Category: Apple Pro Apps

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Apple Pro Apps

Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop (from MacSoda)

Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop http://bit.ly/bb8vVB

While MacSoda implies they have a solid inside source – it certainly reads that way – there are some points that just don’t fit.

It’s highly unlikely that the next studio release will happen in early 2011, or even 2011. As I noted in the comments on the article, it seems very, very clear that the QuickTime we know will get a complete foundation change. Final Cut Studio would need many of those changes to be able to replicate Adobe’s Mercury Engine performance (along with the need to be 64 bit Cocoa and use Open CL and Grand Central Dispatch). It will need those changes for native support of anything other than QuickTime, which is why everything in FCP needs to be wrapped to QT, if not transcoded.

Every indication is that the move of AV Foundation from iOS to regular OS X will happen with OS X 10.7. No announcement has been made of 10.7 and past behavior would suggest that it won’t be announced until WWDC next year, with a most optimistic shipping date of September 2011. Allow at least six months for any applications to be finished on that platform and for a typically 2-3 month beta testing period and it’s virtually impossible to have a release in 2011.

According to job advertisements, Apple were hiring interface designers for ProApps just a few months ago. Presumably by now the jobs have been filled but that would be the beginning of a large amount of work that cannot be done in just a couple of months. To rework the ProApps (Interface) Kit will go across all applications and, again, that’s not trivial. MacSoda seems to think there won’t be major interface changes, but there are already reports of iMovie ’09 elements being included in Final Cut Pro’s current builds. (AppleInsider, and my article, Why Apple Insider Couldn’t be more wrong.)

Randy Ubilos has never been one to shirk from making major changes to interfaces, viz. iMovie ’09 which completely dropped the iMovie ’08 interface. Randy does know that editors don’t like change, but he also knows that you can’t make major improvements if you can’t make changes. Lots of people at LAFCPUG wanted features from iMovie ’09 in FCP when it was demonstrated in LA.

The comments about code rewriting, architectural changes sound plausible enough, although through the lens of someone who has never written code nor understands the procedure. (My day job is mostly a Product Manager for OS X applications in professional video mostly around Final Cut Pro, so I do have some insight into the code-writing process.)

Then there’s much that’s conjecture but I think is reasonable although the comments about Motion and Shake aren’t part of them. Apple is not embarrassed about Motion. What Motion is designed to be: a motion graphics tool for editors, not professional motion graphics designers who will use the more-powefull (and much harder to learn) Adobe After Effects. And so they should, After Effects is a powerful tool. Those folk use Motion as a “plug-in” to After Effects because Motion does some stuff that After Effects doesn’t. Shake, on the other hand, was a specialist compositing (not motion graphics) tool for special effects compositors. While it’s sad that Apple appears to have killed Shake and it’s kind, the purposes of the two programs – as anyone who really knew what they were talking about would know – is so dissimilar that it would be counter-productive to have both functions in the one tool. Shake was node-based; Motion (like After Effects) is layer based. Fundamental differences. I’d like a Shake replacement because the VFX industry needs it. But that’s not who Apple, mostly, make tools for.

Most tools are Perato apps. My word. The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80/20 rule. In my opinion, other than Final Cut Pro (and maybe true of Final Cut Pro too) Apple make the tools that 80% of people need, 80% of the time. Pages is not Word (but I prefer it because it’s less antagonistic than Word); Numbers is not a competitor to Excel in the professional market, but it’s a dmaned fine spreadsheet that meets my needs perfectly. Keynote is simply superior to PowerPoint in every respect – they got a hit! Motion is not After Effects, but it’s much more accessible than unlocking all the power that’s in  After Effects; Soundtrack Pro is not ProTools nor does it pretend to be (although I’m told that Logic Pro competes strongly with ProTools). Apple make the Perato apps, and they make them very accessible through thoughtfully designed interfaces so that more people get productive. And in business, productivity equals dollars.

Fun Fact: Shake was not really a full-functioning application in the normal way we think of it. The GUI essentiallly built a script that the compiler (the part that did the work) put together. A Shake project was essentially the scrip that would run to produce the result. And a lot of the power came from third party plug-ins bundled.

I think he’s right that the next release will be re-architected to take advantage of the new foundations of QuickTime; 64 bit Cocoa, Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL and be performance competitive with any other NLE, including Premiere Pro CS 5 (and CS6 no doubt).

His DVD/iDVD comments are interesting but appear to be lacking in anything other than conjecture. I expect DVD Studio Pro to either go away (most likely) or stay in the package as it is. There will never be Blu-ray authoring for OS X. My friend and conspirator in The Terence and Philip Show thinks DVD Studio Pro will be replaced with a “Publish to iTunes” button, but I’m skeptical, simply because of the legal issues around copyright that won’t be checked with an auto-publish button (although in fairness, an iApp-like review process would address that). There’s also the need to distribution material in other places than via iTunes – for Event videography for example.

As for Compressor. We’ve had, what, four releases, with three interface overhauls over the life of the product. If they’re not happy with it yet, hire some folk from Telestream, who do seem to be able to do an encoding engine right. (The new version of Episode coming is a very nice redesign btw).

Then we come to the comment  that:

Native RED support hasn’t come yet due to bickering between both Apple and RED… neither will compromise the licensing negotiations, so native RED support is a technical go, but a legal stalemate. Whether or not the legal issues will be resolved by the next major release is uncertain.

