Software Books

I bought the first edition 2 years ago and then the second edition to keep up with new changes because this book is a very good and complete introductory course on making real world video (i.e. starting from choosing DV camcorders to final production and delivery to the world depending on your budget).

It starts from current DV technology (like CCD and DV formats) and then introduces various DV camcorder types depending whether you are normal consumer or pro-sumer or professional users. (It even shows you the approximate price range for various camcorder class.)

It then introduces how scripts planning should be like for making different scenes of video (newscast or documentary or movie). It teaches different techniques of shooting pictures/video by cameras/comcorders (angles, views, lighting and audio control). I likes the book giving you various examples of lighting equipments and audio equipments required for making good video.

For movie pre-production process, it tells what kind of production crews and things you will need and do for different stages (including cost ranges). For movie post-production process, it shows how to edit all movie and audio footages into final movies and how to fix video/audio problems. It also describes what types of movie editing systems (computers, hardware equipments and software video applications) available in the market depending on high-end, mid-range, or low-end production and budgets. It also describes how the final process of movie copies are generated and delivered to the world.

I like the book because it gives me pretty good ideas how DV movies are made with real equipments that are availalbe in the current market. This book is highly recommended especially for serious beginning DV/movie producers.

This book should be required reading for anyone making a digital movie with more ambition than experience. This book will be worth its cost in just the first project by eliminating many of the learning mistakes we all make. I wish someone would have sat down with me and given me this advice when I started and yet, even with many projects behind me, this book offers me new ideas. Reading the book and the watching the DVD are like having real work experience - both in production and post-production. In one memorable section of the DVD, Pete Shaner sits down with you and gives you lots of advice on how to shoot and things to consider in shooting and editing.

Highly recommended reading...for the home hobbyist...the USC film student...the software geek... or AV professional.

The authors approach the Digital Video Universe in a real world, common sense and entertaining prose...allowing the reader to apply their level of interest, budget, technical background, project objectives and pace to a surprisingly current and comprehensively deep offering of digital video material.

The supportive DVD is awesome!

This book took me into a whole new World. I sure could have used it before I bought my used BetaCam! Now I can work quicker, cleaner, look like a pro and save $$$. The furture of film making is here. Thanks guys!

As the prices of digital data capture and storage have dropped, new avenues of artistic creation have opened up. One of these areas is in the realm of digital video, where it is possible to make movies using simple and relatively inexpensive digital equipment. However, the fact that the equipment is now cheap does not make it any easier to make movies that people would want to watch. There is an enormous amount of subtle technique involved in making a movie, and until I read this book, I had absolutely no idea how complex a simple shot can be. This is a book that will show you how to make a digitally recorded movie, and should be the first thing you read if that is your aspiration.
It all starts with planning, from the initial idea, on to budgeting, clearing all legal hurdles, organizing and shooting the scenes, editing and cleaning the stored scenes, and ending with publicizing and distributing the finished product. All are so complex, that you do not make a movie, you survive its' creation. The fact that the movie can now be stored on digital devices only significantly affects one of these steps.
Written primarily for those who are interested in making DV projects for entertainment, this is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. The number of detail hurdles that need to be cleared to make a movie are astounding, and kudos to the authors for explaining all of those hurdles in great detail.

The RenderMan Shading Language Guide is an excellent resource. It contains numerous examples of shader code, to help get you started with writing your own shaders. I was happy to see the robust section on illumination models, with some sl code provided for most of them. I found the section that had common functions (like gamma() and remap()) very helpful, and appreciated the disscussion on more sophisticated components of the shading language (like subsurface scattering and global illumination). In addition, for the user who is new to the process of writing and compiling shaders, a number of pages are devoted to explaining how to achieve these goals. All in all, I would highly recommend this book to any user who wants to learn how to write his/her own RenderMan shaders.

As a professional character TD I don't have lots of time to sit and really dig into other areas of 3D. I've been wanting to learn some basics in shader development as well as render pipeline so that I can be more flexible within the team and able to troubleshoot problems that come up or provide solutions to situations that a project might demand. Renderman has been always something I really wanted to get into but had a hard time reading some of the more complex papers I've found before being that I didn't have the time to gather the fundamentals in order to build off. This book solved that by gathering basic, intermediate, and advanced topics all in one place.

the Renderman Shading Language Guide has really helped me out in understanding how Renderman works, as well as how general rendering works and where shaders, lights, etc fit in. It's written in a very intuitive way, and those that are beginning or even intermediate will really benefit from reading this. The book will not only help you with RSL, it will help you with a greater understanding of professional rendering in general. For the price this book really can't be beat.

