Final Cut and SmoothCam

"Final Cut Studio 2 SmoothCam Tested: Fix Those Shaky Shots"

An overview with examples of using SmoothCam in FCP. SmoothCam uses "Optical Flow", which is technology imported from Shake, to the new Final Cut Suite. Gives some good advice on working with HDV--transcode to ProRes422 to dramatically reduce processing time. Very impressive what it does with shots from a car. Seems like Apple's SmoothCam is providing a great tool for removing unwanted motion in a shot. However, I think its value for interlaced standard-definition video is low because you lose so much resolution from the de-interlacing and the scaling that SmoothCam does. But I guess I should try it out before I make any judgments.

UPDATE: There are some more in-depth tests at The Edit Blog. Apparently, when you execute SmoothCam, FCP analyzes the entire source clip and not just what is cut into the timeline. The Edit Blog notes some improvement from using ProRes422 over HDV (36 min. vs. 53 min. on a 12.5 sec clip). But it looks like the big improvements in analysis time cited above are probably confounded by the creation of a smaller source clip when the video was transcoded to ProRes 422. [via FreshDV]

Bottom line: The results are good but the analysis time on SmoothCam is slow. Dual 2.7 G5 estimated 5 hours to process one and half minutes of HDV. Did I mention that the analysis takes place in the background, so you can keep working while FCP analyzes the clip?

Rendering 10-bit in After Effects

With ProRes 422, I think I might start working in 10-bit video. Below is some info on working with 10-bit and ProRes 422 in After Effects. Pretty deep stuff, but apparently it can take some work to get After Effects to work with 10-bit well. Info from HD for Indies and Studio Daily.

After Effects Stuff: Workflow tips and QT NOT always 10bit when you render"

"The great codec bake-off"

What's New in FCP 6

Final Cut Studio 2 is now shipping. I don't know when I'll get my hands on it, but Apple has posted many of the manuals online. I took a look at the manual What's New in FCP 6. I've written before about my thoughts on FCS2 and FCP6, and here's some new things that jumped out at me after reading that manual.

SmoothCam Filter
This borrows Shake technology to steady shaky footage. This seems to be the only implementation of Shake in FCP according to the "What's New" manual. If so, then no great slo-mo's in FCP. Looks like you'll have to go to Motion for those.

Bloom FX
More FX's from Motion are coming to FCP. I like the Bloom filter and there are a few more.

Rendering Native HDV and XDCAM HD Sequences to the Apple ProRes 422 Codec
This is a new sequence preset. So as I discussed before here, it makes less and less sense to transcode HDV to another codec, like uncompressed, when capturing. With the Open Format Timeline you can load and cut your native HDV footage and then render in whatever codec you like (uncompressed, ProRes 422) when you want to filter or composite.

External Video Monitoring
This is very cool. I don't remember hearing about this capability when the new version was announced. Here's something I pulled from the manual:

You can now output to external video interfaces whose settings don’t match those of your sequence. Here are some examples of some of the possibilities:
-A DV or HDV sequence output to an SDI signal on a third-party interface
-An uncompressed NTSC or PAL sequence output to a DV FireWire output
-An HDV sequence output to a DV FireWire output

Before you had to rely on hardware from AJA or Kona to do stuff like this. Now FCP and your Mac's CPU will handle this. Of course, if you are throwing an Open Format Timeline and down-conversion at the CPU that's a fair amount of work. The better the chips you have, the more luck you'll have with this type of stuff. But I pretty much got a DeckLink card because I wanted the option of seeing HDV downconverted to SD (the Kona LS wouldn't do that.) Now Kona LS users will get this capability with FCP 6 if their computer is fast enough.

For more on the new manuals for Final Cut Studio, check out this post at HDforIndies.com.

Hardware-Accelerated h.264 Encoding

Update: XLR8YourMac.com is now keeping on top of comparisons of rendering with different Mac's as well as some encoding issues. This is good. Shows that on Quad G5's that using the Turbo.264 is slower than the CPU's although Turbo.264 does free up the CPU to do other things.

