Erik Lindahl
Forum Replies Created
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While re-inventing the wheel I just hope Apple doens’t forget what was good with the first wheel they created. As a long-term FCP editor (start with the first PAL-verison of FCP 1.2 was it?) I love they’ve made a try at re-writing the whole application. I think however an issue FCP or rather Final Cut Studio has is the simple facts it’s become very fragmented due to having not one but 5-6 apps in the suite. Who should receive some love in the coming upgrade?
At the moment I have more questions / concerns than feeling “wow, this is awesome!”. If FCPX is anything near the later versions of iMovie Apple really needs to think twice at what they are doing. Anyhow, a few concerns are:
– i/o options (i.e. working to / from tape or digital files)
– monitoring options (i.e. working with videocards)
– GUI flexibility (where is the source-window, where are the scopes, can you use mulitple timelines, how does the app work in different workspaces with multiple screens, where do we edit clip parameters etc)
– Effects and animation architecture (how has the out-dated effects / animation engine changed? how will third-party add-ons work?)
– Project format, in / exporting (is XML still there? how does FCP play with other apps?)
– Currently lacking features (TC-handling, project management and conforming issues, support for image sequence formats, old buggy graphics engine etc)..and the list goes on. Personally I’m not so worried about loosing Motion or Soundtrack Pro – or Color for that matter with the recent update of Reslove. However, a lot of people are using these apps on a daily basis (Color is still my grading app of choice!) and I really hope these stay around. I think the issue is, FCP is being used by everything from “the Blogger” (which can range from very professional to non-professional) to TV-commercial editing or feature film editing. It’s used for “offline” or creative editing and “online” or finishing editing – the later largely in conjunction with other applications like Color, Resolve and After Effects. This is one of FCP’s and QuickTime’s strength but this is also an area the can be improved in. What parts have Apple kept and what have they said “we’ll just wait and see what the crowd says”.
Premier Pro is now a re-written app since something like 8 years back. It’s still in some regards playing catch-up with FCP in terms of features but it’s also innovated in areas where FCP is lacking. Will FCPX see this “slowly growing” future now that they’ve start from a blank slate? So many questions, so few answers.
I guess in the end we do have a lot of options.. Sort of. Avid Media Composer for $995 is an interesting option. Sadly they are still a bit I have to say anal in regards to what monitoring hardware you can use. Premier Pro is getting there for sure and it’s more in line with FCP in terms of hardware support. Then you also have Smoke for OSX. Well that’s a different beast all together (and sadly it requires different hardware then Resolve to run). With FCPX being a new cat on the block I really hope Apple has done their homework and haven’t forgotten about the true video professionals. What they did with QuickTime X and iMovie makes me really, really worry though..
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
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Do you see a performance increase even if one of the two cards acts as your GUI-card?
i.e. I’m comparing:
1x Quadro for rendering + 1x Quadro for GUI and Renderings
vs
1x Quadro for rendering + 1x ATI for GUI
This would mean one could skip the expansion-box, save a buck for some setups and still gain X % rendering power. You’d also have the CUDA-card available for other apps than Resolve.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
x264 is as far as I understand it an open source project based on the h264-standard. In theory you could create files there that aren’t playable on h264 devices. However, the same goes for almost any h264 encoder. Different playback environments differ in how much of the h264-stanard they support.
I use x264 through Episode (yes, it kicks the s-it out of the encounter in the application in both speed and quality) daily and it works great. Files playback on Macs and PCs via QuickTime Player or VLC as well as iPhones and iPads
Keeping sustained color accuracy between different playback environments is however very hard if not impossible as the decoder, OS and esp. the screen will differ a lot. This is just something we’ll have to live with until some kind of unified standard comes (which I have a hard time seeing happening).
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
The solution is fairly simple: use a differed encoder than QuickTime or Comprssor. Even x264 for QuickTime (open source project) will produce vastly superior files than QT it self. Other options include a third party encoder like Episdoe or Squeeze.
A problem I’ve found is different formats in will also very much affect your output, hence you might be required to adjusts outpu based on this. Large downscales will also affect the sharpness of an image, hence you have to compensate for that. And so forth.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
At the end of the day if all app using CUDA could migrate to OpenCL we’d all be in a better world. However, the state of OpenCL I THINK is lagging quite far behind CUDA in terms of performance.
An external cubix box over thunderbolt is of course an option.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
The mobile ATI.. erhm.. AMD GPU is a monster but no support for CUDA on that hardware. Any possibility we could see:
a) DaVinic moving Resolve to OpenCL
b) An external acceleration unit connected to ThunderboltThis is the biggest update since the transition to intel but it’s a bit sad Apple doesn’t have any support for nVidia GPU’s on their portables. With the resent release of mobile Quadro 2K, 4K and 5K version these would be nice options for Apple I’d imagine. Maybe it’s hard cater for both AMD and nVidia on one moblie plattform design?
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
You can get the ProRes codec for Windows as well but I presume the question was regarding internal work-flow. File-based delivery can be a number of formats (QuickTime, MPEG2, MPEG4 etc) but that doesn’t change that you can work internally with ProRes.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
Looking into it now it seems I can work fine with ProRes 422HQ in FCP / AE with round-tripping just as well as with 10-but uncompressed. Maybe the issue has been resolved or it is / was a local issue in Color.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
Last time I checked, ProRes in PAL was unreliable. So, if you work in 720×576 @ 25 fps (4×3 or 16×9 FHA) I’d do some testing before going down that road. You might have gamma issues still.
ProRes works great in HD or 2K @ 25 fps however. What we tend to do is work in ProRes at 1080p or 2K and have out PAL-masters in 10-bit uncompressed.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se -
Oh, cool. I just know ProRes can bug out a bit if used with irregular formats.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se