PPro/FCP: More NAB.
Apple introduced the free update FCP HD. If you've got the new Panasonic DVCPRO HD machine you can edit DVCPRO HD (1080i/720p) over FireWire. Even on a Powerbook. Let's hope the codec is OK. The new update also introduced the coolest thing yet - something everyone on Avid has been spoiled with since the early days of NLE's - Digital Cinema Desktop. Preview DV, SD and HD content full screen on your monitor. No need for additional software. That's the way it should be done. Apple also introduced Motion - a motion graphics app - a bit like LiveType on steroids. And no - it's not an After Effects killer. I'm only guessing but it seems to me like Motion could as well be integrated into FCP. Let's wait and see what happens.

On the PPro side there is a new cool product called Prospect HD from Cineform. It uses an AJA Kona HD card and regular IDE drives and Cineform's own wavelet algorithm to capture and play out HD in a visually lossless fomat. It can do nine streams of RT. The downside to this product is that it seems to be extremely over priced. Disk drives are not that expensive these days that we can't live without the Prospect HD wavelet algorithm.

RT = Don't believe the hype. IMHO most RT effects are highly overrated and totally unusable.

Blog update:
Since I'm currently a 50/50 user of PPro and FCP I've decided to cover as much as I can for both editing systems. Mostly a way for myself to keep track with the two NLE's and the hardware world around them.

PPro: Matrox announces HD support at NAB.
Built around the "power of X" engine found in the lower end DV25 solutions coming from Matrox. I'm not sure if this is a HDV solution or actually uncompressed 4:2:2. It's supposed to do both 720 and 1080 formats. Check it out.

PPro: Premiere Pro 1.5 is here.
There are some major cool features added to release 1.5.

Project Management Tools:
Remove unused media. We've been missing that one.

24P/A support:
Support for true progressive footage.

Effect Favorites:
The first thing a noticed where missing when I started using PPro.

More AE integration:
Support for using clip board data. And cross reference use of AE plugins.

AAF and EDL I/O:
This my friends is what's finally making PPro a truly professional application. Move over all else.

This is a really nice upgrade.

PPro/FCP: Blackmagic Designs AGAIN.
I just got a mail from Grant Petty. He's introducing the new DeckLink Pro HD at NAB. It's dual 4:4:4 1080 HD uncompressed. The most quality you can get within the SDI broadcast specs. He's giving it away at $2,495. The mail doesn't mention WinXP support but I'll bet they're working on it. He' also got a neat product called HDLink that turns an Apple HD flatpanel into an editing monitor for full screen HD previews. Very cool indeed. The Apple flatpanels are awesome.