[Zak Mussig]

Ya know… I just watched their demo video again, and I’m going to go back on what I just said. That’s a clever plug-in with a really nice interface. I think node based compositing will show up in the next version of Motion, but that will obviously be a while. This is a nice, easy to use, otion in the meantime.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

I was looking at conduit earlier this year, and it looks as if it makes it possible to access Quartz composer from within Motion. It looked less flexible than Shake and somehow more confusing to use… at least to me. Cool idea, but just not quite where I’d like it to be in terms of usability.

I love Shake, but I’m at best a novice with it. I’m very happy to see some more advanced features movie into FCS2 with GUIs that make them more accessible.

Just my thoughts,
Zak

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

So I just tested that link I just gave you and it went to a generic “page not found” type of page. The link is on the FCS site, specifically on the page about format support in FCP.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

All of your questions would really depend on what format you’re working with and what hardware you use for ingest.

To capture in Pro-Res 422 you’ll need either a capture card or an io-HD. You can’t capture this format over firewire w/o an io-HD.

As far as the file size and quality is concerned… it’s smaller than Uncompressed HD and the quality is supposedly on par with uncompressed. That doesn’t mean the file sizes or data rates are trivial though. If you’re working with HDV now, you may need a lot better drive setup to take advantage of ProRes 422.

Apple has a white paper on the format available… https://images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/resources/white_papers/L342568A_ProRes_WP.pdf

That may answer more of your questions.

Zak

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Apple will be on the winning side… just not necessarily when the death blow is dealt to the other format. You support what sells, so “Optical Disc Studio Pro 1.0” (what do you call it when DVDs are dead?) may support both formats, or just whoever wins by the time they really get into development.
What will be interesting is to see what, if anything, Apple can do to bring the interactive features (javascript support on HD-DVD and Java on Blu-ray) to video editors and content creators without a programming background.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Walter,

Apple supports Blu Ray… not HD-DVD. Check the websites for each if you like. The Apple logo is among all the other members in the Blu-ray site, and definitely NOT on the HD-DVD site.

DVDSP 4 “supports” HD-DVD not because of any certain loyalty to the format, but because Macs already have red laser burners in them. It’ll let you write HD content to a disc, but it doesn’t support the advanced interactive features of the spec.

Apparently HD optical isn’t “for the masses” yet in the same way that high-end color correction and 3D compositing are. That or they had too many balls in the air and they want to see which format will win (or if their own distrubution model can make both irrelevant before they penetrate the market in any real way.

I would like to see Apple create (and release as an open standard w/ no licensing) a new format w/ all of the interactivity of a DVD, or blu-ray, but in a simple self-contained downloadable file. Like a DVD for your Apple TV. The open standard would be to increase adoption speed… worked for firewire.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

I’ve been in your position before and had to use iDVD with FCP. My advise would be to double-check your sequence settings and make sure it’s set to the DV anamorphic preset. DOn’t change the compressor once the select the preset.
Render whatever needs to be rendered and then export a “QuickTime Movie” leave the export setting to “current settings” and uncheck the “make file self-contained” box. This will give you a smaller QT file that will reference all of your media and render files when iDVD encodes it.

Good luck,
Zak

[Zak Mussig]

You might have better luck looking for something so specific on craig’s list. I think Austin’s site is pretty active.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Not true. Apple is in the Blu-ray camp. HDDVD is Toshiba and *gasp* Microsoft.

Old thread, but for anyone still checking back.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Unless you’ve just gotten an Intel Mac, there’s no reason you’d NEED to upgrade. Like Walter said, the announcement for the next version is April 15th, and it’ll probably ship sometime in late May or early June. Wait a couple weeks if you can, and then if for whatever reason, their time frame doesn’t work for you then you’ll have to bite the bullet.

Zak