Apple unveils Final Cut Studio 2 - Page 2

Its possible, we'll have to wait until people can actually use it. You may end up getting what you pay for.


This has been said every year since 2000 when Sony launched HDCAM. So far its been a mixed bag.


This is nothing new. NLE's have always used lower resolution proxy files to lower storage requirements. Back in the 90's hard drive storage was extremely expensive. These proxy files are used to cull the entire piece down to the final edit. The time code of the final edit is then used to digitize and conform the full resolution video into the final edited piece. That eliminates the need to ever store all of the raw full resolution footage.

The problem in the past has been that the low resolution proxy files looked like crap. That could make it difficult to see flaws in the image that you do see later at full resolution.

Then having to resolve 1/4" to mag, editing on a flatbed, mixing down from selsyn locked dubbers.....

Good times.

Yeah. And wouldn't you know, after I sold it in '86, a friend wanted to do a documentary, and he figured as I had the camera...

Probably not. Pixar and Apple share a CEO but that doesn't mean they'd share code as freely.


The smoothcam looks even easier to use in FCP6 than in Shake. I'm sure the Shake version probably has more control but damn. Nice job Apple. I have high hopes for Phenomenon ..I hope it's ready by NAB 2008


Yeah I'm thinking 4K work "must" be ProRes 422. I've downloaded all the docs I can on Apple Sales web and if there's any clarification I'll update.

Oh yeah Soundtrack Pro rocks. Now I needs a 5.1 monitoring system.

Blue Sky?




Also of note. FXplug isn't just a scripting enviroment anymore. It's a full fledged GPU enabled plugin architecture. We're going to see some really cool stuff for this now that developers can tape into the GPU through FCP

Color ....you can tell Apple "quickly" integrated Color into FCS. It's widgets and UI still smack of Silicon Color. I'm sure Apple squashed some bugs which vexed owners and it's going to be solid but watch out for the next version where Apple engineers get some time to work on it.

Same here. Why are there no 8800GTS/GTX, or even a 1950XTX for the Mac Pro...? It can't be that hard to put an EFI Rom on one of those.

I really hope that we'll see the upcoming ATI Generation (R600) for the Mac Pros soon. Aperture and FC would benefit greatly.

This is a fantastic update. Multiple res and format on the timeline is a huge timesaver. My only real complaints about FCP up to now have been bugs rather than functionality so hopefully they will have been addressed.

Motion 3 looks superb. 3D manipulation in AE can be a pain, it looks as if M3 should provide a smoother more intuitive workflow. Yes there is now wiggle and all that stuff.

Soundtrack is starting to look like a professional piece that I could actually use rather than having go the Digital Performer/Logic/ProTools route. It SO needed the easy crossfade function.

The inclusion of Color for 'free', a $25.000 piece of software last time it was on the market, is truly astonishing. There is NOTHING on the market that can compete at this level and many smart people will be buying FCS and an OctoMac just for this. Amazing.

NB.
ProRes422 is not a proxy format by the way, its an 8 or 10bit intermediate. With the AJA hardware in and out there should be no need for further on-line conforming.

If anybody DOESN'T think that the RED camera is going to take over the film world then they really haven't been paying attention.

Everything looks great in the upgrade but DVD Studio.
I was hoping for BluRay support in DVD Studio. DVD Studio supports HD-DVD but not BluRay.
BluRay burners are available but DVD Studio doesn't support them.

It isn't difficult. Apple decides what we need, and they provide that.

Many of us don't agree with Apple's choices, but tough. That's what comes from selling only a few open boxes. Other manufacturers simply aren't interested in producing cards for it. Even ATI, who has been Apple's biggest supporter over the years, has given up recently. Hopefully with CS3, and Apple's new software, enough machines will be sold for that to change, but don't wait for it.

Anyone with experience in AfterEffects have any impressions on the Motion update? My initial impression is: improved, but still needs improving to really compete w/AE.

Motion 3 seems to be encroching more into AE's field, but without actually using it, it's hard to tell just how far. Motions advantages have been with working with feel, AE's advantages have been with with precision. I wouldn't be surprised to see both converging more and more.

Final cut server fills a much needed void in the editing world! Places that have many editing stations have been dying for a proper way to unite their bays, this is very smart and great timing.

FCP studio is friggin beautiful, I'm so impressed with everything, but one thing is for home use it looks like my 15" mbp can't run colour? wtf? I figure it'll probably work anyways but apple just won't advertise as such, at least I hope, because colour is all kinds of crazy useful to me.

Any ideas if the NAB Apple event video will be posted to Apple.com today? I'm really looking forward to seeing it... almost as much as the iPhone keynote video.

