Final Cut Pro 4

"an anonymous reader claims that FCP 4 will indeed by out in April and "possibly feature some low end features of Shake"

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That is pretty vague. Since Shake is a compositing program you could just as well say that Final Cut is adding more compositing features. Shake is a node based program as well that would very very hard to introduce into the Final Cut interface.

Also, the "low end" Shake project is DEAD. It is not going to happen. The folks that had been working on it have disbanded and are out in the world job hunting. Trust me.

So for now we will have to live with the original Shake. Which is pretty amazing.

Also, from Looprumors:

the most important added feature is support for FireWire 800.

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Most important? While it is welcome and would drive adoption of FW800 there is no way that this is the most important feature. No way. Why?

Other features said to be implemented are support for 24fps, improved support for HDTV, built-in 3-D titles,

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These are much more important. Oh, and they already have 3d titles.

hundreds of effects and transitions, several bug fixes, and overall speed performances

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Super-vague. And, "hundreds" of effects?

I am losing interest in Looprumors. They have great graphics but they do seem to be "fishing" a lot of the time.

Re: Final Cut Pro 4

Originally posted by Macrumors
LoopRumors claims Final Cut Pro 4 will make an appearance at NAB in Las Vegas in April and reports FW800 support, support for 24fps, improved support for HDTV, built-in 3-D titles, hundreds of effects and transitions, several bug fixes, and overall speed performances

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Add support for FW800 in what way? Wouldn't that be something the OS has to support?

What LoopRumors claims as new features looks like something that would be easy to guess at. Maybe it is based on real information, but with FW800 being tossed in the feature list, it makes this rumor look a little suspicious.

WOW!!! i wonder if looprumors read my posts here about nab being the place for a fcp release and not at a macworld. funny thing is, the word around, now, is that fcp4 may not be ready for an april release date.

1st with FW800

FireWire 800 would be a big deal because there is no software in the market that can do that yet. I hope that the extra speed of FW800 will mean uncompressed video without a PCI card.

Back to Final Cut Pro 4, NAB would be a good choice for the debut, not because it was that long ago since FCP 3 came out but because the G5 will need its own native version and now would be a good time to start work on FCP 5.

Re: 1st with FW800

Originally posted by Sol
FireWire 800 would be a big deal because there is no software in the market that can do that yet. I hope that the extra speed of FW800 will mean uncompressed video without a PCI card.

....

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Doesn't MacOS X 10.2.4 support FireWire 800 and isn't that software?

Final Cut Pro X evidence

There are currently two "Final Cut Pro X" books listed at amazon.com:

Final Cut Pro X for Dummies (May 2003) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_1/002-2430024-6080008?v=glance&s=books

Final Cut Pro "X" Bible (June 26, 2003)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_2/002-2430024-6080008?v=glance&s=books

I guess we will see an update to FCP in the second quarter.

Re: Final Cut Pro X evidence

Originally posted by mifro
There are currently two "Final Cut Pro X" books listed at amazon.com:

Final Cut Pro X for Dummies (May 2003) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_1/002-2430024-6080008?v=glance&s=books

Final Cut Pro "X" Bible (June 26, 2003)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_2/002-2430024-6080008?v=glance&s=books

I guess we will see an update to FCP in the second quarter.

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you think apple would let a book company know of a new version, i think not.

iJon

Re: Re: Final Cut Pro X evidence

Originally posted by iJon
you think apple would let a book company know of a new version, i think not.

iJon

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Actually it is a somewhat standard practice for a book or two to be written in coordination with the development of a new version of software.

Haven't you ever noticed (for instance) how fast PhotoShop 7 books were available after its release?

Actually it is a somewhat standard practice for a book or two to be written in coordination with the development of a new version of software.

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That iLife book was announced at MWSF, just to reinforce this point....

ok ok, you guys shut me out. guess i thought apple would make it pretty secret, i guess they have to keep a tight leash on the book people. you were right and i was wrong.

iJon

Re: 1st with FW800

Originally posted by Sol
FireWire 800 would be a big deal because there is no software in the market that can do that yet. I hope that the extra speed of FW800 will mean uncompressed video without a PCI card.

