Tech

FCP X – Part 2

February 29, 2012

Well after telling everybody to grow up about FCP X, I preceded to try it in anger last September and found myself agreeing with those that had suggested it wasn’t ready for professional use. Whilst I love the fact that it harnesses all of the power of your computer by using all of the cores of your processor, I still found myself getting very frustrated with the basic interface. That coupled with the fact the software had a tendency to just disappear at times meant I estimated it took me somewhere in the region of three times the time it would have taken me to do the same project on FCP 7.

Since then Apple have released a couple of updates to the programme the most recent being the most interesting as it adds the elusive multi-cam functionality that so many editors complained was missing from the original release. Being glutton for punishment I decided to take the plunge on a recent project and give it another go. Part of the reason I thought now was the time was the project was shot with two cameras that needed to be multi cam edited together.

Well despite a few ‘disappearances’ whilst I was importing my footage, the software did work well. I still can’t work out how to easily fade in from black if I have a clip connected to my primary timeline – something none of the forums seem to answer satisfactorily either, but once I has set up my multi clip, it worked like a dream. In fact the process of setting up the multi-clip was amazing as well.

Last year I watched a Youtube clip that likened the multi cam functionality of FCP X to the ‘cut and paste’ functionality of IOS saying Apple didn’t release it right away but when they did, they got it right. Well I have to say I think they may have had a point. Apple have totally re-thought how multi cam works and frankly made it better than any other software I’ve used. Better than Avid and FCP 7. First of all, to create your clip all you need to do is record with some sort of audio on all your cameras then once they’re imported, just shift select and create a ‘New Multicam Clip’. FCP X uses Pleuralise type technology to sync your clips without the need for timecode and it did it really quickly with the hour long presentation I was working on. Not only that but I was shooting on a Z1 and I had a tape change in the middle of the presentation which FCP X dealt with perfectly, giving me just the one clip to edit with.

Secondly if you double click on your multicam clip you open the multi cam editor which allows you to see all your cameras in a timeline, rather like you would if you were using the old ‘stacking’ technique. This means you can adjust sync and colour correct a single camera all the way through. It also allows you to tweak the audio.

It’s also worth noting you’re not now limited to using clips that are all the same format in a multi cam clip intact you can even use still which the software apparently will sync up using the time stamps.

On the negative side, it would be useful to be able to batch export, it would also be useful to be able to export using Quicktime conversion but overall I’m pretty impressed.

The bottom line is I didn’t need to waste time doing a manual sync. I could just play my clip and live edit on the timeline. Had I not had to add slides, I could have probably done the edit in near real time. I can safely say this time FCP X was quicker than FCP 7 and I would definitely consider using it again for this sort of project. I still see it as another tool in my armoury rather than the only tool, but it’s getting better and better and I look forward to what else they are going to add to it.

POV’s sister company VoxXpress Launches

February 17, 2012

in News,Post Production,Tech

POV’s sister company VoxXpress, launched this week at the industry’s biggest trade show, Broadcast Video Expo / The production Show. The new service allows video producers, editors, web designers and pretty much anyone else to choose and book a professional quality voiceover for Corporate videos, films, television, telephone answering services quickly and simply. They launched with a very strong lineup of voices including the voice of the talking clock, the voice of Gucci Flora and the veteran broadcaster Nicky Horne. To find out more and to check out the service, go to www.voxxpress.com.

FCP X – Our first project Part One

September 17, 2011

in Tech

Well after telling everyone they should just calm down about Apple’s latest version of their video editing software I thought it was time to put my money where my mouth was and put it through it’s paces on a real live project to see just how good or bad it is in the real world.

I didn’t get off to a great start as when I tried to download the software from Apple’s Mac Appstore. It refused to let me buy it due to my graphics card was not up to the job. So £200 later, with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 installed in my Mac Pro (the easiest upgrade I’ve ever done!), I was ready to download. Suddenly this bargain £200 software has doubled in price but in fairness if all Apple cared about was my cash they would have waited until I’d paid before telling me the deficiencies in my hardware.

