WELCOME Welcome to our latest NVIDIA Media and Entertainment newsletter, and thank you for being part of the worldwide community of NVIDIA GPU users within the media and entertainment industries. Our goal is to provide our readers with helpful information on the latest GPU-accelerated solutions for digital content creation and distribution, as well as inside information that might be helpful to you in your work. This month, you even have a chance to win a complete studio upgrade courtesy of NVIDIA and our partners Dell, Adobe, Autodesk and GenArts. Check out all the details on the Pimp My Studio contest below. Of course, just last week we were very proud that the Academy Award winners for both Best Visual Effects and Best Animated Film were NVIDIA® Quadro® customers. With film festival season in full swing, we’re also doing some exciting things at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, including offering you an opportunity to get some quality time with Oscar-winner Rob Legato at the HP and NVIDIA lounge. SXSW is also a great opportunity to hear from a panel of editors who have switched from Final Cut to Adobe Premiere Pro running on Dell Precision Workstations. Catch all the details below. Finally, with NAB coming up in April, we’ll have quite a bit of exciting news from our partners. If you’re planning on attending NAB, be sure and stop by our booth and say Hi. As always, we welcome your feedback and want to hear from you. Contact me at GregEstesME@nvidia.com. Thanks, Greg CONTENTS > HP and NVIDIA at SXSW > Dell and NVIDIA at SXSW > Media applications and technologies > Promotions > Film and Entertainment > Engaging with NVIDIA > Contests > Events summary Greg Estes Media and Entertainment Industry Executive     Get an insider’s look at the newest technology for creative professionals from HP and NVIDIA. Attend hands-on demos of HP Z workstations, including the newly-announced HP Z1, as well as special sessions with leading industry innovators.   Special guests include: Rob Legato, Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor for the five-time 2012 Oscar-winning film Hugo Jacob Rosenberg, Partner/CTO and Director at the Bandito Brothers, whose current films include Act of Valor and Waiting for Lightning. Waiting for Lightning is premiering at SXSW, check out the trailer and screening schedule here. Ted Schilowitz, founding member and member of the development team at RED Digital Cinema, taking the Digital motion picture camera to the next level of resolution Chris Brickler, Founder/Multimedia Producer at Xlantic, a full-service video, film, and multimedia production company When: Friday, March 9 - Tuesday, March 13 Location: NVIDIA and HP Lounge at SXSW Loft on 6th 215 E. 6th St. Austin, TX Get the full agenda. back to the top Moving From Final Cut - Progress or Perils? Join Dell and NVIDIA for a fascinating panel discussion that aims to move beyond the marketing and delve into experiences of real editors switching from Final Cut to Adobe CS5.5. Marc Loftus, Senior Editor and Director of Web Content for Post Magazine, will be moderating the panel of four video professionals who are also participating in the Dell and NVIDIA video advisory program. They all have different stories but have one thing in common. They’ve all used Final Cut Pro and Apple Mac Pro hardware in the past but are in the process of, or considering, switching to Adobe CS5.5 and Dell Precision workstations with NVIDIA® Quadro® professional graphics. When: March 12 from 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. CT Location: Austin Convention Center Room 2 Get panelist details. back to the top   Check out the new HP Z1 workstation—the world’s first all-in-one workstation. Take a closer look at the HP Z1, the world’s first all-in-one workstation with a 27" (diagonal) display that snaps open to let you swap out parts and make upgrades. No tools required. The Z1 delivers true workstation-class application performance with fully accelerated OpenGL support. NVIDIA graphics are 100% certified and optimized with a wide spectrum of industry-leading applications, including Adobe Premier Pro, Sony Vegas, and Autodesk 3ds Max. Learn more. back to the top   Switch and save 20% on Adobe Creative Suite software. Save 20% off the standard upgrade price when upgrading from one of the qualifying products to Adobe® Creative Suite® 5.5 Design Premium, Design Standard, Master Collection, Production Premium, or Web Premium software (subject to Creative Suite upgrade eligibility requirements). The software must be purchased through the Adobe Store, Adobe Customer Service, or a participating reseller in North America. The offer is valid until March 15, 2012.   Get SCRATCH Lab for the Mac with the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU for just $5,990 USD. You don’t want to miss this great promotion from ASSIMILATE, NVIDIA, and The Studio-B&H. Mac artists can now accelerate their entire dailies workflow with the power of SCRATCH Lab and the Quadro 4000 from DITs and video engineers to on-set professionals creating production dailies for a feature film or in a visual-effects pipeline at a high-end VFX house. SCRATCH Lab is one of the industry’s most comprehensive end-to-end dailies systems, designed to bring playback and review, advanced metadata handling, intuitive color grading, seamless integration with databases, compositing, and wicked-fast background rendering all into one incredibly cost-effective tool. Get it now. back to the top   And the Oscar goes to Hugo, Rango…and NVIDIA Quadro! It was a great year for animation and visual effects, and another great year for the NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions that powered many of this year’s nominees and the winners in both categories. Congratulations to longtime NVIDIA customer Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for their work on their Oscar-winning animated feature film Rango, directed by Gore Verbinski. And another shout out to Pixomondo’s Ben Grossmann and Alex Henning who were also awarded with statuettes for their magical visual effects contributions to Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Read more.   See how GPUs helped Act of Valor filmmakers capture Navy SEAL combat. Act of Valor, the first movie to feature active-duty U.S. Navy SEALs, is one of the most anticipated films of 2012. Its innovative shooting and production approach puts you "in the boots of the SEALs". And GPUs made it all possible. Read more. back to the top   Calling all Maya animators! How cool would it be if your model was THE reference in the industry for Maya performance benchmarks? The SPEC organization (responsible for establishing, maintaining, and endorsing standardized benchmarks for the industry) is looking to update and refresh the SPECapc benchmark for Autodesk Maya. Part of that effort is finding new models to use as the datasets for the benchmarks. If you have models that you have created and own the rights to that you might be interested in submitting, contact Allen Jensen at ajensen@nvidia.com. back to the top   Pimp out your editing studio! For the first time, NVIDIA wants to pimp out your editing studio with killer hardware and software so you can do your best work—whether you’re creating larger-than-life Hollywood blockbusters or real-life wedding and corporate videos. Win the grand prize, and rig your studio with:     • A Dell workstation equipped with NVIDIA GPUs     • Adobe® Creative Suite® 5.5 Production Premium     • Autodesk Premium Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2012     • GenArts Sapphire v6 Enter now! back to the top   Get GTC early-bird discount until March 20th! GTC 2012 features hundreds of technical sessions, thousands of thought leaders from a wide range of fields, and the most innovative products and solutions on the market. Don’t miss this event, scheduled for May 14-17. Register before March 20th and save $100! Learn more.   Upcoming Events: SXSW March 9-18 Austin, TX NAB Booth SL9215 April 14-19 Las Vegas Convention Center Las Vegas, NV SIGGRAPH Booth #735 August 7-9 Los Angeles Convention Center Los Angeles, CA back to the top Copyright © 2012 NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Quadro, and Tegra are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. All rights reserved. 2701 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95050.