic is making a big upgrade to Logic Audio Platinum available for download from its Web site. The new Mac (and Windows) Logic Audio Platinum 4.5 lets users work in all currently available Surround formats, according to Emagic. A dedicated Surround Panner has been integrated to facilitate the movement of the sound source in space.

Panopticum Updates Fire Filter for AE
JULY 21—Panopticum has released Fire 2.5 for Mac, a plugin for Adobe After Effects and AE-compatible editors and compositors like Apple's Final Cut Pro. Panopticum Fire 2.5 is designed to create a variety of combustion effects, from candle flames to large fires. The plugin is a single module containing several different effects sets.

Macworld Brief: XLR8 Announces FireWire PCI Card
JULY 21—XLR8 announced that it will soon ship its new MACh Fire PCI card, its first entry into FireWire products. It includes three FireWire ports and comes bundles with VideoShop 4.5, QuickTime Pro 4.1 and a FireWire cable. It should be available in August for $99. For more information, visit http://www.xlr8.com. —Dave Nagel

Macworld Brief: Media Cleaner Gets 2x Boost from New G4s
JULY 21—Terran Interactive says its Media Cleaner Pro video compression software is fully compliant with the new dual-processor G4s from Apple, receiving speeds up to twice as fast than on single-processor models. The company says the software is not actually optimized for the new systems, but future versions will be. Media Cleaner Pro encodes QuickTime, RealSystem, Windows Media, MP3 and others. It sells for $499. Terran also says that its Media 100 systems are compatible with the new G4s as well. For more information, visit http://www.terran.com. —Dave Nagel
Macworld Brief: Sonnet To Ship FireWire/USB Combo Card
JULY 21—Sonnet Technologies says it will begin shipping a new combination FireWire and USB PCI card this summer. The card, called Tango, comes with two external USB ports and three FireWire ports, two external and one internal. Each FireWire port has a data transfer rate of 400 megabits per second and can support up to 63 FireWire devices. The USB port, which is USB 1.1 compliant, has a data transfer rate of 12 megabits per second and supports up to 127 USB devices. The card is expected to ship in late August for $139.95. For more information, visit http://www.sonnettech.com. —Dave Nagel
Sony To Speed Spressa FireWire CD-RW
JULY 20—Sony announced today two new models in its Spressa line of CD-RW drives. The two models, one FireWire, the other an internal ATAPI, support 12x maximum write, 8x maximum rewrite, and 32x maximum playback. The 8x rewrite speed is twice the Spressa's previous speed. Sony says that at 8x a CD can be rewritten in about nine minutes.

