My coverage of last year’s Hot Import Nights event at Raceway Park was so well received, that the managing company invited me back for this years event. We were supposed to touch base in January, to discuss plans for a more detailed article and possibly video, but something is amiss. The HIN website has not been updated since the fall of 09 and my press contact is no longer available. The HIN forums are also abuzz regarding the absence of a tour schedule for 2010. Is the lack of information just a reorganization of the company’s assets or something worse?

Stunt driving is definitely one of the staples of the motion picture industry. Since the days of Buster Keaton and Harold Loyd, stunt drivers have been bashing, crashing and mashing up cars for the silver screen, risking life and limb to bring about the director’s vision. I had the opportunity to interview Mike Burke and Roy Farfel, co-founders and co-owners of Drivers East, NJ’s own professional stunt driving school to see what it takes to “hit the mark.”

http://www.futureincite.com

I’ve been using QT Pro to encode my videos to h264 for some time now and last night, in preparation for posting the next story, I decided to give Adobe Media Encoder CS4 a shot. AME takes some getting used to; for rendering and transcoding multiple files, hey it’s awesome, but when you just need to render one file it’s a pain the butt. Anyway, I created a h264 file of my latest video and it came out much larger than expected – 176MB for a 7min 34sec file. Not bad you think? Compared to a 106MB file size for a 9min video, transcoded via QT Pro, you begin to wonder what’s going on. As an additional test, I transcoded the same 7min 34sec file using QT Pro and the file size came out to 83MB… less than half the file size of the AME transcode. Is QT Pro more efficient? I’m not sure but the settings for both programs was as nearly identical as I could make them.

Story 126 is out for review so with any luck it should be posted by the end of the week…

And, has anyone noticed that my blog pictures no longer have captions? Once again, the culprit is upgrade incompatibility.

I should have known something was amiss when I realized that the New Jersey Auto Show, held at the Meadow Lands Convention Center in Secaucus NJ (Jan 28 – 31st) did not have a press office. “So what?”, I reasoned, “So what if it cost me eight dollars. It should still prove to be interesting.” I admit I have been spoiled by the Las Vegas appeal of HIN and the down right grittiness of D1GP. The customization of cars at these events are worthy of a James Cameron film. You can really see where the money goes in terms of the hosting venue and the exhibitors- you come away feeling inspired.
The NJ Auto Show on the other hand, was nothing more than a show room for Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, Lincoln, Chevy, Scion (aka Toyota) and Jeep. And I do mean “show” room. There were absolutely no aftermarket vendors represented, very few spokespeople and really, when you come down to it, nothing you couldn’t have seen on the internet. And to add to the non-event, the Rhode Island Local 251 Teamsters were raising a racket to protest Honda and its business practices, inside and outside of the convention hall.
The Meadowlands Convention center consists of just one hall and it appears that absolutely no money was spent in making it a worthwhile multi-media event. Acura (aka Honda) had the one and only LCD screen at the entire show which was positioned at the back(?) of their booth.
Now, granted, while this type of autoshow benefits the consumer in way of allowing them to actually sit in a car they may be interested in, the lack of personal engagement from salespersons and the non-immersive nature of the environment made the show nothing more than what it was. What a lost opportunity to cross sell consumers- to excite them to purchase a car on the spot- by not inviting aftermarket retailers or even showing/displaying options for the cars on display.
It’s pretty obvious that unlike the Raritan Center, the Meadowlands Convention Center is only interested in making a quick buck… eight bucks to be exact.

Cyber Extruder CEO Larry Gardner showcases his companies products built around the amazing software AvMaker (short for Avatar maker) and AutoMesh; tools for consumers and 3D artists to create personalized characters for games and 3D movies as well as applications in medicine and security. Find out more here:

http://www.futureincite.com

Take a look at this picture. The multicolored pixels that appear in Premiere CS4’s capture/log window seem to be some serious interference created by my firewire 4pin to 6pin cable. At least that’s the theory. The actual tape that I was using to capture from is thankfully free of the dancing lights when viewed on a confidence monitor, which is a good thing. I played the tape on my backup DV deck and after a few starts and stops (Windows 7 and Premiere still have a problem recognizing the HDR50) I finally got it to work and continued my batch capture recording.

First and foremost I’d like to thank every reader of Future iNCITE! from around the world- this has been a banner year in terms of visitor/readership and has generated a lot of interest for this fledgling webzine. I salute you all and hope that I can maintain your attention for yet another year or two with the stories I have planned for 2010.

2009 was a year of testing the range of topics, designs, and layouts for the webzine. When I first began this website almost eight years ago, it’s sole purpose was to generate interest in high concept independent video film makers. Time and necessity has changed that quite a bit.

Finding the content
This year I went where the story took me- from Audio Visual Automobile installations to high-speed video cameras. From web streaming cell phones to 3D autostereoscopics and from gaming conventions to horror filmmakers.
There were a lot of good stories and a lot that never made it print. Some possible interview subjects actually turned down the opportunity to be interviewed much to my surprise and some never returned my calls no matter how much I attempted to get their ear. It certainly was a wake up call; why anyone would turn down free publicity in this struggling economy escapes me but it made me realize that many companies have their own agenda.

