Erik Lindahl
Forum Replies Created
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I think Apple has shown they aren’t interested in the very high-end market with the latest release of FCS and the killing of Shake. They have nothing to show for in terms of high-end compositing (Shake was and I guess is good but it’s a dead-end application). Their color correction tools are like most desktop-environemnts – split up in different applications. Something like Color is good, and an awesome audition to Final Cut Studio, but yeah… It’s “yet another app”. This sometimes has it’s pro’s, but it’s not really an “integrated” experience (if we in FCP had a “color mode” we’d be talking but then again, not many of FCP’s users would actually want that either).
It’s very hard having a product that caters for the avid home user, the weeding photograph editor, the sports and sitcom editors, the TVC and film editors as well as the people that would finnish all of the above… Color correction, effects, titles etc. I would LOVE to see a “Final Cut Extreme” finnishing tool, but with that I don’t want to loose the flexibilty of the editor of my chose the past, what is it, 10 years now.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
Smoke is made for the select few at the high-end so the question is what Autodesk’s goal is here.
a) Spread Smoke to the masses of “upper class” post production – much like Imagineer Systems have started to do with their line-up of products.
b) Keep Smoke on it’s “select few” but bridge the gap (i.e. better intergration with FCP / AE / Nuke and other desktop apps)
c) Smoke for OSX might be seen as an “audition” to the current Smoke user (i.e. bring Smoke to the home-studio, have a few extra smoke-licenes if needed etc).The above boils down to features, performance and price point. I also think, spreading Smoke for the masses, wouldn’t Windows be a better option? I guess porting a Linux app to OSX might be easier but still…
I can say the thing i lack in my FCP world is an “extreme” option. I’m however not sure Smoke is the answer either, given it’s a high performance tool, the UI / workflow is very very different compared to FCP / AE (if that’s the market Autodesk is targeting). Hopefully we’ll know more after the 18th!
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
Not to forget about Cleaner…
Smoke on OSX sounds interesting especially if it can live in my FCP / AE / SHAKE world and doesn’t cost me the odd 80K Euro’s to buy. I would however fully understand a strict hardware policy.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
My problem solved it self after I installed Final Cut Studio 3 with Final Cut Pro 7. Probably not what you wanted to hear but that’s sadly the solution I found. This sorted a bunch of gamma-related issues I had (working with non-stanard video files such as ProRes files with a 1280×800 resolution). My best tip is to get Final Cut Studio 3, the upgrade price is in the scheme of things minor.
With the error the gamma issue was so big I’m not sure just going for a ref-monitor would be “the fix”. Sure it would be a possible temporary solution but I’d be irritated by the miss-match every day for sure.
I know MacOSX 10.6.2 has some FCS-specific fixes so perhaps that helps you? The other thing I would try i setting the monitor gamma to 1.8 and see if that helps (i.e. if it’s a double gamma correction bug in FCP6 that doesn’t take you monitor profile into context).
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
What FCP, Color and RED codec versions are you using? Are you viewing material on screen or on a ref-monitor? If the later, what video card are you using?
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
I can second this… Tape-based back-up is very solid in a lot of situations. The only down-sides are:
– Relatively slow random access of files
– Higher base-line price (i.e. you will have to get tape-recorder of some sort, you will have to get a back-up software of some sort)If you want to live cheap get a disk or raid-set of some sort ≈30% large than your current system has and use TimeMachine.
If you want to live safe get a spare drive and use TimeMachine for near-realtime-project-file backups and a tape-based solution for daily back-ups of EVERYTHING. The Tape-based solution will also act has an archive, getting TimeMachine to do this is perhaps possible but you need a lot of storage.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
My thoughts are exactly as yours:
– In PAL stay with 25p what ever your end-output is (i.e. cinema, digital or TVC)
– In NTSC stay with 24p or 23.98p for their “standard” inverse telecine for TVC’s if neededBut as you state, everything in the 2K world is geared towards a 24p or 23.98p workflow which to me doesn’t makes sense when shooting in a PAL country. Does anyone have a solid answer to why this is? I get shooting film at 24p saves you 1 frame per second i.e you gain 2.5s material per minute with the same amount of film or in the digital world – bandwidth. But this seems to me plain silly when working in a 25 fps / 50 Hz environment…
At least now, with FCS3 / SL, it seems a 2K 25p workflow has become a lot smoother performance wise.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
Playback of RED files in Color is now near realtime. I see 24-25 fps. It jumps here and there but it’s very similar to ProRes on the same system amazing.
Playback of proxy RED QuickTime files in FCP now playbacks at full 25 fps and not the odd 12-15 fps as it was before. The “only” point to the 2K (2048×1024) plates but that’s more than enough for most post-workflows. I’m using a ProRes 4:4:4:4 timeline for this.
The resolution lowered a little in FCP-playback but still looks awesome.
Playback in QuickTime isn’t vastly changed but it also plays back the footage in it’s entirety I think.
The above performance improvements might just be related to 25p, I can’t say for sure. It was pretty poor compared to the times I’d seen RED on tradeshows before and I thought I was doing something wrong on my system… Yet, I had a long talk to one of the AJA tech’s about this and he bluntly said “2K is 24p not 25p, you’re using the camera wrong”, wrong in the sense they see it as a 24p film-camera replacement. Well I don’t know about the rest of the European RED users but I’d presume most work in 25p and not 24p since everything in PAL-country is based on this.
With the above I might consider not transcoding footage to ProRes… might… It depends a bit, RED will most likely be a far more taxing codec to work with on the system and the RED > ProRes > RED > ProRes workflow is pretty efficient.
The above experience is from a 8 Core 2.8 Ghz MacPro with 8GB RAM, Geforce 8800 CPU and a 2-disk internal SATA raid. I’m using Snow Leopard 10.6.1, Final Cut Pro 7.01 and the Final Cut Studio 20.0 RED codec.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
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Just got FCS3 installed here and the gamma issue seems gone.
I guess it’s either a FCP 6 / Snow Leopard issue or something with my setup or how I upgraded. Problem however seems solved in FCP 7. The canvas and QuickTime Player, given how in-accurate these might be, are very similar in their gamma value.
I’m a more confident Apple-camper. Let’s see what the 7.01 update does to my life… 🙂
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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