ShedWorx is coming to America!

We have just booked in for MacWorld 2011 and will be running booth 305.

This is our biggest marketing push so far and we will be demoing all of our products including the two new ones in development.

While in the US of A we will also be visiting a bunch of our partners and pro users from California to New York.

Apart from the weather, we can't wait to be there :)

3D video is on its way!

3D is now out in force in the consumer TV market and is about to appear for consumer video. Panasonic are first to market with a 3D consumer camcorder (the HDC-750K and variations) and will also release 3D lenses for their Lumix Micro 4/3 range (which includes the GH1, GF1 and G2 DSLRs). Here is a great article on the new Panasonic 3D camera from Colin at SimplyDV.

We've just updated the ShedWorx Test Bench with a Panasonic 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray player. The 3D movies are remarkably clear - much better than the 3D experience that you will get at a cinema. We're now waiting for the 3D cameras and lenses to ship to see how the 3D home movies look.

Technical Details

As far as we know (without seeing the first 3D movie samples), the 3D picture is being recorded using using a standard AVCHD format movie but with a side-by-side left/right view. 3D-capable TVs will detect the side-by-side video and display the left and right channels using 3D display.

The side-by-side approach means that each video stream will actually be 960x1080 in size. The X-axis will be "stretched" out from 960 to 1920 on playback, similar to the way older 1440x1080 cameras recorded 1920x1080 HD footage. This is a slightly lower HD format, so you can bet that there will be "Full HD 3D" entering the market next year. The beauty of the side-by-side approach is that it can be achieved without major changes to existing hardware, so that cameras such as the GH-1 can be made 3D-capable with a new lens and a firmware upgrade.

ShedWorx 3D suport

In July this year we released Native AVCHD editing for Voltaic and Revolver. Native AVCHD editing allows you to edit AVCHD footage without conversion, preserving the full quality of the original footage. It turns out that this will be perfect for 3D editing. We will release a 3D update to the whole product line, mainly to update our previewer so that it displays just one side of the dual-image video. Apart from that we will just do some testing and fine tuning of the Native AVCHD editing function and we will be right for 3D editing.

We should have some early 3D samples to work with by the end of August. We will then update our software lines to support 3D formatting so that you can edit a 3D home movie in either Voltaic or Revolver. Check back here (or even subscribe to the ShedWorx Blog in your RSS reader) and we'll post updates as we find out more.

FlamingoHD 1.5 is coming!

After months of toil and over a year of planning, FlamingoHD version 1.5 is nearly done!

FlamingoHD 1.5 is a major redevelopment of Flamingo to make a whole lot faster and easier to use. Our first goal was to make Flamingo a lot faster with both large and small libraries. We have achieved this by completely redeveloping the content viewing area.

Our second major change was to move to a Folders and Albums approach with user-defined sorting of Albums, Folders and Content. This was the most requested feature for Flamingo, so we've got that all done for version 1.5.

Flamingo 1.5 now forms the basis for the next 12 months of development on Flamingo. By using our own custom-built viewing area we can now implement almost any feature in the content viewing and management area.

New viewing area

The viewing area on Flamingo has been completely redeveloped. We now have a multi-album view where you can scroll down through many albums, rather than just viewing one album at a time.

The new view has been optimised to run quickly on very large libraries and will not slow down as your library size grows.

Folders and Albums

We have dropped the Events and Projects idea from the old Flamingo and gone to Folders and Albums. You can now have whatever Folder structure you like and content will appear in an Album.

Many Flamingo users have requested this since Flamingo was first released in 2009. The new Folder/Album approach allows for much greater flexibility when organising your content.

What's Next?

We have a lot of major work in the pipeline for Flamingo, but our future plans are just that - plans. Not all of what we mention next will make it to a release.

The main focus once Flamingo 1.5 is done will be enhanced metadata support and tagging. We plan to pull all metadata (e.g. EXIF, IPTC) from imported photos and store that in the Flamingo database. We will also implement a tagging function to support easy and effective management of a tag library and subsequent tagging of content.

