The present and future of post production business and technology

One of the currently popular memes is the “wisdom of the crowds” and if by crowd we mean a lot of people then there’s a lot of wisdom at CreativeCOW.net. Trouble is, it’s spread across a whole bunch of their forums so it takes a smart writer to take that wisdom and filter it down into something much more useful.

Well, the Cow’s Tim Wilson has done just that in two excellent articles:

Apple’s ProRes 4:2:2 Codec, Part 1 and
Apple’s ProRes 4:2;2 Codec, with a splash of Color, Part 2.

Highly recommended and well worth the read.

Ken Stone has released an article I wrote on XML in the Final Cut Studio. The article is What is XML and what does it mean for Final Cut Studio users?

Also, Steve Douglas reviewed my company’s Pro Apps Tips, also at KenStone.net in the Pro Apps Tips Review.

Just thought you’d like to know. Oh, and in 2007, I’ll be posting more regularly as I evolve some of the thoughts around a book I’m working on, tentatively titled “Television 3.0″.

The confusion and furor surrounding Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ announcement at the WordWide Developers Conference that future Mac, after Jun 2006, will use Intel processors inside is totally unfounded. Nothing changes now, very little changes in the next year and longer term the future for the Mac got a little brighter. Although the decision caught me by surprise, as I thought about it, and listened to what was said in the keynote, I could see why it made sense.

If we look short term, the decision makes little sense. Right now a G5 (Power PC, aka PPC) PowerMac has very similar performance to the best workstations on the PC/Intel platform running Windows and the G5 will cost less than a similarly performing PC workstation. At the low end the Mac mini is competitively priced to a cheap Dell or other name brand. (Macs are not price competitive with off-brand PCs, the so called “white box”.) So, why put the developer community, and developers within Apple, through the pain of a processor shift?

For the future (”we have to do it for the children”) and because it’s really not that painful for most developers.

Right now a G5 PowerMac is very performance competitive with the best offerings from Intel. What Apple have been privy to, that rest of us haven’t, is the future of both Intel processors and PPC processors. Based on that future Apple decided they had no choice but to make the change. In the future, the performance-per-watt of power of a PPC chip will be “15 units of processing” according to Mr Jobs. The same watt of energy would give 70 units of performance on an Intel processor. Without knowing exactly how those figures were derived, and what it means for real-world processing power it seems like a significant difference. It was enough to push Apple to make the change.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the PPC architecture: IBM continue to develop and use it at the high end and PPC chips (triple core “G5″ chips) will power the Microsoft XBox360. The sales of chips to Microsoft will well and truly outweigh the loss of business from Apple. It is, however, a crazy world: next year will see a Microsoft product powered by PPC and Macintoshes powered by Intel!

Steve Jobs demonstrated how easy it will be for developers to port applications to OS X Intel. In fact, he confirmed long-term rumors that Apple have kept OS X running on Intel processors with every development on OS X - Mr Jobs demonstrated and ran his keynote from an Intel Macintosh. For most applications a simple recompile in the Xcode developer environment will suffice - a matter of a few hours work at most. Moreover, even if the developer does not recompile, Apple have a compatibility layer, called Rosetta, that will run pure PPC code on an Intel Mac. Both platforms are to be supported “well into the future”.

During the keynote Mathematica was demonstrated (huge application, 12 lines of code from 20 million needed changing, 2 hours work) as were office applications. Commitments to port Adobe’s creative suite and Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit software were presented. Apple have been working on Intel-compatible versions of all their internal applications according to Mr Jobs. [Added] Luxology’s president has since noted that their 3D modelling tool modo took just 20 minutes to port, because it was already Xcode-based, and built on modern Mach-0 code.

Remember, these applications are for an Intel-powered OS X Macintosh. No applications are being developed for Windows. In fact, after the keynote Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of Windows. Although it would be theoretically possible to run Windows on an Intel Macintosh it will not be possible to run OS X on anything but Apple Macintosh.

Apple’s Professional Video and Audio applications might not be as trivial to port although most of the modern suite should have no problem. LiveType, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro and Motion are all new applications built in the Cocoa development environment and will port easily. Final Cut Pro may be less trivial to port. It has a heritage as a Carbon application, although the code has been tweaked for OS X over recent releases. More than most applications, Final Cut Pro relies on the Altivec vector processing of the PPC chip for its performance. But even there, the improvement in processor speeds on the Intel line at the time Intel Macs will be released are likely to be able to compensate for the loss of vector processing. At worst there will be a short-term dip in performance. However with Intel Macintoshes rolling out from June 2006 it’s likely we’ll see an optimized version of Final Cut Pro ready by the time it’s needed.

[Added] Another consideration is the move to using the GPU over the CPU. While the move to Intel chips makes no specific change to that migration - Graphics card drivers for OS X still need to be written for the workstation-class cards - Final Cut Pro could migrate to OS X technologies like Core Video to compensate for the lack of Altivec optimizations for certain functions, like compositing. Perhaps then, finally we could have real-time composite modes!

Will the announcement kill Apple’s hardware sales in the next year? Some certainly think so but consider this: if you need the fastest Macintosh you can get, buy now. There will always be a faster computer out in a year whatever you buy now. If your business does not need the fastest Mac now (and many don’t) then do what you’d always do: wait until it makes sense. The G5 you buy now will still be viable way longer than its speed will be useful in a professional post-production environment. It’s likely there will be speed-bumps in the current G5 line over the next year, as IBM gets better performance out of its chips. We are waiting for a new generation of chips from Intel before there would be any speed improvement. If Apple magically converted their current G5 line to the best chips Intel has to offer now, there would be little speed improvement: this change is for the future, not the present.

