Info on Final Cut Studio 3

[Kaku Ito]

The specs of FCP7 say about RED RAW:
"RED (with additional software from RED) import through Log and Transfer with automatic logging, custom naming, browse, mark, and background ingest"

Thanks Robert, no mentioning of robust support of metadata like CS4 I suppose.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

...Some people still feel this is not "native", but it is and as close as we'll ever get without Apple dumping their QuickTime infrastructure.

But it's just that infrastructure that made FCP so much more appealing than Avid products, who are really stuck in there ways with proprietary Avid media.

Besides, the QT wrapped .R3D files already exist, there called RED proxies. Drag, Drop, Edit. I don't see the problem.

 

[Snow R. Shai]

Natively

Natively

Edit in 2K, Output in 4K.
DVDSP still in 4 is underwhelming. We need to get our hands on this to see what that Blu-Ray support is all about.
Otherwise, many, many improvements in this release, which we have been waiting for a while.
• Faster, better performance [especially when 10.6 arrives]
• New ProRes Codecs - efficiency in 5 flavors.
• New speed tools - change the speed of a clip without rippling your timeline.
• Markers galore... in colors, finally.
• Background batch exporting - save u much time, it will.
• iChat theatre sharing from timeline, with timecode.
• Automatic Log & transfer... pop the card/disk, auto ingest...
• AVC-Intra Support- Natively. Well, until we know what that means...

Much more good stuff in there, but those are the major new features, as far as i can tell without playing around with it. And that is just FCP7.
Other than dropping R3D's in the timeline. without wrapping in L&T, what is so terribly missing ? We got the 4K support in Color, it's just 1.5 but that was the biggest...
Hopefully, RED Rocket™ support should be in there as well...
The RED team is working on it. Right? Right?

One other big thing, is the Gamma issue. This has to be solved in this upgrade.

 

[Dustin Cross]

FCP does NOT use native R3D. You have to RENDER it to get it in FCP and then you no longer have access to the R3D metadata. It works, but it is not native. The Proxies are a better solution to L&T.

Color uses native R3D and you can access the R3D metadata. Do you not see the difference?

Dusty

 

[Bing Bailey]

Marketing features are nice but the real changes are under the hood. speed , efficiency , responsiveness. this has been written from the ground up in cocoa and is 64bit and will get even faster and better when dropped on OS X 10.6

 

[Charles Angus]

Actually we have been editing R3Ds on the timeline in Final Cut for a while now. If you set L&T to native mode, it just wraps the R3D as a QT MOV. ...Some people still feel this is not "native", but it is and as close as we'll ever get without Apple dumping their QuickTime infrastructure. This is how Apple handles most every other non-QT format that comes into Final Cut. Simply take the data and package it as a QuickTime...

I really wish Apple would move on from this archaic way of doing things... I'd love to be able to just drop R3D files right onto the timeline as we can in Premiere or Vegas.

You can bring in MXF files from P2 natively (no-re-wrap) with the mxf import codec.

 

[Charles Angus]

If this doesn't fix the goddamned gamma bug, I think I might scream.

And the >8 bit RGB bug.

And the >100 IRE to RGB bug, and the media manager bug...

If these two things were the only new features, I think I might kiss Steve Jobs feet. How pathetic is it that I desperately want them to make their product usable?

 

[Snow R. Shai]

No Render

No Render

Dustin,
I believe you need the RAW image data in Color, not FCP.
I am sure editing in 2K is enough for you.
You can wrap, not render [much faster] the R3Ds in L&T, and make "native" R3Ds, which as you say, link to the original RAW file.
Some semantics, he? but there is a big speed difference.
Complex edits with the proxies are known to have problems [big, multi layered timelines].
Working with the "native" QT wrapped R3Ds is faster, better, more productive.
You do need that extra disk space... that is the culprit.

 

[M Most]

FCP7 now features "ProRes 4444", to which I was not able to find any more info.

"4444" would be 4:4:4 with an alpha channel.

 

[David Anderson]

Apparently now Compresser can throw out a bluray h264.
quote
A new setting lets you create H.264 files that are compatible with Blu-ray players.
unquote.

but dvd studio is still at version 4 with no bluray burning.

So, apple wants you to encode to a bluray h264 and then... use someone else's software to finish? that's insane!

From apple website:

Blu-ray disc and DVD burning

You can now easily burn a Blu-ray disc or a DVD directly from Compressor. Quickly add a menu to your disc by choosing one of the beautiful Apple-designed HD or SD templates included in Compressor. Because Compressor uses an open XML-based template format, you can import third-party or custom templates for a specific look.

I'm still wrapping my head around this but it sounds like you can create and burn blu-ray discs, menu and all, directly from compressor. I'd like to hear more about this feature.

