Well, I'm sure the fact that Vista sucks eggs doesn't help, but Quicktime on Windows is an unoptimized bloated monstrosity; even compared to the Mac edition. (I was hoping the article was about how my Mini feels faster than most Vista machines when it runs OS X, a fact that's definitely the case. ;-) )

But if you really, no, I mean REALLY want to talk about crap software produced by a world class company for another world class company's operating system, then let's not beat around the bush.

Quicktime for Windows is a dog. It's an old dog, a mangy, old, lame dog which you just can't seem to have put down despite serious, room filling flatulence.

It's slow, buggy and is missing lots of features that many serious media users find indispensable.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blogging for ZD-Net has shown that Quicktime on his old 512MB RAM Mac Mini on OS X outperforms his 8GB Quad Core Vista system.

Ah, Vista, I hear you say. But before you click the reply button, he states that using VLC or a real media player blows the Mini to smithereens, so it is a Quicktime for Windows issue.

So I'd make that a 1-1 Apple-Microsoft draw.

iTunes è il nome di un programma sviluppato dalla Apple per riprodurre e organizzare file multimediali, permettendo l'acquisto online delle canzoni, video e film attraverso il servizio iTunes Store.

iTunes può essere utilizzato per organizzare la propria libreria musicale in playlist, modificare le informazioni dei brani (compreso il download automatico delle copertine degli album), registrare i propri CD, scaricare le canzoni nel proprio lettore di musica digitale, acquistare musica su internet utilizzando il negozio integrato (iTunes Store), ascoltare la radio dal web e riprodurre filmati compatibili con QuickTime.

Nel 2008 iTunes è diventato il secondo player musicale del mondo, superando il suo rivale Real Player, sul primo posto svetta Microsoft con Windows Media Player. Nello stesso periodo, iTunes Store è diventato il secondo venditore mondiale di musica, il rivale da battere è Wal-Mart che, secondo le crescite di vendite annue di iTunes, potrebbe essere superata, portando la casa Apple come primo rivenditore mondiale di musica.

iTunes attualmente supporta i formati MP3, AIFF, WAV, AAC e ALE. È tuttavia possibile installare dei plugin per l'abilitazione di altri formati audio.

Condivisione di file e sincronizzazione dell'iPod
La condivisione e la ricerca dei file musicali utilizza la tecnologia Bonjour, implementazione della Zeroconf. La tecnologia Zeroconf, nata per individuare automaticamente la presenza di servizi nelle LAN, viene usata in modo massiccio da Mac OS X per consentire agli utenti di installare una rete senza bisogno di configurarla. Le liste delle canzoni condivise nella propria sottorete vengono automaticamente individuate e aggiunte alla lista delle canzoni condivise.

iTunes sincronizza automaticamente o manualmente la sua libreria con quella dell'iPod ogni volta che l'iPod viene collegato al computer. iTunes supporta anche molti altri lettori di musica digitale. Il supporto dipende dal produttore ma tendenzialmente sono più limitati dell'iPod, per esempio nessun lettore oltre all'iPod può suonare la musica acquistata sull'iTunes Store.

iTunes Store
La maggior parte delle canzoni scaricate da iTunes Store sono protette dalla copia attraverso la tecnologia Apple FairPlay, una tecnologia che implementa la gestione dei diritti digitali (digital rights management).

Heute mal keine Musik. Und gestern auch nicht. Wieso? Zum einen weil ich gestern nur noch 22 MB auf Laufwerk C frei hatte. Naja, wenns dann so weit ist, sollte man mal etwas aufräumen. Also Software aussortieren. Ich habe Quicktime drauf gehabt, hatte auch ca. 80 MB. Ich benutze Quicktime selten, also runter mit dem Mist. Heute wollte ich dann iTunes öffen, doch der schrie auf er könnte ohne sein Quicki net leben. Tja. Blöd.

