Archive for November, 2011

Today Honda’s integrated, national “Happy Honda Days” campaign returns, this time with Honda spokesman Patrick Warburton as the lighthearted voice of holiday savings. Developed by Honda’s long-standing agency of record, RPA, the sales event’s campaign emphasizes the incredible holiday savings and incentives Honda is offering on a wide selection of models across nine TV spots and a robust online campaign.

The “Happy Honda Days” campaign follows the extensive “Good Reasons” campaign, also starring Warburton, which aired earlier this year and emphasized the high quality of the automaker’s full line of vehicles. “Patrick is the perfect voice to continue Honda’s no-nonsense dialogue about all the good reasons to buy a Honda, with the best reason of all being the outstanding prices,” said Jenny Howell, manager of Honda Regional Marketing for American Honda Motor Co., Inc. “He speaks to the consumer about our vehicles with the straightforward honesty that they have come to expect from our brand.”

With a focus on the zero-dollars down payment and zero dollars due at lease signing messaging, Warburton adds his droll-but-candid Honda pitch across a range of holiday auto-ad mainstays. He challenges the craftsmanship of elves by discarding a broken robot and emphasizing that high-quality Hondas are human-made in “Elves;” and mocks the luxury carmaker holiday habit of promoting cars as gifts in “Car Gift.”

“The return of Happy Honda Days presented the perfect opportunity to again leverage Patrick’s presence as the voice of Honda,” said RPA SVP/GCD Jason Sperling. Additional spots feature Warburton getting a bit too close to the camera (“Giant Offer”), invoking an orchestra and an oversized hourglass to encourage a last-minute rush to catch Happy Honda Days deals (“Sense of Urgency”) and dressing a dog up in reindeer antlers (“The Holiday Angle”).

Spots will run on network and spot TV programming across ABC, CBS, NBC and CW, including during “Desperate Housewives,” “Pan Am,” “2 Broke Girls,” “60 Minutes,” “Prime Suspect,” “The Office,” “Ringer” and “Gossip Girl.” Ads will run in top automobile websites, including Car and Driver, Automobile, Consumer Guide Automotive, Edmunds, Motor Trend, Road & Track, AOL Autos, Automotive.com, Cars.com, Kelley Blue Book, Facebook, Google, Bing, MSN Autos, Source Interlink Media, Jumpstart, Vehix and Yahoo! Autos.

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Credits
Agency: RPA
EVP, ECD: Joe Baratelli
SVP, GCD: Jason Sperling
Senior AD: Hobart Birmingham
Senior CW: Perrin Anderson
AD: Brian Farkas
CW: Tylynne McCauley
AD: Cheston Kwan
Junior CW: Josh Hill
SVP, Executive Producer: Gary Paticoff

Production Company: Drive-Thru
Director: Tim Kendall
DP: Neil Shapiro
Executive Producer: Mark Setterholm
Line Producer: Deven LeTendre
Production Designer: Mark Behn

Editorial Company: The Reel Thing, Inc.
Editor: Sally Banta (“Holiday Ad,” “Fake Joy,” “Giant Offers,” “Sense of Urgency”)
Editor: Lance Pereira (“Elves,” “Best of Times,” “I’m Back,” “Holiday Angle,” “Car Gift”)
Executive Producer: Doug Klekner
Assistant Editor: Scott Deerborne

Music Company: Mophonics
Executive Producer: Michael Frick
Head of Prod: Shelley Altman
Creative Director: Stephan Altman
About RPA
RPA, headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., is a leading independent advertising agency. RPA builds momentum for brands by offering its clients truly integrated campaigns that resonate throughout its disciplines, which include traditional advertising, interactive, and direct and event marketing. RPA’s client list includes American Honda, both the Honda and Acura brands, California Department of Public Health, La-Z-Boy, Farmers Insurance Group and Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. For more information, visit http://www.rpa.com.

