 The new Fast Forward Video (FFV) sideKick HD is a versatile recording solution designed to ease production workflow and satisfy the demands of both producers and postproduction editors. The camera-mountable sideKick HD captures video directly from HD/SDI or HDMI outputs at bit rates up to 220 Mbit/s, with 4:2:2 sampling and 10-bit resolution in multiple codecs starting with ProRes on removable 2.5" SSD drives. Recording directly to high-quality NLE formats eliminates time-consuming transcoding,
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 We knew that Gary Adcock was the perfect person to deal with an app that aspires to meet the needs of the hardest-core, highest-end pros. Or does it? What if Apple told you that Final Cut Pro X wasn't meant for you? Gary goes beyond his own knee-jerk reaction to the release to get under the hood of FCPX, and he likes a lot of what he sees. In part 2 of his series, he looks at changes to how FCPX deals with hardware, processing, and the underlying structure you don't see.
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 Final Cut Pro X is very different and it takes a while to get used to it. I’ve been beating on the evaluation software provided by Apple for about two weeks as I write this review, along with a few hours worth of press briefings from Apple staff. I’ve also conferred with probably a dozen colleagues who are also trying to shake it out, including a number of experienced feature film editors. Without a doubt, it’s definitely worth tapping into some of the various training materials if you want to u
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 Avid today announced it is offering a limited-time Final Cut Pro Crossgrade promotion for qualified Final Cut Pro customers. Available now, this crossgrade offer is designed to provide a fast, cost-effective path for Final Cut Pro users to implement Avid’s award-winning professional editing solution—Media Composer®. With Media Composer, designed and built for Mac OS and Windows operating systems, customers can boost productivity and advance the storytelling process with capabilit
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 First things first, I (Jason Konoza) do not currently own an Apple computer. However, I’ve decided to now ’make the switch’ for my next editing computer to be a Mac product. After seeing the Final Cut Pro X preview at the NAB Supermeet this year, this seemed like a solid choice. Now, after 2 weeks of reading testimonials of FCPX, now I’m not so sure…
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 The 4th of July means barbecues, family gathering and fun in the sun and the party concludes with the traditional pyro- show around the country. Everyone wants to capture the family fun, but when it comes to the Big Light Show in the Sky, shooting great firework footage is more than pointing the camera into the sky. The less light you have, the harder it is to focus or capture an image that isn’t underexposed or overly grainy. Throw in a fireworks scene that changes from dark to light within nan
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 Apple appears to be abandoning the professional market in favor of the more lucrative consumer market. And that may actually be a good thing.
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 I’m Al. I’m the guy who gets to – along with an amazing group of very talented colleagues and friends – build Premiere Pro. For some obvious and some less obvious reasons, our beloved product has been receiving a lot of attention over recent days. So it feels like a good time to express a few thoughts.
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 I’ve had a couple of people ask for my thoughts on the new FCPX release given my history with Apple and in particular my experience with how they dealt with another product that was focused (in our case almost exclusively) on professionals – the compositing software ‘Shake’. So, even though I don’t think they’re totally analogous events, I figured I’d use it as an opportunity to make a couple of points about (my perception of) how Apple thinks.
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 Last Tuesday, Apple released Final Cut Pro X — a statement, which does not come as a surprise to the post community. However, what has stunned many of us since then was HOW they released it.
As some of Post Magazine readers may know, I was privileged to see an early form of Final Cut Pro X in February — a form that very closely resembled the final version of the software. I joined about 40 other editors for this initial preview.
At that time, I had a few brief conversations with key membe
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 was busy as hell for the early part of last week, crashing together a 30 minute doc. The footage for the programme was shot and delivered on a mixture of cameras and formats including HDCAM (tape), XDCAM HD (disc), an HDSLR (clips on hard disc). The tape and disc footage was captured into the edit system's direct attached local storage from one of a rack full of bloody expensive HDCAM and XDCAM decks (ingested via HD-SDI for audio/video, RS422 for timecode and deck control) and encoded using a
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 Before coming to Adobe my preferred tool for editing was FCP. Premiere CS4 was installed as part of master collection. Back then every time I had to use it, I didn’t like it – It wasn’t better than FCP and it did things differently – so I ignored it.
Then jump ahead in time and I am interviewing for the job as AE product manager, and I was honest in my interviews of what I thought about Premiere when asked about it. Where they had me though? – I hadn’t even tried the latest version.
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 If Adobe Premiere, Avid Pinnacle Studio, MAGIX Movie Edit Pro, Sony Vegas and similar fare define the entry-level sector of the market, then the high end is probably dominated—with apologies to Apple's Final Cut Studio—by Avid Media Composer, which is the NLE of choice for a large number of film and video projects. And with the recent introduction of Media Composer 5.5, Avid has wrapped into the product a number of new features and functions of direct relevance to the HDVP community.
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 In case anyone is interested in my take on the release of Final Cut Pro X, here it is.
First, let me say this first article is just about the release, and not about the software itself. I promise that henceforth I will focus on the actual FCPX software and forget all the hullabaloo.
But this article is about Apple’s business strategy (or lack thereof), my industry perceptions, and looking back a bit to see if we can predict the future.
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 I could start this blog article, like most of the blog articles I’ve read so far about FCP X, by bitching about the features that are not there, how the UI is completely different, how I can’t use a professional monitor to color correct my sequence, how I can’t edit multi-cam, how I can’t export an EDL or OMF file, plus the many other missing features.
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