Erik Lindahl
Forum Replies Created
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No, that’s exactly what I mean, FCP should become better at working with it’s CPU and GPU. Motion’s realtime engine is far more powerful than FCP’s for instance. No, I don’t want FCP to do everything but some things are much more flexible to do in the editor.
Having dedicated hardware is a solution but I understand Apple doesn’t want to go down that road since dedicated hardware very fast get’s obsolete. This is why you want flexible hardware and the GPU is the solution there. Apple has however always been lagging behind in this area, going with 1/2 to 1 generation old GPU and not offering true high-end solutions (and Final Cut wouldn’t utilize it that well either from the looks of it anyhow).
And yes, I’m the one guy that makes, dubs, edits, color corrects, animate, motion track, scene-replace… Hence I want my tools to be the best they can be and I feel Apple is trailing.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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How do I know FCP7 has a crappy speed-change engine? Well I don’t but Apple would for sure announce if FCP used optical flow / motion compensated slow-motion technology as Compressor / Shake / Motion / After Effects / AVID etc does.
Why is this a big let-down? Cause it makes life harder for any online project requiring speed-changes. Getting these done in the editor can help a done in some situations. AVID Symphony has had this for 5 years or something.
I see crappy speed changes on TV all the time, that doesn’t mean it has to be that way or should be that way. That just proves people producing them are doing it wrong or using the wrong tool for the jobb. To add to this, speed-change-technology can be used for transcoding as well (Compressor uses it). Wouldn’t it be cool if Final Cut could do this as well? Placing NTSC footage in a PAL timeline? Yes, there would be rendering (or “conforming”) involved but it would be a killer feature for sure.
What’s wrong with compressed formats? Little serious post-production work is done with highly compressed formats. Lossless compression is a good, lossy compression is not. If you have a transport format such as HDCAM SR adding a second compression generation isn’t very optimal i general. It could just be I’ve had bad experience with ProRes, but I have little faith in it for post-heavy work.
Conduit from DV Garage is a cool plug-in but it’s not the solution. It might be Motion 4 is worth a look, but pervious version have been way to sluggish and bug-riddled for me to take serious.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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I might suggest that FCP is an editing program and not a Special Effects program like the three other programs you mention. I’d like to see those programs to a trim edit.
…and an editor needs something like “SmoothCam” or Color Correction tools? Final Cut Pro is far more than an editor – it’s also a online and finishing tool with short comings. Final Cut Pro getting a decent slowmotion engine would solve a lot of head-aches for many people I would imagine, and Apple already owns the technology so why not just add it?The 8-bit RGB limitation has likely been addressed as the ProRes 444444444 codec is a 12-bit RGB or YUV codec. Get that? 12-bit! How cool is that. I’ll take 12-bit and lossless at a sixth of the size over a 10-bit uncompressed codec anyday.
No it is not. ProRes is compressed and it’s not lossless. It’s virtually visually lossless over generations, huge difference. I can imagine ProRes 4:4:4:4 will offer used realtime video with alpha but again, that’s a huge limitation for some. Give us a “greater than 8-bit” RGBA codec that’s truly lossess please…I wonder the same thing, but I’m not a compositor/FX guru…
This is a dilemma with Final Cut Pro since it caters such a broad audience. I come from the online / finishing / special effects world and of course look at development primarily there.Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Yep. Instead of bitching about what Apple ISN’T doing for you, go find the tool that does the job the way you want. You threaten to leave apple for Adobe? Yeah, good luck with that. You think Apple cares?
That’s a pretty sad view at things. Of course Apple should care if they loose people, this is the exact reason AVID lost people to Apple 10 years ago or why QUARK lost people to Adobe. The moment you loose your passion and cutting edge is a time where you risk loosing loyal customers at the bleeding edge.Personally I don’t care about BluRay support but I do care about other aspects of Final Cut’s short comings. And it’s frustrating when after 2 1/2 years little is “sorted”. I think this is something people get ticked off by.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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The entire UI of Final Cut should have seen an overhaul years ago. DVD Studio Pro saw it in version 2.0, Sound Track got it, Motion, Compressor… Why does our editor get the treatment? It looks fairy “patched” at the moment (unless something has changed in 7.0).