After reading this, I feel more confident in tackling those papers I had tried to read before, and really digging into experimenting more with Renderman.

I caught wind that this book was coming out well before it actually came out and could hardly contain my excitement. I had it ordered before it was even off the press.

Let's face it, trying to learn Renderman online is like trying to ride a bike with a flat tire. You can go, but not very fast or very far. I own several other renderman books but found them to be a bit out of date and lacking in areas. Since leaving school and entering into the industry I had actually been considering writing a Renderman book myself. I am glad to say that now I don't have to!

I have been enjoying my copy of the book since december of last year. I admit that I was thrown off by all the refrences to the accompanying cd, as well as a few typos throughout. I was overjoyed however to find the website today! This is the book that I have needed for a long time. It is well worth what you pay for it.

I have read many technical manuals relating to the 3D Animation and Visual Effects industries, and I can honestly say that this is easily one of the best available.

Given the limited library of Renderman books, I'd call this an absolute must have for any Lighting/Rendering/Shader TD, or any artist or technical director involved in the look development and shot finaling pipelines.

Even if you haven't yet worked within a Renderman pipeline, this is the perfect publication to introduce you to, and bring you up to speed in, the Renderman Shading Language (RSL).

I've found that the majority of technical manuals suffer from a number of common flaws:

1. The information is presented chaotically, and with minimal use of examples or descriptions, resulting in a publication that would readable only by those that already know everything it has to teach.

2. The information is presented so laboriously that what should take a paragraph instead takes up three chapters.

The Renderman Shading Language Guide is perfectly paced for beginners and intermediate users alike, and indeed when I showed the book to a couple of highly experienced Renderman TDs, they were surprised by the sheer volume of information and ordered copies for themselves.

Everything is presented in short blocks with an easily readable description, examples, shortcuts and conclusions. There is no unecessarily complicated geek speek, and neither is the reader treated like a 4 year old.

Even though I barely remember my high school math, and in the most flattering estimation I'd be considered a competent beginner when it comes to the math involved in RSL, I found the examples relatively easy to follow for the most part. And in those parts where the math went well over my head, I found the simple descriptions and concise, well explained instructions to be all I needed to quickly understand the topic.

From cover to cover this book is crammed full of useful information. There is no wastage of space in these pages. It seems that every conceivable question is answered - every possible topic covered from introduction to an advanced level of understanding and a practical and immmediately useful conclusion.

And at the price? This book is a steal.

One very minor complaint I would make is in regards to the occasional typographical error. An equation or two is printed with "?" in place of "*" or another symbol, and there are a few spelling and grammatical errors. But as I said, it is a minor complaint.

Also, I would have liked to have seen more complete shader examples demonstrated in a step-by-step process, as while this book is overflowing with informative mini-tutorials, it all seems a little incongruous. It would have been good to see a few more examples where the information was brought together in real-world ways to create some amazing completed shaders. Perhaps in a sequel? ;)

All in all, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, from an industry Lead Lighting TD.

9.5/10

I'm quite pleased with the depth of this book. So many of the CGI titles I've bought that claim to be intermediate or advanced aren't. While the RenderMan Shading Language Guide assumes that you have no starting knowledge of RSL, it immediately dives into technical details without overwhelming the novice. For someone wishing to learn RSL (or even just shader theory), this book is wonderfully paced, containing a great depth of information, very well explained.

At the same time, this isn't a book for dabblers. To get much out of the RenderMan Shading Language Guide, you need to be willing to put some effort and practice into it. This is a textbook and needs to be treated as a subject of study, rather than a casual enhancement for playing with CGI. If RenderMan intrigues you, but you don't want to get too deep into the technical (and programing/scripting) aspects, you'd be better off getting Pixar's RenderMan for Maya and a Digital Tutors or similar training DVD. You'll learn more of the simple, day-to-day things and get started making renderings faster.

As another poster mentioned, the text mentions an included disk which isn't. The website doesn't have downloads either. That omission would knock the book down to 4.5 stars, but since I can't rate with half-stars, 5 stars more accurately reflects the value of the book than 4.

Good import CDs for businessman's.
2 CD w.
1 - English Russian English Translator
2 - Pop-Up dictionary Polyglossum II with 5 English Russian and Russian English dictionary-data bases and over 500 000 terms

Is very useful in activity. Saves a lot of time. Thank.

The double CD with MT PARS with Bisiness-dictionaries set and Polyglossum-Business-dictionaries set is good PRODUCT for businesmann and for stjudent. RECOMMEND!

