This was all over the place, at the beginning of September:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201009/090910BBCAdoptsPremiereProCS5.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...e+pro&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
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Final Cut Studio Update Scaled Back and Delayed?
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This was all over the place, at the beginning of September:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201009/090910BBCAdoptsPremiereProCS5.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...e+pro&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
We have adobe production suite at work and it's utterly appalling. I prefer FCP6 over premiere pro cs5. FC is far more elegant and efficient that premiere pro.
Why are people so bothered about this? Just because adobe have joined autodesk in releasing new software every year doesn't mean apple have to. Upgrading software is a pain in the ass in any office with more than a few computers. It's funny that people say apple are abandoning the pro market because they don't release yearly refreshes of their software when traditionally professional software is refreshed every 2 or 3 years and consumer software every year.
Adobe are punishing their pro market far more than apple are by forcing you to pay for a whole software package every year. Who the hell uses content-aware fill in photoshop in a professional capacity? It doesn't work. If you're so bothered, try thinking about the differences between any piece of adobe software from the past 4 or 5 years. They've finally got win7 and multi-core compatibility...great. It took them 4 releases of creative suite to have those features from when multi-core CPUs were introduced. Why do you want to spend £1500 a year on software which offers no advantage over the previous iteration? If feature films can be edited on the first mac pro with final cut pro 5, i imagine people can probably make do with their 8 core mac pros and final cut pro 6 or 7 editing hdv footage. Hell i've seen Red 4:2:2 footage being edited on an imac.
Precisely.
I imagine the BBC will continue to use apple and avid. It's not as if the whole company uses a single software suite nor a single video recording standard.
Why are people so bothered about this? Just because adobe have joined autodesk in releasing new software every year doesn't mean apple have to. Upgrading software is a pain in the ass in any office with more than a few computers. It's funny that people say apple are abandoning the pro market because they don't release yearly refreshes of their software when traditionally professional software is refreshed every 2 or 3 years and consumer software every year.
Adobe are punishing their pro market far more than apple are by forcing you to pay for a whole software package every year. Who the hell uses content-aware fill in photoshop in a professional capacity? It doesn't work. If you're so bothered, try thinking about the differences between any piece of adobe software from the past 4 or 5 years. They've finally got win7 and multi-core compatibility...great. It took them 4 releases of creative suite to have those features from when multi-core CPUs were introduced. Why do you want to spend £1500 a year on software which offers no advantage over the previous iteration? If feature films can be edited on the first mac pro with final cut pro 5, i imagine people can probably make do with their 8 core mac pros and final cut pro 6 or 7 editing hdv footage. Hell i've seen Red 4:2:2 footage being edited on an imac.
Precisely.
I imagine the BBC will continue to use apple and avid. It's not as if the whole company uses a single software suite nor a single video recording standard.
Premiere objectively excels over Final Cut in certain areas - some of them rather important.
For instance, it can pull and play a key in real time. Also, it can playback video with two layers of sapphire plugins - no render.
These are pretty significant advantages and make you want to forget its shortcomings.
For instance, it can pull and play a key in real time. Also, it can playback video with two layers of sapphire plugins - no render.
These are pretty significant advantages and make you want to forget its shortcomings.
FCP is on a 2 Year release cycle. 2010 was never a Release planned. That article is crap. Better read philp hodgets thoughts on the matter.
QUOTE "Avid gets it right"
This will explain why allot of users (myself included) are not able to even install their software! and only obtain a icon that crashes EVERYTIME you try to open it and Avid STiLL without a valid response.
P.s. Avid only purchased to evaluate options. Results? Sticking with FCS thank you very much. As one user here put it. Avid only still around because the old fogies that use it have not retired
Oh, it's not just that. Compressor is utter garbage for H.264 encodes. I never use it. FFMPEG or even Handbrake not only give me more options than Compressor, but also work faster and wind up with higher quality to boot! It's incredibly sad when commercial pro software can't even match free software. Compressor doesn't even support bitrates higher than 1.5Mbps for iPod encodes, even though Apple put out a firmware update that allows iPods to play 2.5Mbps H.264 a long time ago!
