Dennis Lisonbee
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Amen Brother!
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Matt is under a strict NDA. However, with permission from the very highest level he was given permission to issue memo 24:36, which addresses the release date head on.
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[Linda Robertson] “I got the joke. What I want to know is when is the release date?”
According to new sources deep within Apple, here is the answer we all have been waiting for: Matt: 24:36
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We sure did have iPhones in the 60’s. It was made by AT&T right in the US of A. There was a problem with reception so in stead of a bumper AT&T gave you this long antennae that you plugged in the wall and it worked fine. The audio workflow was typical. You recorded the audio with a little suction cup onto a Nagra, then transcoded it mag stripe via a resolve plug-in. And no 2 gig limit! As much bandwidth as you wanted. AT&T had problems with the video portion. We wanted a Pro application and all they had was an expensive black and white, interlaced low rez picture so Kodak introduced a super 8 film unit but we wanted more resolution and color depth. It created a firestorm because a bunch of tech geeks thought the new negative 35mm film stock was simply super 8 on steroids. I liked the 35mm prosumer technology because I could edit it on the prosumer moviola technology.
Workflow was slow. The picture had to be transcoded to workprint overnight in a dark lab, put in sync with the mag stripe, then edge coded. And the interface? The tech geek critics said too many lever clicks and tape tears. So it never caught on with wannabes who thought AT&T, Kodak and movieola was pulling something over on them. They stayed with holding the picture up to the light bulb, cutting it with scissors, taping it and running it on a projector. And the geeks finally gave up because no one would hire them but people wanting cheap wedding films.
The band is happy I’m an early adopter of technology. They don’t have to help me lift a B3 and Leslie on stage cause of digital sampling perfected by the Japanese and the 35mm blimped camera has been replaced by the AT&T high rez picture and sound device designed by Apple and made by the Chinese. And there is no long antenna, just a rubber bumper that fits tight around the phone.
Of course it is all going to change next week when I take the RED onstage with me. I’m getting complaints that 1980 resolution is bush league; you can’t be professional unless you are shooting on RAW 4K and editing it on AVID or Premiere.
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The one cool thing about all these pickle suckers who would rather blog’n whine than cut, is after FCP X comes out this blog will turn into a useful place.
Well who can blame them? Isn’t whining something editors do when they don’t have deadlines to meet?
As for me, I’ve cut on everything from a Movieola, to a flat bed; from Quad tape and a razorblade to Betacam and CMX. And I believe what Apple is doing could very well simplify the whole workflow in a wonderfully revolutionary way.
And yes, Apple snuck out a new editing interface called iMovie as a little test of simplifying workflow. So what? The trolls are making it out to be world war III and it is nothing more than a test of an atomic reaction.
I can understand the problem here. I’ve never paid any attention to iMovie. Till now. I was so bored Saturday that I pulled out my iPhone 4, shot some spring flowers and downloaded all the footage of my grandchildren I’ve taken over the past 11 months onto iPhoto, downloaded iMovie and decided to see what I could do. Within a half hour or so all the families had full resolution movies with music and sound effects downloaded their computers. It was certainly heck of a lot more fun trying something new than doing it the boring old way on Avid, Premier or FCP. Kind of like the first time I used a faltbed.
I wanted some more fun so I cut a music video of my 60’s rock band from the stuff I shot on stage with my iPhone and sent the full resolution version out to the group. Unfortunately two of the guys are on memory leaking windoze machines. I simply did a couple of mouse clicks in iMovie and sent them a higher compressed, lower resolution version for their machines with DOS DNA. Regardless of resolution, everyone was blown away. They had no idea what I was doing pointing my phone at them the last four gigs.
After the music video I was bored again and decided to mow my half acre of lawn. Emptying the last bag of clippings I remembered the 5D test footage I shot of my property with a steadycam over a year ago. What would iMovie do with H.264? After a cold drink I slapped that H.264 into iMovie. Using 32 bits and way too little memory iMovie converted it to something more useful than H.264. I cut it, did a little color grading, added some sound effects and music and sent it full resolution to someone who wanted to be reminded that the Rocky Mountains turn green and lush in the summer.