Macworld Brief: Macromedia Launches UltraDev Exchange
JULY 20—Macromedia yesterday launched the Macromedia Exchange for Dreamweaver UltraDev, a new site for the product's developer community. The site includes discussion threads, receive e-mail updates and rate and review the extensions. The site is modeled after the Macromedia Exchange for Dreamweaver site, which launched in April and, to date, has distributed more than 250,000 extensions to more than 100,000 registered developers. Both sites are part of the Macromedia Membership Center, a centralized location for Macromedia customer interests and information. Because Macromedia UltraDev is built on the core architecture of Dreamweaver, any extensions written for Dreamweaver will also extend the functionality of Dreamweaver UltraDev. The new UltraDev Exchange can be found at http://www.macromedia.com/exchange/ultradev. —Dave Nagel
Macworld Brief: Discreet Ships Combustion
JULY 20—Discreet today announced it has started shipping combustion, a visual effects package for the Macintosh that combines the features of its Paint and Effect applications, as well as a load of new features—keying, motion tracking, color correction, vector-based nondestructive paint animation, true 3D compositing, network rendering, and support for Adobe Photoshop and After Effects plugins. It offers a unified paint, animation and 3D-compositing environment for graphics and visual effects creation. Digital artists and animators can paint or use composites directly in 3D Studio Max (available on the PC only), create textures and background plates or post-process scenes in Combustion using 3D Studio Max's Rich Pixel Format (RPF) file format interchange. Effects created in combustion are available directly within the edit bins or timelines for immediate effects to editing integration. Combustion is available for a list price of $3,495. For more information, visit http://www.discreet.com. —Dave Nagel
Macworld Brief: ATI Announces Mac Radeon Boards
JULY 20—ATI Technologies today announced the Radeon Mac Edition graphics add-in board. It will be the first Mac ATI board to feature 32 MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory. It also features ATI's RAGE Theater chip, with S-video and Composite video support for display on a conventional TV set. Games, animations and architectural renderings can be displayed on large-screen TVs. In addition to TV-out, RADEON Mac Edition also supports more types of displays than any competing product, support which includes Apple, VGA and DVI for digital flat panels, according to ATI. It provides full-screen playback of QuickTime and MPEG-1 video through the Radeon GPU's four-tap filtering architecture. Video images are displayed with full frame rates, and characters move realistically, ATI promises. Other features include: OpenGL support; twin cache architecture; superscalar rendering; specular highlights; perspectively correct texture mapping; spherical, dual paraboloid and cubic environment mapping; fog effects; texture lighting; video textures; reflections; shadows; spotlights; LOD biasing; and texture morphing. ATI says the AGP and PCI versions will ship in September. They will sell for $279. For more information, visit http://www.ati.com. —Dave Nagel
First Look: Media 100 i, Part 1
JULY 20—I have to confess just a little bit of nervousness when I approached Media 100 i for a hands-on session with its product manager Caren Anhder. I'd raised my own expectations pretty high, and stuck my neck out a little further than I was used to on behalf of a product that wasn't even shipping.

Newer Announces First CPU Upgrade for PowerBook G3s
JULY 20—Here I was thinking that my trusty 1999 PowerBook G3/400 was close enough to state of the art performance, when I find out that the speed demons at Newer have come up with something even faster: a 466 MHz upgrade, the world's first for G3 PowerBooks.

VR Toolbox Ships Latest VR Worx
JULY 20—QuickTime VR movies are easy to play with, and anything but easy to create. VR Toolbox has been producing a variety of tools to make the task less burdensome and, at Macworld, began shipping the latest version of its integration of those products, VR Worx. "I can say unequivocally that there is no better way to create QuickTime VR movies with any other application, on any platform."

Virtual Mirror Introduces Vector Studio
JULY 20—Macworld marks the debut of Virtual Mirror's Vector Studio, a suite of plugins for Adobe Illustrator. Compatible with versions 8 and 9 of Illustrator, Vector Studio is available for both Macintosh and Windows. I spoke with Michael Perani, Virtual Mirror's Vice President of Product Development about what he was hoping to accomplish with Vector Studio. "All of us at Virtual Mirror are artists," he said, "so naturally our product development flows directly from the kinds of tasks we want to do better."

Macworld Brief: Club Mac Offers Rebates on New Systems
JULY 19—Well, the new line of G4s, Cubes and iMacs has been around for less than a day, and already at least one online reseller is offering rebates on the new systems. Club Mac is giving purchasers $200 off the dual G4 500 ($3,299), $100 off the dual 450 ($2,399), $100 off the single-processor G4 400 ($1,499), $100 off the G4 Cube 450 ($1,699), $15 off the 350 MHz iMac ($785), $20 off the iMac 400 MHz ($979), $50 off the 450 MHz iMac ($1,249) and $60 off the 500 MHz iMac ($1,439). For more information, visit http://www.clubmac.com/emailframe.html.

More Details on the New Pro Keyboard and Buttonless Mouse
JULY 19—Earlier today we reported on Apple's new pro keyboard and optical mouse. Both announcements came as a great relief to users stuck with Apple's small keyboard and hockey puck mouse—and, worse yet, few third-party options that worked the way they were supposed to. In fact, the mouse actually received more of an ovation at Steve Jobs's keynote address this morning at the Macworld Expo than any other announcement of the day.

