If you've been paying attention to the recent debacle surrounding Apple's release of Final Cut Pro "X" you know the majority of the Final Cut userbase (including myself) were flabbergasted and disgusted with the direction it took.
Not to mention that a large number of people who purchased the new app got a refund from Apple because of the major issues and unseen gotchas that reared their ugly head.
However Apple in rare form has done two things to being to address the long list of issues surrounding "X":
They've just released a major update to the app with a few bug fixes and added just a few of the functionality items missing from X and;
This update also comes with a free 30-day trial (a first for any Apple-branded app!) so anyone can take it for a spin and see how it handles:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial/
What's NOT clear - because it's not stated anywhere on Apple's webpages - are what limitations, if any, there are associated with the trial version. I plan to find out myself and will update as needed.
I'd highly suggest anyone curious about FCP X to use the trial and put it through it's paces. And while you're at it, download the free trial of Premiere Pro as well... and YOU be the judge, not the over-hyped marketing materials!
Reviews for Professional Editors, Producers, Camera Operators and anyone involved in the commercial filmmaking community. Often you'll find some stuff not related to filmmaking... but fun anyway.
Showing posts with label Macintosh Video Editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Macintosh Video Editing. Show all posts
Sep 20, 2011
Aug 14, 2011
Adobe Production Premium CS5.5: The future for Final Cut Pro users
If you've paid attention to the recent Final Cut Pro X debacle and are wondering like so many others if Apple has either lost their mind or, given up on the truly professional editor, the answers to both should unequivocally be, "Yes".
There are a handful of posts from people with a great deal more direct-Apple information than I have, who've very simply stated two things about Apple's perspective on "pro" users.
One: Apple has always - and arrogantly - assumed that it's own direction, rather than listening to it's user-base - is the best direction, period. End of story. Apple may once in a while, give into mass-grumblings when things go really badly or if there's a widespread problem will issue a fix, but as a general rule, it's the Steve Jobs way or the highway.
Second, Apple only wants to produce things that nobody else is doing. They don't want to fortify someone else's idea, expand on existing product structures or simply "update" older software/hardware. They want to go Apple's direction only, and continue to feed the Jobs lemonade to the world.
And from the outside you'd be hard-pressed to think they've got it wrong, just recently during the week-long roller-coaster ride on Wall Street Apple was listed as *the* most valuable company in the world, with Exxon-Mobile coming in second place. Apple has billions - yes, Billions of dollars in CASH and they've gotten there by concentrating in one single direction: iProducts.
Apple has been, ever since the introduction of iTunes a consumer-centric and iProduct tunnel-visioned company and they've reaped their rewards.
So even if you're a loyal Apple customer and have been paying the bills using "professional" Apple products, and Steve Jobs decides that your current software - that being Final Cut Pro - is in need of drastic makeover and needs to be different than every other NLE on the planet, so different in fact that you no longer have a future path forward with your "old" version of Final Cut, Steve Jobs doesn't care. Not one bit.
Why? Because you're a pain-in-the-ass pro customer, and he's making his billions off the general consumer. And so he's going to finally squeeze you out of the equation by turning Final Cut Pro X into "iMovie on Steriods" and laugh all the way to the bank.
In the meantime, you're sitting left feeling less like a professional editor and more like the red-headed step-child nobody will sit next to in class. So if you're Mac-based are you now doomed to a future where you're using old technology while your PC counterparts vault ahead of you in capabilities? Of course not.
Just a few short years ago Adobe's Premiere Pro product lagged behind Final Cut and the rest of the NLE marketplace for years. Why isn't quite clear, but what IS crystal clear ever since NAB 2007 is that Premiere Pro is back, and in a very BIG way, and in point of fact trounced FCP's capabilities starting with the version launched at NAB '07.
Today Premiere Pro and it's pro suite offering, Production Premium, is so far ahead of both FCP 7 and "X" that it's almost laughable to make a direct comparison.
I've spent the bulk of this post flushing out the future of pro-apps for Apple's software lineup, but my next post will talk about WHY every Final Cut Pro user on the planet needs to take a serious look at the Production Premium bundle from Adobe, and never look back.
