[Chris Kenny]

[Adam Berk] “It will be interesting to see if FCP X will fix any of these age old quality issues that have plagued FCP and quicktime since the beginning.”

Presumably, since it’s based on neither. Apple mentioned at the Supermeet event that it processes in a linear float color space.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[walter biscardi] “Your editing monitor does not have to be a CRT, hasn’t needed to be for several years now. There are professional Grade 1 monitors like the Flanders Scientific we keep mentioning (but you keep ignoring) that take a proper interlaced signal from a proper video card such as AJA or BlackMagic and display it properly on their LCD reference monitors.

I’m done with this discussion, if you want to recommend a computer panel with a software simulation, that’s your choice.”

Yes, I’m aware that people regularly monitor from LCDs. It’s the core of my argument that it’s not necessary to monitor from a natively interlaced display.

Look, here’s my point. The current standard signal chain for monitoring, say, 60i goes something like this:

1) NLE
2) Video I/O card (AJA, Blackmagic, etc.)
3) “Real” video signal (60i over HD-SDI or HDMI)
4) Video monitor processing (processes 60i into 60p)
5) Video monitor display hardware (usually a 60p LCD, these days)

The first four steps of this process consist exclusively of moving around and manipulating ones and zeros. And the manipulations being performed are simple enough that they can now be done in software. Thus, the entire chain is theoretically reducible to:

1) NLE (which also processes processes 60i into 60p)
2) Standard computer graphics card
3) 60p DVI or DisplayPort signal
4) Standard 60 Hz computer monitor

There is no fundamental technical reason the image displayed though this signal chain cannot be entirely identical to the image displayed through the previous signal chain. And if you’re talking about, say, a high-end 24″ Dell monitor (which is more than capable of reproducing Rec. 709 these days) substituting for a 24″ Flanders Scientific monitor, and you include the cost of a video I/O interface, this second approach saves perhaps $4,500. It also lets you monitor any sort of strange non-standard format you want to, because it’s not constrained to signals that can be represented as standard video, lets you use operating system color management to calibrate the monitor instead of expensive and laborious manual external calibration systems, and it lets you display GPU-rendered graphics without having to ship them back over the system bus to a video I/O card, thus saving PCIe bandwidth and enhancing performance.

Now, I don’t recommend this approach to anyone right now, because there really isn’t much pro video software designed to work with this signal chain. Currently most NLE’s don’t understand OS color management (which means you have no idea what sort of color you’re getting on a computer display), and many can’t necessarily provide technically correct real-time de-interlacing.

But with ColorSync support in FCP X, it looks like Apple is at least taking one step in the direction of resolving this. That support should at least allow accurate representation of video color on computer displays. That seems like a worthwhile thing to mention to someone looking to save money on monitoring two months before FCP X comes out.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[walter biscardi] “You really don’t understand broadcasting do you?

David and I are not talking about the signal that goes to the TV. We are talking about the requirements of broadcaster across the world.

If you are required to deliver a 1080i / 59.94 (or 29.97) signal to a broadcaster (which 100% of the broadcasters I work with do) then you MUST be able to view that 1080i / 59.94 (or 29.97) signal properly on your editing monitor.”

And what I’m telling you is that unless your editing monitor is a CRT, there is nothing it is doing to let you “properly” view that interlaced signal that couldn’t in principle be done in software, to provide the same result on a 60 Hz computer monitor. If you think there is something it’s doing that couldn’t be done in software, what is that thing?

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[David Roth Weiss] “HDTVs or monitors are designed to display both interlaced and progressive video signals, despite the fact that they are native progressive displays. And, improper or mismatched fields are processed and displayed improperly on such monitors, making such anomalies easily detectable. The same errors go undetected on computer monitors fed by graphics cards or computer display cards. “

I fully acknowledge that this is true with current editing systems (all of them, as far as I’m aware), but there is no fundamental technical reason why it has to be the case. The result of the de-interlacing that takes place inside an HDTV to drive, say, a 60p panel from a 60i source just produces a 60p signal that’s sent to the panel. This process could be precisely duplicated in software and used to generate an image to send to a 60p panel connected via a standard computer graphics card. There are even computer displays and graphics cards that can natively sync at 24 and 50 Hz, for dealing with other frame rates. Or, for that matter, you could simply hook up an HDTV to a standard graphics card via a DVI to HDMI adaptor, and then calibrate it via ColorSync rather than having to mess with LUTs.

About the only real limitation to this approach is that OS X can’t currently drive computer displays at more than 8 bits/pixel. But it’s probably fine for 90% of what people are presently using external monitoring for.