More info: TRUST 646 452 3388 (NY) 310 451 5153 (LA) trustcollective.com

Iron Mountain’s Entertainment Services Will Provide Expertise on Issues Related to Preserving Music and Protecting Musical Intellectual Property for the Recording Industry

SANTA MONICA, CA, November 15, 2011 — The Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing® has entered into a partnership with Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) Entertainment Services, it was recently announced. As an official P&E Wing partner, Iron Mountain will provide title sponsorship of regional Recording Academy Chapter professional development events and will serve as a sustaining member of the P&E Wing Manufacturer’s Council, a diverse array of audio-related companies that function as a creative think-tank to address industry issues, including technical best practices, new technology development, preservation of recording assets and creative rights.

“We are very pleased that Iron Mountain will be working closely with The Producers & Engineers Wing this year,” stated Producers & Engineers Wing Sr. Executive Director Maureen Droney. “Iron Mountain is renowned as a purveyor of best practices related to film and sound archiving, preservation, restoration and transfer, and this ties in perfectly with music preservation initiatives and intellectual property issues that are fundamental to the P&E Wing. We look forward to working with them on educational and professional development events related to preserving the past and protecting the future.”

“Iron Mountain has been a partner to the music recording industry for many years, protecting and preserving some of the most important recordings in America’s musical history,” said Jeff Anthony, SVP, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services. “This partnership with The Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing will allow us to continue that relationship with the industry while also giving us a platform to advise on, and advocate for, best practices in asset preservation and creative rights management. We forward to playing an active role in helping to shape the future of recorded music.”

About The Recording Academy
Established in 1957, The Recording Academy is an organization of musicians, producers, engineers and recording professionals that is dedicated to improving the cultural condition and quality of life for music and its makers. Internationally known for the GRAMMY Awards — the preeminent peer-recognized award for musical excellence and the most credible brand in music — The Recording Academy is responsible for groundbreaking professional development, cultural enrichment, advocacy, education and human services programs. The Academy continues to focus on its mission of recognizing musical excellence, advocating for the well-being of music makers and ensuring music remains an indelible part of our culture. For more information about The Academy, please visit www.grammy.com. For breaking news and exclusive content, join the organization’s social networks as a Twitter follower at www.twitter.com/thegrammys, a Facebook fan at www.facebook.com/thegrammys, and a YouTube channel subscriber at www.youtube.com/thegrammys.

Currently more than 6,000 professionals comprise The Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing, which was established for producers, engineers, remixers, manufacturers, technologists, and other related creative and technical professionals in the recording field. This organized voice for the recording community addresses issues that affect the craft of recorded music, including the development and implementation of new technologies, technical guidelines and recommendations, and archiving and preservation initiatives. For more information, please visit www.producersandengineers.com.

About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) provides information management services that help organizations lower the costs, risks and inefficiencies of managing their physical and digital data. The company’s solutions enable customers to protect and better use their information—regardless of its format, location or lifecycle stage—so they can optimize their business and ensure proper recovery, compliance and discovery. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain manages billions of information assets, including business records, electronic files, medical data, emails and more for organizations around the world. Visit www.ironmountain.com or follow the company on Twitter @IronMountain for more information.

Milpitas, CA – November 16, 2011 – Blackmagic Design today announced that Sony PCL, Inc., one of Japan’s top video production companies, has installed multiple DaVinci Resolve nonlinear color correction systems.

Sony PCL, founded in 1951, is one of largest total video production companies in Japan. Sony PCL handles the planning, production and post production of visual contents, and authoring and packaging to DVD or Blu-Ray, for some of the largest films, commercials and music videos in Japan. The company also provides planning, promotion and digital content creation for a variety of live events. Sony PCL chose DaVinci Resolve to support its complete portfolio of services, many of which now include 3D and 4K imagery.

In September, Sony PCL installed a DaVinci Resolve in the company’s grading room for advanced grading, conforming and rendering, while also installing Resolve Software into their main machine room to handle additional color correction needs. Each Resolve suite is used in conjunction with a CUBIX Expander to provide a powerful 2GPU system. Both systems are connected to SAN and also local SAS RAIDs to allow conforms to be performed in the machine room with grading done in the separate grading suite.

