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Is FCS3 worth $300 to upgrade?
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[Erik Lindahl] “- The new “speed tools” in FCP is to be honest a joke. The rendering quality is so poor that no one in their right mind will use it. We are still forced with clumbersume round-trips to After Effects, Motion or Shake.”
How do you know? How long have you been making speed changes in FCP 7?
In my book the speed changes in FCP finally became usable in v4 or v5.
BTW, I see very crappy speed changes on scripted TV and even in feature films with 7 figure budgets all the time. Perhaps it’s harder than we think.
[Erik Lindahl] “- It’s very nice they develop the ProRes codec but it’s about time they look into Uncompressed alternatives (why can’t we get a 4:4:4:4 uncompressed workflow?). Where is a higher than 8-bit RGB workflow or some RT-effects working with uncompressed RGB files? Or perhaps an uncompressed format that has alpha-channel support?”
What’s wrong with compressed formats? HDCam SR and D5 are compressed. DPX and Cineon are compressed (through a trick of using log color space). TIFF and EXR can be compressed. If you need an uncompressed format with more than 8 bits and an alpha, do what most of the major shops do and use TIFF, EXR or DPX. These formats have been available for years, and the workflow for them is well established.
[Erik Lindahl] “- Where is the Shake replacement? No, Motion is not the answer.”
Like it or not, I expect that Motion will be the answer. Download the demo of Conduit from DV Garage, and you’ll see what I mean. For my money, nodal compositing inside of Motion would be a good thing. A very good thing! YMMV.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
You know if the new speed change method finally ends all of these stupid arguments (which I always seem to get sucked into!) about whether or not FCP should ripple the timeline or arbitrarily trim your clip, well, that alone is worth it!
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
[Rafael Amador] “[Elijah Lynn] “No multi-core support either. 🙁 ”
The tests in the “Prores White Papers” show that FC7 is able to use the 8 cores when installed on Snow Leopard.
They made the test with a pre-release of the next system.
Cheers,
Rafael”Thanks for pointing that out Rafael! Can’t wait for Snow Leopard. I will probably wait to do the upgrade for FCP and SL all at once.
Cheers,
Elijah
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Yes that (non-rippling speed change in TL)is my favorite new feature, long overdue. It will have to render out at a much higher quality than the current speed change algorithms in FCP 6 though to be truly useful anyway. Discreet edit had crystal clear slo-mo and speed up over 10 years ago that didn’t ripple the TL and would work in Real Time beautifully at any speed, even fractionals. It is like Walter has mentioned about the old Cinewave being able to achieve chroma-keying and alpha keying in real time without rendering. Discreet edit could do two layers of alpha in real time. It seems as the processors get better, the performance gets worse…. kind of backasswards….
Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows Vista Adobe Studio CS4, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.3, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 7, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects -
Christopher Wright – “Discreet edit had crystal clear slo-mo and speed up over 10 years ago that didn’t ripple the TL and would work in Real Time beautifully at any speed, even fractionals. … Discreet edit could do two layers of alpha in real time. It seems as the processors get better, the performance gets worse.”
I too worked on Discreet Edit and can confirm that you’re exactly right … I often wonder why it’s so difficult for today’s NLE’s to do things the NLE’s of 10-15 years ago could do easily. It seems that as everyone and their brother got into the video editing and NLE software games, and the NLE’s became increasingly designed to be all things to all people instead of just good NLEs, the various technologies/advantages were increasingly dispersed amongst more and more competitors so there are no longer NLEs that do all the standard things any editor needs (like time remapping, alphas, etc.) and do them all well. Perhaps we should just all have one NLE for time remapping, another for keying, another for mastering, etc.!!
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[Arnie Schlissel] “What’s wrong with compressed formats? HDCam SR and D5 are compressed. “
To add to that ProRes 4×4 is a superior format to those two. 12-bit with option of alpha channel. A ProRes 4×4 copy on a drive is a higher standard than a HDCAM SR tape. It’s really going to give the industry a shake up (at least on an independent level).