There are a handful of posts from people with a great deal more direct-Apple information than I have, who've very simply stated two things about Apple's perspective on "pro" users.
One: Apple has always - and arrogantly - assumed that it's own direction, rather than listening to it's user-base - is the best direction, period. End of story. Apple may once in a while, give into mass-grumblings when things go really badly or if there's a widespread problem will issue a fix, but as a general rule, it's the Steve Jobs way or the highway.
Second, Apple only wants to produce things that nobody else is doing. They don't want to fortify someone else's idea, expand on existing product structures or simply "update" older software/hardware. They want to go Apple's direction only, and continue to feed the Jobs lemonade to the world.
And from the outside you'd be hard-pressed to think they've got it wrong, just recently during the week-long roller-coaster ride on Wall Street Apple was listed as *the* most valuable company in the world, with Exxon-Mobile coming in second place. Apple has billions - yes, Billions of dollars in CASH and they've gotten there by concentrating in one single direction: iProducts.
Apple has been, ever since the introduction of iTunes a consumer-centric and iProduct tunnel-visioned company and they've reaped their rewards.
So even if you're a loyal Apple customer and have been paying the bills using "professional" Apple products, and Steve Jobs decides that your current software - that being Final Cut Pro - is in need of drastic makeover and needs to be different than every other NLE on the planet, so different in fact that you no longer have a future path forward with your "old" version of Final Cut, Steve Jobs doesn't care. Not one bit.
Why? Because you're a pain-in-the-ass pro customer, and he's making his billions off the general consumer. And so he's going to finally squeeze you out of the equation by turning Final Cut Pro X into "iMovie on Steriods" and laugh all the way to the bank.
In the meantime, you're sitting left feeling less like a professional editor and more like the red-headed step-child nobody will sit next to in class. So if you're Mac-based are you now doomed to a future where you're using old technology while your PC counterparts vault ahead of you in capabilities? Of course not.
Just a few short years ago Adobe's Premiere Pro product lagged behind Final Cut and the rest of the NLE marketplace for years. Why isn't quite clear, but what IS crystal clear ever since NAB 2007 is that Premiere Pro is back, and in a very BIG way, and in point of fact trounced FCP's capabilities starting with the version launched at NAB '07.
Today Premiere Pro and it's pro suite offering, Production Premium, is so far ahead of both FCP 7 and "X" that it's almost laughable to make a direct comparison.
I've spent the bulk of this post flushing out the future of pro-apps for Apple's software lineup, but my next post will talk about WHY every Final Cut Pro user on the planet needs to take a serious look at the Production Premium bundle from Adobe, and never look back.
Jun 21, 2010
Fast, Easy Animations with Keynote for OS X!
If you're not familiar with After Effects, Motion or other 3D-motion programs but still want to do some animation-type work there's a quick and simple way to get it done: the latest version of Keynote, part of iWork '08.
If you've ever built a PPT presentation or even made a Keynote it's super-easy to use and very fast to learn. And unlike 3D-specific programs that have a longer learning curve and require using OBJ files and such Keynote works with just about any type of file type you can think of, and with all the built-in effects and motion controls it's like a mini-version of Motion, without the learning curve. Of course, the functionality is nowhere close to being as deep as AE or Motion, but it is a perfectly scaled-down method for creating similar motion effects.
Once you're finished creating your animations you can output them as Quicktime files and using the "custom" output settings you can go all the way up to a 4:4:4 uncompressed file or, even Flash.
Try it, you'll be amazed how simple, fun and quick it is to create 2D and 3D animation moves especially with text!
If you've ever built a PPT presentation or even made a Keynote it's super-easy to use and very fast to learn. And unlike 3D-specific programs that have a longer learning curve and require using OBJ files and such Keynote works with just about any type of file type you can think of, and with all the built-in effects and motion controls it's like a mini-version of Motion, without the learning curve. Of course, the functionality is nowhere close to being as deep as AE or Motion, but it is a perfectly scaled-down method for creating similar motion effects.