It on my supervisings the largest and modern selection of the E-R-E dictionaries on business : economy, jurisprudence, business correspondence etc. It is very convenient, that in a complete set of delivery is present CD with the program computer-translator and CD with the electronic dictionaries Polyglossum

THE BEST ENGLISH RUSSIAN DICTIONARIES !!!!!!
Excellent product!
Qualitative translation.
Huge quantity of the words in the dictionaries!
Very - Very - Very RECOMMEND!
Well works in our internal corporate network!
Constant updating from the publisher till the Internet...

I don't setup a network without this book. It's as complete as any book I have on any subject.

Excellent. Plenty of examples with notes about the differences in the major flavors of Linux. Also, good background information on TCP/IP and basic strategy for including SAMBA in your network.

This book is now 2 years old but still the best reference available. I only say that because I have spent $$$ getting everything on the subject I can. With the recent changes in Microsoft licensing every sensible IT professional should be exploring alternatives. A SAMBA server is a great alternative. Mr. Litts book is all you need to go from knowing next to nothing to knowing enough to impress your geeky Network Admin friends.

This book is well written, clear and expansive. I didn't read it cover to cover (not at first anyway) I found pieces I needed, applied it, digested it, reviewed it and then went on to the next morsel I needed. If I missed something it was easy to find. By the way, it works with Win2K and WinXP neither of which is well documented by anyone anywhere.

I'm just glad they didn't charge me for what it was really worth! (most books I buy I quickly regret wasting the money unfortunately)

I recently installed Samba on a couple of Solaris servers in my organization to integrate these servers with our Windows NT domain. I needed a good reference book that could fill in the gaps left by the "man" pages, and other online docs. I looked at just about every other Samba book around but found something to my disliking with each of them. Even the O'Reiley book, which is very well rated, seemed disjointed and too cursory on some topics that were important to me. Then I saw Samba Unleashed and it was a solid winner! This book is EXTREMELY thorough and guides you through various configuration scenarios from beginning to end in great detail. Additionally, this book does an excellent job of explaining the underlying networking and communication principles involved. One could almost argue that this book is TOO inclusive because at 1200 pages, it's a monster! But I like a little hand-holding now and then and this book does exactly that. I also enjoyed the "special interest" sections one of which covered the nuances of Samba in a Solaris environment. This is the best Samba book out there right now, IMHO of course!

This book is awesome. Covers all of the basic Samba configuration as well as the "sticky" NT domain issues & Win2000 as well. Also provides real-world examples as well as some pretty complex issues I was never able to solve before. Holds your hand if you need it, but is also an outstanding reference book if you don't. Definitely recommended for anyone considering using Samba to replace WinNT servers on their network & needs real-world examples of interoperability does & don'ts and how-to's.

This is a good tool for me in my intern life

The preceding guides have been my most important reference materials in my work in third world countries.

I will laugh, I will cry... I expect I will like it better than "Cats!"

I DON'T KNO

This is one of the most helpful medical texts ever published

This is the best book out there for those wanting to learn from mistakes and do things differently next time! My fiance and I both agree we will keep it and remind ourselves of key points in the book. The experience of the authors comes through clearly and their advice is practical. We have already shared the book with family and friends. I wish someone had given me this book (or the one for first marriages) many years ago!

I love this book because it is so helpful! It has given me peace during a time that brings up bad memories.

My soon-to-be husband and I used this series as our premarital counselling guide and found it to be well-designed, practical (without being so full of pseudo-psychiatry that it felt fake.) The suggestions of topics that should be considered prompted some of the deepest discussions we had. We are both convinced that finding this resource was a blessing.

As a pastor of over 25 years, I have used several books as part of a pre-marital counseling regiment. Drs. Les and Leslie Parrotts' books are the best, by far! Not only do the Man's and Woman's Workbooks (I suggest ordering them with the book) make premaritial counseling simpler, I have found that this book hits the nail on the head. Couples who went through the "Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts" material in preparation for marriage thanked me after they were married, and they shared how valuable this material was in the daily grind of life.

This volume adds additioanl material to address the compexities of a Blended Family. Although blended family issues cannot be dealt with thoroughly, the Parrotts share the most important considerations (and offer other resource suggestions on page 186, footnote 6).

I first heard the authors at a Moody Pastor's Conference in the late 1990's. It did not take me long to determine that I would check out their books. I have since concluded that Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott are exceptional in the realm of understanding human relationships.

Althogh the book is written by a godly Christian couple, this is more of a relational book than a spiritual one, so I would not consider it a complete pre-marital regiment, but a good anchor book. Couples already married (even for years) will find this material valuable as well (and will kick themselves for not having read it earlier).