More Details on the New Dual-Processor G4s
JULY 19—Earlier today we reported on Apple's new dual-processing G4s Cube, which will, as of today, replace the single-chip 450 MHz and 500 MHz G4 desktops. The new models were announced at the Macworld Expo during Steve Jobs's keynote address, which began at 6 a.m. PDT. The new models tip the scale of the price/performance ratio back toward the midrange. Users had previously questioned the value of spending $800 more for a mid-range G4 that offered few benefits over the low-end model. The new dual-processing models are not only priced the same as previous single-processor models, but the also include extra features (beyond the extra chip): gigabit Ethernet; 1 MB backside cache per processor, for a total of 2 MB; and much bigger hard disks.

More Details on the G4 Cube
JULY 19—Earlier today we reported on Apple's new G4 Cube, a desktop computer housed in an 8" cubical case. The new model was announced at the Macworld Expo during Steve Jobs's keynote address, which began at 6 a.m. PDT. Here are some more details on the Cube based on a separate release from Apple. (We mistakenly reported earlier that the Cube would, like its non-Cube desktop counterparts, ship with gigabit Ethernet. It actually comes with 10/100Base-T, according to Apple's release.)

Macsense Adds to FireWire Offerings
JULY 19—Macsense Connectivity announced three new FireWire products products today: the Macsense FireWire PCI Adapter, FireWire CardBus Card and FireWire Repeater. The Macsense FireWire PCI Adapter allows Mac and PC users to link any FireWire-compatible peripheral for a transfer rate of up to 400 Mbps. It supports hot swapping of FireWire peripherals.

Newer First To Fix G4 Problems with Six-Slot Power Macs
JULY 19—Newer Technology announced today that they have identified and corrected a major problem with several symptoms on older Mac systems. The problem occurs between G4 CPU upgrades and six-slot Power Macs (9500 and 9600) and six-slot clones (Daystar Genesis and Power Computing PowerTower Pro). The problem relates to an "illegal bus condition" triggered by the dual PCI bridges in the 9500 and 9600.

Maxon Launches Education Program for Cinema 4D XL
JULY 19—Maxon Computer today announced a new educational program that provides software and services, including a community Web site, instructional resources and reduced pricing for educators, students and administrators. This includes all education levels.

Analysis: You Had To Be There
JULY 19—It's hard to overstate the excitement in New York's Jacob Javits Convention Center when Steve Jobs made the announcement, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated news since the introduction of the Macintosh G4. A new mouse. Oh yeah, and something about dual processors, gigabit Ethernet and bigger hard drives for the same price.

Jobs Keynote: Dual-Processor G4s Take Over Desktop Line; New Desktops, Cubes, iMacs, Displays, Keyboard, Mouse
JULY 19—Steve Jobs delivered his keynote this morning at the Macworld Expo in New York to a packed, cheering crowd. He announced a whole line of new hardware, including new dual-processor G4 desktops, a new G4 "Cube" and revamped iMacs. He also announced three new displays, a new keyboard and the long-rumored buttonless mouse, as well as a new version of iMovie.

MicroNet Announces New SANcube Array
JULY 19—MicroNet Technology today announced new configurations of its SANcube, a line of FireWire SAN (storage area network) devices. The new 450 GB, four-user SANcube provides 450 GB of online storage and delivers up to 33 MB per second data throughput. Two new dual-channel SANcube Xstream arrays, in 270 GB and 450 GB capacities, provide faster throughput by striping data across two FireWire busses to achieve up to 65 MB per second reads and 35 MB per second writes.

LaCie Ships 12x FireWire CD Burner
JULY 19—LaCie has started shipping a new FireWire 12x 4x 32x CD-RW drive called FireBooster. LaCie says the drive is the fastest FireWire writer available and that it's been designed for portability between FireWire-equipped Macs.

Channel Storm Creates Software-Only Solution For Real-Time Streaming
JULY 19—Live martial arts demonstrations from the Macworld show floor every half hour will herald the announcement of LiveChannel, the first and only software-only solution for producing and broadcasting live media.