Native RED support requires a media foundation other than QuickTime. Period. There is no way native RED support – i.e. use of R3D native in Final Cut Pro as it is in Premeire Pro CS5 and Media Composer via AMA, simply cannot be done with the current version of QuickTime. We already have what can be done and that is a quick rewrap of the native R3D codec into a QuickTime container. As for the rest of the comment: Apple have had the closest relationship with RED of any NLE.

And really, the only quibble I have with his final paragraph –

That’s all I’ve got for now. I know I haven’t posted in a while, but hopefully this information will tie everyone over until the release hits. Just know that Apple has not abandoned their pro apps in the slightest… there’s a team at Apple working on them just as hard as the iPhone team works on the iPhone. Apple wouldn’t be employing dozens of people with large salaries if they didn’t think there was a future for the product. The fact is this… Final Cut Studio 4 is coming soon, it’s a major, functional, flashy upgrade, and should make the long wait for a “real” upgrade more than worth it.

– is that it’s unlikely to be “soon”.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Video Technology

Introducing AV Foundation and the future of QuickTime [Updated]

Introduction to AV Foundation http://slidesha.re/aYEJfR To be honest I don’t know why this isn’t hidden behind an NDA, but it’s not and until someone has it taken down, and asks me to do the same, I’ll consider it public knowledge.

Now, AV Foundation is the iOS media system, so we’re not talking about QuickTime per se but I have to wonder.

QuickTime – the real OS-centric media framework, not the little sub applications that function as players – is transitioning from C APIs (Carbon) to Cocoa via QTKit. Trouble is, QTKit got a lot of work around QuickTime 7’s release, but not so much in recent years. And yet Final Cut Pro needs a lot of what’s not written, before it can release a Cocoa version of Final Cut Pro.

Actually, Apple could do what Adobe have done for Premiere Pro CS5. In rewriting their core media handling engine, Adobe retained QuickTime support by spinning it off into a 32 bit thread, but that’s a complex workaround that does nothing for performance, nothing positive anyway.

When you consider slide 9… Even though it was only introduced in iOS 2.2, extended in iOS 3 and “completed” in iOS 4 (consider the reference framework growth in slides 6, 7 and 8), AV Foundation has 56 Classes and 460 Methods (the more you have of these, the more you can do with it). QTKit has 24 Classes (less than half) and 360 Methods. Compare that with the (very mature) QuickTime for Java with 576 Classes and more than 10,000 Methods. Something tells me that QTKit is not in favor at Apple.

Not that I think QuickTime is going away, at least not as a brand for their media players and the overall technology. I say that because, although the code that’s in iPhone OS shows a simplified player, that was all that was originally released and it shared no “QT Classes or Frameworks”. So, the QuickTime brand is likely to be retained.

If I was extrapolating from this presentation, and I am extrapolating wildly from a small amount of data, I’d guess that the direction within Apple was toward the more modern Classes and Methods of AV Foundation, and that, eventually, AV Foundation, Core Audio, Core Animation and Core Media will replace what we currently have under QuickTime on OS X: Core Audio, Core Video (well, just a subclass of Core Image) and a lot of deprecated (do not use) C APIs.

If you consider slide 14, and the similarity of Classes between QTKit and AV Foundation it makes no sense to build two technologies in the company that were essentially doing the same thing.  Slide 29 shows how similar an AVAsset is to a QTMovie. The other Classes all seem to duplicate functionality that’s in QuickTime now, but in efficient, new, modern code. Capture, editing, playback, media formats… they all seem to be in AV Foundation duplicating work done (or not yet done) in QuickTime’s QTKit.

Importantly Core Media Time is in “n’ths of a second” not “ticks” or “events”. Media based on time will be better for video frame rate uses than one based on ticks or events, which caused the “Long Frames” problems of earlier versions of Final Cut Pro.

In support of my hypothesis I offer slide 42: specific references to AVAssetExportSession.h being available in OS X with 10.7 and likewise CMTime.h has a reference to becoming available in 10.7.

So, I’ll go on a limb and suggest that QuickTime as we’ve known it is somewhat dead; long live a new QuickTime. QuickTime will continue being the branding, but everything “below that” will transition to new architectures essentially ported from iOS to OS X.

This would be a very good thing. A completely new, modern, efficient (you see what it does on the iPhone) underpinning for QuickTime down below that QTKit layer.

Who wouldn’t want to use that in an modern NLE, even if it means waiting for OS X 10.7, which hasn’t been announced yet? It would make it much easier for the Final Cut Pro team to create a much more powerful media engine than it has now; one that really understands time and not events and one that mimics the power of Adobe’s Mercury Engine. Let’s face it, media performance on a 1 GHz A4 chip is in some ways better than the performance on 8 core processors. iMovie for iOS, built on these frameworks (if slide 24 is to be believed) can edit Long GOP H.264, which Final Cut Pro can’t! (And in both cases the H.264 playback is accelerated by hardware: dedicated chips in the iPhone, on the graphics card in OS X.)

As always, conjecture on my part, and this time based solely on what I’ve learnt from the quoted slide show. Chris Adamson does not work for Apple but he does claim expertise in iOS and QuickTime. Other posts on his blog indicate some differences between AV Foundation and QuickTime; and Classes still missing from AV Foundation that are in the current version of QuickTime. That shakes my confidence in the hypothesis a little, but given how little work has been done on QTKit in the last two years, and the need to have the foundations for QuickTime modernized, it still seems like the most likely path Apple will take.