Zweiter Fakt (und eher das eigentliche Problem): Ich hab mir irgendwas mit dem linken Ohr eingefangen. Sobald ich laute Geräusche vernehme, tut es sau weh. Vielleicht beim Duschen etwas Wasser ins Ohr bekomm. Keine Ahnung. Hab ich seit gestern. Ein ganz ekliger Druck. Das flasht.

Well, you're in luck! Enter SaveHollywood, the free and universal binary app that does just this, and a little more. First, it's a screensaver so the settings are configurable under System Preferences. It can play both quicktime movies as well as flash videos. You have the option of muting the videos if you feel the need. You can set background colours, add a border to your video, and if you have the luxury of multiple monitors, you can display your video on the main monitor only.

For information and download, be sure to visit the app's main page.

iVerse, novedoso lector de comics para el iPhone y el iPod touch.

...el iVerse, es un novedoso lector de comics para el iPohne/iPod touch, con el podemos ver comics y…

Descarga videos de Youtube desde Safari sin ningun “extra” 

...hoy te enseñamos a descargar videos de Youtube en formato FLV, (que después puedes transformar a .mp4 o …

Nuevos rumores sobre las renovaciones de los portatiles de Apple. 

...Al parecer los nuevos ordenadores, los que se supene que renovaran, seran un MacBook y un MacBook Pro...

¿Un nuevo producto Apple a la vista? 

...Parece que Apple esta preparando alguna cosa nueva, ¿el que? nadie lo sabe (execepto Steve, claro)...

Ya esta disponible la version 2.1. para el iPhone.

...el software 2.1 ya esta disponible para iPhone...

iPod nano 4G ¡Nuevos juegos! 

...el iPod nano nuevo (4G) tiene 3 juegos, y uno nuevo, su nombre es...

Vista Guiada del iTunes 8 

Aqui teneis la visita guiada de iTunes 8...

Resumen de la Keynote del día 9 de Septiembre.

Empecemos con la entrada del consejero delegado de Apple (Steve Jobs, ¿quien sino?), quien dice...

Rumor: ¿Cual sera el nuevo producto de Apple?

Yo creo que sera una tabla...

iPod’s VS Mac 

 ...hay una lucha interna en Apple, la banda iPod contra la banda Mac…

Windows Vista, el mejor amigo de Mac OS X

Desde el lanzamiento de Windows Vista, practicamente todo el mundo se volco en contra de el, después Microsoft prohibio la venta de...

Programas iPod touch/iPhone 

Ahora os enseñare los programas más chulos que, segun algunos, tendrian que venir de serie con...

iDoodle2 lite, ¿quien quiere “mancharse las manos”?

...ya que eso es lo que hace esta aplicacion, su nombre iDoodle2 lite, es gratuita y...

Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates 

El video es una pasada, yo...

Tira comica 

En realida, no hace falta...

Malas noticias para nosotros, los Fan boy’s

Desde el pasado 28 de agosto, el título de ordenador portátil de 13 pulgadas más ligero del mundo ya no pertenece a Apple, sino...

DigidesignはPro Tools® 8がリリース間近であることを発表した。

DigidesignによるとPro Tools 8ではインターフェースが刷新され多数の新プラグイン、5種類の新たなバーチャル・インストゥルメント、スコアリングおよびMIDI、編集、ミキシング機能、パフォーマンの強化などを実現しているとのこと。

インターフェース：

• チャンネル毎のインサート数の倍増
• カスタマイズ性の向上
• カスタマイズ可能なツールバー
• タイル表示やカスケード可能なウィンドウ配置
• チャンネル・ストリップやトラック、リージョン、グループ、マーカーのカラーも変更可能

スタジオ機能：

• Mini Grandピアノ
• Boomドラム・マシン
• DB-33トーンホイール・オルガン
• VacuumおよびXpand!2™ シンセ
• Eleven™ Free
• SansAmp®
• Torq® LE
• 20種の新たなAIRエフェクト
• 約8GBのハイクオリティなループ
• 新たに追加された9種類のプラグイン
• 最大48モノまたはステレオ・オーディオ・トラックで作業可能
• Music Production Toolkit 2または DV Toolkit™ 2を追加すれば、最大64モノまたはステレオ・オーディオ・トラックによるミックスを作成可能
• 新製品のComplete Production Toolkit (Pro Tools LEのみ対応) では最大128オーディオ・トラック、7.1サラウンド・ミキシングに対応