Yeah RED is exciting and all but people are getting unrealistically over excited about owning it. Yes it's cheap for what you get, but how many pros actually own a varicam or their own XDCAM? Most people owning a 20,000 - 25,000 camera makes no sense. The people that can and should buy it will, but already the waiting list is making people that preorder not even get one until a year after it ships, and that's if you ordered already.

Imo the best thing about RED isn't the price to own, it'll be the price to rent, you should be able to get 2 weeks for like 2-3 grand. At that price that's awesome, much better than the crack talk most people on the internet are like: "I now own an HVX and my next camera will be a RED!"

I mean like wtf, if you own an HVX, RED is a ridiculous step up in price and features, if you were happy with any of the 10k and down cameras, personally owning RED should make next to no sense.

Cameras have been launched for the past 7 years where this same claim has been made every year.

The problem with this assertion is that in real world production no one camera fits all situations. When shooting film, productions are typically using 3 or 4 different types of cameras. Because they all have different advantages and abilities.

Productions that only shoot digital are giving up some advantages that are gained with shooting film. In reality the one area where digital cameras are making a major inroads into movie production is in visual effects. VFX people prefer to work with digital images, and the rest of the movie is typically shot on film.

A proxy and an intermediate would basically be the same thing. It looks as though you are pointing out that ProRes422 is a video format in of itself.

But if the intent is to finish with uncompressed 4:4:4 HD ProRes422 can be used as a proxy.

A proxy and an intermediate are not the same thing as you well know.

Nope. You're still not getting it.

If you don't think he's getting it, explain it to us.

Its a film camera replacement. Many, many DP's own their own cameras and many have placed (multiple) orders for RED. Who is forcing you to buy one? Do what you like.

They don't mean exactly the same thing but both terms imply a state between the raw material and finished product.


As I described above there isn't really one type of film camera. There are different cameras that perform different tasks and RED does not in any way replace them all.

DP's that shoot Hollywood movies don't own their own cameras, because you don't use one type of camera for everything.

Its mostly in the video world where people actually own their own equipment and would more than likely be the customer base for RED.

Pixar uses software rendering engines. The 3D stuff here is hardware accelerated. I noticed some stuff from Shake as mentioned already.


I have a feeling they are gearing up for some hardware accelerated software, which I wouldn't like at all given that Apple's GPU offerings are mostly below par again as other people have said. It really doesn't make sense, push as much as possible onto the graphics card and then sell machines that choke under the load. It's just silly because it makes the software worthless. Shake in its current incarnation will run on old G4s and even G3s at a push but Motion won't even run on Apple's brand new low end machines.

I'm not against the move towards what is clearly faster rendering - I recently did that effect they show in the video with the rays coming from behind objects in Shake and it's certainly not real-time - I just think they need to step up the GPU support. They should be putting X1600 in the low end, 7600GT in the mid end and X1900XT in the high end by default.

I actually love Shake's interface though, I find most other software unintuitive. Shake does need some improvements though. It seems to slow down quite easily and can get hung up at the simplest thing. I'm actually scared to hit undo a lot of the time because it's so unpredictable. The caching isn't all that good IMO either. I read a lot of articles saying Nuke's caching is much better - I'm sure a lot of those articles are from fanboys but I know Shake's needs improving. And still no particle generator but they put one in Final Cut 6.

It looks to me like they are breaking Shake down piece by piece and dropping bits in here and there between FCP and Motion and using hardware acceleration where they can. If this is the case, I probably won't be too happy because like I say, I actually like the way Shake works and I hate the way Motion works. The first version of Motion I used was terrible, very unstable, simplistic/under-powered - it felt like it should have been in the ilife bundle - and the unique transform setup it has didn't make much sense to me at all (throw/catch etc).

OMG you could be right!!!

1) Any info on the "cross platform" client for Final Cut Server?

2) Any sites hosting the video Sunday's NAB keynote?

i really wish apple would open this product line to offering standalone products. i know it's all designed to integrate flawlessly with the rest of the products in the suite but i honestly don't need final cut, dvd studio pro or soundtrack pro, but i could make some good use out of motion. it looks great but i can't justify to my boss spending $1200 on a suite when we are really only going to use one of the apps, which originally sold as a standalone app for $300. if they were to bring that back...i would be very interested

From the NAB report on hdforindies.com


This is VERY encouraging

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news...ines/7981.html


I like the idea of a smaller affordable Red camera. It'll be a long time before I'm looking at 4k for projection although a 4k projector with enough light output would make for an awesome screening room.