Frame controls would be awesome for deinterlacing if they weren't so buggy. When they work, the output is superior to any other program I've seen. The problem is...they don't always work, and the time to encode with them is massive. When it finally finishes, I often see fleeting blocks of combing, as if the frame controls somehow missed a chunk of the video for a number of frames.
It's insulting that Apple includes Compressor and touts it as some kind of "pro" package. It's crap. Distributed encoding and integration with FCP is about the only real advantage it has.
Having read the Hardmac article, and these other two;
http://macsoda.com/2010/09/05/final-cut-studio-4-the-inside-scoop/
http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2010/09/final-cut-studio-4-the-inside/
I believe the only real conclusion that can be drawn on is What Has Apple Done, not what do we think they are doing.
First, having worked numerous large companies of Apple's size and having managed and worked on projects very similar to FCP, it really does not take a rocket scientist to figure out whats going on.
1) Development projects of FCP size "should" take about 2 years between major developments. You should be able to release perhaps less than that if you figure you have some redundant teams and the lead work on a new project never requires the entire team to be present at the beginning and at the end your already pulling resources off.
2) The last Major release of FCP was around June/July of 2007 if my memory serves me correct with nothing more than a band-aid-fix around July of 2008. If you figure the "Next Major Release Project" of FCP should have started around 6 months BEFORE the last major release of FCP, which was July of 2007, that means they should have been starting around Jan of 2007.
3) It's now been almost 34 months since that "Next Major Release" project should have been started and we really have nada.
4) Clearly Apples priorities are iOS4, iPads and iPhones. ProApps was important 3 years ago. Apple's business world has changed and now ProApps is simply a resource pool from which to pull engineers/designers at will to support the most important revenue product.
For me, the only thing VERY, VERY clear, based on Apples business model (which, I actually don't disagree with in the slightest) is that if anyone thinks that somehow item number 4 above is going to change to the benefit of ProApps, they are smoking rope.
I've made my decision. My main application I use in my work is Maya. I use to use it on a Mac but quite frankly got sick and tired of the pissing contests between Apple and Autodesk which centered around crap video drivers on the Mac for Maya. You have only one magic configuration that works and if you happen to upgrade something to make FCP work or something else work I ended up screwing up Maya. Plus, you want to back date a video driver on a Mac ? Have fun. It's format your hard drive and start ALL over again. On Win7 I go to nVidia's website. Get the driver I need and 10mins later I'm good to go. For the total amount of video editing I do PP will work fine for me and it simply screams on Win7 64bit with my Quadro card. FCP on my MacPro, "Oh, you want to just slide this HD clip vertical and not even change its location in time...... go make some coffee and run some errands and I'll let you know when I'm through". Sorry, completely sick and tired of that crap.
http://macsoda.com/2010/09/05/final-cut-studio-4-the-inside-scoop/
http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2010/09/final-cut-studio-4-the-inside/
I believe the only real conclusion that can be drawn on is What Has Apple Done, not what do we think they are doing.
First, having worked numerous large companies of Apple's size and having managed and worked on projects very similar to FCP, it really does not take a rocket scientist to figure out whats going on.
1) Development projects of FCP size "should" take about 2 years between major developments. You should be able to release perhaps less than that if you figure you have some redundant teams and the lead work on a new project never requires the entire team to be present at the beginning and at the end your already pulling resources off.
2) The last Major release of FCP was around June/July of 2007 if my memory serves me correct with nothing more than a band-aid-fix around July of 2008. If you figure the "Next Major Release Project" of FCP should have started around 6 months BEFORE the last major release of FCP, which was July of 2007, that means they should have been starting around Jan of 2007.