Techno Bias
The audio recordings of interviews seemed to have done very well and I will continue to make use of that wherever possible. In many circumstances however, written text remains the most adaptable for article presentation, since now more interviews are beyond the state lines.
The move to video interviews was in large part due to a suggestion from the team over at TresMediaWare/Mission Critical Studios and I totally thank them for it. By the time I had released the second video, visitor/readership had skyrocketed to 60 times what it had been last year. Okay, I think I got the message that you like videos…

Adapting to the circumstances
The webzine coffers went dry in June and had to survive on some very helpful donations (I am deeply indebted to my Father who has and continues to invest heavily in my dream). Many of you noticed that my article output was slowing down and rightly expressed concern- the layout of the webzine and my economic situation dictated that I switch over from a magazine type format to a blog. Yes, I had been fighting that concept for a long time- ever since I began the webzine back in 2002 I wanted the site to look more like a magazine layout but with the increasing difficulty in securing interviews and money to continue I had to switch and the results I think are all for the best.

Access To The Fun Stuff
If you’ve ever had press access to an event you know what I’m talking about- there’s nothing like walking past everyone else on line and getting access to tech, people and events that most people aren’t even aware of. As the webzine continues to gain readers, the website gains influence. One of the most incredible insights into how well the webzine is received is when I emailed and received permission the same day of an event (D1 Grand Prix) when another member of the press had taken over a month and a half to gain access. That’s a serious high.

Wordpress Worries
The blog meltdown I experienced mid-year was a bitter disappointment after 92 interesting postings that many of you readers had linked to. I was later to learn that I was not alone in losing my posts- whether directly related or not I read in the UK magazine Web Designer that the wordpress servers had come under attack from some organized hacker group and many subscribers lost more than a year of work. It brings to mind how ephemeral all this web based content is- if you don’t print it out as an archive you have no record of your work.

Problems and disappointments
My attempt at RSS was an embarrassing fiasco. I was so exciting when I hand coded RSS into the html of the webzine layout, received a valid rss syndication and then told the world on my blog only to discover later that it would not work with the layout I hand in GoLive. Shame on me.

I was surprised that no one took part in the short contest I ran for a free 4GB compact flash card or answered the question for the free Vision Research baseball cap (One person did attempt to email me but it wasn’t from a valid domain). Companies provide me with these products and I’d like to pass it on to you- hey it’s free. What’s there not to like about it?

When my obsolete Pentium 4 video work horse crashed unexpectedly right before a major project, I was forced to halt all work on the webzine and build another machine and software to take over the jobs I had lined up. Unfortunately this delayed several video interviews I had shot earlier in the year and once again slowed down the speed at which I could post articles. As you’ve all read on my blog, the Pentium is up and running perfectly again but the i7 Core 2 that was meant to replace it is still giving me problems. Hopefully I’ll be able to resolve these technical issues in time…

I always knew I packed too much equipment for my video shoots but the latest story (124 Elevating Vision) really brought it home. Sometimes too much is a bad thing. I really need to consolidate my gear into smaller and fewer boxes so that they can fit on one hand truck. That JVC camera needs a LOT of accessories to make things look presentable.

Future Plans
While I can’t tell you everything I have planned for 2010 (and it would be arrogant of me to do so) you can rest assured that I will continue to strive for original and interesting stories. In the almost eight years I have authored this website thankfully I have not had a reason to repeat myself. There are millions of stories out there, thousands of new ideas and tools that we rarely hear about outside of small circles. Dreams that need voices and faces behind the magic that are rarely seen.
Let Future iNCITE! continue to be your window into that world.
Expect to be surprised.
Expect to be challenged.
Expect to be incited.

Yours truly,

Sundiata Cowels, CTS

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that I won’t be speaking at NAB this year. As a NAB alumni, I was sent an email back in September that was a call for additional conference programs for the April 10-15 2010 schedule. At first, I hesitated- what could I have to say to all those business executives and TV programmers out there that they didn’t already know? Short on time and ideas, I finally came up with what I thought was an interesting projection of how films/videos/broadcasting would be utilized in the very near future that would involve an entirely new editing language. I submitted the proposal and waited. Not soon after I was advised that NAB had extended the deadline for submissions, which probably meant that they didn’t receive enough proposals. The new deadline was for October with announcements about who would be speaking in November. Well, I haven’t heard back from them so I guess I’m not in the running… but it would have been awesome to speak at the biggest tech “toy” show ever…

Like 3D but hate to wear those funky blue and green glasses? Then you’ll like this next interview. Norbert Haas, CEO of Tridelity Display Solutions North America talks about his autostereoscopic 3D display screens that do not require anaglyph or polarized lensed glasses to enjoy the effect. Just the TV you need to watch AVATAR when it comes out on Blu-Ray…
Enjoy!

http://www.futureincite.com/

Hello readers, Story 124 is out for review and with any luck it will be ready for publishing later tonight. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!