Tool updates: Web clip icons now available

With the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware, Apple added the ability to bookmark web pages ("web clips") onto your iPhone home screen. This is a great new addition that allows you quick and easy access to favorite web sites. Unfortunately, the default icon for the web clip is a tiny shrunk-down version of the page, which looks very unsightly, not to mention confusing for similar-looking pages.

We have now updated our online tools to replace these shrunk-down images with the relevant application's icon, as has been requested by several people recently.

View the updated iPhone applications here:
Footage Calc (iPhone version)
Film Rate Calc (iPhone version)
Aspect Ratio Calc (iPhone version)
Depth of Field Calc (iPhone version)

As always, we appreciate feedback on these applications. Just use the link at the bottom of every page.

New online tool: Depth of Field Calculator

This tool will calculate the depth of field for a given sensor or film type, aperture, focal length, and subject distance (the distance from the camera to the person or object you are focusing on). A lower number means that a large proportion of the background will remain in sharp focus and a higher number means that a smaller proportion (if any) will be in focus.

It also includes presets for popular video cameras. Selecting a preset will automatically change the sensor type to fit your camera.

We have two versions:
Depth of Field Calc (standard)
Depth of Field Calc (iPhone)

This tool was created as a result of feedback by users of our other other tools. We always appreciate feedback so we can create the best possible experience for you. Just use the feedback link at the bottom of every page to send your comments anonymously.

FCS Remover - Easily uninstall Final Cut Studio

By popular demand, we've just created a new tool on the site that allows you to uninstall Final Cut Studio. One of the Mac's biggest failings is the lack of software uninstallation options. In order to remove an application, you must delete the program from Applications and then trawl through the Library folders and delete all related files. This is tedious and there is a real risk of accidentally deleting something that shouldn't be deleted.

With Final Cut Studio, the problem is particularly apparent because recently, many users have discovered hardware and software compatibility problems with the latest versions. They wish to downgrade to a previous version but they cannot install a previous version unless the latest version is removed. Simply deleting the Final Cut Pro application in the Applications folder doesn't work.

FCS Remover automates this process, moving Final Cut Studio applications and support files to your Trash without disturbing your documents. It is better than general purpose third-party uninstallers because it is designed specifically for Final Cut Studio and so you can be certain that it is not automatically removing files it should not. For safety, it moves your files to the Trash rather than deleting them outright so you can see exactly what has been moved before you click "Empty".

FCS Remover is a free download for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. We would appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

Footage Calc updates

Our online tool for calculating the disk space requirements of various video codecs has just been updated. It now supports the following file formats and codecs:

* AJA KONA 10-bit RGB
* AJA 2Vuy
* Cineon
* Maya IFF format
* MPEG-2 at 6.2Mbps, 5.0Mbps and 3.7Mbps fixed bit rate
* OpenEXR
* SGI
* SGI Raw
* Softimage format
* Uncompressed Targa images (TGA)
* Uncompressed TIFF images

Footage Calc
Footage Calc (iPhone version)

These additions are all based on user feedback. Use the feedback link at the bottom of every page to tell us your likes, dislikes, bug reports and suggestions.

Contact form issues fixed

It was recently brought to my attention that we've been having some technical issues with the contact form lately. I was a bit surprised by this as I had only recently fixed it. It turned out that the version on the server was accidentally replaced with the old one when the site was redesigned.

I apologize for any inconvenience caused. This has now been fixed and I see no technical reason as to why it should go down again.

Tool updates

We've updated some of our online tools to reflect the feedback we've been receiving from you.

Footage Calc
* Slightly improved loading speed of mobile version.
* Support for Uncompressed 720p and 1080p 4:2:2 at 8-bit and 10-bit
* Improved accuracy of AVID PAL 2:1 Best

Film Rate Calc
* Slightly improved loading speed of mobile version.

Aspect Ratio Calc
* Slightly improved loading speed of mobile version.
* Changes you make in one dialog transfer across to the others. For example, if you type 1280x720 into the Res box in the Aspect Ratio dialog and then switch to Height, the width and aspect ratio in the new dialog will reflect the previous calculation.
* Extra statistics - you can now view the unrounded aspect ratio, and round width and height calculations to the nearest 16th.

Remember that we always appreciate your feedback and are committed to providing a genuinely useful service. Just click the feedback link at the bottom of the page and leave your thoughts.

Tool update: Aspect Ratio Calc

We've just updated our online Aspect Ratio Calc tool based on your feedback. The tool now features a list of preset formats to choose from such as DV NTSC, HD 1080, 2K Academy, etc. Clicking on one of these will populate the text boxes with common image sizes for these formats.

Other additions include the ability to specify custom aspect ratios rather than just those contained in the list, plus several bug fixes.

We have a standard and an iPhone version available.

Keep up the feedback. We're always interested to hear how our products are helping you and, conversely, what isn't quite working. To leave feedback about a page, use the link at the very bottom.

New tool: Aspect Ratio Calc

We've just added a new online tool to the site. Aspect Ratio Calc allows you to calculate the aspect ratio of various film and video formats. It also offers you the ability to work out the pixel width or height of the footage based on the aspect ratio.

This tool is very useful in ensuring that you are meeting the standards specified by your broadcaster or distributor, and also to make sure that you are delivering at the correct resolution and aspect ratio when creating CG footage from scratch.

It is available in standard and iPhone versions. We also have tools for calculating the disk space taken up by video footage and calculating the number of film reels needed to shoot a certain number of hours of footage. See our Resources section for more details.

New site design

We just launched our new site design. The old design was variable-width which meant that sometimes it looked a little strange when viewed on very large monitors. Our new design maintains the same width, solving the issue and looking more attractive at the same time.

We also have a brand new home page which is designed to give you quick access to the most popular pages on the site. In addition, we have split our service section into individual pages, allowing us to fill them with a lot more information than before. The purpose of the new design was to make the site more professional and increase its usefulness and we think this was achieved. Help us improve it even further by telling us what you think of it, either in the comments section of this post or on the feedback link at the bottom of every page.

Please note that there may be some issues over the next few days as a result of the upgrade and we appreciate your patience as we attempt to fix them, but overall the transition has been very smooth.

Tool bug fixes - improved browser support

I made a few bug fixes today to the web tools we offer. I had had a couple of reports of them not working at all for some people but I couldn't work out why that would be. Turns out that MS Internet Explorer differs slightly to Firefox and Safari on how it processes certain aspects of Javascript code. These issues are now fixed and the tools will work for Internet Explorer users now.

I also improved the XML validity of the mobile versions so these should be a little less browser-fussy now.

I owe it all to a little tool called ie4osx that allows you to run Internet Explorer 5 and up on an Intel Mac through Darwine. It's really useful for me because you don't have to install an entire operating system just to use one program. It comes highly recommended

The tools are located in the Resources section of the site.