 

[M Most]

But it's just that infrastructure that made FCP so much more appealing than Avid products, who are really stuck in there ways with proprietary Avid media.

That is no longer the case. Avid Media Composer v. 3.5 includes Avid Media Access, which allows direct access to various file formats without import and MXF wrapping. The files can be anywhere on the system. Any manufacturer can make their format directly accessible by writing an AMA plugin, which is freely available. A number of formats are already supported. AMA is one way to possibly allow direct access to R3d files within Media Composer in the future.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

That is no longer the case. Avid Media Composer v. 3.5 includes Avid Media Access, which allows direct access to various file formats without import and MXF wrapping. The files can be anywhere on the system. Any manufacturer can make their format directly accessible by writing an AMA plugin, which is freely available. A number of formats are already supported. AMA is one way to possibly allow direct access to R3d files within Media Composer in the future.

That is still a big difference than taking say a PAL Uncompressed 10 bit QT and dropping it right into a project. Is there a true QT AMA patch that handles any kind of QT, or is it all manufacture codec specific? The Avid DS came the closest to this by allowing you to link to files, but this required a lot of rendering, and it loaded them directly into RAM, bogging things down.

 

[A. Bastaki]

<still an adobe boy.

 

[JanneJansson]

I really wish Apple would move on from this archaic way of doing things... I'd love to be able to just drop R3D files right onto the timeline as we can in Premiere or Vegas.

I agree. Wrapping video in QT is soooo, stupid, old, time consumig, unsecure, anoying and just fu... enoying. Changing a source format is a deadly sin.

 

[Dustin Cross]

Snow,

I have plenty of disk space.

I agree you don't need 2k to edit. 1k is more than enough.

L&T is faster than converting with Redrushes, but you get much less control.

Metadata is not required for editing, but it would be really nice to have. My workflow and most editors I know, use Clipfinder (or similar) to one light the footage and then render out offline files for the editor. It would be really nice if I could change metadata in FCP while editing.

When shooting night exteriors I sometimes expose for ISO 320 and then change the ISO to 1000 or higher so I can better see what is happening while shooting. Every now and then the editor will miss changing the clip back to 320 when he is batch rendering. If FCP was native, we would be able to easily correct the ISO on the timeline without more rendering.

I have never met an editor who uses L&T with Red footage. It is just too limited. Maybe someone should create a poll to see how many people use L&T vs other.

You can explain how FCP is native until you are blue in the face, but until I see someone drop an R3D file on the timeline in FCP it will not be native to me. Being able to access and modify the RSX data would be icing on the cake.


Dusty

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

YEAH - 4k in COLOR!!!

YEAH - 4k in COLOR!!!

I am VERY happy that Color can now do 4k and it will grade that 4k from the R3D's! To me that is HUGE!

Now if only Apple would get off there duff and allow the kind of flexibility that Adobe does ... If it wasn't for Color, I'd seriously consider switching to Adobe. I continue to be impressed with their offerings. But as most the stuff I do on my own system has to do with Grading, I haven't found anything from Adobe that matches it yet- in terms of speed & ease of use for grading.

 

[M Most]

That is still a big difference than taking say a PAL Uncompressed 10 bit QT and dropping it right into a project.

If you were working on Avid, you probably wouldn't have made an uncompressed Quicktime file in the first place. The only reason you'd have that is because you either digitized on a Mac into Final Cut, or you were working in Final Cut in the first place.

My reply was to the notion that Avid insists on transcoding everything to its own formats, either OMF (in the past) or MXF (currently), and using only uncompressed or DNxHD for HD files. That was true until version 3.5, which allows direct access to files that are not in those formats. Quite frankly, I don't see the difference between Avid using specific, company blessed formats (which is no longer the case) and Apple using specific, company blessed and proprietary formats (i.e., Quicktime - which is still the case). Why is one a problem and the other not?

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

Personally, I don't think either the L&T workflow, or pre-transcoding are the way to go. All the info you need to edit is right there in the proxy files, I really don't understand why this isn't used by more people, nor does it seem to be officially sanctioned by the Red FCP white-paper.

It allows you to cut right away, no prep time and all the time code data is right there in the file. It's easy to use them as a conduit back to the raw, via several workflow methods including sending to Color, Crimson to Redcine or Monkey Extract via Redalert. I don't get the resistance to working this way. It saves lots of time and places the heavy lifting on the right applications.

 

[M Most]

I am VERY happy that Color can now do 4k and it will grade that 4k from the R3D's! To me that is HUGE!

Out of curiosity, I have to ask:

Why?

 

[Nicholas Shields]

Does this mean Color does the debayer?

By the way, is it just me or have others had very innocent posts go missing?