Archive of the Video Editing Systems Category

Trying to predict the ultimate usability and performance of Apple software based upon an Apple demo is like trying to judge the performance of any republican politician based upon what you see on Fox News. Fair and balanced, it ain’t, and rightly so. Still, at a high level, it was impossible not to watch Apple‘s Final Cut Pro Studio demo and not be impressed, especially at a time when a new barbarian at the gate, in the form of Adobe‘s Production Studio for the Mac, will soon start grabbing for share in the Macintosh editing market.

Final Cut Pro can now adeptly handle multiple formats on the same timeline, a major objection for many event and wedding videographers with one foot in HDV and the other in DV. The new variable speed controls in Motion replace the cryptic controls in Final Cut Pro, turning another glaring weakness into a strength. more

Final Cut Pro 6 was announced yesterday, and there’s no question that it’s a major update. First, there’s support for mixed resolutions, formats, and even frame rates in the timeline — all conversion is done in the background. For example, drop 960×720 native clips from the Panasonic HVX200 onto the timeline, and FCP auto-scales them to match the native 1920×1080 clips that you’ve already cut together. (Read the press release at The Briefing Room: 2007 NAB Newslink)

One of Apple‘s biggest announcements from yesterday was its new ProRes 422 codec. This is a 4:2:2 (obviously), 10-bit, variable bit-rate, full-raster HD codec that Apple is claiming is much more edit-friendly and effects-friendly than previous attempts to limit the bandwidth of HD video. Apple showed a demo of a ProRes clip — from a project that had gone from 1TB uncompressed to 170GB in ProRes — that had suffered ten encode/decode cycles and displayed it side by side with the uncompressed version. There was no distinguishable difference. more

Sunday morning started with a magic bus ride. Rolling down city streets, through underpasses, along Interstate 15 at 70 mph, and finally pulling into an underground casino parking lot, a handful of journalists including yours truly got a preview from Samsung of a proposed enhancement to ATSC that enables perfect mobile reception of digital TV, particularly to handheld devices.

What‘s the big deal? In a word, YouTube. Even the most benighted of computer illiterati grew acquainted with the pleasures of Flash files over the past year. (Thanks in large part to Paris Hilton, but that‘s another story.) The idea that it‘s fun to watch videos in a small window a few inches from your nose instead of from across the living room floor has now entered the public‘s consciousness. Apple‘s video iPod is another manifestation of this shift in TV viewing habits, as will be the larger, sharper iPhone when it debuts in June. more

Las Vegas, Nevada — NAB — April 16, 2007 — NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, today announced launch plans for their latest development, LightWave Rendition for Adobe® Photoshop®. The product created by NewTek‘s 3D division provides photorealistic 3D render output, such as recently used in the feature film “300®, for Adobe‘s just revealed Photoshop CS3 Extended. Based upon the Emmy® Award-winning render engine native to LightWave 3D®, Rendition™ for Adobe Photoshop gives creative artists the ability to render models imported through Photoshop CS3 and deliver the richness of detail, textures and lighting attributes found in the original 3D object format, all within the Photoshop environment. Read on at The Briefing Room: 2007 NAB Newslink

Avid demo guru Michael Phillips got to show off a marquee feature of Avid‘s new editor release for Xpress pro, Media Composer, and Symphony. Called ScriptSync it‘s an indexing feature that matches dailies to script scenes in…well 15 seconds in the demo, for something that would have taken 2-3 hours, Phillips reminded us. At the Avid booth, you can see more on this shipped release and also see the Media Composer running on the new 8-core Intel-based Mac.

At Avid‘s press conference today CEO David Krall marked the company‘s 20th anniversary with a few dramatic facts, some to do with nearly a billion dollars in revenue, similar sums of R&D, and a furious output of patent applications–I think he said one every 15 days for 20 years. He also looked ahead–or rather looked around–at digital content and its proliferation across multiple devices and channels. It‘s a reality Avid has expected (or has been trying to hasten) for as long as I can remember.

VP of Worldwide Marketing for Avid Video Jeff Stewart picked up the thread in a straightforward presentation that reinforced the idea of Open Avid. Much of Avid‘s historic innovation was made possible–at least initially–by being the opposite of open. But that was then. Now Avid has to work harder than some to make a convincing case for openness, even though that has been the company‘s direction for some time. more

NAB, LAS VEGAS–April 15, 2007–Apple® today unveiled Final Cut Studio® 2, a significant upgrade to the industry‘s leading video production suite that delivers new creative tools designed expressly for editors. Final Cut Studio 2 includes Final Cut Pro® 6, which introduces Apple‘s ProRes 422 format for uncompressed HD quality at SD file sizes and support for mixed video formats and frame rates in a single Timeline; Motion 3 featuring an intuitive 3D environment, paint and new behaviors; Soundtrack® Pro 2 with dozens of innovative tools for multitrack editing, surround mixing and conforming sound to picture; Compressor 3 delivering powerful batch encoding for multiple formats with a single click; and DVD Studio Pro 4.2 for SD and HD DVD authoring. Final Cut Studio 2 also introduces “Color,” a professional color grading and finishing application for ensuring consistent color and creating signature looks. Read on at The Briefing Room: 2007 NAB Newslink