Another data point is that the QuickTime X player was promoted thusly:

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone™, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari® with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*

Pioneering the technology under iOS, and then porting it to Mac OS X has happened already.

UPDATE: Chris Adamson, who did the presentation I referred to, clarified many of the points I get wrong or wrongish, including the fact that AV Foundation is not under NDA. His Connecting the Dots post is essential reading if you’ve got this far!

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Apple Pro Apps

Why Apple should drop Log and Capture from FCP

My friend Terry Curren and I get together for lunch periodically. Last time he was trying to convince me, among other things, that Apple will drop Log and Capture from the next version of Final Cut Pro. I resisted the idea until I realized that not only was he right, but that Apple should drop Log and Capture. Here’s why.

Tape is deadish now, will be more so in 2012.

After revising the HD Survival Handbook last year I realized that HDV and tape in general was dead. HDV was the last tape format for acquisition and that too is now (according to me) officially “dead”. (Not that it’s out of use, but that it’s unwise to invest further in that format.)

So, given that I have considered tape to be “dead” for a year, how dead will it be in another 18-24 months? Very dead.

Sure, there will be people who need to capture from tape and output to tape. Output is already handled by Blackmagic Design and AJA with utilities that ship with their hardware. Blackmagic Design’s version includes capture.

Rewriting Log and Capture will waste engineering resources that should go into an improved Log and Transfer.

If tape capture and output is a third party opportunity (and both Blackmagic Design and AJA utilities are better at accurate insert editing than FCP is itself) then the engineering resources could go into improving Log and Transfer: speed and metadata support could be beefed up.

Dropping old technology and moving to new is in Apple’s DNA

We’ve dropped the floppy disk, ADB, and a host of other technologies. In the iDevices, Apple have frequently used the latest and greatest technology, so it’s much less likely they’d invest the resources that would be necessary to rebuild Log and capture.

So, I’m convinced: Log and Capture must go. Even though they have Cocoa code in the HDV version of Log and Capture I can’t see the benefit when the vast majority of FCP users in 2012 so it has to go. Leave an opportunity for third parties and move FCP into a newer, modern future.

Updated: Matt has a point in the comments that I should have addressed: tape will be with us for quite a while and I made almost all the same arguments to Terry before becoming convinced I was wrong.

Beside, tape is dead according to this image from Chris Roberts of a Copenhagen shop window:

Tape could well be dead.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Item of Interest

Some cool tools for Final Cut Pro from Edit Mule

Auto-Collapse for FCP http://bit.ly/dtJQ1h Tidy up those timelines by collapsing redundant layers, removing unused parts of clips, etc. Looks powerful and useful.

We often create or are presented with messy, confusing timelines… This is the perfect way to simplify unwieldy timelines… It’s ideal for efficient use of drive space before media managing and re-conforming; and also for consolidating sequences to one track for exporting old style CMX EDL’s.

Filter Removal for FCP. Unlike Final Cut Pro’s Filter Removal tool, this one allows selective removal.

So often we find ourselves with sequences with tons of filters of all varieties. For example, say you have a whole sequence that’s been de-interlaced, colour corrected, with some maybe blur and film effect filters peppered around too, and you want to remove just the interlace filter… its impossible without deleting all the others. The workaround for this little problem is as tedious as it gets, you’ve got to pick through each and every clip and manually delete each of those pesky de-interlace filters… Now with EM Filter Remover you simply select the sequence whose filters you want to edit, and it does it all for you!

And one more that I didn’t tweet about is Auto Scratch. Automatically set the Scratch Disk to follow the project. Yah!

Particularly useful for machines and facilities with many operators and projects… EM Auto Scratch remembers where each projects render files and media destinations are meant to be, even when you hop between projects. No more excuses for colleagues who’ve accidentally deleted all the media for the project you’ve been working on for months!

Until today I wasn’t even aware of Edit Mule – out of the UK and creating some nice tools.

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Apple Pro Apps

Why Apple Insider couldn’t be more wrong!

Today Apple Insider got the echo chamber of the Internet buzzing, with their post Apple scaling Final Cut Studio apps to fit prosumers by Prince McLean. It’s a great headline and I can’t blame Prince McLean and Apple Insider for running with it: it’s bound to get them a whole bunch of links.

However, they couldn’t be more wrong. Factually they have the entire history of Pro Apps at Apple just plain wrong. That’s probably because Prince McLean isn’t exactly well known in the professional video communities and because that history is only known by those who where paying attention at the time. (And also, Apple have definitely encouraged the inaccurate version of the Pro Apps history mistakenly quoted at Apple Insider.)

More on that in a minute. Aside from the factual errors in the history, I think they have had some data from an insider that they’ve totally misinterpreted and the true interpretation is incredibly positive for Final Cut Pro.

Now for the standard disclaimer. I’m not a rumor monger. I gather data from a lot of different places; have watched the professional video software industry closely on a day-to-day basis; and am very good at interpreting and interpolating meaning from the data points. However, I do have a way-above-average history of accuracy in my predictions, something that cannot be said for Apple Insider (G5 Powebook anyone? Where’s my Final Cut Extreme Apple Insider?)

