A brand new Gotham Gazette is out! Check out the contents below or read it here.

Tax Preparation for Film Crew
Ah, tax season, when a young film crew member's fancy turns to thoughts of deductions. And 1099's. And IRS schedules and wondering why on earth you thought it was a good idea to keep your receipts in a box full of poisonous asps? Anne K. Johnson, tax & production accountant, guides you through some of the pitfalls.

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Get a Free IFB100!

Zaxcom has announced a great special to celebrate the launch of their new TRX992 boom transceiver  Any customer who orders  a TRX992 and RX900s before April 9th, 2009 will get an IFB100 transmitter for free. Limit one per customer, but, hey, are you going to complain about a free IFB100? I thought not.

AVID & BWF: BFF

There's exciting news regarding the new Avid Media Composer; they've introduced BWF Audio File Support! Quotes the ReadMe: You can now import multi-channel, monophonic BWF files into an Avid editing system as a single master clip.

Matt Schneider of PostWorks New York tells us they've been testing it and it works great: “Media Composer 3.5’s new ability to import multi-channel, monophonic BWF audio as a single master clip has completely eliminated the previously arduous task of using 3rd party software tools to interleave audio prior to import. This render was time-intensive, required double the storage, and slowed down the process of making dailies available in a speedy manner. It has and will make lives easier for film assistants everywhere! It is also an enormous help to those recording for reality TV content where lengthy recording times and multi-character sets push file sizes far beyond the 2GB file limit. Small feature, huge benefit!”

So there goes one more brick in the wall between sound mixers and post-production. Solidarity!

The White Stuff

You thought it was over. But the turmoil over white spaces rages on!

First off, as you've probably heard, Congress has deferred the DTV conversion to June 12th (Naturally, this also defers Gotham's Farewell to Analog Party. We'll keep you posted)

Meanwhile, the FCC is still set to authorize unlicensed devices for sending and receiving broadband over unused television channels on March 19th, but the. National Association of Broadcasters and Association for Maximum Service Television have sued to stop them. The actionable details remain sketchy, but more details are available here. ESPN, the major pro sports leagues, and theater owners and producers have also filed suit.

And on the 700 MHz front, Verizon has released a look at their plans for the spectrum. They begin testing this summer with plans to be up and running in two markets by the end of the year and 20-30 by the end of next year.

That is, unless the $550 million spectrum license user fee proposed in Obama's budget comes to pass!

Having trouble making sense of it all? Andrew Seybold of the eponynmous Andrew Seybold Media has some interesting things to say.

And, hey, it's not all political wrangling and lawsuits and gloom. ShowMyWhitespace.com is a nifty new website set up which allows users to search for the open TV white space channels anywhere in the United States. Should be handy if we end up fighting like trapped rats for vanishingly small corners of the spectrum! You can pre-register your wireless mic with them now.

New Products at NAB

Zaxcom has just announced the slate of products they'll be premiering at NAB 2009 in April and it's a doozy: QRX100 Four-Channel Camera RF Audio System TRX992 Wireless Recording System STA150 Stereo Adaptor New Sunlight-Readable Screen for Deva Hard-Disk and Fusion Audio Recorders Mix-8 Mixing Control Panel
Lectrosonics will be premiering their nifty HM transmitter, featuring 100mW RF power, LCD and membrane switches for settings and monitoring, and phantom powering for condenser microphones.

Be sure to visit Zacom at Booth N3114 and Lectrosonics at N5223. We'll check it all out and bring you the latest on it if you can't get to NAB yourself.

G-Tech Introduces Solid-State Drives

G-Tech has announced a new family of external drives based on 2.5” solid state drive (SSD) technology – the G-DRIVE mini SSD (120GB and 250GB) and the RAID 0/1 G-RAID mini SSD (250GB and 500GB). These high-performance, plug-and-play storage devices are ideal for the film, television, and broadcasting users who capture, offload and edit digital content in challenging remote environments. Because the drives have no moving parts, each drive can withstand extreme shock up to 1500Gs and can endure higher altitudes, vibration and temperatures when compared to traditional hard drive-based solutions. Delightfully, these new drives also provide higher data transfer rates, lower seek times and use less power, all while delivering a cooler, quieter operation.

They're currently in pre-order - we'll let you know when they ship!

788T Firmware Update

The Sound Devices 788T Firmware Update 1.65 is out and it introduces a host of improvements, including new input routing, latching tone, and sampling rate options. Download it from Sound Devices here.