Kiyoshi Kogami, Digital Production Division, Visual Solution Department, said: “With Resolve, we can offer high end grading for an affordable price by reducing the cost of installing a grading system. And Resolve’s XML support has made it easier to handle offline data from our clients.”

“These days, many clients bring materials in various file formats. Resolve supports a broad range of those formats, so we can meet an expansive range of demands. Resolve also lets us access those files directly so I don’t have to import them to start grading. It is a big time saver!” said Yoshiro Kamei, Sony PCL colorist.

Availability and Price
DaVinci Resolve 8.1 is available now as a free download for all current DaVinci Resolve customers.

Press Photography
Product photos of DaVinci Resolve, and all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagic-design.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s DaVinci Emmy™ award winning color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagic-design.com.

Blackmagic Design today announced HyperDeck Software Update 2.0, a new software update for it’s popular HyperDeck Studio that adds broadcast quality compressed 10 bit recording and playback to the Avid® DNxHD® format.

DNxHD is a broadcast industry standard for media files and adding native support for this compressed video format into HyperDeck Studio will allow dramatically longer recoding times, lower media storage costs, and full file format compatibility with Avid Media Composer® systems. All media is recorded in MXF format, so it’s immediately available in Media Composer without any time consuming file copying or import processing.

HyperDeck Software Update 2.0 will be available at the end of November 2011 free of charge for all HyperDeck Studio customers.

HyperDeck Studio still includes support for perfect quality uncompressed 10 bit video, for the ultimate in high quality mathematically perfect recording and playback. With this new software update, customers will now be able to choose between uncompressed or DNxHD formats and then all recordings and playback will use that format. This is all available on the same model of HyperDeck Studio and without any upgrade costs. Customers can change between compressed and uncompressed formats depending on their needs and the work they are doing.

HyperDeck Studio records direct to Solid State Disks, (SSDs) which offer incredibly fast read and write speeds, so they have the high bandwidth required for full SD or HD recording and playback. SSDs are used in regular laptop and desktop computers so are constantly increasing in size, while purchase prices have been dropping dramatically over the last few years. This means the cost per minute of recording is now much less than any other broadcast format, and getting cheaper every day.

HyperDeck Studio is the perfect solution to replace aging broadcast decks due to it’s higher quality, direct file format compatibility with NLE software, and easy to use broadcast deck features. HyperDeck Studio allows recording and playback from SDI and HDMI sources, and includes support for RS-422 deck control. Unlike broadcast decks, HyperDeck Studio can record forever because it includes dual SSD slots. This allows a new blank disk to be inserted while recording, and when the current recording disk is full, HyperDeck Studio will seamlessly continue to record across onto the new blank disk. Disks can be swapped constantly for continuous recording!

“This is a very exciting update because it means all our customer’s disks just became 4 to 5 times bigger and 4 to 5 times cheaper! You get great 10 bit quality and in the MXF format that allows all files to be loaded into Avid Media Composer without any import processing. That’s the fastest and most efficient workflow possible, vitally important in fast moving broadcast stations” said Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design. “Ever since HyperDeck Studio was announced at NAB, we have been asked constantly by customers for Avid DNxHD compressed recording, and we think this new feature in HyperDeck Studio will be very well received by our broadcast and hollywood post production customers! And it’s a free update!”

“DNxHD is a SMPTE standard format, and has long been the broadcast and post production format of choice because of it’s great 10 bit quality but very small file sizes.” said David Colantuoni, Director of Product Management at Avid. “The addition of native MXF DNxHD recording and playback to the Blackmagic HyperDeck Studio completely changes the game in terms of flexibility, speed, and quality for our Media Composer, Symphony® and NewsCutter® customers.”

HyperDeck Studio Features
• Record and playback to standard 10 bit uncompressed QuickTime or Avid DNxHD MXF media files.
• Uses high speed off the shelf Solid State Disks (SSDs) available from computer resellers at low cost.
• Includes dual SSD slots allowing disks to be changed while recording for unlimited record duration.
• 3 Gb/s SDI and HDMI inputs and outputs, including SDI loop through and monitoring outputs.
• Familiar broadcast deck VTR design and functionality, including jog/shuttle wheel and RS-422 deck control.
• QuickTime and MXF file formats are compatible with Avid Media Composer and other editing applications.
• 1 rack unit design saves valuable rack space when mounting multiple units.