In the late 1990’s Macromedia were going head-on against Adobe: whatever Adobe could, they could do better. There was Freehand against Illustrator; Fireworks to ImageReady; Dreamweaver vs GoLive; and there was to be KeyGrip against Premiere. In fact Macromedia snagged the three core members of the development team for Premiere 1-4.2 and they started work on KeyGrip. KeyGrip had evolved to become Final Cut by NAB 98, where it was being shown in a small demo room in the basement. That was my first exposure and I still have the T shirt (which fits a much younger man).

Macromedia suddenly decided to stop fighting Adobe and jump on this new thing called the Internet. Good call. So Macromedia had no need for Final Cut and where in fact shopping it around before NAB 98. Media100, who were going to use KeyGrip on PCs with their Vincent Card but became frustrated with how far behind schedule it was they went on to develop Finish, passed on buying Final Cut, probably because of the history. 1998 was the year that Media100 launched a Windows app. Premiere had gone cross platform at 4.2 and Premiere 6 was developed for both platforms.

This was the year that it wasn’t looking all that good for Apple. NAB was PC all the way. Even Avid had endured the “we’re going only to PC” debacle/rumor/whatever.

Apple eventually purchased Final Cut about three weeks after NAB in reality to ensure that there would continue to be a Non Linear Editing application on the Mac. I also believe that someone figured that Apple’s FireWire (they developed it) port combined with the iLink on Sony’s DV cameras just released (in reality, also FireWire) combined with the new software could sell some Macs. That was a smart move. When I saw Final Cut in March 98, it was working with some Targa dual stream cards, which was not as robust as when Final Cut Pro was release at NAB 99. But Final Cut Pro had native FireWire/DV support: perfect with those new Blue and White G3 towers with native FireWire!

But Apple bought Final Cut Pro as a defensive (and marketing) move. I seriously doubt that there was a cohesive Professional Applications Strategy in 1999. Or 2000. But by NAB 2002 there had been some serious planning going on. By then (or shortly before) there was definitely a Pro Apps strategy in place. (If I recall correctly, largely attributable to Richard Kerris.)

I do know that the Final Cut Pro team were a whole lot more open then than they are now. It was a different time at Apple. I’m very confident, from conversations at that time, and when Apple went on the Pro Apps buying spree, that the strategy of a Pro Apps group came well after the Final Cut Pro purchase. When Apple saw how successful Final Cut Pro had become, and how valuable its nascent involvement in the professional film and television world was for selling iMacs with iMovie in the heartland, a Pro Apps strategy evolved.

And Apple went on a buying spree:

  • eMagic (Logic, Logic Pro, Garageband and Soundtrack Pro have evolved from that purchase)
  • Prismo Graphics for “LiveType” (a Cocoa version of India Pro)
  • Nothing Real (Shake) and Silicon Grail
  • Astarte (DVD Studio Pro 1-1.5)
  • Spruce (DVD Studio Pro 2 onward)
  • The Motion team who had previously created combustion and it’s ancestors (well, they had just been let go from discreet and Apple employed the whole team so technically Motion was developed by Apple employees)

and so on.

Apple have poured a lot of money into the Pro Apps and in turn it’s made them a lot of profit on the software division. “Highly Profitable” according to one very reliable source.

So, to the substance of the Apple Insider rumor: is Apple turning Final Cut Pro into Final Cut Prosumer? Let’s consider some data points.

  1. Apple does not like to be second best in anything. Consider DVD Studio Pro. DVDirector, the product they purchased Astarte for, was released by Apple as DVD Studio Pro 1 – effectively DVDirector 2.0.  There was a 1.5 release but DVD Studio Pro was not getting the professional respect that Apple hoped for. (Was that polite enough?) So they purchased Spruce. Although it was PC only and immediately killed, Apple bought the best available knowledgeable engineering team and abstract layer code. This became DVD Studio Pro 2 with the Pro Apps kit interface. (The first app with that Interface Framework.) They genuinely want Final Cut Pro – or its successor – to be a truly great application for their target market, which may not be senior editors on studio pictures!
  2. Apple derives a lot of benefit from the Pro Apps.
    1. The division is highly profitable. (500,000 users upgrade a version of the Studio and it’s $150 million). Not iPod territory but respectably profitable. (And they do help sell some of those expensive MacPros.)
    2. The technology is now interwoven throughout their iApps.
    3. There is a huge marketing advantage from the Pro Apps, such that it’d be worth keeping them if they were only just profitable. Every time a documentary is nominated for an Academy Award edited on Final Cut Pro, Apple sell 10,000 copies of Final Cut Express and an iMac or MacBook Pro in the heartland – it’s aspirational but affordable.
  3. Apple are pushing all their applications to 64bit and to Cocoa. Final Cut Pro has a harder-than-most development path because of the history (cross platform app to OS 9 to OS X to Intel and now to Cocoa and 64bit).
  4. Apple need to come out with a very strong version at the next release. Avid have been very strong with their recent Media Composer releases, particularly with workflow features that editors appreciate (a better open timeline than Final Cut Pro, for example). Adobe have just released a version of Premiere Pro that leverages Apple’s hardware for performance far better than Final Cut Pro does. Apple know this.
  5. Apple has the financial resources to wait until something is right, rather than release a half-finished version.
  6. Apple does not leak. OK, I think I’ve substantiated that Randy Ubillos is back in a senior designer position (or more) but really, Apple employees don’t leak. They’re my worst source of information that isn’t necessarily public knowledge. Randy, for those who don’t know, was one of those original three that went from Adobe to Macromedia: he was the original designer of Premiere 1-4.2. He is also the lead designer for Aperture and iMovie 09 was almost a personal project before Apple picked it up.
    1. So Apple Insider have not had a review copy of any development version of Final Cut Pro (next); it’s almost certain they don’t have any substantial information at all, just a snippet. Perhaps a quick view of an interface or mockup? There isn’t anything substantial in the article.