スコアリング機能：

• 強化されたスコア・エディター
• ノーテーション・ツール
• ペンシル・ツール
• コード・ネーム (Dm7、Gなど) やコード・フォーム (ギタリスト用) も追加可能
• MIDIパートのリアルタイムで採譜
• スコア全体、もしくは特定の楽器パートだけの印刷が可能
• セッションをSibelius (.sib) ファイルとしてエクスポートし、Sibelius上で編集可能

MIDIプロダクション：

• MIDIエディター・ウィンドウはインストゥルメント/MIDI/AUX入力トラック用にMIDIとオートメーションのデータを表示でき、広範囲に渡るMIDI編集のパワーを実現
• MIDIノートの分割や統合、ミュート、パートのスクラブ＆シャトル
• スーパーインポーズしたMIDI及びインストゥルメント・トラックの表示によるアレンジメントの簡単な編集
• トラックやタイプ、ベロシティによるMIDIノートの色分け
• ベロシティ変更のオーディション
• タブによるMIDIノートの再生

エラスティック・ピッチ：

• オーディオ・リージョン全体を、簡単に半音単位で上下4オクターブに、タイミングやテンポに影響を与えずトランスポーズ可能
• ボーカルトラックの個々のノートのピッチをセント単位で修正可能
• Varispeedアルゴリズム

Pro Tools|HDのパフォーマンス強化：

• Pro Tools 8と新たなSatellite Linkオプションにより最大5セットのPro Tools|HDシステムを1システムとしてコントロール可能
• 超低レーテンシー
• ローカル・アサイン・モードの追加
• I/Oビューの搭載
• コンソールを40フェーダーまで拡張可能
• Pro ToolsでHDによるAvid® ビデオ・ワークフローの実現

その他の機能：

• Pro Toolsとプラグインを最新の状態に保つアップデート・チェック機能
• Pro Tools|HDのWindows Vista (32-bit Business またはUltimate) サポート
• Mac OS Xベース・システムでQuickTime HDサポート
• Pro Tools|HDにおけるセッションのオープン及びクローズ時間の短縮
• 最大4GBのファイルをサポートするため、ハイ・サンプル・レートの長いファイルでも作業可能

更に詳しい情報はwww.digidesign.comへ。

トラックバック：http://ja.audiofanzine.com/2008/10/04/digidesign-pro-tools-8/trackback/

But I've always been a little confused with what to do afterwards. I have a .mov file from AE that's huge and I have my audio file from SoundTrackPro. But how do I merge them?

If I ran it back trough AE I'm either going to have to wait for the render time and/or I'm creating another huge video file. In the past I'd dump them into Final Cut Pro and have FCP render out a reference movie so the file size was much smaller. But FCP doesn't like my "Church Def" formats and FCP is going to create a bunch of folders just to do this one small task.

Now you may already have known this but QuickTime Pro can knock this simple step out. Here's how:

1) Open the audio file and movie file in QT
2) With the audio file selected select all (cmd+A or Edit/Select All) then copy it (cmd+C or Edit/Copy)
3) Select the movie file and add the audio file to the movie file (Edit/Add To Selection & Scale)
4) Save your movie file

Tada! That's it. Wish I would have known that a while ago. And if you already knew it, why didn't you share it?

1. Mejora la búsqueda de actualizaciones en la tienda App Store.
2. Soluciona la eliminación de episodios de televisión con calidad HD durante la descarga.
3. Reproduce la canción actual sin interrupciones cuando se crea una nueva lista de reproducción Genius.
4. Mejora la sincronización de los menús hablados con el iPod nano.
5. Mejora la accesibilidad con Windows.
6. Soluciona los problemas de sincronización de los resultados de Genius con el iPod.

