final BUG Blog

The Bristol Editors meeting at the watershed in Bristol. FCP X and workflow. No longer hacked to hardware. Why did Apple change. FCP 7 being 12 year old cut. 64 bit architecture etc. Grand Central Dispatch in conjunction with 64 bit and all Ram on the system. HD and 2K with a powerful system with multiple codecs on a time line. Through pretty much anything at it and it will play. FCP X will simply render to Pro Res 422 with out even having to think. Applications and going the XML route to other applications. Go to Da Vinci dissolve. AJA, Black Magic and Matrox offer video output options Excellent FCP X run through. Particularly good for beginners. The Bristol Editors Site : http://wefcpug.blogspot.de/ Thanks to Philip Ashby. Not quite sure why the domain has a .de at the end which usually means germany!!!

Talks about Disruptive Technology. Game changers such as DVCAM, RED and their Digital Cinema Camera, Solid State Technology and of course last but no means least Final Cut X. People scream for change and cry when they get too much change too soon! He runs through all the stuff his production house are using. FCP 7 and FCP X, Resolve, Smoke and Adobe.

Does an overview of editing systems that have come and gone. Looks at the changing post production hardware landscape. Shift from sheer CPU power to the growing importance of video cards and open CL. The shift to 64 bit. And of course RAM taking advantage of more than 4GB now that most things are 64 bit.

The Edit Bay - an unexpected journey from FreshDV on Vimeo.

Here is a wonderful round up of pretty much everything you need to know from NAB. The video is presented from a guy called Shane Ross. Shane is a long time contributor to forums such as the LAFCPUG and Creative Cow. He has a wonderful tongue in cheek approach to the whole post production landscape. Well worth investing 7 minutes of your time. Topics covered include, Apple, Avid, Adobe and Autodesk (Smoke 2012.) amd of course AJA and Black Magic.

After a wave of revolutions in the world of Print, DTP, Music, Digital Cinema Cameras and Video Post Production the unthinkably is on the verge of happening. The oligopoly world of Digital Cinema Projection is beginning to look threatened.

Digital Cinema Projection has long been the exclusive domain of big players such as Christies Digital Systems (USA), Barco (ASIA) and NEC (Relativly new) who have all licensed DLP Cinema technology from Texas Instruments. And lets not forget the other technology which is made by Sony and is labeled SXRD.

If you have been reading some of the other articles on this blog maybe you need a break from all this geekery ;-) Why not feed your brain with the following videos from the NAB! The March 2012 Editors' Lounge was the 9th year of our annual NAB discussion panel and featured guest speakers Steve Cohen, Terence Curren, Michael Kammes and, Mark Raudonis. Debra Kaufman moderated a lively discussion on post-production trends and predictions for NAB 2012.

PreNAB Editors' Lounge 2012 Part 1 of 4 from Editors' Lounge on Vimeo.

New Converts from the usual suspects Blackmagic design and AJA. Both companies have field and studio versions of there converter boxes. Also look out for driver updates also from Matrox for all those Matrox users out there.

From Blackmagic

FCP 1.0.4 : This update improves overall stability, performance and compatibility including:

Improves image quality and responsiveness of broadcast monitoring with compatible third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices

Improves performance of multicam syncing and editing Adds language support for Simplified Chinese

The battle is no longer between RED and Cannon. There is a new player Blackmagic video design. Probably the biggest surprise at NAB was the announcement of a the Black Magic Cinema Camera. Features include a 2.5K image sensor with a wide 13 stops of dynamic range. You get a built-in SSD recorder, popular open standard uncompressed RAW and compressed file formats, compatibility with quality EF and ZE mount lenses, LCD touchscreen monitoring plus metadata entry, all packed into an exciting hand held design!

This is going to leave the Fixed lens Scarlet in the dust and give canon a run for its money. Particularly interesting for all those people with EF and ZE mount lenses lying around.

There is a lot going on in the non linear editing rat race these days. It is hard to keep up. So what with the American computer trade show NAB here is a quick round up.

Avid released MC 6.0 back in November 2011. And then of course there was their legendary cross grade action from FCP to Media Composer. Now they have a new cross grade offer. Upgrade from MC Composer to Symphony from Final Cut Pro.

http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do?product=325362589174032&cmpid=70140000000Tg2Q

Adobe have a new Beta version of Photoshop. Apart from a major overhaul photo shop now has video editing capabilities! Amid at the DSLR photographers who like to experiment with video. It will be interesting to check photoshop out. Maybe also a taste of other updates in the Adobe family. Could it be that the next Adobe Premiere borrows heavily from FCP X?

from the Adobe Site :

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

We posted this guy before. This is part two of a four part series.

Re Vision effects have ported Twixtor to FCP X. Twixtor is regarded by many in the industry as the best speed tool for FCP period.

http://staging.revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/overview/

Below is a very cool comparision. Twixtor & Optical Flow.

