Blackmagic beta driver

[Craig Seeman]

I’ve also heard there are major changes in Blackmagic Media Express used for control over tape I/O that might be useful to FCPX.

[John Pale]

I have it installed. I have a Decklink Studio card.

There is no external monitoring for FCPX yet. Decklink does not currently have the extended desktop feature, as AJA does (this is how AJA hacked a ‘preview’ quality output for the Kona as a temp workaround)

Media Express has been updated in a big way. The capture tool and edit to tape interface is actually better than in FCP 7. Very nicely designed. You can easily capture media (with some metadata support) and import the media into FCP X with metadata intact. You can edit to tape Quicktime movies exported from FCPX.

There is some XML support. You can export bins from FCP 7 as XML. You can load the XML into Media Express for recapture and use in FCP X on another system that does not have FCP 7. This does not mean you can export an XML of a sequence for recapture, but its something of value.

[Craig Seeman]

[John Pale] “Media Express has been updated in a big way. The capture tool and edit to tape interface is actually better than in FCP 7. Very nicely designed. You can easily capture media (with some metadata support) and import the media into FCP X with metadata intact. You can edit to tape Quicktime movies exported from FCPX.

There is some XML support. You can export bins from FCP 7 as XML. You can load the XML into Media Express for recapture and use in FCP X on another system that does not have FCP 7.”

This is going to be such an interesting year. I can’t help but think that Apple was considering the developers when they decided where things are going with FCPX.

It’ll be interesting to see what moves AJA and Matrox make for tape handling.
Tangentially it’s worth noting how AJA has woven some of its hardware products around Apple ProRes.
I think the hardware developers have strong financial incentives to support FCPX and FCPX features will be “filled in” over time.

[Bret Williams]

Could all this stuff be sold through the app store? Apple gets it’s 30% cut then.

[John Pale]

What stuff?

Media Express 3 is free, but only works with BMD cards.

AJA has their own utility, but its pretty bare bones right now.

[Bret Williams]

Al these add-ons, plug-ins, additional apps. As the app store takes off, it’s going to be the place people look for apps for their mac. That’s the goal at least. I wouldn’t doubt if eventually Apple closes down the whole ecosystem like the iPhone. Hard to deny that’s the direction they’re heading. They’ll tell us it’s to keep viruses off our computers. To keep them running efficiently, etc.