Anyway on to the software. Firstly I totally understand why a re-write was needed, FCP 7 didn’t take full advantage of the hardware in modern machines and you can see straight away that the new FCP is very responsive. The first thing you notice is program forces your to scrub through your content on the timeline or your rushes when you move your mouse over them. Something that’s very impressive but actually quite annoying. You can turn the audio scrubbing off but I’d personally like to be able to turn the whole thing off and just scrub when I hold down the mouse button.

One of the biggest changes is how the new program deals with your source material. In FCP 7, Avid and pretty much every other editing program you sort your clips into bins. With FCP X, you tag them with keywords and ‘smart lists’ are created from your tags and they act as bins. It takes a while to get your head around but actually it might well be an improvement as it means clips can reside in many different smart lists at the same time.

Interestingly the main criticism of FCP X is that it’s a toy and not suitable for professional use. In some respects I’d agree, but when it comes to media management I think it’s probably more appropriate for professional projects with lots of media such as documentaries and feature films. The new system is all geared around you being able to find the clip you want really quickly. It will even categorise your shots into Wide, Medium and close automatically if you ask it.

Sequences are now projects, so if you are working on a number of timelines on a job, essentially you seem to have to create a new project for each. This seems more than a little clunky and I had real difficulty organising my sequences into folders as the list of sequences didn’t scroll if you were dragging to somewhere out of the visible area of your list. Something to fix asap Apple!

FCP 7′s left hand player window has been replaced by a film strip type view which you scrub through and can set your in point. The video is displayed on the single video window along with the timeline when you’re on it. This actually didn’t take too long to get used to and if I’m honest I did find it quite useful when trying to find shots within a larger clip.

My biggest gripe with the software so far is the trimming. I, and many other editors have been used to precision triming cuts and despite the ‘close precision editor’ being called a ‘precision editor’, it is a blunt instrument. As far as I can tell you still have to drag clips to adjust an edit and that is very hit and miss. To accurately control at frame level, you need to zoom right in where as with the FCP 7 trimmer, it’s just a case of clicking some buttons.

Also when working with audio, a trick I like to use in FCP 7 to smooth out a difficult audio cut is to to create a one frame audio mix on it. This seems to be impossible to do on FCP X. Apart from the fact it’s very difficult to do things to the audio without effecting the video, if you do add an audio mix there seems to be a minimum duration of 3 frames.

One other major change is the way the software deals with tracks. Rather than having numbered tracks, there is a primary story line where your main content goes and then you ‘connect to the main storyline’ your B-Roll which sits on top and is anchored to the main story line. This did cause some frustration however I think with a bit more time I could get used to it and what it does mean is your B-Roll never goes out of sync.

Adding captions seems to be a bit of an ordeal at the moment. Having not forked out for the new version of Motion yet I was stuck with the built in options. Now don’t get me wrong, there a lot of very impressive templates built into the software but if all you want to do is add a basic name Aston or a placeholder graphic it’s not as easy as it should be.

There is a custom caption option but cutting and pasting this at the moment doesn’t seem to work properly meaning you have to start from scratch each time. For placeholders there is a special type of clip which assumes you want a mockup of people in it and so you have to change it each time to have a plain background. The text on this seems a bit flakey too at the moment. I wanted my text vertically centred in the screen, which I seemed to be able to do but then when I came back to it, it had moved back to the default position at the bottom.

Overall the software seemed relatively stable for a V1. I had a couple of crashes where the software just disappeared and took me back to the desk top but when I relaunched I hadn’t lost much. Playback most of the time was fine. Occasionally it would be glitchy and sometimes I would hear audio clicks that weren’t there and sound would lose sync. A quit and relaunch seemed to fix this.

I still haven’t graded or completed a final audio mix on the project so that will be the next test for the software and I’m hoping that is where it will really shine. After this project my feeling at the moment is that I will go back to FCP 7 until the next update where I’m hopeful the trimming will have been addressed.

Hopefully Apple will listen and add these sorts of features as I think this software could be good. To get from zero to this in one version is brilliant but now it needs a bit of refinement to be a serious tool.