Imagine the scenario if you can, you are a Media Studies teacher. You wish to use some movie trailers in a classroom session, so that the learners can analyse the content and structure of the trailers and compare the features and similarities between each one.

Now you could use a computer suite and each learner could access the relevant movie site and view the trailer online. However this doesn't really help as the video plays once and sometimes you want to see part of the trailer again and again. Now if only the learners could download the trailer, or even better could the teacher download the trailers and make them available to all the learners via a local network server, so enabling fast and easy access.

Well technically this is possible, however is it legal?

There are many tools available online which allow you to download videos from sites such as YouTube (usually through a Firefox extension or similar). They basically "scrape" the code for the video link from the website and then download the video file, providing you with a Flash based FLV file, some tools will convert this on the fly into an AVI or WMV if required.

However this article makes for interesting reading on the legality of doing this.The website in question (which is quite a respected tech blog) had given instructions on how to use video downloading tools to download streaming video from a site such as YouTube.

From the article YouTube states quite clearly that:

Currently, YouTube is a streaming-only service. We do not permit users to download the videos we host on our site. We believe our Terms of Use are clear on this point, but in light of the confusion which came to our attention today we are considering revisions to our Terms of Use to avoid any further confusion. It is important to many of our users who have uploaded and licensed content to YouTube that their content is authorized for streaming-only.

If a site streams a video to you, generally you don't have the right to download that video as they are only making the video available as a stream.

Media-Convert.com which I have mentioned before, use to do this via it's web based video conversion service, enter the YouTube URL and before you could say "is this legal" you would have a video in the format of your choice. They were soon stopped from doing this.

So downloading a streamed Flash based video is not an option, what about Quicktime based trailers from the Apple website?

For personal use, I can use Quicktime Pro on a Mac (and on Windows as well). What Quicktime Pro allows you to do is to save a Quicktime video to your hard drive. Once the trailer has loaded onto my computer in the browser I can save a copy to my hard disk for later viewing. I can even download the 1080p HD versions which look very nice even if they don't fit on my computer screen as it's too BIG.

Quicktime Pro is not the free video viewer but the paid for upgrade, which is about £12 per license for educational users (it's £20 for "normal" individuals). There are other things you can do with it as well, I use it for making video and audio recordings on my Mac for example. I have also used it to trim audio recordings and some of the export functionality does make life easier...

Note the term "personal use", most film trailers online are only available for personal use only. I would be surprised by any movie site which would allow a teacher to download movies for use in the classroom.

Apple in their terms of use for example make it quite clear what you can and can not do with any trailer you download from their website:

...no Content may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, publicly displayed, encoded, translated, transmitted or distributed in any way (including “mirroring”) to any other computer, server, Web site or other medium for publication or distribution or for any commercial enterprise, without Apple’s express prior written consent.

This would mean downloading and distributing it to students in a classroom situation would be viewed as illegal unless you had the permission of the movie trailer copyright owner.

Similar guidance is available on most other movie sites I checked. For example on Warner Brothers website is says:

You may access and display Material and all other content displayed on this Site for non-commercial, personal, entertainment use on a single computer only. The Material and all other content on this Site may not otherwise be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, distributed or used in any way unless specifically authorized by WB Online.

You could write and ask for authorisation and permission, sometimes this may be given, more often than not it won't.

Legally students could download their own individual copy for their own analysis. However this may not always be possible, especially if you have network congestion or a slow internet connection.

So is there a solution, well yes, if you go for an alternative solution which is forgot online and go back to broadcasting.

Now an easier way would be to digitally record the trailers from the TV and use digital copies of them. You won't even need an ERA licence, as the ERA does not cover adverts from the TV. Though if the trailers are part of say a film programme then these programmes probably are covered by the ERA licensing scheme and appropriate action should be taken accordingly.

However if it is an advert, under the Copyright Act you have a statutory right (therefore can not be taken away from you) to show recordings of TV broadcasts for educational purposes.