Whether used in counseling or simply read by a couple in their own quest to prepare for marriage, this book is a gem. The Drs. Parrott seem to have a realistic (and well documented) grasp on the nature of marriage and the additional complexities of bringing children into a new blended family. This is practical, hands on material.

The book is arranged around 9 questions: Are you ready to get married again? Have you faced the myths of marriage with honesty? Can you identify your love style? Have you developed the habit of happiness? Can you say what you mean and understand what you hear? Have you bridged the gender gap? Do you know how to fight a good fight? Do you know how to blend a family? and Are you and your partner soul mates? This is basically the 7 questions from "Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts" with two additional questions added to tackle a blended family, thus, "Saving Your SECOND Marriage..."

Of course no couple entering marriage could honestly answer all those questions with a "yes." But the book provides a good start and helps couples begin to face reality and potential areas of growth.

If a couple follows the exercises by purchasing the workbooks, (like identifying some of your own personal "commandments"--rules you live by that you picked up who knows where and expect your spouse to know and agree with), it could preclude many potential tensions later.

To those of you considering a second marriage, go through this book together, and cosider at least some of the exercises in the workbooks. To pastors and Christian counselors, I urge you to read this volume and consider using it!

As a divorced person, I have often felt like there are many books written about marriage, but few that deal with the specific issues that I can only imagine affect second marriages. Not content with reading just another book about the general subject of marriage, and not really wanting to read another book about divorce, I was very pleased to be given this book on remarriage. After reading through it, I feel so much more confident now about my ability to enter a second marriage and not be trapped by fears and insecurities that resulted from my first. I feel much more able now to look objectively at the areas I still need to heal and grow in. Praise God for the careful work of Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott in addressing this seldom-addressed issue. I HIGHLY recommend this for anyone who is divorced, even if they haven't yet addressed the possibility of remarriage in their life. [Edit on Jan 10, 2008, about six years after the original review!]: I have come to not necessarily agree with everything that the authors write in this book. But I did find it extremely helpful at the time I read it and wrote this review.]

I bought this for its worked examples in graphics, particularly projections and perspective transformations. It covers these topics throughly and clearly. The chapters on clipping to the view frustrum and transforming to the device coordinates were also excellent. The material on general graphics transformations was easy to follow. The appendices cover necessary parts of vector algebra and geometry. The level seems suited for a reader who has had undergraduate vectors and calculus classes. This book is complete, understandable and certainly a bargain compared to other texts costing 5 times as much

In the late 1980's I taught a computer science course in computer graphics and I used this book as the text. It was one of the most interesting courses I have ever taught, the students and I had a lot of fun. The action on the screen was slow and patience was required as we were running Turbo Pascal on IBM PC's.
Although it is now dated, this book was more than adequate for our needs. While it was abbreviated, the coverage was complete, well suited for a beginning course where the emphasis was on the mathematical foundations rather than the modern bells and whistles. Even today, if I were to offer a computer graphics course, I would consider using this book as a supplement, computer power may have advanced over the years, but the mathematics has stayed the same.

This book is a very handy guide to have while you are studying computer graphics. It explains a wide variety of topics in the field computer graphics as well as the math that is involved. However, this book is all concepts and math. You will not find much code in here, but rather a good review of the theory behind elementry computer graphics. I recommend this book to those taking an undergraduate course in computer graphics.

This excellent book enabled me to design my first graphics pipeline from scratch. Even though technologies like DirectX, OpenGL and Glide provide this all for you on a platter today; if you want to understand the maths that they all share at their core, this is the book !

Two things that you'll likely find in most computer graphics textbooks are:
1. A triple digit price tag
2. Disorganized and obfuscated algorithm details
This Schaum's outline is an excellent antidote to both of these problems. Besides its low price tag, it has a very clear presentation of the basics of computer graphics algorithms. It starts out talking about image representation including common color spaces. It gives a clear definition of dithering, halftone approximations, and error diffusion. Next comes a discussion of scan conversion, which is how to translate geometric figures into pixels. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss two-dimensional graphics and their transformations. This includes good discussions and examples on matrix transformations and how they can be chained together. Chapters 6 through 8 extend these concepts to three dimensions. Very detailed information is given on transformations, projections, and clipping in 3D. This includes a definition of a typical 3D graphics "pipeline", which is basically an assembly-line of computer graphics from object definition to display. Chapter 9 on geometric representations was not as good as the other chapters in this outline, since it didn't do a very good job of talking about such representations in greater than two dimensions which is necessary for the development of wireframe models. However, the last three chapters of the book on hidden surfaces, shading models, and ray tracing had very good examples and discussions that could lead to pseudocode. I would highly recommend this guide to anyone taking or planning to take a course on computer graphics as a good language-independent guide to the basic methods and algorithms of computer graphics programming.