WebOS on Amazon Tablet

August 29, 2011

in Tech

Having been one of the tens of thousands who recently missed out on getting a nice shiny but defunct HP Touchpad in the recent ‘fire sale’, I got thinking. HP’s recent announcement seemed a little odd to say the least. The fact that they are discontinuing hardware production of their tablet computer after just 45 days, but see a future for the critically acclaimed WebOS that ran on it, got me and many other scratching their heads.

Having missed out on the suddenly very desirable Touchpad (it’s amazing what a price drop does!) I was at least marginally consoled by the news that Amazon are about to launch their own low priced tablet at a price point very similar to the heavily discounted HP kit. They are apparently going to achieve this unbelievable price tag by subsidising the cost of the hardware with revenues gained through content sold for use on the device.

Now the perceived wisdom is that such a device would be running Google’s ubiquitous Android operating system, however there is one big flaw in that plan which is Amazon need control of the software delivery mechanism for getting apps on the unit to make their money, something I’m guessing Google aren’t going to entertain. So we need a mobile operating system that Amazon can control that App store on. Hmm I wonder where they might get one of those from!? Enter HP and WebOS’s future!

I might have this totally wrong but to me this makes perfect business sense and with Amazon behind the content of the WebOS platform it would have the best chance of a future which many have said it genuinely deserves. If this does happen it will really shake up Apple’s market dominance and allow Amazon to tap into a market that Apple, due to it’s higher priced units has so far not exploited.

All I can say right now is watch this space!

FCP X Petition – Grown Up!

June 28, 2011

in Tech

Well they’ve done it, FCP X is proudly featured on the Mac Appstore and everybody’s hailing it as the future of editing technology. Well um no! Actually some people are rather upset about it. Apparently Apple have had the audacity to mess with ‘the people’s’ editing software! There was Mr Jobs sitting there thinking Final Cut Pro was owned by Apple when all the time it was owned by 600 ‘professional editors’ who have written to Apple and demanded they go back and develop the old version of Final Cut or release the code to another party to continue development on it.

News flash – Apple can, and frequently do do precisely what they want! Yes the new version is totally different, yes it doesn’t have multi-camera and batch capture. Yes it doesn’t import old Final Cut Pro projects. And guess what, you don’t have to use it! You’ve still got Final Cut Pro 7! If you’re really not happy with spending $299, apparently Apple will even give you a refund!

Now I’m not an Apple fan boy … honestly! But the way people are throwing their toys around you would think Apple had re written the Bible or something. Clearly FCP X is new and by most accounts not particularly useful if you use functionality like multi-cameras. But what it does do is utilise your 64 bit architecture properly and guess what, other functionality can be added, but on proper future-proof foundations.

I haven’t downloaded the new version yet. Mainly because I can’t justify the expense (small though it is). But when I do, I will consider it another tool in my armoury to use – in the short term -along side Final Cut 7. Yes there are many things Final Cut Pro 7 does that FCP X doesn’t but there are a lot of things FCP X does that FCP 7 doesn’t and my guess is the things missing from FCP X will be added pretty tout suite.

So my advice is stop whining and wait. Give it 6 to 9 months and my guess is most editors will be using it and forgotten why they had a problem with it. Give progress a chance after all if we never embrace anything new we’d still be editing with scotch tape!

Rant over!

An app in 4 hours – this time in London

June 3, 2011

in News,Tech

Once again POV rose to the challenge of creating an engaging up to the minute app for Apple’s iPad, this time at Communicate Magazine’s SMCC Conference in London. Reprising their feat in Amsterdam, the same team managed to produce an application in lightening time, this time featuring content and discussion from the London event.

In four hours the app was up and downloadable from Apple’s Appstore and featured video and text input from the 100 plus delegates covering key social media issues. David Noble, who was heading up the team said:

“We’ve proven yet again how efficient, simple and cost effective it is to create 21st century custom publishing tools that harness modern digital technology to stimulate interaction and engagement between producers and consumers of information in ways that were just not possible earlier.

The App from the Communicate Magazine SMCC conference helps show the future of custom publishing and corporate communication.”

