SXSW festival being streamed live

The South by Southwest multi-day gathering, also called the SXSW Festival, since it’s being livestreamed from Austin, TX, enabling viewers around the globe to feel the love even sitting in the comfort of their home. 

From March 9 - March 18, there’s a party going on, and you didn’t even need to fly there in order to attend. This event, which is popularly know by its acronym SXSW is streaming various live events, music and photos online here. Events are best viewed using Internet Explorer 9.

This year, more than 500 parties — a record — are on tap at venues around town. With its focus on music, film and interactive offerings, SXSW naturally attracts interest each year from record labels, film distributors and high-tech firms looking to make a big splash with lavish events featuring celebrities, freebies and, of course, lots of food and booze.

Overall, SXSW is known as a great creative mashup attracting filmmakers, distributors, music promoters, talent buyers, members of the national and international press, digital creatives, technology geeks, entrepreneurs, fans and fanatics. This year is the 19th time the South by Southwest film event is being held. The largest demographic represented among attendees are people in their 30’s (40%), followed by twenty-somethings (31%).

While it has a reputation for being hip, it aims to steer clear of being a stuffy, snobbish atmosphere, and based upon press testimonies , the South by Southwest gathering seems to have reached that goal in past years. And then some.

The interactive part of the festival continues for 4 more days through March 13th, while film viewing will last 8 more days through March 17th and for those who love the music events, there’s a great line up that will take folks out 9 more days, through March 18th.

A Microsoft gala last year at downtown's ACL Live venue, for example, reportedly cost $750,000. But the festival also appeals to other firms, including automakers, fashion designers, television networks and even the makers of Red Bull energy drink.

All are eager to reach the 20,000-plus trendsetters in town, hoping to generate buzz, which, in turn, generates sales.

 Visit the South by Southwest home page for a more comprehensive list of events and programs.

Avid for iPad is here

 

Avid has launched a new video editing iPad app, which it hopes will give Apple’s iMovie a run for its money, and is Avid’s first prosumer video editing app for the iPad.

Avid Studio for the iPad enables you to quickly arrange your clips in the Storyboard, make precision edits using the Timeline, and add high-quality transitions, effects, and soundtracks to your movie footage.

Avid has created an app with the power of a professional editor, yet is easy enough for newcomers. It looks to be a big step up from Apple’s iMovie app, which is strictly for home hobbyists.

The Avid Studio app combines a storyboard and timeline interface, where users can arrange clips in the storyboard, then use the timeline for precise cuts. It also offers touch controls not found in the desktop, like the ability to resize and rotate titles with a gesture.

To get media to edit, users can capture video or photos within the app, import media from iTunes, or capture from a camera using the iPad Camera Connection Kit ($29).

More than a basic editor, the Avid app includes picture-in-picture effects, as well as multiple audio tracks for layering sounds. When they’re done, users can upload their creations directly to their YouTube or Facebook accounts, save them to their computers, or send them to their Avid Studio desktop program for further editing.

Other features include 3D animations, transitions, and titles; full title and graphic control; pan-and-zoom for photos; and full screen playback.

Get the Avid for iPad App now:

Canon C300 poised to take over Hollywood?

The EOS C300 – the latest Digital for Film camera from Canon – starts shipping from today. Aiming to compete directly against the Reds of the world, it carries a Super 35mm CMOS sensor capable of up to 4K resolution 1080p capture, and should be helped in large part by the company's top-shelf lenses; like the 14.5 - 60mm and 30 - 300mm. When we first learnt about C300, it was priced at a hefty $20,000. But that's no longer the case, instead it'll cost a less painful $16,000 for the body only.

Canon has always made video cameras alongside its stills cameras, and the EOS C300 is really the natural evolution of the 5DMkII.

Canon took principles of the 5D — a full-frame SLR which shoots hi-def video — and developed it into a proper movie camera. The sensor is a conservative 8.3MP, and it records 1080p video in each of the three color channels. These pixels are big, for good low-light performance, and the movies are recorded to standard CF cards.



From there, things get very movie-techy. The C300 records in the open-source MXF (Material eXchange Format), can capture compressed MPEG2 Full HD, uses 4:2:2 color sampling and hooks up with all manner of movie accessories. In short, unless you’re a movie pro, not much of this camera will be familiar to you.
The new camera will be joined by a range of EF and PL mount lenses, and in Canon also has a 4K-capable SLR camera in the making.

Canon is counting on a wider range of offerings as digital cinema gets more serious. There’s time. The first significant all-digital movie came out a decade ago: Once Upon a Time in Mexico, where “significant” applies more to digital cinematography than to the flick. Some movies are shot with a combination of film and, for special effects, digital. Even in Hollywood, the ability to streamline production and see daily rushes without the cost and delays developing and printing film, can be an important money-saver when studios shoot all-digital.