Elgato is the maker of the EyeTV product that adds Tivo-esque capability to your Mac. They've just released the Turbo.264 which is a tiny hardware encoder. It plugs into a USB2 slot and handles encoding into h.264. If you've tried encoding video for your iPod or now the Apple TV, you know how slow encoding h.264 is. The Turbo.264 promsises a substantial speedup--they cite a test where a 2GHz MacBook took nearly an hour to encode a 10 min. DV movie but handled the same movie in under 12 minutes with a Turbo.264 plugged in. The slower the Mac, the more boost in performance you'll get from the Turbo.264. It should retail for $99.

Turbo264 comes with its own app to handle encoding with batch capability. Turbo.264 also works with any app that uses Quicktime for encoding, including FCP, iMovie and Quicktime Player. One missing feature is that the maximum resolution is 800x600. Apple TV support up to 1280x720--too bad the Turbo.264 doesn't do any high-def video.

Update: A short review cites a doubling on encoding with a dual-core 2GHz G5. That's a lot slower than the improvements that Elgato cites for the MacBook with the same clock-speed Intel Core 2 Duo.

Update: Reg Hardware has a review with their own render tests from a MacBook Pro. They note some more impressive improvements.

Update: Another review from iLounge notes problems with de-interlacing from HD movies and give some more rendering results.

New MacBooks, Still No Good with Final Cut Studio

Apple did a speed bump on the MacBook's today. Nothing major. The MacBooks don't have a dedicated graphics card, which is problem with some aspects of running Final Cut Studio like Motion. You can do some stuff with Final Cut Pro 5.1 on it, but you aren't supposed to run it on a MacBook. So nothing has changed about it. As for FCP 6, we'll have to wait and see until the software is out, but it isn't officially supported on the MacBook either (or the Mac Mini for that matter.)

Mike Curtis at HD for Indies writes about this here. He actually has a MacBook and goes into more detail on his site about what the MacBook will and won't do with Final Cut Studio.

So if you want to run the whole Final Cut Studio on a laptop, you'll have to pony up for the MacBook Pro.

Format Rundown

Here's a couple of good articles (Part 1 and Part 2) that runs through different formats on HD for Indies. The HDV section is really dated, but otherwise it's a good rundown on the basics on these formats technical-wise. Skips some newer formats like Sony's IMX codec, AVCHD, and AVC-Intra. I've actually found wikipedia isn't a bad place if you want to buff up on technical stuff like formats.

Here's what's covered:
DV
DVCPRO50
Digibeta
HDV 720 (JVC) vs. HDV 1080i (Sony)
DVCPRO HD
HDCAM
D-5
HDCAM SR

Matrox MXO 2.0

This little box, the Matrox MXO, gives you broadcast-quality HD out of a DVI port, either from a tower or a laptop. It is also meant to help you monitor high-def video on a computer display, like the Apple Cinema Displays. Shane Ross writes very favorably about the accuracy of the video display from the MXO on LCD's here and more recently here after trying the new 2.0 drivers. The 2.0 drivers allow you to do some calibrating of a DVI display opening up the possibility of using less expensive LCD's than Apple's.

So this looks like an interesting option for doing color-correction with high-def. At around $1K it's more expensive than the inexpensive Intensity products from Blackmagic Design, but it promises better results in accuracy of video. Works with DVI, so takes up a port that could be used for a 2nd monitor, but that does allow for easy use with laptops. It also does simultaneous downconvert on its analog outputs for viewing on a standard-def monitor. Blackmagic and AJA do offer products that let you use an Apple Cinema Display to display HD video but they only take an HD-SDI input. So they require more hardware to monitor HD video.

To Replicate or Duplicate?

"Macrovision and DVD Creation - What You Need To Know"

This is a good article on some interesting aspects of DVD production, namely copy-protection issues and also replication. Replications is not duplication. I have a hard time remembering which is which, and this article reminded me that replication is what makes a real DVD and duplication is what gets you a DVD-R just like out of your computer. To do a real replication, you aren't supposed to deliver the replicator a DVD-R but instead a DLT tape. Anway, the article does a better job of explaing these issues than I, so if you're interested go check it out.

