During a special event at the National Association of Broadcasters conference today, Apple introduced some new products. They introduced Final Cut Server and Final Cut Studio 2. “Final Cut Studio 2 puts a powerful new version of Final Cut Pro at the center of an integrated post-production workflow. Final Cut Pro 6, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Compressor 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, and Color – a brand-new application for professional color grading – are all included in Final Cut Studio for USD 1299.”
Apple is doing a great job with it’s professional editing line.
I just wanted all this working nicely with other editing products besides Apple’s own. Some nice open and patent-free file format specs, etc…
This market is becoming even more proprietary, proprietary project files, proprietary file formats… it’s difficult to choose you’re own work flow. And it’s not becoming easier to use different companies software together…
…at last, open source software at this area still at baby steps… So I wonder if that’s going to change anytime soon…
Hollywood use already many opensource tool to make movies
While Hollywood does have a lot of Linux based clusters for high end graphics, all Hollywood cares about is getting the job done. I don’t think Hollywood cares too much about proprietary or open source software. Both open source and properitary are just methods for achieving the goal, Hollywood just chooses the one that is most convenient.
Hollywood doesn’t care because Hollywood doesn’t make films. Films are made by countless people in thousands of production houses around the world. Some of these people swear by a properiary tool chain, other are hard core open source fanatics. Most are somewhere inbetween.
Some try to sell their inhouse tools for profit, some release their tools as GPL and other keep their inhouse tools inhouse.
Trying to speak about Hollywood in general is pointless since Hollywood isn’t a person or even a company.
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That’s only because Hollywood has to customise the software heavily to create their state-of-the-art CGI (which often uses uniques specific to that film).
I thought Apple’s products supports anything supported by Quicktime, which uses the MP4 container format by default and can be extended to support competing formats such as NUT and Matroska.
In addition, I don’t think Final Cut Studio as a whole is all that competitive yet, considering that Motion is still far from being a replacement for AfterEffects and Premiere Pro is coming to OS X.
Edited 2007-04-16 01:37
I’m not talking about the rendered final/distribution file format… far from that, I’m talking about the project workflow with other editing applications.
I thought the MP4 container format is not simply a final distribution format, but a format designed for the whole workflow (starting from the capture step).
In addition, I don’t think FCP is in a position to lock other products out, considering the weakness of Motion as a compositing application.
Sre you referring to (the old) Motion 2 or to Motion 3?
By the way, there still is Shake…
Have you used Motion 3, or are you just guessing here?
No, I am not talking about Motion 3 here. It has just been announced and is only shipping in May. It doesn’t make sense to talk about the market position of a product that has yet to ship.
I think it is widely agreed that Motion 2, while very innovative and intuitive, lacks the power of competing products such as AfterEffects and often needs to be supplemented by them (depending on your work), which is why FCP is not in a position to lock out competing applications.
And yet Final Cut Pro is *much* more used that Premier in professionnal film editing (having displaced Avid).
You can also use Piranha and Smoke and Linus, for high-end editing/compositing.
FCP, as far as I know, is still the benchmark as far as NLE is concerned.
That was exactly my point. This article is about FCS 2, which includes the new and improved Motion 3. Comments about deficiencies in Motion 2 are irrelevant.
A nice summary of the NAB event:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/15/apple-keynote-live-from-nab-2007…
(MacRumors actually gave up their usually nice live coverage and linked to them instead)
I’m not their target customer for these apps, but at least is nice to know that the iPhone hasn’t taken over even more Apple projects.
Not that I was expecting anything spectacular, but I was really hoping for updated MacBook Pros. If not immediately available, but at least announced so that I could put in an order. My Powerbook is getting a bit old…
I guess we’ll have to wait until Intel announces Santa Rosa.
So you feel that the Macbook line that is available today is crap? Come on, just give it a break and buy that Macbook or wait until you die. New ones arrives every year, maybe you can get an even better next year. Maybe you should wait and see…
So you feel that the Macbook line that is available today is crap?