Ok, given all that, here’s why I think Apple Insider are about as wrong as anyone could be. They got something: a tip or a sneak peak or something. The most likely thing they saw that could lead to this type of misinterpretation is they saw, or more likely someone visiting Apple saw, a screen supposedly from the next version of Final Cut Pro and it looked, superficially like iMovie. Combine that with Randy Ubillos’ move back to Final Cut Pro and the leap is obvious, but wrong.

Apple appear to be revising the Pro Apps kit from it’s original incarnation in 2002-03. We’ve seen hints of more HUD (the white-on-black interface for Motion’s floating palettes) like interface design in places, and that look is very similar to iMovie 09. They’re looking for designers now. It’s likely that whatever the current interface design is, it’s not there yet or they wouldn’t be hiring designers now!

Let me go out on a limb and say that it much more likely means that Final Cut Pro is getting a very thorough rewrite. Not just a 64 bit/Cocoa rewrite (and hopefully take advantage of modern OS X features) but a complete rethink.

When iMovie 09 was demonstrated at LAFCPUG, there were a lot of people who wanted iMovie features incorporated into Final Cut Pro. Not dumb Final Cut Pro down to iMovie but take the best features of iMovie and incorporate them. While you’re at it, if nothing’s sacred in the current design, let’s take the best from Avid (metadata management – the groundwork has been happening since FCP 5.1.2 and the evidence is in the XML); the importance of performance from Adobe (strap in Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL and make a showcase for Apple’s technologies); the best of iMovie.

This actually makes me much more hopeful and positive for the next version of Final Cut Pro. It suggests that Apple are serious about rewriting and not just changing out the minimum possible. And if it looks a little like iMovie 09, that wouldn’t be all bad. (But could you borrow customizable interfaces from Adobe, please?)

That’s why I believe Apple Insider misinterpreted the snippet of information and that the opposite is true: Apple are serious about making the next release the killer release everyone is hoping for.

Above all else, I reserve the right to be wrong. It’s a guess: an intelligent guess, yes.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Interesting Technology Video Technology

What are my thoughts on NAB 2010?

By now you’ve likely been exposed to news from NAB – at least I hope so. If not head over to Oliver Peter’s blog and read up on what you missed. Rather than rehash the news I’d like to put a little perspective on it.

Digital Production BuZZ

The little show that I co-created nearly five years after a successful five years with DV Guys (although I was only managing editor for the last 3 years of that show) has now been the official NAB Podcast for 2009 and 2010. Big props to Larry Jordan, Cirina Catania, Debbie Price and the amazing team they put together for NAB 2010. I filed some special reports, which you can hear among the more than 70 shows the team pulled together in the six days of NAB.

3D Everywhere

Whether it’s Panasonic’s “Lens to Lounge” or Sony’s “Camera to Couch” 3D was everywhere. Everywhere except actually being able to do something with all the 3D content we’re being pushed to produce. I’m aware that the top grossing movies last year were 3D and 3D movies perform better than 2D. I just don’t see that as being relevant to my universe where I don’t distribute my work through a major studio to 2000 cinemas.

So short of that, where’s the outlet for all the 3D? YouTube plays 3D (but is incredibly hard to monetize). The Blu-ray 3D spec is finalized but no shipping players, burners or encoders are available.

While I have no real quibble with the cinema experience – although films need to be designed for 3D, and shot with 3D in mind, to be successful 3D experiences (and few are) – I am very skeptical about 3D in the home, at least for the next couple of years. The problems of the glasses – I multitask a lot of the time while watching TV, what about visitors, or preparing dinner? – and the very different nature seems to limit the future of 3D in the home to those who have dedicated home theaters and dedicated, monotasking viewing time.

The missing Apple

Of course, if you’re a regular reader you’ll know it came as no surprise that Apple wasn’t at NAB. They don’t do trade shows any more so it was highly unrealistic to expect anything at NAB this year, next year, or any year. When they have something to announce, they’ll announce it.

You’ll also be aware that I believe Apple is doing a lot of what they need to do with Final Cut Pro to make it the “awesome” release that Steve Jobs tells us it will be. Maybe 2011 some time, but more likely early 2012 for the next awesome Final Cut Studio release. Or whenever Apple is ready!

Avid Media Composer 5 and editing in the cloud

The new management (current management) at Avid certainly appear to be spot on track. Media Composer 3.5, 4 and now 5 have all been great releases. As more of the work this management team are pushing comes to the public, the more I see the company back on track.

In fact hearing “interoperable” and “openness” sprinkled regularly into the press event and marketing materials seems slightly out of character from the old Avid, but is very welcome. Direct editing of QuickTime media, HDSLR or RED media via AMA for quick turn-around content is a huge advancement. Improvements to audio filters (and eventual round-tripping to a future version of ProTools) are long-standing requests from Avid’s customers. Even the “expensive” monitoring (output only) requirement has gone thanks to support for an MXO Mini for monitoring. (I wish that was an option back in January – it would have saved a client of mine about $18K!)