Availability and Price
HyperDeck Software Update 2.0 with DNxHD recording and playback features will be available at the end of November 2011 free of charge from the Blackmagic Design web site for all HyperDeck Studio users. HyperDeck Studio is available now from Blackmagic Design Resellers Worldwide for only $995.

Press Photography
Product photos of HyperDeck Studio are available at www.blackmagic-design.com/press/images .

About Avid
Avid creates the digital audio and video technology used to make the most listened to, most watched and most loved media in the world – from the most prestigious and award-winning feature films, music recordings, television shows, live concert tours and news broadcasts, to music and movies made at home. Some of Avid’s most influential and pioneering solutions include Media Composer, Pro Tools®, Interplay®, ISIS®, VENUE, Sibelius®, System 5, and Avid Studio. For more information about Avid solutions and services, visit www.avid.com, del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube; connect with Avid on Facebook; or subscribe to Avid Industry Buzz.
Avid, Avid DNxHD, Avid Studio, Interplay, ISIS, Media Composer, NewsCutter, Pro Tools, Symphony, and Sibelius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. The Interplay name is used with the permission of the Interplay Entertainment Corp. which bears no responsibility for Avid products. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s DaVinci Emmy™ award winning color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagic-design.com.

Milpitas, CA – November 16, 2011 – Blackmagic Design today announced DaVinci Resolve Lite 8.1, a new version of the free DaVinci Resolve that now includes unlimited color correction nodes.

Unlimited color correction nodes allow customers to use multiple color correctors for more complex and creative grading and is a dramatic boost in power over the previous version of DaVinci Resolve Lite that was limited to 2 nodes. Adding more than 2 color correction nodes was the top requested feature by DaVinci Resolve Lite colorists.

To help promote the art of color correction, DaVinci Resolve Lite includes many powerful features found in the full version of DaVinci Resolve for an extremely powerful toolset that anyone can download free of charge.

DaVinci Resolve Lite includes all the same high quality processing of the full DaVinci Resolve, however limits projects to SD and HD resolutions, unlimited nodes using a single processing GPU and a single RED Rocket card. Stereoscopic 3D features, noise reduction, power mastering, remote grading and sharing projects with an external database server are features only offered in the full DaVinci Resolve so are not included in this free DaVinci Resolve Lite edition. Customers who want these features can simply upgrade to the full DaVinci Resolve Software for only US$995.

Even with the restrictions of the free DaVinci Resolve Lite, image quality is never limited, and customers can use the incredible image processing quality of DaVinci Resolve. In addition DaVinci Resolve Lite can still accept high resolution source footage in 2K, 4K and 5K from the latest digital cameras from RED and ARRI, so customers get a fantastic digital camera utility.

DaVinci Resolve Lite still includes high quality optical resizing, curve grading, XML import and export, 32 bit float processing, YRGB image processing, multi layer timelines, stabilization, window tracking, primary and secondary color correction, real time processing, capture and playback with deck control, compatibility with third party control panels and much more. With so many powerful features at absolutely no charge, customers will be able to experience the dramatic improvement to their work from using professional color correction.

“Thousands of colorists have downloaded and are using DaVinci Resolve Lite to help generate a revolution in visual design that’s dramatically improving the production values of the entire television industry!”, said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “We are very excited to be able to offer this new enhanced version of DaVinci Resolve Lite, and we hope that many more people will be able to explore the art of color correction on their television production work.”

Availability and Price
DaVinci Resolve Lite is available now and free of charge from the Blackmagic Design web site.

Press Photography
Product photos of the DaVinci Resolve Lite, and all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagic-design.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post-production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s DaVinci Emmy™ award winning color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagic-design.com.

