Festival Update: Cat's Bad Hair Day Wins Student Award At Hamptons Film Fest

We're pleased announce that Cat's Bad Hair Day, a coming-of-age Capstone projected written and directed last year by UCF's Debby Wolfe won a Student Award at The Hamptons Film Festival! Deb reports the award included a $1,000 cash price and some "Rayban sunglasses."

According to IndieWire Coverage of the event, Student Awards went to:

• Sharat Raju 'American Made' (American Film Institute)
• Karen Dee Carpenter 'My Scarlett Letter' (Temple University)
• Scott Rice 'Perils in Nude Modeling' (American Film Institute)
• Todd Smith 'Young American's' (Columbia University)
• Debby Wolfe 'Cat's Bad Hair Day' (University of Central Florida School of Film & Digital Media')
• David Lebensfeld 'The Counselor' (Emerson College)
• Sam Bridger Carroll 'Hungry in the Hamptons' (School of Visual Arts), and
• Alexander Woo 'Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher' (New York University).

Big props to Debby (and all the UCF students who worked on the short) for the award and for making an excellent film!

Color Correction/Finishing in FCP 4

Curious about how to tackle Color Correction in Final Cut Pro 4? Check out Color Correction/Finishing in FCP 4, a great article in the ever-expanding online archieve of Ken Stone. Head to Kenstone.net to read this and other fine reports about FCP 4 and related programs.

Considering an iMac G5?

If you're thinking about buying an iMac G5, you probably already know that you'll need more RAM. As per usual, Apple installs a bare minimum of 256 MB RAM in the base model. Of course you know you'll have to upgrade that, but did you know that there's a right and wrong way to upgrade RAM. Different RAM arrangements yield different results, as mentioned in this newsletter article from OWC, or Other World Computing, a fine Apple reseller found online at otherworldcomputing.com

In my opinion Apple is shipping these with an inadequate base memory option. That base being 256MB of non-interleaved memory which reduces the memory bus performance and in itself isn't the memory needed for OS X to really run well either.

Unlike the PowerMac G5s, which all require the use of matched pairs of DDR 184 Pin PC3200 memory, the iMac allows you to go with an individual module, two different modules, or matched pair. But without a matched pair, that memory bus is slowed down and that means the G5 processor spends extra time when it could instead be processing. People pay $500 extra for the PowerMac G5/2.5GHz Dual vs. the 2.0GHz Dual for 10-15% realworld gain at base. Spend less than $190 to bump an iMac G5 up from one 256MB to 1GB of interleaved memory from OWC and you're looking at up to doubling that machines performance. And with us, you'll spend about $40 less than Apple would charge to deliver that iMac with 1GB + you'll have an Apple 256MB module as that extra added bonus.

My theme on that is to make sure you adequately equip any system you buy. You have no idea how many people buy a base system and never upgrade it. They'll buy something new, making the same mistake, never knowing that their old system with the right memory added could even still run circles around what they've just bought new with it's base memory config.

Logically, you'd expect the base config to be fine - but unlike a vehicle that is just as well going from point A to B whether it's stripped down or loaded with options, there is a huge difference in performance comparing a base configed system to one that's configed right. Understand that the base machines are there to provide the lowest cost of entry - and schools especially will buy that base config to have as many computer seats as possible. What's sad is that the result has been a bad experience with such systems (64MB base iMac G3s running OS 9, 128MB eMac G4s running OS X - painfully slow!) that disenfranchises students and teachers alike + results in premature replacement of said systems.

Reducing the number of seats by 10% and spending an extra 10% to have enough memory to run up to speed would result in far, far, far more productive and enjoyable use of those systems and save the schools a ton of money with such systems going for a lot longer too. This is more of problem since Apple took educational sales direct, before that, the educational dealers were smart about explaining what should be installed - since then though, most of Apple's own are all about the numbers game - moving units - which plays right to the political game of how many computers are there to use. There will be a lot of iMac G5s sold with that base 256MB config. They'll be faster than base systems they take the place of, but a whole lot of those iMac G5s will be themselves be replaced before a simple performance doubling memory upgrade is ever done.

DVD Duplication at CDRom2Go.com

Here's another good source for DVD duplication - CDRom2Go.com Prices for a 50 DVD run with disc and disc printing start at $2.99 per disc. They're not local, so plan on some turnaround time as you send out.