Apple Special Event at 11AM Sunday

to my eyes, final cut server just looks like Spotlight for media assets, not management for FCP's working media files. could be wrong.
 
Jim2000 said:
Excuse me? Have you actually worked on an Avid before? How about an Avid Unity System? The new FCP Studio looks pretty impressive, but I doubt it comes anywhere close to Avid's media management capabilities.
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Jim2000 I was talking about FCP Server. How much is Avid Unity Sytem? Remember Apple didn't just create a version 1 media management program they purchased a mature program and updated it to work with there system.
 
I spent two and quarter hours in the Apple booth today watching them present the new Final Cut Studio 2. Pretty incredible stuff. I was really surprised at all the great improvements they've made to Soundtrack Pro 2. Besides surround sound, you now do ALL your sound design in STPro rather than within FCP. You have a lot more control. Of course, Color is the nuts. Motion 3 (also available within FCP) now has "Smoothcam" capabilities. From what I saw, it looks like they incorporated that freature from Shake.
 
SHAKE

It does look like they brought "Smooth Cam" over from SHAKE. Can any Shake users see if they've integrated anything else? I also saw a Shake-like node tree in the demo.

Also, not being a Shake user, can any of you SHAKE users tell me what you like best about it?

Thanks
 
ProRes 422 / AJA IoHD

ProRes 422 / AJA IoHD

I have a question about Apple's new ProRes 422 codec, is it meant to be used for offline editing - recapturing your HD footage at full res once you have finished? Or is it for use instead of the full res HD footage?

Also, the AJA Iohd had a HDMI input. Would I be better off capturing footage (HDV from a Canon XH-A1) via the HDMI input or via firewire? Is there even a difference?

Thanks!
 
AlanSla said:
Also, the AJA Iohd had a HDMI input. Would I be better off capturing footage (HDV from a Canon XH-A1) via the HDMI input or via firewire? Is there even a difference?

Thanks!
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You'd need a component to HDMI converter in order to do that, as the XH A1 doesn't have and HDMI output. Although the Canon HV20 does.

If it's a live output, HDMI, it'll be uncompressed. If it's after you recorded to tape, FireWire, it'll be compressed already so you won't get better quality through HDMI. It'll be better becuase you can fit more of the video on the computer.
 
Thanks. So does HDMI carry an uncompressed signal - but the footage is already compressed so it would be a waste of drive space, whereas the firewire carries the compressed signal (same as the compression on the recorded footage)? Is that right, or am I totaly off the mark???
 
AlanSla said:
I have a question about Apple's new ProRes 422 codec, is it meant to be used for offline editing - recapturing your HD footage at full res once you have finished? Or is it for use instead of the full res HD footage? Thanks!
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It can be used that way but that's not what its intended for.

With few exceptions all of the codecs used in FCP were developed by camera manufacturers who tried to create as good an image as possible given the bandwidth constrains of recording to tape. The logic behind DVCProHD was that the NLE didn't really need a codec that was any better than the one it was acquired with.

That logic doesn't work for several reasons; the image processing in FCP can degrade image quality, DVCProHD is an 8bit codec so there isn't sufficient headroom, and it lacks enough information for a quality output to film. I know that people will argue that they master with DVCProHD, film out and it looks great. But that's not the point. If that works you can continue to work that way.

But the ProRes codec does a couple of things for FCP; it a user selectable 8 or 10 bit so you can apply the quality where you need it. Keep in mind there's more data in a 10bit file than an 8bit one so you'll require faster I/O, encoding with this codec enables you to capture any flavor of HD and work with it on a common timeline, and it supposedly gives you uncompressed HD image quality with an SD data rate.

So this fundamentally changes the debate to uncompressed post-production versus compressed post-production. If you can afford to work with uncompressed HD then I guess there's not much of a decision. However, I'd argue that the time saving you gain from working with smaller more manageable file sizes should enable you to spend more time creating and less time rendering and doing system administration.

Also, these newer codecs, Sheer Video, Cineform and now ProRes are designed specifically for Post-production and they all enable you to work much faster in a digital intermediate work flow. :thumbup:
 
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