Charlotte Motor Speedway, long considered the home of NASCAR, was looking for the next big thing when Panasonic Enterprise Solutions installed the world’s largest LED display in a sports venue – all controlled by one Vista Spyder 353 video processor.

Two hundred feet across and 80 feet high, and offering unprecedented views of the action, the record-breaking 30mm full-color LED display towers 11 stories above turns 2 and 3 along the speedway’s back stretch. Along the front stretch – encompassing turns 4 to 1 – fans have clear viewing angles of the board that features high-resolution visuals illuminated by over nine million LEDs.

Good Karma Pictures’ Michael Rocha, integrator for the system, operates the screen for the speedway and creates content for the display, giving fans a big multimedia experience. “Rather than break up the screen into sections,” said Rocha, “we layer content and treat it as one huge contiguous screen. Spyder is critical to this application.”

Rocha approached Vista with the concept for the enormous display and asked if Spyder could manage it. “I knew we were going to have numerous signals and realized that the size of the display, which is larger than HD, would require the convergence of multiple sources,” he added. “We needed the Spyder to manage and control every signal going to the display and, two months later, we were up and running.

“Many screens at racetracks are hard to see, but not this one. Stunning and bright, the LED display shows live coverage, interactive entertainment, leaderboard updates, replays, and sponsorship information – and we can seamlessly display any or all of the content at any time,” Rocha continued. “Spyder can easily window and transition all the images on the giant screen. High-octane animations and graphics act as a background for the multi-image display. It’s a very cool presentation.”

Rocha said there are 16 live sources, including nine in-car POV feeds. Additional sources include numerous prerecorded video segments, race information, a live audience text-to-screen feed, and computer graphics.

“Spyder is working great, and I’m blown away by how responsive and fast it is. The speedway is very thrilled with the presentation.”

About Vista Systems
Vista Systems was acquired by Christie, a global leader in visual solutions for business, entertainment and industry, to create a comprehensive source for image processing and projection solutions. The acquisition combines the power and flexibility of Vista’s video switchers and real-time windowing and composition products with the power, performance and reliability of award-winning Christie projection systems. Vista Systems’ switchers have become the industry standard for live multiple-destination video and data mixed signal switching. For more information on Vista Systems, visit their website at www.vistasystems.net.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada – November 2011… Lawo, recognized globally as a leading manufacturer of digital audio networking and console systems for production, post production, broadcast, and related applications, is pleased to announce the appointment of Christian Schniering to the position of Product Support Manager – VSM for the company’s North American office. With a background that includes comprehensive technical training and a wealth of experience with system control issues commonly encountered in the broadcast environment, Schniering is well equipped to oversee Lawo North America’s VSM-based installations. more

Old Lyme, Conn. – November 15, 2011 – During the 45th annual Country Music Association Awards, audio specialist Sennheiser delivered another evening of rock solid audio and flawless RF performance courtesy of its EM 3732-II receivers, SKM 2000 and SKM 5200 transmitters and its ew 300 G3 IEM series monitoring system. The following Sennheiser users also won awards and performed live onstage using Sennheiser transmitters and capsules:

– Blake Shelton: Top Male Vocalist
(Sennheiser SKM 2000 coupled with an MMD 953-1 capsule)
– Miranda Lambert: Top Female Vocalist
– (Sennheiser SKM 2000 couple with an MMD 935-1 capsule)
– Sugarland: Vocal Duo of the Year
(Sennheiser SKM 5200-II coupled with an MD 5235 capsule)
– Lady Antebellum: Vocal Group of the Year
(Sennheiser SKM 5200-II coupled with an MD 5235 capsule)

Among the notable performance highlights was a rendition of “Georgia On My Mind” by the Zac Brown Band and music legend Gregg Allman, during which Brown used a Sennheiser SKM 2000 coupled with a MMD 935-1 mic capsule.

For Bexel staff engineer Jim Dugan, who designs antenna systems for a living and was RF coordinator for this year’s CMAs, Sennheiser was a foundational component of the show’s overall success. “We had 10 of the Sennheiser EM 3732-II receivers, which are really flexible and can cover any of the transmitters the artists are using,” he says. “They are well built, clean and have a very wide switching bandwidth which helps tremendously — especially in shows with 300 or more frequencies. Most importantly, they sound great.”

