In case you haven’t had ENOUGH new content today, Luke Smith posted the latest Bungie Podcast, weighing in at a ridiculous 2 hours long, and 123 mb large. Doesn’t he know the internets are made of tubes? BUNGIE’S CLOGGING EVERYTHING! It’s an exhaustive discussion of the new Bungie.net, plus discussion about the next Halo novel, plus… well, plus lots of stuff. It’s really long. Go listen to it. If you play your cards right, you’ll be done with it right about the time Halo 3 is released.(Louis Wu 21:58:32 UTC)

This vid made me smile. Thanks, Mad Tom.(Louis Wu 21:57:05 UTC)

Today was the day for comics, I suppose – we heard from Sane Intolerant, whose latest Halo Toy Box speculates (with NO foundation) about the ending to Halo 3, and Haloplayer, who let us know about the fourth Countdown Comic from Injured Knee Productions. (Louis Wu 21:53:34 UTC)

Up on Bungie.net, you’ll find a really cool story – they’ve posted one last VIDOC, this one covering Saved Films and Forge. It’s called Cinema Paradiso, and I’ll let Frankie’s words describe it:

Take a closer look at two of Halo 3’s coolest features. Saved Films let you replay your games, Campaign or Multiplayer, from any angle, with near complete control over the 3D camera and DVD-like functionality. The Forge map and object editor lets you recreate Halo 3 multiplayer maps to suit your style, or cooperate with up to eight other players to build a new game experience. Both features are explained clearly in this in-depth feature, with input and commentary from Bungie and the game designers.

This film is available on Marketplace, as well as being available online. The download links on B.net are for the WMP9 versions; there are three. They range from small (320×180, 32 mb) to medium (640×360, 84 mb) to huge (1280×720, 338 mb). We’re handling the QuickTimes for them – but there’s a small glitch. The versions I got from Bungie, while gorgeous, might give folks on slower machines headaches. They’re H.264-encoded. You can grab the small (47.8 mb) or medium (154 mb) ones directly from us – but the large one is too big (424 mb) to offer you as a direct download, so we’re torrenting it, and providing some healthy seed bandwidth. We are also providing versions that do not require H.264. Here’s where the glitch comes in – these aren’t fully ready yet. The 720p version will be available via BitTorrent, as well (it’s just under 300 mb), within the next half hour – but this article went up a bit earlier than I’d expected, and the other two versions are still a couple of hours away from being ready. If you need/want the smaller Sorenson 3 Pro versions… please, be patient, they’ll be up very soon. Thanks to the billion people who were clearly hitting F5 all day for new content from Bungie – we got an inordinate number of emails within ten minutes of the article going up. Update: The Sorenson 3 flavor of the large version (1280×720, 294mb) is now available via BitTorrent, as well. And, as before, we’re providing a healthy swath of seed bandwidth. The two smaller versions will be online shortly. (Louis Wu 19:30:19 UTC)