Steve Mullen explains some of the problems exporting HDV footage (thus mpeg-2) from the timeline. Mpeg-2 records one I-frame and 6 to 15 B-frames (depending on the camera). I-frames keeps track of the B-frames by checking the changes of one frame to the next. When you bring your HDV footage into your NLE, new I-frames are created because cuts usually require one. When you export it back to HDV, it takes forever (as I found out recently). The two diagrams of the GOP strings of essentially before and after shots are vastly different. This is something that NLE's will be paying more attention in round two of HDV compatibility. If this interests you, I'd suggest reading the article.
Red Giant Software is at it again and this time they've created a color correction tool, Magic Bullet Colorista. Besides precise color balance, the real-time DeepColor RT engine and easy masking, Colorista claims the following benefits over color-correction tools built into host applications:
The easiest and fastest 3-way color corrector for After Effects with full support for 8, 16, and 32-bit per channel projects
Colorista performs like Premiere Pro's standard three way color corrector, but delivers results up to 5x faster with a fast graphics card
With Colorista you can finally do full 32-bit color correction at all times, with no shift in shadow colors and area masking directly in the Canvas window in Final Cut Pro. Plus, the exposure settings make it easy to work with common f-stop settings like plus or minus one-half stop
For Motion users, Colorista delivers full support for fast GPU rendering and support for 8, 16, and 32-bit float projects
All the platforms in one package which means no matter what tool you use, you will have a familiar color correction plug-in at hand
The Colorista plug-in supports After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Avid, Premiere Pro and Motion. The price comes in at $199 with discounts for volume licensing and you can download a demo here. While this is a version 1.0 product, with Red Giant's track record I expect good things. Let us know what you think if you check it out.
Tip one is about what is the best practice for naming projects and assets in Final Cut Pro. Applecare suggests using letters instead of symbols. Something I try to stay away in general when naming any file. Symbols won't necessarily not work as titles but it will complicate matters when shared or changing platforms.
Tip two involves canceling FCP audio renders as it may change the render state of audio tracks. Meaning, a portion of audio content which previously was rendered, may afterwards be unrendered. The workaround is to simply choose Sequence > Render Selection > Audio. Instead of Render All or whatever.
Since rendering always seems to take up most of our time, we love it when we can shove it to the background and keep on working. Well a user over on the AE Enhancers forum has created a script for After Effects 7 that will take any items you have ready in the render queue and send them to a terminal or command line window to render while you keep on doing your thing. It will also allow you to have multiple instances running so you can crank up one per CPU if you have 'em. I haven't had a chance to give it a try yet, but so far user feedback is good. The script is available for Mac and Windows and best of all, it is free.
Texas Instruments has announced the beautifully named TMS320C6455 digital signal processor (DSP). This DSP uses Serial Rapid IO to encode H.264/AVC, the popular format used for high definition video. The TMS320C6455 processor (or C6455 for short) forms part of Texas Instruments fastest fixed point DSP family. C6455's are being used in MainConcept's ProjectNext v2 hardware platform that integrates not one, but eight of the C6455 DSPs for converting incoming SDI video signals into the H.264 format in real-time. As I'm sure you can understand encoding HD in real time is no walk in the park for a PC. This press release describes the encoding from ProjectNext v2 to be designed for live video broadcasting, HD streaming and offline production studios.
AVCHD has been touted by Sony and Panasonic as the next step in prosumer codecs. So DV, then HDV and now, supposedly, AVCHD. Part of the initial lack of excitement was that none of the NLE's was able to support it. It was only a matter of time, that problem was to be resolved.
According to this Press release in Japanese, and then translated at Digital Camcorder News, Canopus "will be releasing a new AVCHD converter product that will convert your footage into an editable format. However, because of the fact that it converts it into the 'Canopus HQ Codec,' it is unlikely that the files will be usable outside of Canopus' Edius NLE systems." Sadly, I am not aware of any Mac Canopus products and I am guessing that is not going to change but this is the first step of many that will bring AVCHD to the fold.
The most exciting thing about AVCHD is that it fixes my biggest complaint with HDV, the mpeg-2 sound compression. So here is hoping this starts a trend by NLE's to support AVCHD.
I have been doing a lot of compressing for the web recently. I started off very excited with H.264 because the resolution was very good for a web codec. But I did notice that the colors were off especially compared to the original, a compressed .mov or .mp4. I eventually gave up H.264 partly because of the wash out and partly because that Quicktime 6 users could not use it.
Anyways, it seems that wash out happened not because of the codec as much as it had to do with the Core Video feature built into Mac OS X. Specifically, it affects users who have calibrated their monitors. I did when I first got my LCD monitor. Core Video and H.264 for whatever reason don't like this and export with a little wash out. Rob Griffiths writing for Macworld had the solution: "Just create a new customized color profile using the Calibrate button and the Expert mode option." A simple solution to a convoluted problem.
This is so basic, I was not sure if I should post it. This Lifehacker article is clearly for the newbie. If you are thinking of using MovieMaker and iMovie, this is for you. BTW, MovieMaker will finally be able to export to DVD's in the upcoming version of Windows (titled Vista). I know this has been annoying for many of MovieMaker users.