Finally, we have an iPad version of Flamingo in early Beta testing. The iPad application already supports Folder and Album management, Metadata, Tagging and Content updating. By the end of the year we plan to release the iPad Flamingo app along with cloud-based data sync of the Flamingo library between your iPad and desktop/laptop installation of Flamingo.

Thats everything we can share about Flamingo right now. We're sure that the new features of Flamingo will help many people stuck with the shortcomings of iPhoto and iMovie when it comes to managing your precious digital content.

One last thing - Flamingo 1.5 will be a free upgrade :)

We have just released a bug fix release for VoltaicHD for Mac.

This release fixes a problem with FlamingoHD where AVCHD movies were not being sent to Voltaic. This was caused by the updated Applescript API in VoltaicHD 2.5

VoltaicHD 2.5.0 for PC and Mac out now!

We've finally released VoltaicHD version 2.5.0 for PC and Mac! Its been a while coming, and we think its been worth the wait.

This release brings the PC version of VoltaicHD up to par with the Mac version for the first time. Both versions now support the more advanced features of editing, YouTube publishing and Native AVCHD output.

PC new Features

• Shedworx AVCHD previewer - preview your AVCHD movies with no delay
• Editing - you can now trim, include/exclude and join clips directly from VoltaicHD
• Titles - add a title to your edited movie
• Send to Youtube - edit and send to Youtube all directly from VoltaicHD
• AVCHD Output - trim and join AVCHD movies to export a new AVCHD movie. Zero quality loss for the discerning editor!

VoltaicHD for PC has been built using the latest and greatest Microsoft development framework - .Net 4.0. If you don't have this installed already on your PC, you can get it from here.

Pricing for VoltaicHD for PC has been increased to $US39.99, in line with the Mac version, now that it contains all features of the Mac version.

Version 2.5 of VoltaicHD for PC is a free upgrade for all current VoltaicHD for PC users.

Mac New Features

This release is relatively minor for the Mac version of VoltaicHD. The key new Mac feature is Native AVCHD output. This function lets you trim and join AVCHD movies as before, but now gives you the option to create an AVCHD movie as output. We create the new AVCHD movie by trimming the source video and audio streams and creating a new AVCHD movie containing unaltered video and audio. This means that that output movie is exactly the same quality as the original.

Every video edit workflow that converts formats incurs some quality loss. Native AVCHD editing inside VoltaicHD provides you with 100% guaranteed lossless editing.

Version 2.5 of VoltaicHD for Mac is a free upgrade for all current VoltaicHD for Mac version 2 users.

VoltaicHD version 2.5 - for Mac and PC!

We've finally got both the PC and Mac versions of VoltaicHD into Beta testing and available for download.

Click here to download VoltaicHD for Mac Beta

Click here to download VoltaicHD for PC Beta

We're a little behind schedule because we've been working on a separate video project for an OEM client. The work is all under NDA, but we can say that the work is all related to H.264 video streaming, using the software that powers our AVCHD previewer. The advances that we make in our OEM work will give us a better AVCHD previewer for ShedWorx later this year.

Version 2.5 sees the introduction of native AVCHD output. This means that you can now load up AVCHD movies, carry out simple trims and joins and export out AVCHD output.

This is significant because we do not convert the AVCHD video at all during this process. We just trim the video and audio streams, then re-package the output into a new AVCHD file. This means that the video is 100% of the quality that it was shot under. No other editor can do this.

We are still testing both versions, so they are not perfect yet. If you find any bugs that you think we might miss, please drop us a line.

VoltaicHD for Mac

On the Mac, version 2.5 includes just native AVCHD output as the new feature.

Click here to download.

VoltaicHD for PC

On the PC, version 2.5 is a major change. Version 2.5 on the PC brings the PC version up to par with the Mac version, which includes native AVCHD output.

You will need the latest .Net framework (version 4.0) in order to run VoltaicHD for PC. This is available from our beta download page.

Click here to download.