I have borrowed this book from a friend, it is the best and I hope I will find it to buy :)

Lischner gets into areas of both Delphi 1.0x and 2.0x that are not usually seen. His understanding of the internals of the VCL and Delphi's Tools Interface make this book a must-have for any serious Delphi developer

Quite simply the best "techie" Delphi book I have seen. Covers 16 bit Delphi too. If you are serious about programming in Delphi, buy this book. Not recommended for Delphi beginners

Great book, a lot of hard to find information, the name secrets does not disappoint. A must have book if you want to know Delphi's inside working.

I read many books about Delphi programming. This one is the ONLY one I would recommend to understand WHAT IS Delphi.

A few years ago (I'm told) Bill Gates called all of the developers together and told them that the big thing it was necessary for Microsoft to do was to implement strong security systems in their mainstream products. I don't know if this is true, but the biggest changes in their 2003 series of products is greatly increased security emphasis.

Exchange Server is no exception. This book is oriented around how to get the most out of Exchange Server while protecting the security of the messaging system. It is written by a network security expert who worked closely with the Exchange Server development team. Published by Microsoft Press, this can be viewed as the definitive book on the subject.

Good book! I'm not an Exchange admin, but I need to understand what the issues are in Exchange and Outlook security. I found the book very helpful in a couple of ways:
* covers 5.5. and 2K, even though the title says 2003
* covers life cycle issues like archiving and compliance
* covers Active Directory and Certificate issues
I was impressed that the book managed to combine enough detail to be valuable to technical users, with clear enough descriptions of the issues to make sense to non-techies.

In today's environment of spam, virus, and bad things in general, knowing how to protect yourself is a very valuable commodity.
Paul has managed to condense everything you need down to a nutshell, okay, maybe more like an acorn tree. But it's all in there.
Chapter 20 should be a must-read for anyone in messaging. It goes over some of the legal aspects of you and your messaging system. Most administrators don't realize the possible litigation that they can get themselves into. And sure, your company will protect you. When it comes to a 10 million dollar lawsuit or an employee, who's going to get the shaft?!
Ever worry about what permissions have been set on something? Take a look at Appendix B for an in-depth guide.

I admit to a certain degree of bias, being that I'm the author and all, but this really *is* the only book that takes a comprehensive approach to every aspect of Exchange security. The book covers physical and operational security, patch management, end-to-end transport security using IPsec and TLS, client-to-client security with S/MIME, and even security issues related to mobile devices like BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile smartphones. Sample chapters are available from a variety of places, including the book's companion website at e2ksecurity.com.

If you're going to pick up a book on Microsoft Exchange Server security, this is *the* book for you. Great and comprehensive coverage on everything to do with Microsoft Exchange Server from one of the foremost Exchange Security experts in the industry. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in understanding what's entailed in Exchange-related security, including some ground-breaking content on compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, SEC, etc.) and legislation pertaining to e-mail ... which alone is well worth the price of the book! Highly recommended!!

If your organization is facing the challenge of figuring out how to overcome Operating obstacles by leveraging the latest and greatest technology, then this book is for you. It truly helped me understand the strength of what SOA brings to the table, and how to wrap methodologies around it to really differentiate your business with speed and agility.

In this book, Dr. Khoshafian demonstrates his deep industry knowledge and expertise by not only illuminating the importance of SOA to today's business architecture but also by applying this expertise into actionable advice for the reader. Khoshafian helps the reader to understand the practical applications of various technologies while he explores the SOE. I would recommend this book to both business and IT for greater understanding of the issues impacting today's businesses.

The most pragmatic approach to BPM and SOA that's meaningful to an enterprise.

A must read if you want to avoid BPM or SOA becoming something a software vendor sells you and becomes shelf-ware.

Dr. Khoshafian shows just how important it is for organizations to have an effective gameplan with SOA and BPM, not to mention the many benefits one can reap from these valuable technologies. And he tells this in a way that is practical, understandable and yet still realistic. Service Oriented Enterprises is a must-read, whether you're from the IT or business side of the aisle.

Have you identified the human element of SOA within your organization? Service Oriented Enterprises provides an in-depth look at how SOAs are affecting various facets within the enterprise - both organizational AND cultural. Dr. Khoshafian has done a tremendous job making the argument that SOA is only part of the puzzle toward change and that the second major layer of SOEs, called service oriented business process integration, is key to success. I especially liked the ideas he presented on how service orientation can narrow the gap between business and IT, as I can implement some of those ideas at my company. This book will be helpful to both the IT-focused people within your organization as well as the business people who are actively trying to lead in today's service-computing world.