Once you're finished creating your animations you can output them as Quicktime files and using the "custom" output settings you can go all the way up to a 4:4:4 uncompressed file or, even Flash.
Try it, you'll be amazed how simple, fun and quick it is to create 2D and 3D animation moves especially with text!
Mac Encoder Shootout: Compressor 3 vs. Episode 5 vs. Squeeze 6
Every editor no matter what system they're cutting on has always had the same level of frustration after creating their final masterpiece: At the very end of their blood, sweat and often tears-effort to bring their visual masterpiece to it's final iteration they are then forced into the time-consuming and gut-wrenching task of compressing the final movie into it's end format, be it DVD, web or even Blu-Ray.
In Mac-land the most often used - and complained about - tool is the Compressor application bundled into Final Cut Studio. A quick tour of the various web-forum threads will show a plethora of users knee-deep in head-scratching sessions that the default Compressor settings not only don't give optimal results but the final encoding process - or compression - takes painfully long to complete.
Several low-cost third-party offerings have surfaced over the years in an attempt to best Apple's own compression tool and some had widespread success in years past amongst the indie filmmaking community, such as Handbrake, BitVice, MPEGstreamclip and others. Most of them do a good enough job for the average editor or those who don't require or aren't familiar with things like high-level output, creating transport streams for broadcast or controlling the final output color space, something most if not all of the freeware applications are capable of handling. But, back in the days of FCS 1 and the now defunct version of Compressor these low-cost or free options often did in fact outperform Compressors lack-luster speed, but not by a huge margin.
However today things have changed; Compressor is now able to create virtual clusters on machines that have multiple processors (this is best suited to quad-core machines, not the Core 2 Duo laptops or iMacs) and has more advanced options for output in fact, Compressor 3.5 (bundled with FCP 7/FCS 2009) now has a very limited option for Blu-Ray export, making the freeware offerings invalid and outdated.
However, despite the increase in capabilities one thing still reigns true over Compressor's many abilities: It's dog slow, even when using virtual clusters. (See Brian Gary's Quick Reference Guide on Compressor 3 on the how & why to setup a virtual cluster - but beware: It's not easily understood and an improperly setup system will actually cause problems in encoding).
Have no fear, there are now viable options to Compressors snail-like pace for making your final encodes. Enter Episode Encoder (Previously called Episode Desktop) and the newly released Squeeze 6.
The testing machine was a 2.5Ghz MacBook Pro running 10.6.2 with a 2TB external array connected via the Sonnet Pro eSATA card. Compressor 3.0.5 was tested, not the current version 3.5 mainly because most FCP users have not yet upgraded their FCS2 version for the very reason I did not: it's really a service pack and not a full update to the suite. Hopefully Apple will grace us with a "real" update later in 2010.
Going head to head with Compressor is Episode Encoder Pro 5.3 and the newly released Sorenson Squeeze 6. This update to Squeeze is long overdue as Squeeze 5 has been around for almost 3 years with no updates.
The tested file was a 10-second 720p30 DVCPRO-HD clip exported as a stand-alone file from FCP. Although both Episode and Compressor can talk to reference files for encoding it was determined that to level the playing field for testing that a self-contained QT file was most appropriate.
The 2 most common final encoding tasks are MPEG-2 for DVD authoring along with the AAC audio file and; H.264 for various web and mobile content delivery methods.
For each encode type, both MPEG-2 and H.264 a built-in preset was used for "best" quality in each engine; I used the advanced settings in each application to ensure that, BITRATE, FRAME RATE, VBR SETTINGS, KEYFRAMES and DE-INTERLACING modes matched up line-for-line. Each run was done 3 times with the best time out of the 3 posted as the final result. And the results?