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Software that can "do" FW800? What does that mean? As of now it will just mean faster tranfer and read times.

As for uncompressed video. Not likely. "Uncompressed" video still needs some sort of compression and why would they work on a whole new compression to support that? Because you need fast and wide drives. Plus the ONLY decks that have firewire are DV decks so you would have uncompressed DV.
And you need a ton of space.
With the quality of DV the average (non-broadcast) user does not need uncompressed...and there are great uncompressed cards for about a grand if you do need it.


Better uses for FW800:

4 channel simultaneous audio capture/output. (this is needed).

Fibre-Share networking.

I'm not a video-editor-type-guy, but I read that FW800 was able to transmit video and audio along very long fire"wires"(?) And stay digital with noad/da business. I work with audio all the time, and this seems, from my level of understanding, to be a very interesting feature. Would this mean the ability to record live footage directly into FCP4? The apple site hinted at this sort of application of the technology.

A very interested nerd,
Badhorsie777

Originally posted by badhorsie777
I' I read that FW800 was able to.. stay digital with noad/da business... Would this mean the ability to record live footage directly into FCP4?

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The firewire would have to he connected to something that has a firewire port. This would likely be a camera or a deck and that is where the analog to digital conversion would happen. FW800 couldnt change this. DV is not only a tape format it is a compression. Any time you have video on a drive it needs to be compressed (even if it is "uncompressed video"). This compression currently is done with a DV chip (in your camera or converter). In the case of uncompressed it is done on a PCI card.



You can record live into final cut now. If you use "capture now."

Does anyone know when Final Cut Pro 3 came out?

Like others here, I find the 'rumor' to be so broad as to assure they will be correct on at least one count.

As for Firewire 800, that's hardware. And like most everything else about FCP, it'll work with whatever hardware you manage to hook it into to; Firewire, SCSI, Fibre.

If Firewire 800 is going to make any splash it'll be if it's incorporated into a tape deck... like a highly compressed HD deck.

Some things that the pros will be concerned about are: 4 channels of audio I/O, improved Media Management, MultiCam functionality, improved OMF support, better compatability between FCP and DVD Studio Pro, hopefully a rewritten code base to improve stability of the software and integrate it more tightly into OS X, perhaps even a management tool for simultaneously sharing media between multiple FCP stations (several third party vendors are also working on this, but I'd like to see more tightly integrated into FCP).

Originally posted by MacFan25
Does anyone know when Final Cut Pro 3 came out?

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December 2001

Wow. Cool. Hope you can break down your rendering...

I sure hope that it (or FCP5) will give the user the ability to export the EDLs to render farms to get all the rendering done over a network. If that happens, I'd be pretty happy.

Re: Wow. Cool. Hope you can break down your rendering...

Originally posted by GeneR
I sure hope that it (or FCP5) will give the user the ability to export the EDLs to render farms to get all the rendering done over a network. If that happens, I'd be pretty happy.

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Are there programs that renderfarm to video from video?

The only apps that I have used that renderfarm are either 3d or are using image sequences. I have never heard of video to video renderfarm.

Idiots Rule

How many people posting on this thread have ever even used FCP???

I am guessing not many.

People who are saying FW800 is not important:

quote:
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the most important added feature is support for FireWire 800.
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"Most important? While it is welcome and would drive adoption of FW800 there is no way that this is the most important feature. No way. Why?
quote:
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Other features said to be implemented are support for 24fps, improved support for HDTV, built-in 3-D titles,
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"These are much more important. Oh, and they already have 3d titles."

hmm, the future of HDTV could be on FW800 and FW1600 cables. Apple has a chance to make FW an important standard in the Post Production world.

Go :
http://www.panasonic.com/PBDS/subcat/Products/cams_ccorders/specs/s_aj-hdc27v.html

and checkout the specs for Panny's most popular HD Camera(1280x720)
6.7:1 compression
100Mbps bit rate.

basically this HDTV signal could be sent over FW400. But transferring from camera to cpu to hard disk would be 200Mbps plus, so doubtful Panny would put FW400 on HDTV decks and HDTV cameras.

If any of you recall, Panny and apple made announcements last spring to work on firewire together. hmm, if we are lucky, Panny will make FW800 a standard connector on there future decks and cameras.