While only a “technology demonstration” at this point, Avid’s “edit in the cloud” (i.e. over the Internet or from a Local Server) looks like the real deal. Scott Simmons has a review of the demo over at Pro Video Coalition. Avid is back and we like it.

Adobe CS5

I doubt there’s much to add to Adobe’s CS5 announcements. The Mercury Engine is a major step forward in performance and it will take the others a while to catch up. To be competitive Apple would have to rewrite FCP to 64 bit and then implement Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL to deliver that level of performance (and that’s what I expect they’re doing). Adobe’s platform-agnostic code (at the core) has made it easier for them to move to 64 bit, and tight integration with Nvidia’s CUDA engine, on top of some mighty software optimizations, gives the performance boost.

The whole Master Collection is a must-have for post production for After Effects, Encore, Photoshop and Illustrator alone. Premiere Pro is a bonus and could well become the Swiss Army Knife of editing tools as it supports pretty much any format natively.

Pick of the show

The pick of the show for me is, without a doubt, Get: phonetic search for Final Cut Pro. Search your clips for specific words wherever they occur. The exact opposite of Adobe’s Transcription (although that can be boosted by feeding it a script in CS5) Get does not attempt to derive meaning from the waveforms that make up the audio. Instead it predicts what the waveform for your search terms should look like, then goes and tries to match it in your media.

It has certainly set my thinking cap buzzing. What we could do at Assisted Editing with this technology would be amazing – almost delivering my “magic future” for metadata I spoke of at my two presentations. But for now, Get is an amazingly powerful tool that every documentary filmmaker will want to be using.

Hardware trends you might have missed

Not many of the main news streams picked up on the trend to multiple cards, or multi-channel cards, this NAB. Obviously 3D capable cards were announced (by AJA and Blackmagic Design) but AJA also announced that multiple Kona cards can co-exist in the one host computer; while Blackmagic Design announced a dual channel card, and Matrox promised a four channel I/O card.

What we’ll be using this multi-channel capability for, I’m not quite sure, as no software supports it, yet. Except, Blackmagic Design used to have a two channel software switcher in their product range (although it seems to be missing from their website right now). A dual channel Decklink card, with software switcher, makes a very powerful and inexpensive studio or location tool with a Mac Pro. Seriously undercuts dedicated switchers from Focus Enhancements or Pansonic.

$999 daVinci

Blackmagic Design almost deserve a post of their own on the NAB announcement (that you no doubt followed here) of the $999 software-only daVinci. Scott Simmons reminded me in a Tweet that I had accurately predicted a dramatic price drop for the daVinci system. What I didn’t predict was how far, and how fast, Grant Petty would drop the price. What I expected to come in at $60K was announced as a turnkey system for $30,000! I didn’t expect the software only version, although in reality, with hardware, monitors, scopes and storage, that’s still likely a $20,000 investment, for what used to be a minimum of $300,000 or more.

This is, of course, consistent with everything that Grant Petty has done with Blackmagic Design. I remember the first Decklink announcement (on the DV Guys show) at under $1,000 and everyone wondered how the industry would cope. Those cards are now much more powerful, and even cheaper, and now we’re going down the same path with daVinci.

Friends, fun and the Future

For me, NAB is as much about friends as it is about the technology. It’s a time when my virtual communities intrude into real space. Once again, NAB proved to be two days too long and four nights too short. With about 20 parties happening Monday night and a similar number Tuesday, we need more nights to spread them over, and fewer days. I was done with the show floor by Tuesday afternoon and there were two days to run.

This year’s MediaMotion Ball was a great social event, as it always is; running into the Adobe party following. Tuesday’s Supermeet broke new ground with the “Three A’s” on stage together for the first time.

I made my contribution to the show via my Supermeet Magazine article, The Mundane and Magic Future of Metadata, which I also delivered as a presentation at the ProMax event and in the Post Pit on the show floor. The Supermeet Magazine should be available soon from Supermeet.com.

The future of post production automation is metadata. Check out the article and tell me what you think.

And that’s my NAB wrap for 2010. Other than to say, worst WiFi experience ever at the Sahara. Expensive and slow. It’s time for broadband to be included in the price of a room, like air conditioning (didn’t use); the Television (only to get the sign up details for the Internet connection); etc.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Video Technology

What is Apple doing with Final Cut Pro?

We were talking a couple of night ago and discussing how various of the NLE developers are dealing with the Carbon/Cocoa transition. But before I get to that a disclaimer and some background.

Disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge. If I did it would almost certainly be under NDA and therefore would not be shared. Everything I post here is based on publicly available knowledge, if not that commonly known. (Depends on how much you care about code and most people don’t.) So, I present data points, interpretation and extrapolation: in plain English, guesswork, but intelligent guesswork! PLEASE DO NOT CONSIDER THESE RAMBLING “RUMORS” OR HAVING ANY INSIDE KNOWLEDGE. THEY DO NOT AND ARE NOT RUMORS.