App World First

May 28, 2011

in News,Tech

POV were involved in what is believed to be a world first recently at the ‘Social Media in a Corporate Context’ conference in Amsterdam.

[click to continue…]

First Impressions of FCP X

April 21, 2011

in Tech

Well the dust has settled a little and we’ve all picked ourselves off the floor after hearing the price Apple is going to be selling their latest iteration of Final Cut Pro for $299 and it’s perhaps time to get into the nuts and bolts of whether it’s any good or not.

Having sat through the 60 minute presentation, I can confidently say there are some exciting innovations in there. Some would say this is long overdue as the last major release was in July 2009, an eternity ago in tech terms! Apple say this is a totally new version that has been written from the ground up which perhaps explains the gap. Now I know that is supposed to be a good thing and indeed for reasons of utilising the horsepower of multiple processors and 64 bit technology it is. However it’s also at the nub of one of my biggest concerns about the software.

You see a lot of us have been editing with FCP for many years now and although things have changed and improved over that time, the basic way the software operates hasn’t. Improvements tended to be in support for new formats, higher resolutions and minor tweaks in the UI.

That meant if you could use the current version, you pretty much knew how to use the new one. That does not appear to be the case this time. The UI is radically different meaning there is definitely going to be a big learning curve to get up to speed with version X. I really hope there will be a way to have both versions (7 and 10) on your system simultaneously because, firstly you can bet there are going to be bugs when X first comes out and secondly if I’ve got a live project to turn around, I really don’t want to be wasting time trying to work out how to do something I know instinctively how to achieve on the last version.

As far as the new features go, they do look very interesting. I am slightly nervous of features such as automatic audio clean up, colour correction and syncing as my experience of these sorts of features in the past is they work great when being demo’d but when it comes to using them in the real world aren’t always as successful. So lets hope they work and that they can be switched off if required!

The magnetic timeline is heralded as a great step forward, it prevents you from knocking your tracks out of sync. Also if I understand correctly, you now don’t have numbered tracks (V1, V2, A1, A2 etc), the software just creates new ones when you need them, I’ll be interested to see how this works if you’re planning to export for a dub.

Having cut my teeth on Avid as many of us did, I have always found the ‘nanny’
sync protecting functionality in the current version more than a little annoying. It is very frustrating when you are trying to do a trim and you are told this action is not allowed. I suspect this new version may prove to be even more of a pain, we will have to see.

Another concern I have is the amount of nesting allowed on the timeline in this new version. My experience of nesting edits into new clips in previous versions has not been great. Almost without fail I’ve had audio and video tracks decide not to play or drop out or audio mixes come through that bear no resemblance to the original edit. Lets hope this doesn’t happen with version 10. Also there is definitely something to be said for being able to see all your cuts and tracks on one timeline. Sometimes having stuff collapsed can be even more confusing particularly if you didn’t do the original edit.

I really do feel using FCP X will be like learning a new piece of editing software. Apple have always had the arrogance to feel they know best when it comes to these things. The frustrating thing is, with the hindsight of time, they’re normally right. It will be very interesting to see how this version is received. My guess is initially there will be a few negative comments as editors get comfortable with it. Give it a year and none of us will know how we did without it!

What does Nintendo’s 3DS mean for video production?

April 15, 2011

in Tech

Since it’s official launch on the 28th March 2011, the internet seems to be awash with comments about Nintendo’s new pocket gamer – how many units they may or may not have sold, how some gamers are suffering from nausea when using it and is this the future of 3d gaming? What not many people seem to be saying is that this is potentially a very exciting development for affordable 3d video production. Along with LG’s Optimus 3D mobile phone, this puts lenticular screen technology in to the hands of the masses at a very reasonable price. Lenticular technology is exciting because it does away with the need to wear glasses to get the 3d effect. The down side is you have to be in exactly the right place for the 3d to work. With a small screen however, this is not too much of a issue.