Another nail in the coffin of computers as we know them!!! Or another break through for the touch screen revolution. Depending on how you want to look at it.

Last month we had Avid Studio for the iPad. Now we have one of the old post production staples. Photoshop Touch for the iPad! Almost sounds like an invention from Apple. Obviously it is only a matter of time till we have FCP X for the iPad!

On a side note when you read the license agreements for Adobe they do mention that they can "change or discontinuation without notice" Does this mean that they can pull the plug in the middle of a project. Our tool goes dead? How do we reanimate our project? So here is the official line....

Not exactly FCP X related.

But sometimes it is interesting to see what is going on in parallel universes ;-)

Food for thought what with Apple reinventing the wheel with FCP X!

Talks a lot about ideas. And much more!

Creators need immediate connection to what they are creating

Talks about ideas not getting out there

Because the tools are not helpful.

Technologist and a vision of a better world through invention.

http://vimeo.com/36579366#embed

So it is just a crazy experiment but why not.

Having used a steenbeck many years ago this somehow seems to make sense.

Anything that makes editing more tactile has to be good.

Sure this has a long way to go and is certainly as of now not financially viable but time will tell.

We reported about stuff like this 3 years ago!

http://finalbug.net/entry/low-cost-multi-touch-whiteboard-using-the-wiimote

Before taking the FCP X plunge it is a good idea to check and see if FCP X will ingest material from your camera.

Here is a list of Cameras that are currently supported!

http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/cameras/en/index.html

Up until very recently Canon Cameras such as the EOS C300 were not supported!
Now there are 2 options out there. First off, a third party solution.

http://pika.dk/?p=406
From their site :

"So, is this the Holy Grail? The ultimate tool? Nope. Does it work? Absolutely yes. And it’s fast as well. Oh, and did I mention, NO transcoding. Basically, I am rewrapping the original mpeg2 stream in a .mov container that FCPX will play nice with – after which you can have FCPX transcode it if needed. But you have your original yuv422p/50Mbps footage going straight into the belly of FCPX – yummy yummy ;-) It’s all possible only due to the brilliant work of the guys doing the whole FFmpeg open source project. So yeah, don’t thank me – thank them… they did the hard work; my little utility is simply wrapping it in a nice UI that will enable it to be used in a decent workflow for us happy XF100 owners ;-)"

And a solution from Canon

http://usa.canon.com/cusa/professional/products/professional_cameras/cinema_eos_cameras/eos_c300#DriversAndSoftware

Note the Canon solution is for Lion only although there is a workaround to get it to work on Leopard.

http://fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/4380-canon-mxf-import-plugin-is-finally-available#4381

Storage is the last post frontier in a sense because if you think of the big players they will spend significantly more on there storage than o the editing software as such.

Imagine 10 mac mini lined up all digesting material simultaneously for a film and then editing. This was possible with FCP 7.

One of the mission critical question now is how committed is Apple to getting shared network workflows like this work with FCP X. Because imagine that you had 100 or even 1000 edit systems. The whole sharing thing becomes more and more interesting.

White paper: http://images.apple.com/finalcutpro/docs/Final_Cut_Pro_X_Xsan_Best_Practices.pdf

More over at Xsanity

http://www.xsanity.com/article.php/2012021022090515

Note : This white paper relates to feature that were introduced to FCP 1.0.1.

The Motion Template Tool allows to install custom Motion Templates for FCPX in an easy way. This tool is helpful for both developers and users. It provides a simple hassle free way to install custom templates, change some installation settings and make backups of the template installations.

One also can create disk images for backup and/or distribution. The Motion Template Tool is free of charge as long as you use it for distribution of free Motion Templates or for backup purposes. A donation though is appreciated. You freely can distribute or host the installer disk image for free Motion Templates as long the license agreement is supplied and the application is not modified.

To learn about the app you can download the manual here: Manual

FCP Reality Check 10.0.3

A lot has changed with the recent developments in the Final Cut World.

Most of the initial complaints of the "professionals" have been addressed.

There are solutions out there for moving to other applications, See Import/Export possibilities.

http://finalbug.net/entry/fcp-x-import--export-possibilities

The video monitoring thing is being nailed.

Broadcast monitoring in Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 is currently in beta and allows you to connect to waveform displays, vector scopes, and calibrated, high-quality monitors to ensure that your project meets broadcast specifications.
Supports monitoring of video and audio through Thunderbolt I/O devices, as well as through third party PCIe cards.

Multicam is back. Lets face it multicam in FCP 7 was a disaster so this looks a lot easier.

And just in case you couldn´t live without it you can finally relink your media and get this even if you changed the name!

The are pluraleyes like sound capabilities built in. Enabling editors to get sound sync automatically.

http://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html

The latest version of Motion has apparently amongst other things improved drop zones. That might clear a couple of headaches up.

Major hard and software companies are offering solutions.

AJA with their broadcast monitoring ioXT.

http://www.aja.com/support/io/io-xt.php

And sapphire and Magic Bullet with there plugins.