MPEG-2: 10-second clip to MPEG-2 widescreen w/AAC audio
Compressor 3.0.5: - 1:52
Squeeze 6: - 1:12
Episode Encoder Pro 5.3: - 0:28
I've known for some time that Episode was a speed demon compared to Compressor, but this end result surprised even me. And what's more, is that the final movie in DVDSP4 actually had *better* overall discernible quality than either Compressor or Squeeze! I still shake my head in disbelief. On to the next test:
H.264: 10-second clip to 640p Widescreen w/192kbs audio
Compressor 3.0.5: - 2:08
Squeeze 6: - 2:35
Episode Encoder Pro 5.3: - 0:57
Again, Episode renders a virtual smack-down to it's rivals and Compressor offers up a slightly better time than Squeeze, however the overall quality difference between the 3 encoders is negligible; none of them had any visual superiority over the others.
Now keep in mind the test clip was only 10-seconds long, yet 2 of the 3 encoders took over 2 minutes long to encode it to H.264! In fact Squeeze took 2 1/2 minutes! Really?!
(CAVEAT: Squeeze has proven to be buggy with H.264 encoding on 2 machines that I've tested and I've been able to cause the app to crash repeatedly when doing the H.264 encoding tests. Clearly something is amiss with this newly released encoder and it could be that the long encoding times are relevant to this bug. To be sure I'll be delving into the cause of it's maladies but for now the results are what they are).
The good news: There is a clear winner in this head-to-head speed contest, Episode.
The bad news: The "pro" version of Episode costs exactly as much as the entire FCS suite! OK, actually it's a whopping $4 dollars cheaper... to be exact.
For most indie filmmakers who don't output their finals to broadcast and don't often author DVD's for end-user clients the cost of Episode Pro doesn't add up. But, if your company does a great deal of MPEG-2 encoding for DVD or, you need to make a ton of H.264 files for clients on a regular basis or, if you need to make transport streams for broadcast then the speed offered by Episode could easily pay for itself in much higher productivity.
Keep in mind that my test file was all of 10-seconds long; multiply that by the typical run-time of a DVD project or final movie, which averages out to be 40-70 minutes and the time spent waiting for an encode to finish becomes exponentially shorter using Episode than Compressor.
As an example: I had an HD final that needed to be compressed to MPEG2 for widescreen DVD for a client. Time was on my side so I ran a test using that final movie and went head-to-head again using Compressor and Episode. Compressor was literally an all-night encoding job. It started at 9pm and finished when I woke up at 6am the next morning - actually it was still crunching the file until 6:45.
By contrast I put that same HD final into Episode Pro at my lunch break that same day, around 1pm, ran a few errands and made it back to my office in time for dinner around 6pm. The encode was finished by the time I arrived.
You do the math.
In Mac-land the most often used - and complained about - tool is the Compressor application bundled into Final Cut Studio. A quick tour of the various web-forum threads will show a plethora of users knee-deep in head-scratching sessions that the default Compressor settings not only don't give optimal results but the final encoding process - or compression - takes painfully long to complete.
Several low-cost third-party offerings have surfaced over the years in an attempt to best Apple's own compression tool and some had widespread success in years past amongst the indie filmmaking community, such as Handbrake, BitVice, MPEGstreamclip and others. Most of them do a good enough job for the average editor or those who don't require or aren't familiar with things like high-level output, creating transport streams for broadcast or controlling the final output color space, something most if not all of the freeware applications are capable of handling. But, back in the days of FCS 1 and the now defunct version of Compressor these low-cost or free options often did in fact outperform Compressors lack-luster speed, but not by a huge margin.
However today things have changed; Compressor is now able to create virtual clusters on machines that have multiple processors (this is best suited to quad-core machines, not the Core 2 Duo laptops or iMacs) and has more advanced options for output in fact, Compressor 3.5 (bundled with FCP 7/FCS 2009) now has a very limited option for Blu-Ray export, making the freeware offerings invalid and outdated.
However, despite the increase in capabilities one thing still reigns true over Compressor's many abilities: It's dog slow, even when using virtual clusters. (See Brian Gary's Quick Reference Guide on Compressor 3 on the how & why to setup a virtual cluster - but beware: It's not easily understood and an improperly setup system will actually cause problems in encoding).
Have no fear, there are now viable options to Compressors snail-like pace for making your final encodes. Enter Episode Encoder (Previously called Episode Desktop) and the newly released Squeeze 6.