Unfortunately the Sony CineAlta F900 (1920x1080)uses a much higher bit rate. averaging 130MB/s, usually between 110MB/s and 170MB/s


""As for uncompressed video. Not likely. "Uncompressed" video still needs some sort of compression and why would they work on a whole new compression to support that? Because you need fast and wide drives.""
What????
Compression for uncompressed??? hmm... how's that crackpipe??
I guess you have never worked with uncompressed video.
ever heard of SDI?? Serial Digital Interface, the STANDARD for uncompressed video!!!!!!
it is true though, that each Uncompressed board manufacturer needs to write a codec(for lack of a better word) to tell their board how to deal with the Standard SDI stream.

It would be great if apple and others, perhaps AJA, would make us a SDI - FW800 adaptor.

Why would I need fast wide drives? I'll have a FW800 RAID, using standard ATA drives and oxford 922 chipsets before NAB.

"there are great uncompressed cards for about a grand if you do need it."

hmm.. I only know of 1, the Blackmagic Decklink. And I am not sure if if can playback an uncompressed(SDI) stream, although it can definitely acquire the SDI, and playback DV with some realtime effects.

"This would likely be a camera or a deck and that is where the analog to digital conversion would happen. FW800 couldnt change this."

hmmm am I going to have analog to digital conversion from my camera or deck??
well, if all my stuff is shot on digial cameras, then there is no conversion.


After Effects can be set up with renderfarms.

Hi-Def

Yes, FW800 would be important for High definition video cameras, recording mechanisms, etc. As for uncompressed video, true no DV or Motion-JPG like codec is used for it but you still need to convert an analogue signal to digital video. With twice the speed I think a standard definition converter would work over FW800 BUT THEN AGAIN the same thing would be possible over FW400 and we have seen no such products from Canopus, Formac, etc. My hope is that uncompressed video over FW would be cheaper than a PCI solution.

FCP 4 should have much improved GUI options. I love making audio tracks as tall as the screen in Pro Tools and that is a feature I hope to see in FCP. I am sure we will see a lot of new and re-written filters as well as real-time effects (so long as you have a brand new Mac).

The idea about a video render farm might be good for film editing but for DV projects or Motion-JPG it would be over the top. I would rather do all my rendering on a workstation that is up to the task.

Thank you, spacepower, for adding some sanity to this thread!

I think that when michaelyoung says that uncompressed video still is compressed, he means that it is encoded or digitized. That would be a true statement - unless he's thinking that a loss-less compression is applied - but then it wouldn't really be uncompressed then would it?

I'm a hobiest videographer* so I don't want to come off as some kind of pro-wannabe or anything, but I'm pretty sure spacepower is correct in much of what he (she?) said.

Also, (not that I could afford to make use of it), I'd love to see FCP be able to distribute rendering off to a "farm". You'd probably need gigabit ethernet and a fast file server to make it worth anything but it would be a nice way to sell racks of XServes and XRaids!

-Eric

*(FWIW, I started with NLE's right about the time FCP 1.0 came out but played a little with the Toaster in college when I worked for Commie-Amiga)

Re: Hi-Def

Originally posted by Sol
The idea about a video render farm might be good for film editing but for DV projects or Motion-JPG it would be over the top. I would rather do all my rendering on a workstation that is up to the task.

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(This was posted while I was still typing my comments in)

You are probably right here. I think all of us FCP users have high hopes for the IBM 970 or something to bring us up to speed on rendering times.

High speed capture

One thing I'd like to see (which might exist on some ulta-high end stuff that I'll never be able to afford) is high speed transfer from DV tape.

I can think of no technical reason why there couldn't be a tape drive that could read/write DV25 data at higher than 1:1 speed. FW800 could really shine there, but FW400, from what I understand, has a lot of headroom as it is today.

Anybody know why this wouldn't work and/or why there aren't any products out there? (or if there is, please fill me in!)

-Eric

Hassle Free Render Farming

What if the render farm becomes available as a service on the Net? If it was I would edit a project on my own workstation and for a subscription I could access hundreds of CPUs to do my rendering for the time that I need them. I imagine that Apple's XServes would be ideal for such a render farm operation.