3) It's now been almost 34 months since that "Next Major Release" project should have been started and we really have nada.
4) Clearly Apples priorities are iOS4, iPads and iPhones. ProApps was important 3 years ago. Apple's business world has changed and now ProApps is simply a resource pool from which to pull engineers/designers at will to support the most important revenue product.
For me, the only thing VERY, VERY clear, based on Apples business model (which, I actually don't disagree with in the slightest) is that if anyone thinks that somehow item number 4 above is going to change to the benefit of ProApps, they are smoking rope.
I've made my decision. My main application I use in my work is Maya. I use to use it on a Mac but quite frankly got sick and tired of the pissing contests between Apple and Autodesk which centered around crap video drivers on the Mac for Maya. You have only one magic configuration that works and if you happen to upgrade something to make FCP work or something else work I ended up screwing up Maya. Plus, you want to back date a video driver on a Mac ? Have fun. It's format your hard drive and start ALL over again. On Win7 I go to nVidia's website. Get the driver I need and 10mins later I'm good to go. For the total amount of video editing I do PP will work fine for me and it simply screams on Win7 64bit with my Quadro card. FCP on my MacPro, "Oh, you want to just slide this HD clip vertical and not even change its location in time...... go make some coffee and run some errands and I'll let you know when I'm through". Sorry, completely sick and tired of that crap.
These are insignificant if you have built a career and vast library of shows on a certain piece of software. In FCP, I am fast, really fast. Keyboard shortcuts are all known, I don't look at the keyboard or mouse I just know where my hands are and what I am doing.
Saving a little render time means absolutely nothing to me as an editor. I make up the time with my quickness in the software. Learning Premieres menus, learning the keyboard shortcuts, learning the workflow, etc is all things I don't have the time or want to learn. Not to mention upgrading old capture cards that work fine with FCP just so people can work in Premiere.
And then comes compatibility with the rest of the market. With Automatic Duck I can get back and forth between FCP and AVID if I am working with a client that is using Avid. Is there a solid piece of software that allows you to do this between PP, FCP and AVID? I don't know of one, but truthfully I never bothered to look either.
In short, yes Premiere Pro CS5 is slick and powerful, but it won't be a true one stop shop for the majority of PROFESSIONAL users until it is more widely adopted. And that isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Apple should buy TheFoundry and while they are at it Side Effects Software!
That would bring a dedicated staff on board! Imagine Final Cut Pro, Color, Mari, Nuke, Houdini, SoundTrack Pro, and DVD Studio Pro offered as a complete suite.
I'm hoping Final Cut Pro, and Color are retooled to use a node based interface.
Maybe Apple can scoop up Traffic (Node based non-linear editor): http://www.xmedit.com/
Assimilate Scratch also looks like a good fit to take on Autodesk Smoke: http://www.assimilateinc.com/scratch.html
Both Compressor and Final Cut Server could also use a node based GUI for creating workflows. Telestream Vantage seems to be one upping Apple in that area/
That or Apple sells off Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server to TheFoundry.
That would bring a dedicated staff on board! Imagine Final Cut Pro, Color, Mari, Nuke, Houdini, SoundTrack Pro, and DVD Studio Pro offered as a complete suite.
I'm hoping Final Cut Pro, and Color are retooled to use a node based interface.
Maybe Apple can scoop up Traffic (Node based non-linear editor): http://www.xmedit.com/
Assimilate Scratch also looks like a good fit to take on Autodesk Smoke: http://www.assimilateinc.com/scratch.html
Both Compressor and Final Cut Server could also use a node based GUI for creating workflows. Telestream Vantage seems to be one upping Apple in that area/
That or Apple sells off Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server to TheFoundry.
The fact you are using software to transcode to h264 shows me just how amateur of an operation you run.
Personally, I would define an iPad as a computer.