Since 2009 we’ve been making 3d stereoscopic content for clients like Intel and Future publishing at a fraction of the price of the established players. Frankly we’d like to be doing much more but one of the biggest problems is just demonstrating what 3d video actually is and the impact it can have. You can’t sent someone an internet link, you can’t send them a disk and it isn’t practical to cart a 50 inch 3D plasma to a client’s office. Enter the 3Ds, a portable unit capable of playing back 3D video… and the client doesn’t need glasses to view the content!

Add to this the potential benefits of being able to have something like this on set to check your 3d effect when shooting and you can the impact this might have. The lenticuar screen in the 3ds is made by sharp and I can see potential for it to be used in many other devices, such as real time 3d monitoring equipment, fold out screens on 3d cameras and dedicated 3d playback machines.

At the moment, it appears there isn’t a way to get your own video content on to the system. This is clearly technically possible and hopefully it will be available in the next firmware version otherwise I can see there being an unofficial firmware upgrade made available to facilitate this before too long.

Of course what we do know is that Nintendo will be selling 3D films to watch on the device and we reckon they will soon be the ability to view Youtube’s 3d channel as the LG Optimus already does.

These devices along with the recent introduction of affordable stereoscopic cameras from the likes of Panasonic and JVC is making this technology more and more accessible and with domestic 3D screens costing less than £1000, we think this time round 3D’s here to stay.

I wonder who will be the first corporate to make their video in 3d and then deliver it to their target audience already installed on a 3ds? We’d love to make it happen for you!

We’ve only had our unit a few days. We hope to do more experiments in the next few days and will report back.

Are Apple taking over the world of Post Production?

April 13, 2011

in software,Tech

With the announcement yesterday that Apple’s latest incarnation of their ubiquitous post production suite Final Cut Pro X will cost a mere $299, there has been much talk about what this means for Apple, Post production, the universe and everything.

What’s the big deal you may well ask. Well the big deal is that Apple’s previous version cost $1000 which in the world of post production was considered a bargain. This had already caused Apple’s major competitor in this market space, Avid, a big headache as they were happily charging many times this for editing solutions before upstart Apple muscled their way in. This latest price drop is going to leave them with severe concussion. So what does it mean and is it good for us the user?

Well firstly there are those that say Apple’s aim is to crush the competition and that they are unfairly using their size and deep pockets to undercut other products so that Final Cut Pro is the only player.

I don’t think this is the aim at all. My guess is this is about the Mac. Steve Jobs once famously said when asked why FCP didn’t have a dongle to protect it, ‘It does, have a dongle it’s called a Mac’ and this is the point. Apple are unique in that they make both the hardware and the software which means they don’t need to charge a fortune for software when they know people will buy their hardware to run it. And of course people will, one of the major improvements in this release is the support for 64 bit architecture and full utilisation of multiple processors, so we will be going out and getting the latest and greatest Macs to run it on.

So what does this mean for Avid? Well they need to decide if they even want to compete in this space at this price point or whether they want to be the more expensive option. My guess is they will plump for the latter. That does mean they need to differentiate themselves somehow and that might be a challenge. One thing I do know is that more and more of their software will running on OS X. There are going to be a significant number of users, myself included, that will want to run both on the same system and seeing as FCP only runs on a Mac, that will be the system people choose.

Is this bad news for the competition? Well its definitely made things a bit more tricky! Right now from my perspective it is a two-horse race between Avid and FCP but players like Lightworks have recently waded back in again and to make sure they get a look in, they are offering their basic software for nothing. That surely that can’t be a bad thing. Ultimately the market is changing and companies will be selling more units and charging less per unit and Edit Share the guys behind Lightworks can see that and are counting on selling enough extra plug-ins to make it worth their while.

So what does it mean for us content providers. Well I think it’s good news because it democratises the tools you need to make TV. No longer do you need to have access to hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment to show what you can do. Talent will shine and the next generation of film makers will be successful because of their ability, not what equipment they have access to.

So bottom line – I think this is a move to sell more Macs. Will it affect the market? Yes but it may well prove the market for Pro Editing Software is much bigger than the likes of Avid had realised and convince them that if they dropped their prices, they would sell many more copies. It would be wonderful to see much more of this software at an affordable price.