Chris Kenny
Forum Replies Created
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[Peter Berg] “Those limitations are not that limiting. Alot of the TV documentaries that I color would not need any of those features.”
There are lots of shots where you might not end up using more than two nodes, but having the option to do so for shots that do require it is fairly important. Some people might be able to live with this limitation for in-house projects, but they probably weren’t going to pay for a color grade anyway. I think it will be nearly impossible to set yourself up as a colorist who charges for his services with the free version. How does that work in client sessions?
Client: “Can we maybe put a window on the right over there, to bring down that wall?”
Colorist: “Well, we could, but I was too cheap to buy the full version of Resolve, and I’m out of nodes.”
The truth is, by the time you’re done building the rest of a real-time Resolve system, the cost of the software isn’t even that significant. The free version will be used for prepping, as an on-set DIT utility, and by do-it-yourself types. Not in grading suites. Blackmagic will probably see almost no cannibalization of the paid version.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Alex Geroulaitis] “Anything specific? For example, Vegas Pro 10 does use GPU acceleration in some encoding tasks, but it’s insignificant compared to Adobe’s use of it.”
This is an entirely new engine. There’s no reason they wouldn’t be using it essentially everywhere it’s possible to use it.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Dennis Radeke] “What do you base this on?”
The GPU/multicore stuff Apple is doing looks far more sophisticated than anything Avid has so far. Hell, Media Composer is still a 32-bit app — we’ve been hearing about lack of GPU/multicore or 64-bit with respect to FCP 7 for a couple of years now as proof that Apple doesn’t care about pro users, but somehow people cut Avid tons of slack on the exact same issues.
Compared with Avid, Adobe is doing a lot better on the GPU/multicore front. Their Mercury engine already has capabilities similar to what Apple seems to be introducing… the catch is that Adobe is using CUDA, not OpenCL, so Mercury only works on a handful of NVIDIA GPUs, whereas FCP X should be able to take significant advantage of GPU acceleration on most modern systems. If you’re running FCP X vs. Premiere Pro on a current-generation MacBook Pro, for instance, it’s going to be day and night.
As far as I know, the ColorSync support in FCP X is not a feature found in either Media Composer or Premiere, and it’s a fairly big deal. Standard desktop displays have been able to accurately reproduce video color spaces for years now, but editors have been stuck buying video I/O interfaces and monitoring on external displays set up off of color bars, which provide less accurate color than you can get get with a $200 calibration device and a desktop display, if you only have the right software support. If Apple’s implementation of ColorSync support lives up to what’s technically possible, they’ll have made external monitoring unnecessary for probably 80 or 90% of the users who currently need it.
And then of course there’s ProRes, where Apple was already well ahead of the competition. Adobe has no answer to ProRes (surprised they let Cineform get acquired by GoPro; it would have solved all of their problems), and Avid’s DNxHD has neither the range (offline through 4:4:4) nor the third-party device support that ProRes has. You can now shoot, edit, color grade, and in some cases even deliver a feature film (an indie, anyway) without ever leaving the ProRes format.
People can fight all day about whether the UI looks too much like iMovie’s or whatever. From a technical perspective, Apple has its ducks in a row.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Greg Andonian] “The second music clip that moved down to make room for the first is now on another track, but it’s still part of the timeline- and you’re still going to hear it if you play the whole thing back- so you’re going to hear both of them playing at the same time, creating a very undesirable effect.
You’ll have to trim the second one back or fade it in to make sure this doesn’t happen, and at that point it seems to me it would be faster and easier (though less visually appealing) to use the old paradigm. Maybe I’m missing something here- I figured J and L cuts would be impossible until I watched the demo- but I don’t see how they’re going to get around this, unless they automatically mute the portion of the downward-moving clip that’s covered by the new one coming in. But you wouldn’t always want that either…”
I would guess that you will have to manually trim one or the other of the music clips in a case like this. But (not having using it yet, obviously), I think the Magnetic Timeline approach is still better, because it lets you do things in a more natural order. That is, if you decide you want to move a clip somewhere you can just do it. It might result in some undesirable overlapping, but this is essentially non-descructive — you can see exactly what happened, and you still have all the media on the timeline at the end of the move that you did at the beginning.