By the time an iPad and other tablets become truely mainstream ( they aren't *yet*, early days ) and are truely a replacement for a PC ( which, currently, they are not ), then tablets too will be a creation devices as well as consumption devices which they are today in most part.
Thankfully, The Foundry don't have shareholders and are not interested in being taken over.
The first thing Apple would do is kill off Windows and Linux versions of the products like they did with Shake.
Most of the big effects houses are using Nuke under Linux now anyway (ILM, Weta, DNeg, Framestore) for admin reasons, it's mainly the independents who are using Macs.
There's also Storm being released soon, optimized for RED workflow, so Apple had really better watch out.
I was at the new Apple Store in Covent Garden a few weeks back. In case you don't know, the Covent Garden store is the largest Apple store in the world (even larger then the previous largest on Regent Street).
Anyway, get this.... they had no Mac Pros on display. That's right: ZERO! I asked an assistant who confirmed this was the case! Oh, but we stock more than iPads than any other store
This is how much Apple cares about the Mac.
Its not as though they are pushed for retail space.
Anyway, get this.... they had no Mac Pros on display. That's right: ZERO! I asked an assistant who confirmed this was the case! Oh, but we stock more than iPads than any other store
This is how much Apple cares about the Mac.
Its not as though they are pushed for retail space.
Isn't the more prosumer version of FCP, FCE? I tired FCE for a while, and it is very nice. I like it more than Vegas Studio Platinum in most cases. Most these still can't match the ease that iMovie offers(the old one, not the new one) imo.
Anyone know how Vegas compares to the latest versions of Premier and Premier Elements?
Anyone know how Vegas compares to the latest versions of Premier and Premier Elements?
The fact that you stick your nose up at people because they cannot justify hardware H.264 encoders shows me how much of a snotty ass you are. Do you honestly think that FCS is only used by big production houses that can justify the extra cost because they are encoding all day long? Do you really think that everyone cranking out video on FCS thinks that software encoding times are utterly unacceptable and they need hardware for it? Do you think everyone can justify the cost of a Mac Pro so they can actually put a good hardware encoder in it? Are you really that far up your own ass?
I was at the new Apple Store in Covent Garden a few weeks back. In case you don't know, the Covent Garden store is the largest Apple store in the world (even larger then the previous largest on Regent Street).
Anyway, get this.... they had no Mac Pros on display. That's right: ZERO! I asked an assistant who confirmed this was the case! Oh, but we stock more than iPads than any other store
This is how much Apple cares about the Mac.
Its not as though they are pushed for retail space.
I live right down the street from the biggest Apple Store in America, Boylston Street Boston. They have I think 2 on display. Fact of the matter is, most people don't go to an Apple Store to play with a Mac Pro. Those who are buying them tend to know what they want, why they want it and get the brick shipped to them. This has been the case for a very long time and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has walked into an Apple store in the past few years.
That's not it. You kept saying Pro this and Pro that. Any PRO has a hardware converter. The Elgato Turbo.264 HD costs less than $100 bucks and transcodes up to 300 fps (I average about 230 fps on my work). Anyone who can afford a mac and FCP but is too cheap to spend $100 is an idiot if they spend any time with video. Time is money and this thing paid for itself the first day I got it. This little dongle is more important than RAM when it comes to editing but you see morons cramming their system with 32GB and still get pissy about slow h264 transcodes.
I'm not holding my nose up, I'm trying to teach. Knowledge is power and many amatuers don't even realize they can get such serious gains for such short cash. Seriously, h264 transcoding in Compressor should be the least of anyone's worries about the suite.
The Turbo.264 HD sucks if you want to deliver H.264 for iOS devices at SD resolutions. Unless they've substantially improved the software, you're trading quality for speed. The reviews I've read showed iMovie outputting higher quality video than the Elgato. The free encoders would do even better. I'm not complaining about encode times. Hell, I don't mind longer encode times if it means higher quality. I don't want to shell out for a Mac Pro and an expansion card and the Turbo.264 is mediocre in quality. You only have to encode the video once assuming you set everything right the first time.