Final Cut Pro, like most software developed originally for OS 9, is built on a type of code called (for short) Carbon. The Carbon APIs (Application Programming Interface – the building blocks of code) allowed Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Media Composer and thousands of other applications to make the transition from OS 9 to OS X “reasonably painlessly”. (Meaning, hard but not impossible). Carbon code runs just fine on OS X and is no less efficient in and of itself than the more modern Cocoa code.

So-called Cocoa code is the native language for OS X. It is built almost completely on NeXTstep, which Apple acquired when they acquired NeXT (and Steve Jobs) as a replacement for OS 9. Now, originally Apple said (at the 2006 WWDC) that there would be 64 bit versions of the Carbon APIs. This would have meant that Final Cut Pro, Media Composer, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, et al. would be able to move to 64 bit versions without major rewrite. And so it was good.

Until a year later. At WWDC in July 2007 Apple reversed that decision and said that any application that wants to go to 64 bit would have to be rewritten to Cocoa.  Much gnashing of teeth in the ProApps camp and at Avid and Adobe. Not only can’t they go to 64 bit without rewriting but Final Cut Pro cannot start to use OS X technologies like Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL until that rewrite is done.

I’m much less familiar with Adobe’s code but the current version of Premiere Pro was ported to OS X in the modern code era and is almost certainly Cocoa where it hits the OS X road. It is highly likely that the majority of the code is in a format that is common to both platforms with mostly interface-specific code for each platform.

That’s also likely with the Media Composer code but I have reason to believe that Avid have been progressively rewriting functional blocks of code from Carbon to Cocoa over the last several releases (since mid 2007 probably)!

Most of the ProApps are already written in Cocoa: Soundtrack Pro, Motion, DVD Studio Pro (when it was based on Spruce not Astate’s code) and Compressor. These are already in a form that makes it relatively easy to move forward to take advantage of modern OS X technologies.

Not so Final Cut Pro.  Now we do know that most of what has been added to Final Cut Pro in recent versions has been written in Cocoa. Apple’s Xcode development tool allows a mixture of code types in the one application. I’m uncertain whether Multicam is written in Cocoa but I’d expect it to be. HDV Log and Capture; Log and Transfer; Share, Master Templates etc are clearly also written in Cocoa. (The main evidence is that the interface is using the “ProApps Kit” interface used in Motion, Soundtrack Pro et al.)

So to the question that started the post: “Are Apple rewriting parts of the code as they go?”  I think the answer is yes.

One really strong piece of evidence is the new Speed Change tools in Final Cut Pro 7. The new interface is ProApps kit, not Final Cut Pro’s interface elements, which by itself suggests new Cocoa code. What is stronger evidence is that speed changes in XML files give different results when imported to Final Cut Pro 6 than they do when imported to Final Cut Pro 7. This is very strong evidence that new code is involved. (The old code would give the same result even with a new interface.)

One would have to extrapolate that the new Marker functions (with their new interface) has also been given new code but that’s much less certain as the Marker interface still shows the original Final Cut Pro interface style with new elements added. (Compare the Speed Change dialog and Marker dialog to see the difference.)

The rewrite to Cocoa, even assuming they don’t make fundamental changes* is very time consuming and a lot of hard work to rewrite and test. That there is evidence in the current release of work already complete strongly suggests that the team is hard at work doing what’s necessary to bring Final Cut Pro into the modern Cocoa OS X code era. But don’t expect to see a converted release any time soon. There’s a lot of work that the QuickTime team has to do to add functionality to the underlying QTKit API (The modern QuickTime API for programmers) that an updated Final Cut Pro needs. Right now there’s no support for QuickTime metadata in QTKit, for example.

* Fundamental Changes. We’ve argued this instead of watching TV as well. Most of Final Cut Pro’s functionality is just fine. There’s not a lot to be gained by totally redesigning and redeveloping the Transition Editor, for example. There are, however, two areas that I think it would behove Apple well to rethink: Media Management and Metadata views. Media Management in Final Cut Pro is now reliable, except for a few edge cases (largely to do with dual system and merged clips). Whether or not to spend a lot of effort (and dollars) to improve it that last little bit for the relatively small customer base that would benefit is a management decision I’m glad I don’t have to make!

I do think they need to do something more flexible with metadata support. Non-tape sources come complete with comprehensive metadata that Apple capture and insert into the media file. This support was added in my all-time favorite Final Cut Pro release – 5.1.2! Unfortunately the Bin interface has limited flexibility. While there are a lot of viewable columns there’s no way to add a column unless you’re the Apple engineer that does that!  Other NLEs are much more flexible. Media Composer will add as many columns for whatever metadata you ask it to display. Not so Final Cut Pro where the only simple way to view QuickTime metadata in a QuickTime file is with my company’s miniME. (Go on, download it. The free demo lets you view all QuickTime metadata in a file and export it to an Excel spreadsheet. Buy it and you can remap the metadata into Final Cut Pro’s columns.)

It takes years to make major transitions in software. QuickTime metadata support came in late 2006. With the advent of Log and Transfer, that support became valuable. So my informed guess is that a future release of Final Cut Pro will allow that metadata to be viewed and used in Final Cut Pro. It’s all there in the file and in any XML export. To me that suggests a foundation for some future construction.

Like I said, nothing more than intelligent guesses. NOT RUMORS. NOT INSIDE INFORMATION. Just me joining dots and I’m bound to be wrong about half of it. I just don’t know which half!