The sound and dependability of the RF transmitters is key in an awards show that features no less than 29 performers. “This is a challenging show that is all about music, and the only time someone isn’t playing is when someone is introducing music,” commented John Harris, the broadcast music mixer at CMA who had two of his Music Mix Mobile trucks on site. “Since there are performances way out in the middle of the arena and on three different stages, the RF has to be rock solid. The Sennheiser transmitters are very reliable and there were no blips.”

“Overall, the show was a great success,” adds monitor engineer Jason Spence. “Sennheiser had a big role in this, and we had quite a few artists with Sennheiser mics out there. Whether you are the guy mixing, or if you’re in the audience or the artist who is performing, dependability is everything. We had zero issues with the Sennheiser mics, and they sounded great.” In Spence’s role, the right mic choice means that he can get the sound he is looking for faster: “It means I don’t have to hack up the EQ. For example, for Miranda, all I had to do was set the gain, put a high pass filter on it, run it up on the IEMs and put a little bit of reverb on it. Done.”

During this year’s CMAs, a variety of other Sennheiser microphones were used in many other applications. For example, Vocal Group of the Year Lady Antebellum used the new Sennheiser MK4 large diaphragm condenser as overhead microphones, and Sennheiser mics were on every drum kit used by every band during the evening’s performances. “Every band that played had e 602-IIs on the kick drum,” says John Harris. “Everything about my mixes start with drums, and the Sennheiser 600 and 900 series just knock it out of the park.”

“We had a perfect show and it was great,” Dugan concludes. “The CMA show is a very complex, technical environment with a lot of electronics. The fact that the Sennheiser equipment performs flawlessly and sounds great is a testament to its overall quality. I will definitely use Sennheiser again next year.”

Createasphere’s Digital Asset Management Conference-Europe made its bow at The Hague last week to strong response and an engaging lineup of speakers and sponsors. Createasphere – a global community builder for the entertainment technology industry – launched its Digital Asset Management Conference (DAM) in Los Angeles in 2010. Since its launch, based on positive response from sponsors and attendees, Createasphere has presented three additional conferences, including ones in New York and Los Angeles. Unveiling a European version of the conference on November 8 and 9 was in direct response to interest from European experts and companies engaged in leading asset management endeavors, according to Kristin Petrovich Kennedy, President of Createasphere.

Createasphere’s Digital Asset Management Conference-Europe was co-located with SPAR Europe 2011. With multiple platforms of images, video, and digital assets comes a new set of integration, archiving, multi-platform, security, and digital rights management issues; these two highly-focused conferences gave business professionals the opportunity to see end-to-end technologies.

Kristin Petrovich Kennedy comments, “As our U.S. conferences have gained momentum, we heard from our colleagues in Europe that they were looking for the expert-driven conferences we were presenting. We have been fortunate to work with some of the most intriguing, inspiring and informative speakers this week. Given the response we received, we are looking forward to returning to Europe in 2012 with an expanded program.”

The European conference kicked off with keynote speeches from Ed Lantz, Thomas Schleu and Dieter Reichert. Lantz, president and CTO at Vortex Immersion Media, is a technologist and futurist with a background in hardware and software engineering, quantum physics, and electromagnetics. He is currently participating in the building and planning of an immersion environment at a new MGM Grand in China. Schleu, founder of CANTO software and recent winner of Createasphere’s coveted DAMMY of the Year Award, is a highly respected software expert in DAM. Reichert is one of the co-founders of censhare AG. He is responsible for strategic planning and worldwide marketing of the censhare Communication and Publication System.

Createasphere’s DAM conferences shape the standards and explore the urgent global issues of digital asset management in the sectors of advertising, entertainment, media, publishing, museums, sports, and higher education, and will return to the U.S. in 2012 on February 22-23, 2012 in Los Angeles, September 27-28, 2012 in New York, and in Europe on November 13-14, 2012. For complete information, visit the website at http://www.createasphere.com/En/explore-expos-conferences.html.

