I can spraypaint over the Nvidia logo too…

This press release from Pixellexis/Ambric Silicon caught my attention today. Pixellexis are the folks who tried to raise a buzz at NAB this year with their RedBox external processing unit. Every time I went by their booth, it was a bit empty. As Mike said, “I’m not sure I’d start a company based on the idea that computers will never get faster.”

In any case, the press release talks about the new Ambric Silicon chips they’re using, which have 300+ cores in a single die. Which sounds suspiciously like a commodity GPU. With OpenCL in the near future (and far cooler than the public info would have you believe), it’s hard to imagine dropping serious cash on a proprietary secondary processing unit.

So why was the opening scene of Casino Royale so macroblocky?

Sony has announced a new multicodec HD encoder for BluRay authoring. Starting at $55k, it’s a bit of a splurge for the hobbyist, but I bet it comes in a very attractive box.

High end compression tools do some amazing stuff though, like the ability to customize compression parameters on a frame-by-frame basis, after the encode, without re-encoding the rest of the stream. Sexy.

Pond5 launches stock video site

Just a plug for some friends – Pond5 has officially gone live. They’re a stock video site, where any videographer can sell their content at prices set by the videographer. You get 50% of the profits, customers can get great footage at HD resolutions, with even higher end formats coming soon.

If someone with an EX1 were looking to make some money without too much extra effort, it’s not a bad option.