So after trying out an editor that some seem fully convinced is the new Final Cut Pro X, I’m looking forward to June when I’ll plop down $299, pull out the Red and shoot a story, then fire up the 12 cores and see if the bloggin’ nay sayers are right about FCP X being nothing more than iMovie with a couple more lines of steroid code.
And if you think I’m just some ridiculous old man who wants a fight, let’s get a pile of footage. I’ll simply take iMovie and you take AVID, Premier Pro or whatever you want. In short time we will see if it’s the software that makes the editor.
Sorry for hogging the bandwidth because it is all meaningless anyway. You know the story… arguing about software we have never seen or used makes as much sense as giving a girlfriend or wife a year long pass to Weight Watchers.
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You can certainly edit effectively on a Macbook Pro. There are several workflows. Here is one workflow I’ve use on location. It requires R3D software from here: https://www.r3ddata.com/ Tiger Direct sells Dual Channel SATA cards for the Macbook Pro Express Slot. (Remember that the engineer who designed the SATA connectors did not have a clue they would be used like a firewire 800 external drive. The connectors and the express card can easily slip out. I’m gaffer taping the SATA cable down from now on.
1. Using R3D software create two “sum checked” backups on two separate SATA drives. On a Macbook Pro, use the firewire 800 port for the Red Hard Drive and Two SATA Drives via a two SATA port Express Card. The “sum check” guarantees the files are perfect copies.
2. At the same time a ProRez file can be created and put on either of the SATA drives or on the MacPro HD.
3. Vault the SATA Drives.
4. Edit with the ProRez files.
Like film, the asset management at the beginning is slow and time consuming. However, RED is a high end tool much like film. Film is processed, then workprinted or transferred to digital for editing. The camera original is placed in a vault. This process takes time. Same with the RED. Instead of processing and workprinting we create sum checked backups and a ProRez (or codec of your choice) workprint. It takes time. These are large file, but drives are cheap. Reshooting footage is not.
We have found DP’s who are using the RED are treating the digital assets like betacam footage or HDV footage shot on memory cards. Many of them don’t understand the workflow or why sum checked backups are needed. As a result they are asking for trouble. Additionally, a feature film completion bond company is going to require the backups. If you don’t and the drive fails, they are not going to pay for reshoots because you did not properly create two to three sum checked copies. Again, Drives and sum checks are cheap, reshooting is not.
My 2 Cents
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1. What format is your timeline (Settings) is the timeline format the same as the assets?
2. Where are the assets. Any on a server? If even one file is on a server somewhere it will sloooow things down.
3. What are the specs of you computer? Compressing to H.264 on anything but a 8 core Intel is going to be slooooooow. -
Better yet, buy an external Blu-Ray and install DoStudio on Boot Camp. Or buy another MacPro Tower and when not using it to author a DVD use it as part of a render farm. With Snow Leopard and the coming release of FCP 3 we can be assured creating a render farm is going to be stunning.
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Purchased 16 GB SDHC class 6 transcend cards from newegg and two MxR Express Card 34 Readers from e-films. At the time the SDHC cards were $27 each. They are now over $40 each.
Took the system to Guatemala and Mexico for a week to shoot ancient ruins. Worked fantastically. Each night I would back up onto the system drive of my MacBook Pro and an external drive. The external drive crashed so the moment I got home I backed everything up to two external drives. Backup, backup, backup is the rule if you are not going to archive the memory cards.
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FCP Suite is a powerful and mature piece of editing software. For me, the most helpful step forward in the Suite is rendering time. Simplifying work flow for using multiple computer and improved use of multiprocessing power is what we can expect next. Snow Leopard is going to open up a whole new era in rendering and could very well turn the whole business in it’s ear. Then will come the Suite. We will not be disappointed.