Basically, a lot of people are wasting a lot of money on monitoring because NLE developers haven’t been interested in moving past the traditional approaches, which originated in a world of interlaced analog video, desktop operating systems with no color management, and computer displays that couldn’t duplicate TV color spaces. I don’t know that Apple has managed to entirely solve this problem, but supporting ColorSync in Final Cut Pro X is at least a good first step toward dragging digital video monitoring out of the past.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[walter biscardi] “Yes, you DO display fields. 1080i is an interlaced format. Standard definition is an interlaced format.

Yes you DO want to see fields so when these formats are displayed on interlaced monitors / projectors, there are no surprises. You absolutely positively do NOT want your software or hardware converting your interlaced to progressive unless you need it to.

That’s why we recommend Flanders Scientific monitors. They properly display interlaced images. “

Again, LCDs are natively progressive. Flanders Scientific monitors may “properly display interlaced images”, but unless they’re doing something really, really bizarre (and their marketing material doesn’t seem to mention any especially unusual handing of interlaced material) they do so by processing them and then putting them on a progressive panel. There is, in principle, no reason this couldn’t be done in software.

If you absolutely need to see interlaced material as interlaced material, with no processing of any kind, as far as I know the only way to do this is to use a CRT.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[David Roth Weiss] “I suspect that’s wishful thinking Chris, because accurate color is only part of the equation. I don’t think that even Apple has yet figured out a way to properly display fields on computer monitors.

So, I wouldn’t be throwing all those Flanders monitors and AJA, BM, and Matrox I/O devices in the dumpster just yet. However, I will provide my address and the precise location of my dumpster for anyone who thinks I might be underestimating the FCX architects in this regard.”

You don’t display fields, you de-interlace in software first. What kind of external display are you monitoring on? Unless it’s a CRT, there’s a de-interlacing step in there somewhere anyway, probably handled by hardware within the display. LCD, plasma and DLP are all natively progressive.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Andy Mees] “No. Thats a “display” output, not a “video” output ie it appears as a extended desktop monitor output to the OS but not as a broadcast video output to the NLE.”

Mind you, in FCP X (sorry if this violates forum boundaries, but it seems relevant to someone trying to save money on monitoring), there’s a fair chance you’ll be able to get decently accurate video on a monitor connected to a normal GPU, thanks to its new ColorSync support.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Adam Berk] “It certainly would be silly. So even though we’re talking 10bit RGB here, you’re saying that PR4444 is a situation where the 8-bit limitation of FCP’s RGB implementation and gamma shift issues no longer apply?”

ProRes 4444 can encode either RGB or YUV data (YUV lets you store subsampled color, it doesn’t require you to). It’s possible ProRes always represents itself to FCP as YUV to take advantage of high bit depth rendering, performing conversions internally. Red’s Redcode codec uses this trick, I think. I’ve never been able to find a definitive answer to this question.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Steve Douglas] “Just one of my many concerns is that since it will be available only as a download it will mean that the $299 price will apply to only one Mac. Guess you will have to pay double to also download it on your laptop.”

That shouldn’t be a problem. See here for discussion of App Store licensing rules. In particular:

When you buy an app on the Mac App Store, you’re getting the rights to run that program on any Macs you own and operate, for your personal use. Basically, if your household has a half-dozen different Macs, including desktops and laptops, you can buy a copy of Gratuitous Space Battles and play it on every single one of them. Consider a purchase of consumer software via the Mac App Store to be a bit like buying a household site license for the app.

The situation is slightly different for apps that are considered commercial or professional in nature. For apps that fall into this category—Aperture’s a good example—the Mac App Store license says that you essentially can install that item on computers you use or on a single computer shared by multiple people. Basically think of it as a one-seat license for a pro app.

It’s no more restrictive than standard software licensing, and there’s less obnoxious technical enforcement than a lot of apps have; if an App Store app manages to de-authorize itself, all you have to do is log into your iTunes account to reauthorize it. You don’t have to call someone on the phone and beg them to let you use the software you’ve paid for. Ditto for transferring the app to a new machine. In fact, you can just authorize the new machine on your iTunes account and then flip over to the ‘Purchased’ tab and install your apps right from there.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Steve Douglas] “Automatically saves every hour? Heck I save every few minutes. A lot of work could be lost in an hours time.”

Lion (with an app that supports the new saving features) automatically saves everything immediately. It automatically creates a new version every hour (that you can revert back to in the future). Or you can create a new version manually whenever you want to.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read What is FCP X’s relationship to iMovie? on our blog.