From the ERA website.

Are there broadcasts I can't record under the ERA Licence?

Yes, only broadcast material owned or represented by ERA Members is licensed through the ERA Scheme for off-air recording. This means that some contents of certain broadcasts and material included in them, such as advertisements, are not covered by the Licence because ERA Members do not own or control the rights in them.

However, if you record these broadcasts for non-commercial educational purposes, your recordings in the ways relevant to the ERA Licence will not infringe copyright, unless a certified Section 35 licence applies. This is because Section 35 (1) states that where works are not covered by a certified scheme, then educational establishments may reproduce and communicate them electronically on-site without infringing copyright. You will need to adequately acknowledge, i.e. label, any broadcast recordings you make under Section 35 (1).

Also worth look at the ERA restrictions as well.

I have made recording just like this using an EyeTV device on a Mac (I have also used a Windows Media Centre as well, but never again...) I just set the video to record for a few hours (takes GB of space mind you) and then go through the adverts until I find the one I want (or one that's similar). For movie trailers I would recommend recording the adverts during film programes on ITV or Channel 4, or during films.

If you do have an ERA licence then recording film programmes will help, as some of these will have trailers in them.

My Elgato EyeTV device captures from Freeview so I get a really good quality digital video file, it's roughly the same quality as DVD. The editing tools make life really easy well to trim and edit the video you need. There are Windows TV Capture devices, some of them are just small USB sticks which slot into any USB port.

Though there are legal barriers that are getting in the way of the learning here, there are also solutions as well.

Photo source.

Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.

A great quicktime plug-in just got updated and added some great new features!

The best part...It's FREE!

Get it HERE

INFORMACIÓN:WWW.MACKINANDO.COM Por macKFrancis

Perian, para mi imprescindible en cualquier mac, es un paquete de plugins para QuickTime para ayudarle a reproducir una gran cantidad de archivos de audio/video tales como avi, mkv, etc.
Los cambios son numerosos, os los adjunto tal y como se describen en las notas de la versión 1.1.1 de perian :
H.264 in AVI fixed
Some anamorphic AVI files are now supported
Performance problems due to PIC fixed with Xcode 3.1
Incorrect frame skipping on H.264 intra frames fixed
Better character set detection
The update checker is now much more polite
Several parsing and rendering bugs with subtitles fixed
Player freezing while loading subtitles with embedded fonts fixed
Audio fixed for some older MKV files with AAC/FLAC
Strange values in MKV chapters or video sizes are handled better
Initial support for SAMI subtitles added
Worked around a QuickTime bug (#5770288) causing frames to be lost during export
New codecs: DosBox ZMBV, VP6+Alpha, Nellymoser ASAO
FFmpeg:
Crashing on PPC G3 fixed.
Fraps decoding artifacts fixed.

DESCARGAR EL PROGRAMA

I friend on mine gave me a avi rip of the "Ashes and Snow" DVD. I liked it so much I'm going to buy the DVD for its photographic scenes and music - looks great on a flat panel screen with surround sound!

I ran into a common problems that people have whereby the playback in Quick Time doesn't always provide the sound due to a missing codec. In this case I was missing the AC3 codec sometimes called the A52 codec. Open source products such as VLC play it correctly however I wanted it to work in QT!

After spending almost a day trying different alternatives I came across an open source version that... you guessed it ... "Just works"!

Many thanks to François Planque

Questo film, però, se visto con 3 amici, assume un significato particolare.

Chi non l'ha visto e vuole cimentarsi nell'impresa, non pensi leggendo queste righe, che si troverà dinnanzi ad'un opera prima di De Maria psicologica e profonda... il film è una reale boiata, con un mezzo significato in sottofondo, utile come la trama di un film porno prodotto in casa...