Jim Harvey of Creative Cow has written up a review for the latest update to Sony's Vegas, version 7.0. Overall, he has very positive things to say, praising the multitude of small refinements that increase productivity and make the program more of a pleasure to use. In the case of Vegas 7, it is these small new features that make the new version shine. If you're investigating Vegas as your editing solution or looking to upgrade, this review is worth the read.
Sometimes editing projects need to be moved from one system to another. And sometimes the second system is not even the same platform as the first. Oh boy, now you are in trouble. Don't fret, this happens every day and there are ways to make it work. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it takes a little time and tweaking. Scott Simmons has a great article over on The editblog that talks about what to do when you run into this situation and he also discusses some of the formats that can be used to go from one system to another. Even if you are a one man band right now, you may have to move a project in the future and this is good stuff for you to know.
Hot on the heels of GridIron releasing Nucleo Pro 1.0.4 today comes word that this update will NOT work with the After Effects 7.0.1 update. The word from GridIron is:
We are actively pursuing a fix for this problem and will have a new release ready as soon as possible.
So if you jumped out there and installed Nucleo Pro 1.0.4, GridIron recommends backing off to the 1.0.3 version if you are running AE 7.0.1. If you haven't updated AE yet then your good to go with the new Nucleo Pro version. I received this info via an email alert and they don't seem to have any info about this on their website yet. I'll update this post with a link as soon/if they post more info. See, I told you updates were scary.
UPDATE: GridIron has quickly addressed the issue and the new update is available for download. The new build is version 1.0.4 Build 391. All systems should be a go now with the update and After Effects 7.0.1.
Here you go Sony Vegas users, version 7.0c has been released and it is available for download immediately. With this update, Vegas will now properly handle Sony HVR-V1 progressive scan modes. Some of the other changes include:
Added support for Sony 1080-24p HDV
Added import capabilities for Sony HVR-DR60 hard disk recorder
Added several new project templates
Improved reading/writing MXF files
Improved SDI monitoring via AJA and DeckLink hardware
Numerous bugs squashed
Get the full list of changes here. The upgrade is free to all registered Vegas 7 users.
Matrox just released a software update for the Matrox Axio system. Version 2.5 allows Adobe Premiere Pro users to take advantage of several additional formats including:
Native MXF file support for Panasonic P2, Sony XDCAM, and Sony XDCAM HD
Native HDV 720p (JVC ProHD) editing at all frame rates
4:2:2:4 (YUVA) MPEG-2 I-frame and uncompressed codecs in HD and SD
DVCPRO HD support at all 720p frame rates
Panasonic VariCam support
Realtime mixing of additional formats on the timeline – MXF, AVI, MPEG, HD 1080i in an SD timeline
The update is free and supports all 3 members of the Axio family: Axio LE, Axio HD, and Axio SD. You can download the update from the Matrox website. Any Matrox Axio users out there?
Adobe has released an update for After Effects users. The update, version 7.0.1, contains way too many bug fixes to list here but you can checkout the full list on Adobe's website. Mac users can download their 12MB update here. Windows users can download their 14.5MB update here. I was able to download and update mine with no problems (so far). You know, sometimes these updates can be scary.
The title is misleading because I am pretty sure that Pro Tools is not on Linux as of yet. But good news Mactel-based audio people! DigiDesign has released Pro Tools 7.3 which is now compatible with Macs equipped with Intel processors. Pro Tools is the industry standard with audio. I know many sound designers who were not going to upgrade to the new Macs till Pro Tools became compatible.
For more info on new features, check out these video one & two (Flash video). Besides compatibility, there aren't any major new features, a lot of interface improvements. Free upgrade for existing users.
Steve Mullen explains some of the problems exporting HDV footage (thus mpeg-2) from the timeline. Mpeg-2 records one I-frame and 6 to 15 B-frames (depending on the camera). I-frames keeps track of the B-frames by checking the changes of one frame to the next. When you bring your HDV footage into your NLE, new I-frames are created because cuts usually require one. When you export it back to HDV, it takes forever (as I found out recently). The two diagrams of the GOP strings of essentially before and after shots are vastly different. This is something that NLE's will be paying more attention in round two of HDV compatibility. If this interests you, I'd suggest reading the article.
Red Giant Software is at it again and this time they've 
Texas Instruments has announced the beautifully named TMS320C6455 digital signal processor (DSP). This DSP uses Serial Rapid IO to encode H.264/AVC, the popular format used for high definition video. The TMS320C6455 processor (or C6455 for short) forms part of Texas Instruments fastest fixed point DSP 
I have been doing a lot of compressing for the web recently. I started off very excited with H.264 because the resolution was very good for a web codec. But I did notice that the colors were off especially compared to the original, a compressed .mov or .mp4. I eventually gave up H.264 partly because of the wash out and partly because that Quicktime 6 users could not use it.
This is so basic, I was not sure if I should post it. This 
Jim Harvey of Creative Cow has written up a 
Hot on the heels of GridIron releasing Nucleo Pro 1.0.4 today comes word that this update will NOT work with the After Effects 7.0.1 
Here you go Sony Vegas users, version 7.0c has been 
Matrox just 
Adobe has released an update for After Effects users. The update, version 7.0.1, contains way too many bug fixes to list here but you can checkout the full list on Adobe's website. Mac users can download their 12MB update 
The title is misleading because I am pretty sure that Pro Tools is not on Linux as of yet. But good news Mactel-based audio people! DigiDesign has 