I think this is explictly stated in:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/action/?movie=red

Yes I've seen that video. He must mean that you can shoot 4K and import the footage with compression from REDCODE or ProRes422. The obvious sign of this is the MacBook Pro. There is absolutely no way a MBP can deal with 4K files. There is no interface connection that has enough bandwidth to send a 4K file. There is no way to store 4K files and there is no way to monitor 4K files. MacBookPro cannot reliably or accurately work with 1080HD.

That is the reason why AJA created this device so that the MacBook Pro can work with 1080HD.



Here are the type of ports needed to deal with high resolution images.

The Apple booth is pretty nice. I didn't bring my card reader or camera cable, so I can't upload any pics. Also, I didn't ask, but nothing there gave me any indication that AVCHD was going to be supported in any manner. I tried to ask Brad Wright of HDVxDV if he was planning to make a conversion program (IMO, he's the obvious third party that would do it), but he left the booth that I saw him at and I didn't see him again.

The RED booth is a bit insane. It's an enclosure that looks like a red canvas "barn". The times I walked by the booth, the line to get in wrapped half way around the barn. I do agree with the sentiment that it's not all things to all people, but it looks like it's extremely adaptable too. As far as I can tell, the 4k res is not 4:4:4 so that might cause some problems for those wanting to composite at 4k. Not that it matters for FCS, I didn't see a clear indication in any of the specs that it supports 4k in any form.

i was wondering about that, but I doubt it means anything. Apple seems to support codec's when it arbitrarily feels like it. With out a doubt eventually apple will support AVCHD and AVC-i.

Were you able find out why DVDSP does not support blu-ray?

Buddy I'm not talking about broadcast, I'm talking about FILM DPs, they don't own their own cameras, because those cameras are not for sale. And even if they were why would anyone buy what a studio would pay for?

I'm talking about RED in the realm of movie making which believe it or not is RED's primary purpose.

Why would Peter Jackson's DP spend his own money to buy a RED if studio would pay for the rental for every picture they worked on?

Am I the only one amazed that the FCP 6 interface is still not updated to the Pro look seen in DVD SP, Compressor and Motion? Pretty soon it will be the only Apple product still sporting ye olde brushed metal! WTF!?

I think they did add some stuff like XDCAM HD support, IIRC, announced at IBC last year. BTW, there is a new Sony on display that uses ExpressCard/34 memory cards in a format called XDCAM EX. I think they showed cards up to 32GB. You can pop the card into a MBP and just import the video from the memory card like you would a hard drive. Panasonic did similar with P2 being PC Card, but P2 doesn't work on newer machines without an adapter, it's like they jumped the gun by a year.

I asked about your questions and a few other things. AVC-Intra is supported, they even had one station showing that, it was converted into ProRes 422. AVCHD is "not right now", no time frame given, but then, even S

What the hell are you talking about? Final Cut Pro does not have bushed metal by ANY means whatsoever. Not even Final Cut Pro 5 did.

Well, friend, if you take a look at the transport control sections (you know, the bits where the play button is located) of the Viewer and the Canvas windows you'll see what I'm talking about - sure looks brushed to me! (You know it's nice to check these things before posting!)

And my point was also about the lack of consistency between FCP and the other members of the Final Cut Studio suite. So there.

I know what you mean Nick. Final Cut Pro is looking kind of old and stodgy when compared to the new hottness of Motion, STP and Compressor. I wonder why they made no attempts to align the UI elements.

Perhaps there's a planned update that is coming in the fall which will upgrade DVD SP to version 5 and refreshen FCP's UI a bit along with Leopard support.

We can dream - in any case, I still love FCP, and brushed is just an annoyance to my OCD I guess! And the overall suite looks very cool, esp. the increased integration/round tripping between apps etc. Must - justify - expense

Yeah, I just checked it out. Sure is strange that Apple can't seem to get something this siomple together. How much time would it take?

It's strange. I think that I'm the only one around here that actually LIKES brushed metal. Well, maybe that's because I have had a machine shop downstairs for many years, and like metal.

I feel your pain guys. I am aslo quite obsessive when it comes to UIs and the fact that FCP6 STILL has the old interface drives me nuts. It would just make perfect sense to update it to match the rest of the suite, and it wouldn't exactly take much time either. WHY WHY WHY!?

Well anyway, like someone posted above we can only hope that apple has an update up its sleeve. But I seriously doubt it. \

The worst part is - IT'S JUST THE BLOODY TRANSPORT CONTROLS!!

Hey, has no enterprising GUI hacker out there found a way to replace those few resource files with something more appealing? Of course Shapeshifter does nothing to FCP.

Anyone? Beuller?