Are you replying to me? If so, did you even read what I wrote? On the off chance that you’re not the troll i think you are, I’ll answer.
No, the MacBook line that is available now is quite good. When they introduced the Core 2 Duo line, I was disappointed that it didn’t support 4 GB of memory, but that’s to be expected when the motherboard chipset was made for 32-bit CPUs. When Santa Rosa comes, it will finally be updated to full 64-bit architecture, which means that I can put 4 GB of memory in the computer. Since the MacBook Pro is such an expensive computer, at least to me, being able to upgrade the memory beyond 3 GB will extend its usable life. I should also mention that this would also let the computer run dual-channel memory, which requires two memory modules in order to work. If I recall correctly, the memory performance decreases when you go from 2 GB to 3 GB.
Since Apple update their laptops roughly every 6 months, and last update came in October, its rather likely that we’ll see an update fairly soon. (As in the next two months.)
And, before you cry about me not needing so much memory for browsing the web or sending email, I’d like to point out that yes, I do run heavy scientific applications on my computers…
When they introduced the Core 2 Duo line, I was disappointed that it didn’t support 4 GB of memory, but that’s to be expected when the motherboard chipset was made for 32-bit CPUs. When Santa Rosa comes, it will finally be updated to full 64-bit architecture, which means that I can put 4 GB of memory in the computer. Since the MacBook Pro is such an expensive computer, at least to me, being able to upgrade the memory beyond 3 GB will extend its usable life.
Just to add to what you said.
You don’t need 64-bit cpus to address 4GB. 32-bits address 4096 MB (4GB) just fine. Intel chips have been able to address more than 4GB with hardware hacks ala PAE.
I am not sure Apple’s decision to limit them to 3GB is bounded by the CPU’s addressing mode. But more a problem with x86 hardware in general. about 1GB of address space is carved for I/O devices Leaving only 3 GB for memory.
Edited 2007-04-16 14:27
As I understand it, there’s an internal Mac OS X limit of 3 GB RAM allocatable pr. application … That might explain it, at least for its notebook line, since the Mac Pro allows fitting 16 GB and the Xserve even allows fitting 32 GB of RAM!
No, it’s not an Apple-exclusive limit. The Intel 945 chipset only supports 32-bit addressing, which does allow for up to “4 GB of memory”. What they don’t mention, is that addressing of other hardware is also done in the same address space. The result is that you’ll end up with only 3.2-3.4 GB of memory, depending on the computer you’re using. This is the same for Dell, HP, etc. (Note, that the OS will report 4 GB, but will not be able to use all of it.) This limit will disappear when the addressing space is expanded from 32 bits to 64 bits.
No, it’s not an Apple-exclusive limit. The Intel 945 chipset only supports 32-bit addressing, which does allow for up to “4 GB of memory”. What they don’t mention, is that addressing of other hardware is also done in the same address space. The result is that you’ll end up with only 3.2-3.4 GB of memory, depending on the computer you’re using. This is the same for Dell, HP, etc. (Note, that the OS will report 4 GB, but will not be able to use all of it.) This limit will disappear when the addressing space is expanded from 32 bits to 64 bits.
Intel’s information is quite interesting on this [Note: I’ve got an Asus V2-PH1 with 4 Gigs of DDR2-667 PC5300 which the bios preallocates 896MB for itself leaving me with 3.06 GB on Linux 2.6.20]:
From http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/945g/index.htm
Delivers up to 10.7 GB/s of bandwidth and 4 GB memory addressability for faster system responsiveness and support of 64-bit computing.
The G965 Chipset:
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/G965/index.htm
It says,
Delivers up to 12.8 GB/s of bandwidth and 8 GB memory addressability for faster system responsiveness and support of 64-bit computing.