Ma nonostante ciò è una pietra miliare, un film meraviglioso che cambia davvero il tuo modo di pensare... capisci che da un giorno all'altro se sgarri potresti ritrovarti con il gatto crocifisso sulla tettoia, o che verrà a farti visita il Colas che tutti conosciamo...I disegni di Andrea Pazienza prendono vita vera... e poi non vi dico nient'altro...guardatevi sto fil con qualche amico e morirete dalle risate :)

Adobe's Open Screen launched in May, the result of five years of work to get Flash onto devices of all types, from mobile phones to ATM machines, says Anup Murarka, Adobe's director of technical marketing for Mobile and Device. "What we've seen across over 800 million deployments are two industry goals or common challenges that the Open Screen project is trying to address: the first is enabling web browsing and rich internet applications across a broad range of devices and desktops," he says. "The second--and one we hear most clearly from our developers--has been to give them opportunities to enable them to publish and deliver content and applications across screens more easily than they can today."

"It's almost trivial to publish content on the web today," he notes. "We'd like to bring some of that ease of publishing and distribution to the device industry."

Murarka spoke about "two use cases" for Flash. the first for stand-alone applications and the second for web browsing. Stand-alone applications relies on AIR, the technology Adobe launched on the desktop for building desktop applications. "If you want to build an application that uses all the same web technologies you're used to but deliver it outside the browser, AIR enables this," he says. "An application installer allows developers to ship a binary that installs exactly the same way on Mac, Windows and the beta of Linux as well. We're going to take that same packaging format and work with different device partners to enable that as well, so you'll have the same application binaries installable on devices, not just desktops."

"One of the biggest gaps we have between Flash on the desktop and on a mobile devices is a difference in the scripting language," he continues. "On the desktop, we support Active Script 3 and in mobile, we're only at Active Script 2. We're working with Mozilla on an open source project to get that script working well for devices, essentially bringing the scripting language up-to-date."

The second element to the standalone application is support for hardware acceleration. "Clearly mobile devices don't have the same processing power," he says. "There's often a ten times difference, and for the high end of those categories. a lot more has to be done. A lot of our energy has been focused on taking advantage of all hardware features to accelerate the graphics capabilities of Flash. We believe we can support AIR on a fairly wide range of phones, from high-end smart phones all the way to mass market feature phones."

What will this mean for the content creator? "It gets back to the idea that developers/designers used to using web technologies can use the same skillsets and deliver applications not dependent on a browser to a wider range of devices than they've been able to."

The second use case--which builds off the first--is web browsing. "Mobile browsers have become more powerful and capable," says Murarka. "We're working to enable a complete web experience on high-end mobile devices. We still won't see web compatibility on low-end devices, but we do believe, based on several months of engineering work, that we can get desktop-compatible browsers working on smart phones. We'll need the same hardware acceleration and script browser, but it would live inside the browser. We're working with partners so that all those browsers will be updated to support Flash."

A great example of this is our work with Nokia on the Nokia E71 with a browser that actually had a Flash plug-in and could browse existing web content. "The E71 is a first attempt between our two companies to get that web compatibility working well," he says. "We're going to continue to work on it. With Open Screen, we hope to release something that's 100 percent compatible with web content. It'll take a lot of effort and it'll take a while and it won't be on all phones, but we believe we can do it with the high-end smart phone."

Adobe has also been successful at creating a suite of well-known software tools for content creators, including Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. Creative Suite 4 (CS4) focuses on the broader workflow, from planning through management of assets and metadata all the way through delivery.

Carol Linburn, Adobe group product manager, for mobile authoring, describes how CS4's Device Central helps mobile content creators. "Particularly relevant for mobile is the explosion of new devices and the number of screens people are targeting," she says. "The major brands are thinking how they can move content across these screens. RIght now, there is a lot of additional testing and complexity with piping out content in all these different ways and formats. There's a lot of versioning of content, and it's more complex and harder to get started." To keep content developers abreast of where their content might be headed, every time you open CS4, it will show a window of newly shipped devices.

Testing and optimizing is a "huge time sink," says Lindburn, and Device Central is aimed at shrinking that. "We're doing some interesting things around automating the testing process," she says. "Instead of a developer going device by device, they can set up a test script and set it up for 50 to 100 devices. Then they can see the 10 phones where their content isn't running correctly, go in and diagnose the problem."