HD for Indies partners with Silverado Systems

"HD4NDs Big Announcement #2: Mike's Recommended System Configs via Silverado Systems "

I know this sounds like a press release, but I'm a big fan of Mike Curtis' HD for Indies website and I think he is on to something with this new venture. Silverado Systems, which is outside of Sacramento, CA is selling FCP systems that Mike recommends. Most of the systems are based on a write-up for DV.com that Mike did recently. I personally prefer to put together my own systems, but I have yet to tackle a system for high-def. And when trying something new, especially if it is as complex as putting together a system for uncompressed high-def editing, then it can't hurt to have a value-added reseller behind you if you can afford it.

28 percent of Americans Own HDTV

So says the Consumer Electronics Associations, the folks that put on the big CES show every year. Well it seems that after 10 years of struggling to get off the ground, high-def has hit critical mass. I personally am dismayed whenever I have to watch standard-def TV on a high-def set because it looks so much worse than on a standard-def set. It's a big pixelated, stretch-out mess that will exagerate any flaws in the image, including compression artifacts from your digital cable or satellite. And let's be clear that there is not that much high-def content out there on TV. But apparently this doesn't bother consumers that much because 86% said that they were highly satisified with their TV according to this survey. When you do get a good signal, like decent HD or even an upconverted DVD, then a decent high-def display can really shine.

TV folks not only have to worry about whether to deliver HD content but also widescreen content too. I'm assuming that standard-def channels will have a place in the future because of the trade-off between quality and bandwith will make it reasonable to have more channels at a lower resolution. So when will standard-def go widescreen? I know in Europe, where there's not much HDTV, their TV is already widescreen. When the analog shutoff of over-the-air TV comes in 2 years how many of those 4x3 tube TV's will become our toxic legacy to the futre and end up in the landfills to be replaced by LCD flat-panels? Well considering that 10 years ago I thought DVD's would never take off because everyone would be glued to their brand-new high-def sets that the public was about to rush out and buy, I'm not going to hazard a guess.

[via Engadget]

Slingbox for Remote Feeds

CNET has a video about our neighbor KPIX 5 . KPIX is using the consumer Slingbox for remote feeds. These sell for around $120 and basically take a video input and will stream it to another computer over the internet. They are putting these in cars and driving around for traffic shots. Looks like the video is being streamed to the internet through a cell phone data connection.

Slingbox was designed to let folks watch their TV's at home from any computer or even mobile devices that can connect to the inernet. It's interesting to think of another low-cost internet technology being used for broadcast video. Apple's iChat does a decent job of streaming video to another computer. But with Slingbox you don't even need a host computer to stream the video. I also recently wrote about a Windows streaming software Orb.

Slingbox recently released a Mac client called SlingPlayer that will let you receive the stream from a SlingBox on a Mac. The interface will recreate the remote for a device like a TiVo and allow you to control that device from the client computer.

Subtitling with DVD Studio Pro

This short article covers the basics of adding subtitles to a DVD using DVD SP. Workflow is based around using a professional closed-captioning service to transcribe and caption the program. Then they provide you a .STL file that DVD SP can work with.

FCP Editing Tip

This is a cool little editing trick. Add transitions to multiple clips at once. I would have never thought of that.

Mac Pro Onboard SATA

Recently I wrote this post about a way to use the extra SATA ports that are otherwise unused inside the Mac Pro. Well, here's an article from a person who actually did it, and on reflecting on it, I would judge it not worth the effort. Appparently the NewerTech eSATA Cable Kit/PCI bracket manual recommends that you route the cables underneath the motherboard. I'm not up for that kind of surgery personally. Neither was the author, so he/she just left the cables floating around inside the computer. I guess that would be OK, but generally I don't like to do stuff inside of a $2,500 computer unless a manufacturer is recommending it. When you can get 2 eSATA ports from a number of PCIe card manufacturers for $100, I wouldn't bother with this personally. File this under, too much trouble but cool (in the geeky way).

Cool in a geeky way would also describe the site where I found this article xlr8yourmac.com.