[Alan Okey]

It’s funny – a few years ago, Fusion and Nuke were running almost neck and neck in the post-Shake compositing market, but then Nuke just took off. I haven’t kept up with what’s happening with Fusion, but it seems I rarely hear it mentioned anymore.

There was actually an Eyeon Fusion forum on the Cow very, very briefly, but it was killed due to lack of participation.

[Alan Okey]

[Herb Sevush] “As someone who owned Discreet products in the past (edit* & combustion) I would like to state for the record that in my opinion Discreet / Audtodesk is the most dishonorable, disingenuous, disagreeable and disloyal company I have ever dealt with.”

I agree completely.

Great products, great developers, despicable management. They make Apple look like an amateur when it comes to abandoning or killing great software.

[Alan Okey]

I just realized that the video you posted is just the spot, not the behind-the-scenes smoke discussion/tutorial. Looks like it’s no longer on the Autodesk site, unfortunately. It really highlighted the power of having all of smoke’s tools available during editorial.

[Alan Okey]

I’ve shown about 20 people the exact same video over the past few years. It’s always a crowd pleaser…

[Alan Okey]

Very interested here to find out what they announce…

[Alan Okey]

Apple’s h.264 encoder is one of the worst out there. If you have Adobe Media Encoder, use that instead. Or, install the x264 encoder. All h.264 encoders are not created equal!

https://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/x264encoder-vs-the-apple-codec.html

[Alan Okey]

I just assumed that everyone knew by now that Jeffrey Harrell created this video… After all, it’s only been out for months now.

https://jefferyharrell.tumblr.com/

And it’s not exactly a big secret that he’s no fan of FCPX.

[Alan Okey]

There is nothing wrong with or strange about seeing interlacing if you shot 1080i50. If you were watching your video on a broadcast monitor instead of on the computer display, you would not see the interlacing. Computer monitors cannot properly display interlaced material, which is why you see lines.

I’m not sure why FCP is using 1080p24 for the sequence setting, because your sequence settings need to match the format you shot, which is 1920x1080i50. Change your sequence settings to ProRes 422 1920×1080 50i.

What is your final delivery medium? Web? DVD? If you are exporting for web, don’t use FCP’s deinterlacing filter. Just edit your video, render, export a Quicktime movie (uncheck self-contained) and open the exported Quicktime in Compressor.

When you compress your video for the web, you can use Compressor to create a deinterlaced 25p video file. Turn frame controls on in the motion tab of the inspector window. Change Resize to Best, Output Fields to Progressive, and Deinterlace to Better or Best. Compressor’s deinterlacing is much better than FCP’s deinterlacing filter.

If you are making a DVD, there is no need to deinterlace your video. It will look fine when played back on a standalone DVD player connected to a TV set, and most decent DVD playback applications on computers have built-in realtime deinterlacing algorithms.

[Alan Okey]

[Scott Thomas] “I owned and worked with a couple of different versions of Combustion. I thought the Keying and Color Correction were great, but man was it ever flakey.”

Out of curiosity, were you running the Mac or Windows version? I’ve heard many say that the Mac version was never quite as stable or as fast as the Windows version. Windows users also got Backburner, which Mac users never got.

[Alan Okey]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Apple just went off and did exactly what they felt like. Critical feedback came to absolutely nothing. For a creative livelihood industry mainstay.”

To play devil’s advocate, look at it from Apple’s point of view. If their intention was to create an entirely new paradigm for editing that dispensed with all of the legacy baggage of past NLEs, and they wanted to redefine the future of editing software, why should they have cared what the old dogs thought? They were more interested in starting from a blank slate, not in catering to old habits and traditions just for the sake of making things more comfortable for some stodgy old pros who work in the isolated bubble of a tiny niche market.

I’m not implying that I agree with that philosophy, but Apple’s apparent disregard for “pro” feedback does make sense from a certain perspective.