About Createasphere
Createasphere is a global community builder for the entertainment technology industry, advancing technologies and careers through Expos, Conferences, and online offerings.

Createasphere was founded in 2001 as HD EXPO, and over the past decade has grown into a global company that develops and presents influential events for the content creation community, on line and face to face. Founded by Kristin Petrovich Kennedy in Los Angeles, Createasphere became part of Diversified Business Communications in 2009, now driving their entertainment strategies and properties division. Currently Createasphere is presenting the Entertainment Technology Expos in New York and LA; the Digital Asset Management Conference in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe; The DAMMY Awards in New York; Cinema India Expo in Mumbai; the online news and content portal CreativeProCoalition.com; 3D Road Shows; and Post Production Master Classes.

# # #

Media Contact:
Chris Purse, 818.303.8088
ignite strategic communications
chris@ignite.bz or mimi@ignite.bz

Boris FX, the leading developer of integrated VFX and workflow technology for video and film, today announced that Boris Continuum Complete 8 AVX (BCC 8 AVX) is now available. BCC 8 AVX delivers 200+ comprehensive VFX and compositing filters to Avid Media Composer, NewsCutter, and Symphony. Flicker Remover and Videoscope tools, integrated Beat Reactor technology for audio-driven effect animation, a new Film Glow filter, and support for 64-bit operating systems headline the Version 8 release.

BCC AVX gives Avid editors the most comprehensive VFX and compositing plug-in suite ever created. A whopping 200+ filters include 3D Objects such as Extruded Text, 3D particle effects, image restoration tools, lens flares and lights, award-winning chroma keying and compositing, a full suite of color correction tools, time-based effects such as Optical Stabilizer, warp and perspective effects, and blurs, glows, and cinematic effects. All BCC AVX filters take advantage of either multi-processing or OpenGL hardware acceleration for an interactive effects design experience.

Over 1,000 professionally-designed presets are included free with every installation of BCC. Customers can save and freely share their own presets and build customized preset collections tuned to the specific needs of a project – without the need for a costly subscription service. Presets can be shared with matching BCC installations on any host application in which BCC is installed. In addition, via the Boris Transfer workflow utilities, BCC is the only plug-in set that allows easy VFX migration between Avid, Adobe, and Apple editing software – with parameters and keyframed information intact. Boris Transfer AE transfers Avid or Final Cut Pro sequences to After Effects while Boris Transfer FCP transfers sequences between Avid and Final Cut Pro.

Boris Continuum Complete 8 AVX New Feature Highlights

• BCC Videoscope checks color levels at any stage of an Avid project, ensuring broadcast-legal colors of the final output or any individual element in the project.

• BCC Film Glow creates the soft feel of exposed film.

• BCC Flicker Fixer repairs video affected by flickering light or uneven shutter exposure.

• Beat Reactor Technology is now built into many BCC AVX filters, making it easy to generate audio-driven effects such as a pulsing light, a glow, or even an image wipe that follows along with the beat of an audio track.

The following new features will be available to BCC 8 AVX customers via a forthcoming free software update:

• BCC Stage Light simulates production lights, projectors, or stage lighting.

• BCC Lens Flare 3D creates cinematic looks and stylish broadcast design elements.

• BCC Particle Emitter 3D provides a powerful, OpenGL-accelerated particle system.

• BCC Organic Strands emulates flowing strands of matter, glowing plasma, and more.

• BCC Wild Cards allows editors to build complex designs of 2D images in 3D space.

Pricing and Availability
BCC 8 AVX is available immediately through the Boris FX worldwide reseller channel and direct from the Boris FX web site at www.borisfx.com for an introductory MSRP of $995 USD. The regular MSRP will be $1,995 USD. Owners of previous versions of BCC AVX may upgrade for an introductory MSRP of $295 USD. The regular upgrade MSRP will be $599 USD. A free 14-day trial version is available from www.borisfx.com