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net -
I might suggest that FCP is an editing program and not a Special Effects program like the three other programs you mention. I’d like to see those programs to a trim edit.
…and an editor needs something like “SmoothCam” or Color Correction tools? Final Cut Pro is far more than an editor – it’s also a online and finishing tool with short comings. Final Cut Pro getting a decent slowmotion engine would solve a lot of head-aches for many people I would imagine, and Apple already owns the technology so why not just add it?The 8-bit RGB limitation has likely been addressed as the ProRes 444444444 codec is a 12-bit RGB or YUV codec. Get that? 12-bit! How cool is that. I’ll take 12-bit and lossless at a sixth of the size over a 10-bit uncompressed codec anyday.
No it is not. ProRes is compressed and it’s not lossless. It’s virtually visually lossless over generations, huge difference. I can imagine ProRes 4:4:4:4 will offer used realtime video with alpha but again, that’s a huge limitation for some. Give us a “greater than 8-bit” RGBA codec that’s truly lossess please…I wonder the same thing, but I’m not a compositor/FX guru…
This is a dilemma with Final Cut Pro since it caters such a broad audience. I come from the online / finishing / special effects world and of course look at development primarily there.Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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How do I know FCP7 has a crappy speed-change engine? Well I don’t but Apple would for sure announce if FCP used optical flow / motion compensated slow-motion technology as Compressor / Shake / Motion / After Effects / AVID etc does.
Why is this a big let-down? Cause it makes life harder for any online project requiring speed-changes. Getting these done in the editor can help a done in some situations. AVID Symphony has had this for 5 years or something.
I see crappy speed changes on TV all the time, that doesn’t mean it has to be that way or should be that way. That just proves people producing them are doing it wrong or using the wrong tool for the jobb. To add to this, speed-change-technology can be used for transcoding as well (Compressor uses it). Wouldn’t it be cool if Final Cut could do this as well? Placing NTSC footage in a PAL timeline? Yes, there would be rendering (or “conforming”) involved but it would be a killer feature for sure.
What’s wrong with compressed formats? Little serious post-production work is done with highly compressed formats. Lossless compression is a good, lossy compression is not. If you have a transport format such as HDCAM SR adding a second compression generation isn’t very optimal i general. It could just be I’ve had bad experience with ProRes, but I have little faith in it for post-heavy work.
Conduit from DV Garage is a cool plug-in but it’s not the solution. It might be Motion 4 is worth a look, but pervious version have been way to sluggish and bug-riddled for me to take serious.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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If ProRes 4444 beats HDCAM SR in it’s compression-level I stand corrected. Previously I’ve had very poor experience with ProRes. But if this is true and telecine’s actually start using this it’s truly a nice feature.
On source of worry (and it made be giggle a bit cause sadly it’s pretty “Appleish”):
Source:
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS2861?viewlocale=en_USSymptoms
Rendering PAL material to ProRes 4444 in Color introduces a gamma shift in the resulting video file.Resolution
Avoid rendering PAL material to ProRes 4444 in Color as it can cause unexpected results.—
Apple has in the past been a bit “slow” on PAL-support which can cause serious issues in Europe.
Regarding ProRes vs HDCAM SR – If I’m not misstaken, HDCAM SR is 440 or 880 Mbit 10-bit where ProRes 4444 is 330 mbit 12-bit. Given ProRes is a new:er codec I guess it could beat HDCAM but you’re at a higher bit-depth and much lower bitrate.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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That’s just the codec, which proves it is modern and thought through which is very good.
Question is how effective FCP will be at handling this (I’ve never seen FCP use more than 3 of my 8 cores here at home). For instance you can’t send an FCP sequence for compression via a compressor cluster apparently due to the fact FCP can’t open multiple instances of it self.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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