I'm pointing out that Compressor is crap for two reasons. One, it doesn't offer nearly as many encoding options, which is inexcusable for any part of a pro package. Whether or not people use it in a truly professional capacity is irrelevant. Two, it doesn't even match free alternatives in speed or quality. If everyone on Final Cut is expected to use hardware encoders then Apple might as well chop H.264 encoding out of Compressor all together. If they're going to include a software encoder in a $1k software package, then they should at least try making it worth a damn.
Apple, if you really want to see FCP fly off the shelves, drop it down to the price of the iLife suite. (Hidden Implications.... more Hidden Implications)
Yeah, if you use the presets you can get some bad quality. If you take the time to learn how to use it and adjust settings and make proper looking output it rocks. Most reviews people put online are people who can't figure out their ass from their elbow when it comes to video.
Umm... I can export using any codec on my system with Compressor. You install the quicktime component and there it is. Just because you don't know how to do it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Again, it is over a year old. Yes it is painfully slow and needs a revamp. I will agree with you there.
No, only those that care about their time. Compressor is fine for non-professionals since, like you said, non-pros work with the apps too. You can't have it both ways. You say not only pros work with the suite but then you say that it needs to be more pro. A professional (you know, what pro is short for) knows how to transcode faster and better than what Apple offers. I'm not buying the suite for Compressor, I buy it for FCP.
If anything should be taken out of the suite it is the fisher-price my-first-composting-app Motion. But then non-pros wouldn't know how to make all those cool particle effects
Well if that's the case TheFoundry should buyout Side Effects Software and pick up Houdini and then try to see if they can pick up Final Cut Studio from Apple. It would be great to have a non linear editor that ties in nicely withe Nuke and Houdini. Assimilate Scratch would be a great addition for TheFoundry as well so they can take on Smoke.
I'm anxiously waiting for Mari on Mac OS X, it has the potential to be a zBrush/Mudbox killer. It's core already can scale farther then both in the amount of polygons/textures that it work with at a time.
The FCP code would be so crap it wouldn't be worth having - would be better starting from scratch, which is what i guess Apple is doing if they have any sense at all.
You'll be waiting a while longer I'm afraid - Mari needs OpenGL 3.0, which Apple STILL doesn't support fully.
Umm...try looking in the encoding options for those codecs, specifically H.264 and especially H.264 for iOS devices. It's ludicrous how little control you have when other encoders give you far more options and even allow you to pass command line arguments when the settings aren't accessible from the GUI.
It was comparatively slow a year ago, too. Free encoders passed up Compressor a while ago and Apple just hasn't caught up.
I'm saying that the options should be there and it's ridiculous that they aren't. Whether or not pros are using FCS is irrelevant. It's designed for pros and made accessible for smaller guys, too. Apple has done a pretty good job of straddling a pretty large chunk of the video market with it, from the high end to the midrange. The thing is, Compressor is included in the package. It should darned well measure up to the other applications as well as compression packages in other suites. It doesn't. Putting Compressor in FCS is like putting a tape deck in a BMW.
You won't get a whole lot of argument from me there. Lumping Livetype into Motion was pretty awful, too. Then again, if they can improve Motion and bring it up to snuff, then that's great. The same would go for Compressor.If anything should be taken out of the suite it is the fisher-price my-first-composting-app Motion. But then non-pros wouldn't know how to make all those cool particle effects
This is just beyond pathetic. Once FCP was the crown jewels and now its like the illegal alien. Its very sad on many levels... and taking away FCP devs to develop iOS?!? What the hell is going on? Its time to go back to AVID Media Composer. Whats the point of spending money on Apple Pro hardware if the software isn't there. Its seems Apple=iOS=iToys. The only part that is "awesome" in Apple Pro software development is the amount of PR crap Apple is trying to feed to pro users.