The testing machine was a 2.5Ghz MacBook Pro running 10.6.2 with a 2TB external array connected via the Sonnet Pro eSATA card. Compressor 3.0.5 was tested, not the current version 3.5 mainly because most FCP users have not yet upgraded their FCS2 version for the very reason I did not: it's really a service pack and not a full update to the suite. Hopefully Apple will grace us with a "real" update later in 2010.
Going head to head with Compressor is Episode Encoder Pro 5.3 and the newly released Sorenson Squeeze 6. This update to Squeeze is long overdue as Squeeze 5 has been around for almost 3 years with no updates.
The tested file was a 10-second 720p30 DVCPRO-HD clip exported as a stand-alone file from FCP. Although both Episode and Compressor can talk to reference files for encoding it was determined that to level the playing field for testing that a self-contained QT file was most appropriate.
The 2 most common final encoding tasks are MPEG-2 for DVD authoring along with the AAC audio file and; H.264 for various web and mobile content delivery methods.
For each encode type, both MPEG-2 and H.264 a built-in preset was used for "best" quality in each engine; I used the advanced settings in each application to ensure that, BITRATE, FRAME RATE, VBR SETTINGS, KEYFRAMES and DE-INTERLACING modes matched up line-for-line. Each run was done 3 times with the best time out of the 3 posted as the final result. And the results?
MPEG-2: 10-second clip to MPEG-2 widescreen w/AAC audio
Compressor 3.0.5: - 1:52
Squeeze 6: - 1:12
Episode Encoder Pro 5.3: - 0:28
I've known for some time that Episode was a speed demon compared to Compressor, but this end result surprised even me. And what's more, is that the final movie in DVDSP4 actually had *better* overall discernible quality than either Compressor or Squeeze! I still shake my head in disbelief. On to the next test:
H.264: 10-second clip to 640p Widescreen w/192kbs audio
Compressor 3.0.5: - 2:08
Squeeze 6: - 2:35
Episode Encoder Pro 5.3: - 0:57
Again, Episode renders a virtual smack-down to it's rivals and Compressor offers up a slightly better time than Squeeze, however the overall quality difference between the 3 encoders is negligible; none of them had any visual superiority over the others.
Now keep in mind the test clip was only 10-seconds long, yet 2 of the 3 encoders took over 2 minutes long to encode it to H.264! In fact Squeeze took 2 1/2 minutes! Really?!
(CAVEAT: Squeeze has proven to be buggy with H.264 encoding on 2 machines that I've tested and I've been able to cause the app to crash repeatedly when doing the H.264 encoding tests. Clearly something is amiss with this newly released encoder and it could be that the long encoding times are relevant to this bug. To be sure I'll be delving into the cause of it's maladies but for now the results are what they are).
The good news: There is a clear winner in this head-to-head speed contest, Episode.
The bad news: The "pro" version of Episode costs exactly as much as the entire FCS suite! OK, actually it's a whopping $4 dollars cheaper... to be exact.
For most indie filmmakers who don't output their finals to broadcast and don't often author DVD's for end-user clients the cost of Episode Pro doesn't add up. But, if your company does a great deal of MPEG-2 encoding for DVD or, you need to make a ton of H.264 files for clients on a regular basis or, if you need to make transport streams for broadcast then the speed offered by Episode could easily pay for itself in much higher productivity.
Keep in mind that my test file was all of 10-seconds long; multiply that by the typical run-time of a DVD project or final movie, which averages out to be 40-70 minutes and the time spent waiting for an encode to finish becomes exponentially shorter using Episode than Compressor.
As an example: I had an HD final that needed to be compressed to MPEG2 for widescreen DVD for a client. Time was on my side so I ran a test using that final movie and went head-to-head again using Compressor and Episode. Compressor was literally an all-night encoding job. It started at 9pm and finished when I woke up at 6am the next morning - actually it was still crunching the file until 6:45.
By contrast I put that same HD final into Episode Pro at my lunch break that same day, around 1pm, ran a few errands and made it back to my office in time for dinner around 6pm. The encode was finished by the time I arrived.
You do the math.
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