[Hector Berrebi]

[David Cherniack] “Hector, I must admit I’m rather perplexed at your negative take on Windows (I’m assuming we’re talking 7). Across a number of systems I find it rock solid, very tune-able, and working smoothly. To each his own, I guess.
“

yup…

i agree with you again, windows 7 is rock solid and a HUGE improvement. i don’t miss XP at all…

and yet. it is just not an elegant system.

these past weeks i walk around hoping for something new to emerge… a modern, open, simple and wonderful platform, it seems like apple is going mobile on us and Microsoft… they’re so…. microsoft…

can you trust a company with Steve Balmer as its CEO?

maybe Google… lol

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[Craig Seeman] ”
I should add this also relates to Thunderbolt. HP has said they won’t be using it.”

so what if they said it…? 🙂

they can say something else tomorrow…

apparently they can even wrap it in USB and call it light peak …
https://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20110629/192972/

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[David Cherniack] “Could be the next round of hardware upgrades for a lot of companies shows a lot of HP workstations being sold. Truth is they’re nicely designed, work well, you get on-site service, and no my-way-or-no-way attitude.
“

i must agree with you David.
HP workstations are a pleasure to work with, not as good looking as Macpros, and tend to be more expensive, but a better workstation, and good service.

now if it wasn’t that damn windows OSing them…

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

this whole thread and not a word on MXF?

Avid is MXF based, that’s how Avid writes and likes its media. this comes after years of their previous, proprietary, SD only OMF.

if i’m not completely wrong about it, MXF is rather open standard with much simpler licensing than QT.

MXF (Material eXchange Format) supports metadata and a myriad of codecs. P2 and XDCAM use it as wrapper ( shooting 80%+ of the world’s television, unlike QT cameras and recorders which are very good but still much less popular)

from wiki : “MXF has been designed to address a number of problems with non-professional formats. MXF has full timecode and metadata support, and is intended as a platform-agnostic stable standard for future professional video and audio applications”

just recently, my company assisted in a large network transition to FCP7. as part of the requirements we had to practically rape 20 FCP stations to read and write MXF in a server environment, due to the broadcast pipeline they had decided on.

it was a little rough, but it worked… even in tight schedules of sport and news broadcasting.
(in that specific case, i do believe it would have worked better with QT)

for a good, professional and sane future, a dominant video file format shouldn’t belong to a company like Apple. it should be as open as possible.

about Avid’s dependency on QT, i’m not sure about the inside of the software code, but i don’t believe its a catholic wedding

of course there is AMA, which is a newer module that can natively read and edit QT among other formats… but that’s recent.

and there is export to QT and a whole export module for it, but you can run Avid on a PC without QT pro on your system, and even using QT alternatives. (i think protools needs QT in some way, but that may be outdated, i’m not an audio guy)

i think Avid depend very little on QT,
(and on a side note, i also think Avid is responsible for quite a lot of MacPro sales)

and if Adobe is smart (and i believe they are) they shouldn’t depend on anything Apple too

you draw an interesting future Craig.
in my opinion, why switch at all? at this price…just for nostalgia we will all still run FCPX on our Macs, iPhones and iPads alongside anything else we choose to work with for at least the next two years 🙂

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[Jeff Bernstein] “As a result, Disney, along with SMPTE, have embarked on a replacement for QuickTime, yet it emulates many of the core features of QuickTime, but brings it to the next level. The key here is that industry begged Apple, Apple said no, then the industry said we better make sure this is an open standard so we don’t find ourselves in this position again.

Will software manufacturers embrace this new standard? It is too early to tell. The hope is that it will become an industry standard with support on as many OS platforms as possible.
“

interesting post Jeff… thanks

the questions i would have asked you over the years…. lol
damn QT has always been such a mess, and yet so brilliant, QT is way beyond just being a player or a video container… it sometimes seems as deep as a mini OS… and then there’s stuff like QTVR or the editing features… or just being able to open multiple players simultaneously…

and just like you say… its not an open standard. so it comes with chains…

any info i can read on this new SMPTE/Disney file format?

it sounds quite interesting.

hector

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] “Why exactly?”

the offline stage of a feature film is long and editing-intensive.
people tend to shoot way over 10:1 ratios
thats at least 1000 minutes for a 90 minute film

being able to sift , sort, find ans select quickly is crucial for good work to be done. furthermore when you fine tune each and every cut on a 90+ minute timeline using trim tools, you need fast response (immediate response)