"Automated testing is moving from a world where you have to test everything individually, to a position where you can create a test script to interact with the content and capture keystroke interactions, which can be shared with different developers," says Lindburn. "You can use that as a way to batch test and not have to test sequentially. You can test simultaneously and you get visual output [snapshots] and error messages that might occur for different devices. We can also adjust latency and so on to give the developer a chance to see what the content looks like on a slower or faster network."

Another challenge addressed by the new Adobe software focuses on how to showcase content for clients. "If you're in LA and your client is in NY, and you're targeting a Nokia N95, but the client doesn't have one, you have to FedEx one across the country," she says. "This isn't conducive to the design process, which is iterative."

To showcase content to clients, Adobe has added two things: Device Central will spit out a quick storyboard that can be saved to an HTML file that's easy to share. Likewise, the content creator can capture a video recording and save it as a Quicktime file for people to view. "The person viewing the content doesn't even need CS4 installed, so it's a much easier way to share content with a broader audience," says Lindburn.

She also states that Adobe looked at how to get Flash designers used to building for the web to bridge to the mobile platform. That problem is addressed by Device Central, which is already integrated with the toolset those Flash animators are already using. "It allows them to preview their work on a variety of devices and a range of media types within the same environment," she says.

"The other piece to get people started is an easier way to manage mobile projects," says Lindburn. "There is complexity with keeping all the assets together and CS4 offers project management capability. How do I get my files to a phone? You might have different publishing routines or "output tasks" and I can set them up and do it with a single click." Adobe has also built an SDK (software development kit) for partners to plug into Device Central directly with their different packaging routines.

According to CNet, the flaw – entered into NIST's National Vulnerability Database with ID CVE-2008-4116 – affects QuickTime 7.5.5 and iTunes 8.0.

The flaw centres around a heap-based buffer overflow which can be exploited via a long-type attribute in a QuickTime tag, either via a maliciously crafted MP4 or MOV video file or embedded within a webpage if the QuickTime browser plugin is installed. As with most buffer overflow vulnerabilities, the flaw can result in mild annoyance – a crash when the program attempts to access memory which is out of bounds – or remote code execution, which is far more serious.

The discovery of this flaw comes shortly after an update was released for issues using iTunes 8 on Windows Vista, and just days after the latest Mac OS X update was made available. Sadly, there's no patch available for this flaw as yet.

If you're hoping for a workaround, the only way to be sure of safety is to avoid using iTunes and QuickTime to play back video and audio files, and to uninstall the QuickTime browser helper component.

Has anyone noticed inexplicable crashes in iTunes over the last few days, or is this likely to be a storm in a teacup and quickly patched by Apple? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

Macintosh security specialist, today announced that it has discovered a QuickTime bug which may be used as a vector for attack.

Read the full story here:
http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/security_alert_quicktime_bug_may_be_used_as_a_vector_for_attack/

About 35 people assembled in the DI theater at PlasterCITY Digital Post in Hollywood on Tuesday, May 13, and were treated to a fantastic presentation on using the Red Camera and its RD3 media in post production. The guests included ACE members, editors, assistants, teachers, and a couple of directors.

Michael Cioni, Chief Knowledge Officer at PlasterCITY, and Stephen Beres, Chief Technology Officer, were the presenters. They used a Mac laptop to project a Powerpoint slideshow, and for 90 minutes delivered an expert guide on the Red Camera and how to get it in and out of Avid and Final Cut Pro.

1. Introduction
2. DI Workflow
3. Redcode R3D Media
4. Archiving Media
5. Recording
6. RedAlert! and RedCine
7. Avid Workflow
8. FinalCut Workflow
9. Digital Cinema Delivery
10. Assimilate Digital Assembly
11. Cost Advantages
12. Question and Answer

I learned lots of new stuff especially from the "Archiving Media" section. Thanks to the very excellent Red Centre podcast for alerting me to this.