[Paolo Ciccone]

Hmm, I actually thought that Sheer’s price was pretty fair. I worked in the software development industry and writing software is an extremely costly and risky business. If you make software for the consumer level then you can afford to be sloppy, see Microsoft Office, but at the pro video level you need very solid coding and that costs a lot of money because good developers want to be paid good money. Every month 🙂

[Paolo Ciccone]

Nothing against Animation, I just find Sheer faster and smaller.

[Paolo Ciccone]

If you need a lossless codec with Alpha channel and smaller size than Uncompressed , you can consider Sheervideo: https://www.bitjazz.com

[Paolo Ciccone]

There was no sluggishness at all, I am quite surprised how responsive the software is. I tried clips in both HDV and Sheer and the response when importing, and working on the timeline, was good. More test needs to be done but so far so good.
I did have memory issues with the pre-CS3 on a PC version of PPro, about a year and a half ago so what you say is not surprising. I will need to get a fairly heavy project to be able to compare PPro against FCP.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Mark, I just installed the PP tryout and put together a sequence in HDV 720p, it imported in After Effects very nicely. I use a rather modest machine, a MacBookPro 17″ with 2GB Ram and so far so good. I’m going to add some more complexity to it but what I saw so far surpasses anything that I tried before to integrate FCP with AE. If Apple is listening, integration with AE is not an option, it’s a deal breaker. See what Maxon has done with Cinema 4D, that’s the way to go, IMHO.

[Paolo Ciccone]

>Also you won’t be able to use the ProRes codec unless you already have FCS2, so why bother >getting Premier in that case.

That was a reply to the original poster who pointed support of ProRes as an example of wider support of codecs by FCP. My point is that in reality what FCP does, in this case, is to add a QT plugin to the mix. The application itself doesn’t have support for ProRes, it’s Prores that is installed in QT. Similarly to installing the XDCAM plugin. It’s not that FCP has support for the XDCAM MXF format, there is a plugin, developed by Sony BTW, that wraps the XDCAM files with QuickTime. Similarly, when FCP capture from HDV-based cameras, like the JVCHD100, there is no real support for the .m2t files created by the camera, there is instead a conversion routine that wraps those clips with a QT layer. That these plugins are accessible directly inside FCP it’s a plus but it’s important to make a distinction between direct file support and conversion to a QT clip. Now, I don’t mean this as a criticism for FCP, I used it for years in this setup and it’s fine but there is a distinction between *native* file support and available conversion to QT.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Actually that’s not true. FCP edits strictly one format of files: QuickTime movies. It has additional support for things like PS files but when it comes to video QT is the only format. In fact FCP cannot work, at least up to 5.x, with sequences of images. Not a coincidence that the QT player makes it easy to convert from image sequence to QT movie. If you have any QT codec installed on your machine Premiere or any other editing program will be able to access it as well. ProRes is not an exclusive of FCP it’s just included in the Studio bundle. In fact Premiere, last time I checked, could access a wider series of formats.

[Paolo Ciccone]

While I use FCP and like it there is a major problem with it and it’s the integration with After Effects. AE is the de-fact standard in post-production and simply THE one app used in motion graphics. The integration with Maxon Cinema 4D is simply amazing and one more reason to use After Effects in my pipeline. Sorry but Motion can’t come even close and Shake doesn’t integrate with FCP that well either.
I do have a workflow from FCP to AE but it could be much better and the integration between Premiere and After Effects is becoming more and more inviting and I’m seriously considering the switch. That and the aforementioned consistency in the UI, very ironic that Apple is the main offender here, is a very strong point in supporting Premiere.

[Paolo Ciccone]

I synched sound from multiple cameras all the time, as long as you have a good “snap” at the beginning of the takes. Otherwise you’ll have to work a little more but just drop the sound on the timeline, turn on the visualization of the waveform and move it until it synchs. If you have a slate simply scrub the video up to the point where the slate “clicks”, move frame by frame, set a marker, scrub the audio until you get the first click of the slate, set another market and then drag the audio click by the marker until it aligns with the video marker. Be sure to have “snap” on (press N to toggle) and it should take a minute to synch a clip.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hi Walter.

I agree with you that immediately there is no visible loss, in fact that’s how Apple advertises ProRes, as “visually lossless”, but the data loss is there and if we add to it with other manipulations the final result will be visibly deteriorated. I’m just trying to add a little bit of caution in the way people treat their footage. With HDV, I work both with the JVC HD100 and the XDCAM, it’s pretty easy to make irreparable damage. I like the idea of using ProRes for either capture, via component out or HDSDI, or as an intermediate codec for editing but I’m kinda of a purist when it comes to pixels and I want to be sure that people understand that there is a generation loss with this kind of transcoding. Of course, as usual, it all depends on the material and the deadline :), if we are talking about interviews and ENG then no problem. It’s just that many time people tend to use a “shiny hammer” for all their projects and then I end up color correcting footage for a film festival and the clips have been shredded to the last bit of usable color and I’m expected to revive what’s no there anymore 😉

In my opinion, if the footage is for a feature or narrative work, transcoding to *any* lossy codec, not just ProRes, should be avoided. When it comes the time to color correct and grade the difference will be visible.

BTW, I enjoyed your articles a lot, thanks for sharing.