Contrats to the Foundry. Their Ocula stereo plugins received a ‘Best of IBC’ Award for Post Production by the IBC Daily/TVB Europe team. fxguidetv episode #037 contains an interview with Simon Robinson about the new plugins.

The Foundry has published a ocula stereo whitepaper which provides more in-depth details about the technology behind the product.

Well, RED said their specs were subject to change and not a week after saying RED would also be going into the DSLR camera market with their own video, stills hybrid, the company pulled photos of the Scarlet $3,000, 3K camera off its web site and said the camera is being fully rethought and redesigned.

Still targeted for next year, founder Jim Jannard said on the company’s web site that “We have changed everything about Scarlet because the market has changed and we have discovered a lot of things in the process. We have a new vision. Wipe you minds of the past announced Scarlet. Forget the design and forget the price. It is all different now”. When asked by users about delivery he said “full working models at NAB(April2009)… shipping to ramp up after. Volume estimations are high so the long wait like a RED ONE should not be an issue…We are making these changes ‘in the nick of time’”. But they have decided to not wait until NAB to show the new plan and they expect to unveil details within weeks, this decision was reached 3 days ago he said online, from an initial idea 10 days ago, but the old Scarlet was at IBC and fully on display. In the same discussion he said back orders on RED ONE would be solved by the Fall, but Jannard was at pains to say this was in no way a reaction to the Canon 5D MKII which offers ultra high res stills and full HD Progressive video.

Epic is also set to be completely redesigned. In a second release on line, Jannard said that the Epic would also be completely changed from their initial plans - but that the upgrade program for Red One cameras remained. The Epic is still slated for “early-mid 2009″, he said.

Autodesk released a Stereoscopic Filmmaking Whitepaper delivering a comprehensive understanding of the state of the industry and its current barriers. The whitepaper provides valuable knowledge for anyone curious about the future of Stereo 3D (S3D) and highlights current industry challenges from technical production complexities to studio considerations and theatrical acceptance.

While the industry faces numerous economic, technical and creative barriers, the growth of Stereo 3D is omnipresent and the demand for live action SD3 cannot be ignored. Autodesk’s whitepaper devotes a considerable amount of thought to standardized workflow processes and the creation of affordable tools to make S3D more available and accessible to a broader range of film projects—both independent and studio-driven.

The whitepaper is available for download (pdf) here.

Cooke Optics Ltd., a premier manufacturer of precision lenses for the motion picture industry, has announced that its i/ Technology will be available on all RED ONE cameras that ship from 12 September 2008.

Jarred Land, Fire Chief at RED, announced on the RED website on Friday 12 September that all new RED ONE cameras would come with /i pins installed and fully functional.

Read more from the press release from Cooke….
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Autodesk Inc. has agreed to terms with the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company and has signed the RED R3D Software Developer’s Kit License Agreement. RED provides a high-performance digital cine camera with the quality of 35mm film and the convenience of pure digital. Autodesk is a world leader in entertainment and design software.

Read more of the press release from Autodesk….
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Thomson announced that it is selling the Thomson Grass Valley equipment business to private investors led by PARTER Capital Group, a German private equity advisory firm. The sale includes the Spirit film scanning family, together with the Bones digital intermediate workflow tools and LUTher, a colour space management product. Financial terms of the sale are not being made public.
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After many years of rumor and possible projects, ILM is going to make a full animated feature film called Rango for director Gore Verbinski Variety is reporting.

ILM of course worked with Verbinski on Pirates of the Caribbean and like that film the new animated film will star the voice and capture motion of Johnny Depp. As with Pirates, ILM will use motion capture technology to allow Deep to not only voice a character but also “will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny’s performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature,” Verbinski said.

Work is set to beginning in January. For many years it has been speculated that ILM with its enormous animation talent would produce an animated film but rumored projects such as Frankenstein failed to ever be made. Yet the hope has been for some time that ILM would turn its enormous talent on the animated market, having watched the computer animation spin off from Lucas Animation -over 20 years ago, turn into the powerhouse that is PIXAR.

Variety reports that Depp will voice the lead character, a household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self. John Logan (”The Aviator”) has penned the script from an idea hatched by Verbinski. The Director will direct “Rango” as he continues to develop an adaptation of the bestselling video game “Bioshock” for Universal. That film is also being scripted by Logan.

The film is pencilled in for a March 2011 release.

During Siggraph we decided to break from the show floor and visit New Deal Studios to talk with Ian Hunter and Matthew Gratzner about their fantastic work on The Dark Knight. We also talk with Richard Spohrer from The Pixel Farm about the next version of PFTrack.

To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link. Visit the fxguidetv page for the direct RSS feed links.

The new Red Centre #14 is out. This week we discuss the RED DLSR and start a series looking at Red Post gear - starting with Assimilate Scratch.

Visit our red centre page to listen or subscribe via RSS or iTunes.

As always we’d love to hear from you please email us at Red at fxguide.com

GenArts is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Sapphire Plug-ins for OFX products. Our entire collection of more than 200 Sapphire effects can now be easily applied by users of The Foundry’s Nuke, Autodesk Toxik, Eyeon Fusion, FilmLight Baselight, Digital Vision Film Master, and Assimilate Scratch.

Click through for more details and the rest of the release….
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