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Was really hoping real-time keying of alpha graphics would become part of RTExtreme.
I can only agree! While we’re at it why can’t we have proper support for a codec like Animation through the RT Extreme engine seeing this is the only decent uncompressed RGB codec around?It’s crazy we that we can do many streams of video but can’t key in real time. Avid’s been able to do this for years.
Some things just don’t make sense. Like Shake, Motion and Compressor having optical flow technology but Final Cut doesn’t. Why? My workflow in general is:– Input > Final Cut > Shake or After Effects or Mocha > Final Cut > Output
I’m still forced to solving speed effects in either Shake, Motion or After Effects (I sadly don’t trust Motion, every project I’ve tried to get through that program has been nothing but sluggish performance and bugs).
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Very little is done by your video card when working in Final Cut. Apple completely moved away from dedicated hardware support since I think version 3 of the application. With version 7 just released and sadly no news on the hardwhare front you’re still forced to used the software and primarily your CPU for effects.
MacOSX Snow Leopard, the next major OS-release, is around the corner and it does boat advanced multi-core and GPU features that applications can utilize. It’s likely the next major release of Final Cut Pro will finally use the full capabilities of your system when working on it. Personally I thought this would be one the killer features of FCP7 but yeah, seems the dev-team isn’t quite “up-to-date” with that program…
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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The new 4:4:4 ProRes codec is 330 mbit with-out alpha, roughly the same bitrate as SD over SDI. HD-SDI would easily have more than enough bandwidth.
As a new recording format this could be interesting, as a professional finishing codec I fear it will be as big of a let down as ProRes was. Where are the updated uncompressed formats? Where are the uncompressed formats with alpha support? Where are the greater range of RGB codecs? Why not introduce an uncompressed 4:4:4 codec similar to that of ProRes?
This update leaves me with so many questions and I fear we’ll have to wait another 2 years for say background rendering…
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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I’m quite disappointed this is all Apple could “cook up” after 2 years of development.
– The new “speed tools” in FCP is to be honest a joke. The rendering quality is so poor that no one in their right mind will use it. We are still forced with clumbersume round-trips to After Effects, Motion or Shake.
– It’s very nice they develop the ProRes codec but it’s about time they look into Uncompressed alternatives (why can’t we get a 4:4:4:4 uncompressed workflow?). Where is a higher than 8-bit RGB workflow or some RT-effects working with uncompressed RGB files? Or perhaps an uncompressed format that has alpha-channel support?
– Get on the multi-core wagon already! Give us true background EVERYTHING (Rendering, Importing, Exporting and Processing of effects)
– Where is the Shake replacement? No, Motion is not the answer.
– I swear we’ll still be sitting with the normal odd-ball rendering bugs and issues since Apple mentions nothing of an improved rendering engine.
Seeing we waiting for this long I thought Final Cut Pro 7 would be THE upgrade with Snow Leopard around the corner. Now we get last years innovation…
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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I’m not sure what to think about the new studio. It’s like 2 1/2 years since the last release, I’m not very impressed unless a lot of “under the hood” changes have been made.
The new 4:4:4:4 ProRes codec sounds nice but where is the uncompressed alternative of that? Why hasn’t Final Cut Pro gotten “with the program” in terms of speed-effects? Compressor and Motion have optical compensated effects here… If the new “background processing” is anything like what smooth cam is now, well that’s not a background processess. That’s a “stop and resume” process. Nothing really new on the grading and mastering scene unless you go via Color (I hope version 1.5 has less bugs and clumbersum UI than 1.0 had, that would at least be something). They state they have a better media manager, that’s been a source of less than pleasant surprises in the past.
Still, I’m unsure if it’s worth it or not. The Intel Only move is a potential problem for us also since we’ve got one intel and one ppc bay still working. Might get the upgrade and try it at home to see if it’s worth it all. Feels less than innovative from my pov.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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