Post Production
Post Production (11)
Wednesday, 02 May 2012 13:37
Adobe CS 6, why own when you can rent?
With the release of Adobe's Creative Suite 6 due to launch in the next few weeks, a lot of people will be weighing the cost of upgrading. In my case, my copy of CS3 has become flakey and unstable under Mac OS 10.7 Lion. But do I really use it enough to justify the cost of upgrading my entire suite? I use Photoshop and After Effects pretty often, Encore occasionally, Flash and Illustrator somewhat rarely, and Premiere and Soundbooth not at all. For me to upgrade would cost over $900. To buy the Production Premium bundle (the motion picture/video oriented bundle of Creative Suite) outright…
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Software
Thursday, 08 September 2011 15:26
Tangent Devices Element is imminent
Tangent Devices is debuting its new Elements modular control panels for color grading software at the IBC trade show in Amsterdam. No word yet on pricing or when they will ship, but family of modular panels will be supported by Apple Color, Assimilate Scratch and SGO Mistika, among others. No word on Black Magic Designs' Davinci, but it would make little sense for BMD to support Avid's MC Color and Tangent's Wave but not the Element. http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_element.asp
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Hardware
Thursday, 08 September 2011 15:17
Mazel Tov, EditShare on Lighworks
Another announcement from IBC is that EditShare if reaching a milestone in its redevelopment of the Lightworks editing platform for a formal, non-beta release at the end of November. The first beta of its Linux and Mac versions will be available in mid December. Moving the code base into open source is still a goal and is progressing in parallel with the other goals in their development roadmap. http://www.lightworksbeta.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=122&Itemid=263 The new release will include a free version of Lighworks with support for a limited set of codecs and a somewhat restricted feature set. An annual subscription of $60 per year ($30…
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Software
Thursday, 08 September 2011 15:14
Holy shit! Adobe buys Iridias
Interesting announcements out of the IBC trade show in Amsterdam, today. The biggest may be the bombshell that Adobe is buying Iridias, who's two product lines are SpeedGrade and FrameCycler. From the announcement, SpeedGrade will be integrated into Adobe's Production Premium and Master Collection software suites. How, or if, it will effect pricing is not said. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201109/090811AdobeAcquiresIRIDASl.html The acquisition of SpeedGrade, and its integration into the Adobe Creative Suite bundles, is much like Apple's purchase of Silicon Color and their Final Touch product back around 2006, which became Apple Color. Apple put some, perhaps not enough, effort into developing and…
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Software
Tuesday, 05 July 2011 11:35
The Checker Marathon and FCP-X
"It's not personal, it's business." Sony Corleone, from The Godfather "It's the plumber, not the wrench" Arnie Schlissel From about 1956 to 1982, the Checker car company manufactured the Marathon and sold it to taxi companies around the country. The Marathon became the icon of the NYC taxi and the taxi of every other large city in the US. I can remember the moment in the mid 1980s when, because of gas prices, the bulk of NYC taxis went from Checker Marathons to Peugeot diesels. Less than a year later, all of those Peugeots were gone, they had simply…
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Software
Wednesday, 29 June 2011 15:22
FCP-X: Stop whining and get back to work!
"Well I lay my head on the railroad tracks waiting for the double E but the railroad don't run no more poor, poor pitiful me!" Warren Zevon First, let me say that I'm not going to apologize for Apple's release of FCP-X. Apple can do that themselves, if they're interested. I think they're not. Second, let me say that I'm not going to condemn Apple for the release of FCP-X. There's plenty of people doing that, already. The truth is, I think it's irrelevant. Would an apology from Apple really make a difference in your work? I know that it…
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Software
Thursday, 28 April 2011 12:55
The Kremlinology of FCP-X
Once upon a time, in a faraway land called The Soviet Union, the people in charge used to stage a big parade every year on May 1st. The great leaders of The Soviet Union would stand on top of Lennin's tomb in Red Square and watch the parade. Afterwards, they'd release an official photograph of themselves standing on top of Lennin's tomb watching the parade. And then, Very Smart People in places like Washington DC would spend days and weeks staring very long and hard at this photo (possibly with a magnifying glass), comparing it to last years, attempting…
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Software
Thursday, 14 April 2011 21:40
Holy shit, batman! Apple introduces iSmoke, err... Final Cut Pro X
Well, it's official, Apple has not gone out of business, hasn't abandoned the Mac, hasn't abandoned Final Cut. This also in, the sun will rise tomorrow. This past Tuesday, Apple gave a "sneak peek" of the upcoming version of Final Cut Pro X, to be released this June, at a price of only $300 from the App store. There's no mention, yet, of what's happening to the companion programs in the suite that's accompanied FCP for the last few years: Motion, SoundTrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro and Color. FCP has been given a complete re-write and a totally new…
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Software
Monday, 15 November 2010 15:43
Finally, the inevitable.
After all the hype and hoopla of the "DSLR revolution", someone finally came round to the obvious idea of putting a DSLR style imager into a real video camera. And it shouldn't be too surprising that the someone should be Panasonic and Sony. For the last couple of years, a number of people have been crowing about the "amazing" image quality that DSLR video has. Amazing. I keep seeing that word in articles and forum posts about DSLR video. But I am not amazed. If anything, I am just a little bit underwhelmed. The video is a bit soft,…
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Hardware
Thursday, 26 August 2010 11:12
I have seen the future...
I went to a demo of Nuke 6.1 a couple of nights ago, with a sneak peak at 6.2, and I was blown away... For those who aren't familiar with it, Nuke is a software based nodal compositor, similar to Shake or Fusion. As both a Shake and After Effects user, I was very impressed. The Foundry have done more than add new features, they've added power and efficiency to let us accomplish our work faster and with better results. First, stereoscopic 3D. Most compositing systems work in a 2.5D space. You can use virtual cameras and sometimes virtual lights inside of…
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Software