Dilemma: Dual Channel is installed in pairs and thus with 4 banks going from 4 Gigs to 8 Gigs leaves one to imagine how much more memory the BIOS will preallocate to itself that is not available for the OS.
Now I’m more interested in knowing if this is a legacy BIOS [early implementations of EFI] that varies with how much preallocated memory the system holds to account for registry sharing or not.
With 33 bits, you could address 8 GB of memory. G965 has 64 bits, which means that they have 31 bits to use for the rest of the hardware, so you would not have any such limitations anymore. In fact, with 64 bits you could address 16 exabytes, so we’ll do just fine for a while…
I would think the current situation depends on both the hardware and BIOS implementations.
The big news today is the IO-HD device. This device, which hooks up via Firewire 800, can do up-conversion and down-conversion of 4K HD video to their Pro-Res 422 format. It works with their laptops and pro machines, which is a benefit for editing in the field.
Pro-Res 422 also provides extremely good 4K HD support, and has support from other companies.
In other words, you can now do uncompressed 4K HD editing in the field on a MacBook Pro. That’s big.
They’re doing for high-end and HD post-production what Newtek did for TV production 15-20 years ago with the Video Toaster.
However, with Final Cut Server, OS X Server (and its rendering cluster abilities), XSan, Final Cut Studio, the XServe, and XServe RAID, Apple’s offering the entire package for managing large video content workflows across departments. This is something that Newtek didn’t do years ago, and which Apple can do really well because they have OS X.
They already had the market for low-end DVD production with Final Cut Studio. They’ve managed to build out a package of products that support higher-end production studios, and allow smaller departments to operate together at a lower cost.
With this move, they are actively targeting the same markets Newtek was and is, and are aiming straight at the film industry.
Apple is also making it incredibly appealing by offering the whole package, from software to storage. You can buy everything from one place, and if you want to interoperate other components, such as your EMC SAN or Linux boxes, you can.
After NVidia and ATI release their next generation of cards, I’d expect Apple to release a 4K display to complement these products as well.
ProRes is compressed. Also, I’ve seen no evidence that the IO-HD supports 4K.
Wes,
you’re right…I spoke too soon about the 4K support. It does have 1080p support though, which is NICE.
The biggest news, again, is that they have a device which can do HD upconversion and downconversion with a mess of ports in back, including HDMI.
This is smart of them, as it doesn’t require you to have a big piece of HW there just to do video work. The video on the Apple site showed the IO-HD on a desk.
Still, this makes news because it allows teams to work together better on HD content at a much lower price.
while i cannot really comment much on Final Cut Server as it really is not relevant to what i do, i can say that Final Cut Studio 2 looks nice and i will likely be upgrading to it in the somewhat near future.
color looks nice and it also appears that many things in final cut studio have been simplified which is always a good thing as long as you do not lose features in the process which does not appear to be the case.
i have friends that will buy this asap. I will play with it on their systems and decide from there, but i have a feeling i will end up purchasing this.
apple has its quarks and annoyances like everything else, but final cut studio is not one of them (in my experience). I have found final cut studio to be powerful and as intuitive as a professional video editing suite can be.
… Now we’ll have to wait to see a new Logic Express/Pro ?
There’s not going to be a new Logic. Instead, a new product will be released using a lot of the key princibles of Logic plus some new enhancements.
For those that didn’t read he noted the following:
“I should also mention that this would also let the computer run dual-channel memory, which requires two memory modules in order to work. If I recall correctly, the memory performance decreases when you go from 2 GB to 3 GB.”
He is correct about this.
Why do comments whining about proprietary file formats get modded up to plus five in response to a review of a commercial software package?
And “Hollywood use already many opensource tool to make movies”?
This article isn’t about hollywood’s use of open source products. Why are there so many script kiddies pissing and whining about points not even relevant to a commercial software package getting modded up?
Oh it’s not GNU so it’s not good. Typical fanboism.
Marked Down because I denoted an off topic comment as being off topic? The fanbois won’t cease. LOL