Categories
Apple Pro Apps The Business of Production

How to save on the AVP Conference next week?

You can get a great deal on the AVP Conference for either the whole conference or any single days, by using my discount code: BIGBRAIN when you register.

I’m talking about the Association of Video Professionals Conference Jan 28-30 at the Radisson Hotel, 6225 W. Century Bld, Los Angeles (just near LAX). This year the conference has some of the best trainers in the industry, including myself, Larry Jordan, Frank Rohmer, Mark Spencer, and Bruce Nazarian.

My session, on Thursday 28th is:  Awesome Titling

How to use all the Titling tools available in Final Cut Studio to create Awesome Titles: choose the right font; better typgraphic design; when to use Calligraphy, Motion or LiveType; and animating fonts and glyphs.   Be prepared to experiment, be inspired and be exposed to new possibilities with titles in the Final Cut Studio ecosystem.

Register and use my discount code BIGBRAIN and you’ll get a 10% discount on the full conference or any single day. That’s $20 off a day and $50 off the three day Conference package. But wait there’s more! Anyone that signs up for the conference using my promo code will also receive a free one year Gold Listing on the FindAVideoProfessional.com site (a $149 value).

It’s going to be a great conference. Come along if you want to learn how to make awesome titles and I’ll see you there.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps

What about 64 bit support in Apple apps?

In Apple’s latest release of Logic 9.1, Apple have turned on 64 bit support. Now, I’m not privvy to the internal workings of the Logic code – I don’t even own a copy as I’m not a musician or post-audio guy – it is my understanding that 64 bit support requires the App to be written in Cocoa, the more modern of the underlying coding languages for OS X.

Logic was originally released on OS 9 and Windows by eMagic, long before the advent of OS X. (Apple purchased eMagic in mid 2002, less than a year after the first release of OS X 10.0, and Logic was well established before that.) Logic was therefore almost certainly written in the older language and used Carbon (the older language) for OS X compatibility.

As I’ve written before Apple initially announced that Carbon APIs (Programming interfaces) were going to be released in 64 bit; and then at WWDC 2007 announced that the Carbon APIs were NOT going to 64 bit after all. Basically meaning that, if you want 64 bit support (and you do with RAM hungry applications) then you have to rewrite to Cocoa.

This release of Logic would suggest that work has been completed on making Logic a Cocoa application supporting 64 bit.

That is good news because Apple have another piece of Carbon-heavy “legacy” code that they need to rewrite to Cocoa if it’s to go to 64 bit. That application is Final Cut Pro. The action on Logic is another data point that Apple is very keen to get its applications to 64 bit as soon as possible. Of course, the Final Cut Pro team are also dependent on QuickTime to also support a 64 bit Cocoa API through the QTkit framework.

Right now, the QTKit Framework lacks support for QuickTime features that Final Cut Pro needs: like the ability to read and write QuickTime Metadata through QTKit. (This is currently handled by the older “deprecated” C API from the Carbon days. A deprecated Framework can still be used but Apple are giving notice that you shouldn’t use it. Unfortunately, there’s no current alternative to the C API for that functionality.) So, it’s not as easy for the FCP engineers as it might have been for Logic because this example is only one place where the more modern API does not yet support essential functionality FCP needs.

Still, I’m encouraged by the Logic announcement.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Item of Interest Video Technology

Why did Blackmagic Design buy daVinci?

Of course, I don’t have any direct link into the mind of Grant Petty, founder of Blackmagic Design and don’t know more about the purchase of daVinci other than what Grant posted, but it’s such an interesting purchase that I can’t help but comment and guess.

Like so many of the industry’s giants of old, daVinci was losing money in the face of lower priced competition (Apple Color) and a reliance on mostly-obsolete 2K-limited hardware. On the other hand, Resolve is software only and resolution independent running on a cluster of Linux machines connected with Infiniband high speed data interconnect. daVinci also have Revival, although I don’t know anything about what advantages it brings.

Clearly, Grant thinks that the company has not been making the most of its opportunities and more focus on marketing and product development will once-again bring the daVinci brand to prominance. (Assuming it ever lost it.)

However, I don’t expect we’ll see Blackmagic Design suddenly want to start competing with Apple Color. I don’t think that’s the market and Grant himself seems to rule out that direction:

DaVinci Resolve is unique because it uses multiple linux computers linked together with InfiniBand connections and multiple GPU cards so you get the real time performance advantage it has. I donʼt think that can be lowered in price much, however over the next few years as technology advances this might happen a little. However, DaVinci is different to a DeckLink card because itʼs a high performance computing based tool. Our focus will really be on adding more features. Thatʼs what we want, and I guess others would too.

Possibly, some time in the future, a network of multiple Linux machines might be replaced by optimized code on some future 8+core Mac with awesome graphics card and an application written with Grand Central Dispatch and  OpenCL in mind. But don’t hold your breath! Combined CPU+GPU power has to increase a lot to replace multiple machines and the market is not that big.

I think the move will allow daVinci to continue developing their modern products and repositioning the company (to be operated independently of BMD) for the mid-size post house: those that have become dissatisfied with Apple Color but who would not have purchased a full daVinci hardware/software package. If the price could be, say $60K instead of $300K (or more) then that has a really good chance of reviving the brand and – in that inevitable trend – make higher quality available at lower price. That has always been Grant Petty’s goal, so it seems this is consistent.