I think this is a big improvement on the current situation, where if you want to move a clip in a similar circumstance, you either have to sort out the collision manually prior to performing the move (which breaks your flow), or perform an edit that overwrites media on the timeline, which actually destroys information about your previous editing decisions.
From the demo, it doesn’t look like there’s anything you can do just by dragging clips around that has the side effect of removing media. That seems extremely valuable, especially for rough cuts and assembly edits — you can decide what media you want to use, toss in on a timeline, and then sort of juggle it around there, without having to carefully plan edits to make sure you’re not overwriting things.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Alex Geroulaitis] “Was GPU acceleration mentioned in any way at the FCP X “sneak peak” demo?”
Yes. It uses OpenCL.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Jeremy Garchow] “That’s true of any slate, digital or analog.”
Sure, but it’s worse with a slate that’s a backlit glossy screen.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
We’ve occasionally done iPad slating. It works very well in some lighting conditions, poorly in others. In very dark shots with a fast lens that’s wide open, for instance, you can sometimes entirely blow out the screen, to the point where you can’t make out text. And outside there can be reflection problems.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
Nice Dissolve Digital Cinema -
[Aindreas O Gallchoir] “Clips automatically swapping around each other looks insane – my edit is not a jenga puzzle, that has to be turnoffable.”
I suspect it’s likely that Magnetic Timeline can be toggled off with a key, like snapping on the timeline in FCP 7.
[Aindreas O Gallchoir] “with only a single smart cursor, in other words with the tool palette, and the other states of the cursor (blade, slip, roll) gone, does this mean i have to jump into the AB trim mode all the time?”
I have no specific information about Apple’s approach, but you could do all of this very smoothly with modifier keys. Position the cursor just to the left of a clip boundary, and you’d get the ripple tool by default, but hit the option key and you’d get the roll tool. Position the cursor over the middle of a clip and you’d get the selection tool, hold option for the slip tool.
[Aindreas O Gallchoir] “why is there an entire menu designated “share” and is anyone else freaked out by that?”
Not especially. If it’s like the Share command in FCP 7, it’s for generating all sorts of useful Internet deliverables and also provides access to Compressor presets. That’s not just ‘prosumer’ functionality.
[Aindreas O Gallchoir] “why are they listing as key benefits auto tools to compensate for shoddy audio and bad camera shake? these are prosumer solutions, is this a prosumer product?”
Audio glitches and camera shake are the exclusive domain of amateur productions. I see them all the time on indie features. Yes, hopefully on a feature you’ve got better approaches to fixing these things than FCP’s automated tools — but typically those approaches don’t come into play until after your edit is locked. So even on features, there’s value in FCP X’s automatic footage-fixing capabilities — it should make offline edits feel a little more polished, which eliminates distractions and lets you send around higher quality rough cuts.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
Nice Dissolve Digital Cinema -
[Scott Davis] “Yes FCP is $299. Previously the entire suite (FCP, DVDSP, Motion, Soundtrack, Compressor, Color) was $1000. 6 applications for $1000 versus 1 for $300. Simple division; the price has gone up!
“Heh.
You also have to consider that the App Store has no upgrade pricing. Yeah, FCP X is $299. But FCP 11 (or whatever they call it) will probably be another $299, even for existing owners. So all they’ve done is lower the initial purchase price… which will probably result in more customers on the FCP upgrade treadmill, which is just as profitable as it used to be. It’s pretty clear that FCP is going to make more money for Apple, not less, as a consequence of this approach to pricing. There’s not much cause to worry about it becoming a less important product to the company.
(Anyway, the two big reasons Apple is in such a niche market in the first place is that a) it helps sell expensive hardware and b) I think Apple gets legitimately excited about making tools that world-class creative types use to do interesting things. Both of those motivations would still be there even if they gave the app away for free.)
Digital Workflow/Colorist
Nice Dissolve Digital Cinema -
[Andree Franks] “Your right I had the same feeling, and now I really want it and try it out!
For some reason I feel [from what I have seen] the new FCP X is leaning toward a Smoke like software.
Not just editing but finishing it one app.”Linear floating point processing is certainly leaning in that direction. The open question is support for non-MOV file formats, like R3D or DPX — whether it’s there out of the box, and if it’s not, what kind of extensibility is possible.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
Nice Dissolve Digital Cinema