R3D files are generally very large (most people shoot in 4K+), RAW and compressed (a good wavelet compression, but still…) all these are intensive on your system. and even with the legendary Mercury engine, you’d need a monster system to be stable with such a project and timeline natively, and i’m not sure that even on the best of systems your timeline response in trimming would be satisfactory.
add to that storage requirements, its one thing to have your original R3Ds in a drive on a shelf, completely different thing to have them on a drive where you constantly have to read them and play them (in FULL frame rate and real time as you can’t afford less in narrative work). it would probably mean faster more expensive drives.

the point is. that it makes absolutely NO difference if you work offline/online.
offline editing in long projects can take months. and the better offline editors out there usually don’t own monster systems. in Avid or FCP you have a stable and easy workflow, that allows you to cut your project on a portable drive using a laptop and doing it anywhere you want (tarins, plains, a hut on a beach or a monastery in Tibet). Prores Proxy files are small look amazing, so do DNX36, and as they are optimized for their systems, they work FAST and stable.

and because of the amazing world of Metadata, conforming back the final sequence to R3D is simple (in most cases and if you know what you are doing) and can be done in a myriad of tools and techniques.

I have many R3D project stored in my studio, some of the quite large, I know how Premiere reacts to big RED folders with hundreds of files and its not what they’d show you in an ADOBE presentation.
believe me, i love Premiere, and the day that software/hardware will really allow native raw 4K work in FULL frame rate, with immediate, response and proper monitoring, i’d advocate for it. its just not quite there yet, at leas when it comes to long form, or narrative work.

sorry for the long answer… didn’t have time for a short one 🙂

hector

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[David Cherniack] “But for effects work”

🙂 ok… VFX is something different. I’d go for DPX and such, I find them more versital, and just as intensive on systems ..

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[Brian Cooney] “in FCP I have always had the option to play the gambit of codecs and edit them within the timeline. Prorez is great because it bumps up quality and also cuts HD rendering time in half… or more.
“

Hmmm… Nothing just bumps up quality. ProRes allows more optimal use of some files in the FCP environment.
It doesn’t lose quality (in most cases) its great for capture, and it is proving to be an excellent acquisition codec too.

But any appearent bumping up of quality involving ProRes can be probably explained in better terms

FCP had funky native codec support, involving too much QT rewrapping.

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[David Cherniack] “If you’re ingesting from HD tape the Matrox iFrame codecs are excellent, free, and will suffice for most uses. For effects bound source material, where greater than 8 bits is needed, the uncompressed 10 bit codecs will not degenerate any tape source, even HDcamSR, while capturing to both Prores and Dnx will. Premiere does all video processing at 32 bit float so only at that point will the quality of the intermediate codec come into play, not on ingesting from tape. And as effect’s work is not greatly storage intensive, I, for one, prefer uncompressed 10 bit to any compressed codec. If space is a concern then yes, the prores 4×4 would be a great choice.”

Hey David.

I tend to agree with john here. Adobe users tend to overlook too quickly how the lack of a propitery codec line hurts the product. Working native all the way is good in certain codecs maybe, but in many cases it is a weak solution, which ignores issues like unifying standards in multiple res multiple codec projects, offline/online workflows, affordable high end mastering both in broadcast and cinema ( no DNX there yet…) and yes, capture from HD tape source.

Uncompressed 10bits HD codecs are in most cases a complete overkill. And if you work in 4:4:4 then it’s even a bigger pain in the A@&. The HDD space and performance requirements on a broadcast/network scale make no sense. That’s true in other markets too.

It makes little difference that premiere reads DNX or ProRes. FCP reads DNX and AVID reads ProRes too… but they aren’t optimized for it so it works poorly. Premier’s stregth in reading Native is good for stuff that’s either very short or simple, or stuff with lower standards and less rigorous examination…
It’s also cool in presentations.

But if someone cuts their feature film in R3D native in premiere, then in my opinion, they’re either noobs, or they just don’t know better.

ProRes is genius and brilliant, DNX is solid and has potential to better up,
I believe and I hope, that soon Adobe will have their solution too.

Hector

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Absolutely – although the worst of all are the AVID editors who wanted to make FCP work like AVID ;-)”

🙂

I teach Avid to FCP courses. I sort of agree..

However.. This mainly affect selftought editors, as I’d do believe you can make FCP quite Avid-like if you’re prorperly trained. The other way around is harder

And trying to make FCPX behave like ANY other traditional NLE… Now there is a task condemned to frustration.

Hector Berrebi
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