FCP: Uncompressed on a powerbook hoopla...

I'm not sure why this is such a big deal but I'd thought I'd share it since it's a funny link. Gary Adcock of the Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group shows uncompressed HD running on his 1Ghz TiBook. He has no way to capture or output it but he can run one stream of uncompressed. I don't think he can edit it very we'll though. The thing is people like Scott Billups have been using PowerBooks as DDR's for several years using CineWave HD in PCI expansion chassis from Magma. I was close to building one for a job myself but found another solution. On a side note I'd say you could probably tweak a PowerBook to run several streams of uncompressed HD if you use a lossless wavelet codec.


Scott Billups rig running uncompressed HD on a PowerBook. CineWave hooked up via Magma underneath the TiBook. This is from an issue of DV magazine. In this particular case he used Premiere 6.0 on OSX for stop motion animation.

FCP/PPro: New FireWire Box for uncompressed!

Convert Design has a new box out that does uncompresed SD over FireWire. It will retail at about $1495 and it will support both Mac and PC with FCP and PPro as host apps. It has a nice 19" rack design.

Production update: Premiere Pro Long Form Performance

I promised to get back on this since we've just finished editing on STINGER for Shoreline Entertainment. PPro is performing ok on large timelines. But not great. It's still far from the Avid but equal to FCP. I've also discovered a few AAF bugs going in and from PPRO and AE. Some of the Pro bundle plugins stops working now and then when I've imported a timeline from PPro into AE. I still find our PPro setup less "buggy" that our FCP setup.

Format wars!

I predict an uneven battle between HDV and DVCPRO HD in the coming two or three years on the below $10K systems. And I predict HDV will win. Looking at the release of FCP4 I cant stop to think that Apple underestimated the HDV craze that's going on right now. There's nothing wrong with editing DVCPRO HD over FireWire. But the format do have one gigantic flaw that pulls the rug under Apples marketing feets here in Europe (and in places like Australia)...DVCPRO HD is a 30p format running on 29,97 clock. There is no possibility to edit DVCPRO HD in 25p in the 50Hz world and integrate it into a regular post production workflow. My suggestion is that Apple stops marketing DVCPRO HD and FCP HD in PAL countries until they have integrated HDV in the workflow (Hey, FCP has been HD since version 1.5). It's a waste of time and money and resources and the users have better things to do than discover the truth the hard way... HDV however has no problem anywhere in the world. It's 25p as well as 30p.

PPro: Link

Check out Digital Media Nets dedicated Premiere Pro site.

PPro: More expensive solutions for PPro!

Matrox announced the Axio on IBC.

Matrox Axio makes Adobe Premiere Pro the foremost realtime HD and SD editor for demanding broadcast and post-production environments. It features no-render HD and SD finishing in compressed and uncompressed formats, superior color correction tools, advanced realtime effects, and a full range of analog and digital audio and video inputs and outputs. It incorporates Matrox Flex 3D and Power of X technologies to leverage scalable CPU power with the explosive performance of dedicated 3D graphics hardware to provide the ultimate SD and HD editing environment.

The Matrox Axio family builds on solid expertise gained over several generations of Matrox DigiSuite and RT Series products. Well over 200,000 users worldwide currently enjoy the amazing value, stable reliability, and superior productivity of Matrox based realtime nonlinear editing systems. Close collaboration between the Matrox and Adobe engineering teams throughout development ensure the tightest hardware/software integration.

The Matrox Axio software and hardware components are integrated into an approved workstation and sold through a network of Matrox authorized resellers. These resellers also provide installation and training services to customers worldwide.

It's probably good. Still a bit pricey compared to a DeckLink solution. The HD configuration is $12,000.

PPro: The new HDV plugin from Adobe.

There has been some speulation regarding the soon to be released HDV plugin from Adobe that will let you edit HDV in Premiere Pro. The news about the Adobe plugin hit just when Sony showed their new HDV consumer camera (the FX-1) that will probably be used by a lot of independent filmmakers like myself. The rumors say the plugin is written by CineForm. If it's true it's great news because I don't think Adobes current collaboration with MainConcept is going anywhere and CineForms visually lossless codec is awsome. The HDV solution Mpeg Pro coming from MainConcept leaves a lit to be desired in terms of workflow and over all quality. I personally thing that goes for all of MainConcepts Mpeg products. That's sad because MainConcepts are CHAMPS(!) for bringing Non Linear Video Editing to Linux with MainActor. One of the few NLE's available on Linux.