So, I don’t think it will affect hardware sales significantly. As a laptop user I’m not likely to upgrade to a new G4 laptop, but then there will be little speed boosts available there in the next year anyway. But as a laptop user, I’m keen to get a faster PowerBook and using an Intel chip will make that possible.

Although I have to say I initially discounted the reports late last week because, based on current chip developments, there seemed little advantage in a difficult architecture change. With the full picture revealed in the Keynote as to the long term advantages and the minimal discomfort for developers, it seems like a reasonable move that will change very little except give us faster macs in the future.

How could we have any problem with that?

[Added] Good FAQ from Giles Turnbull at O’Reilly’s Developer Weblog

Although no new applications were announced, Apple upgraded all the Pro Video Apps with new versions of Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor 2, Motion 2, LiveType 2, DVD Studio Pro 4 and Shake 4.

In their Sunday morning presentation at Paris, Las Vegas, Apple announced upgrades across the their Pro Video line, consolidating the tools in the $1299 Final Cut Pro Studio. With Final Cut Pro alone priced at $999, the Studio becomes the purchase option of choice if you want Final Cut Pro and any of the other applications. In depth articles will follow, but here’s the 20,000 ft view.

The suite features improved integration across the suite with automatic asset updating from application to application but no dramatic changes to workgroup editing.

Final Cut Pro 5
Key new features are Multicam, Multichannel audio input and support for HDV and P2 media natively. Multicam allows up to 128 angles to be switched in a Multiclip. 4, 9 or 16 angles can be displayed and switched at a time. Final Cut Pro 5 supports tapeless media from Panasonic’s P2 and native IMX support (and keep an eye out for Panasonic’s new camera - P2 media and DV tape for the best of both worlds). MXF media from XDCAM is supported with a 3rd party plug-in from Flip4Mac (Telestream). Final Cut Pro HD works seamless with almost any type of media. HDV media is supported natively. It’s not clear whether or not media can be mixed in a Sequence without rendering. Since it’s not featured, probably not.
RTExtreme has been extended with a new Dynamic RT architecture that adjusts the amount of real-time according to the processor and graphics card speeds - as speeds increase, more real-time will become available. During playback Dynamic RT looks ahead in the timeline and dynamically adapts rather than suddenly stopping playback. Real-time speed change with frame blending is new to version 5.
Final Cut Pro now allows simultaneous import of up to 24 channels of audio. Final Cut Pro audio can now be controlled on any control surface that supports the Mackie Control Protocol meaning that Final Cut Pro mixing can be done a hardware mixer.!
Motion 2
Motion had the most dramatic update with new features that bring the application up to a truly material application for motion graphic design. New interaction techniques - including controlling parameters with a MIDI controller (did anyone say VJ?) - and Replicator for building patterns of repeating objects like flocks of birds. Replicator gives more control than a particle generator and comes with 150 patters with controllable parameters.
Rendering depth has been beefed up to 16 and 32 bits per channel float for those who need it. 32 bit processing is done on the CPU. Motion on Tiger supports more than 4 GB of RAM.
Motion also gains the third dimension with a new 3D distortion filter that allows pseudo 3D with beautiful transparency and effects in real time. A new GPU accelerated architecture lets 3rd parties access the GPU acceleration so Boris, Zaxwerks and DV Garage plug-ins now display in real time.
Soundtrack Pro
Although it shares part of a name with Soundtrack, Soundtrack Pro is far more positioned for a "regular editor" replacement for Pro Tools than simply for scoring music for video. Soundtrack Pro retains the loop editing functionality of Soundtrack, but adds waveform editing, sound design (including a library of sound effects) and includes more than 50 effects from Logic.
Soundtrack Pro comes complete with "search and destroy" tools for most common audio flaws - clicks & pops, AC hum, DC offset, phase and Clipped signal, plus tools for ambient noise reduction and automatically fill gaps with natural sound.
DVD Studio Pro
With an upgrade to version 4, Shake is HD ready with built-in support for H.264 encoding (adopted by both Blu-ray and HD DVD camps) and direct encoding from HDV without intermediate format conversion. Distributed processing using Qmaster for encoding and built-in AC3 encoding (no need to use A.Pack) and enhanced transition support headline DVD Studio Pro’s new features.
On the technical side, DVD Studio Pro 4 supports VTS editing for greater playback performance by allocating menus throughout VTS folders to overcome 1GB menu limitations. GPRM partitioning enhances the scripting options for highly interactive DVDs, for example jumps to motion menu loops to avoid repeating introduction transitions.
LiveType remains part of the Final Cut Pro package and is at version 2. Visually the interface does not appear to have changed. Most of the changes are under the hood with changes to the LiveFont format to support Unicode and vector fonts.

More soon.

Why does the Apple rumor mill get so frantic coming up to NAB? It’s not like we don’t all know to delay purchases until after NAB unless you can get a pay back in the months between now and then. So what is it that makes us frantically review rumor sites and set the forums and email groups buzzing when ThinkSecret purported to leak (yet again) from within Apple?

Nobody can confirm or refute the rumors until Sunday April 17th, and in reality the rumors don’t do much more than supposedly “confirm” what can reasonably be inferred from existing public announcements (HDV support in FCP “next version” is an announced feature); known intentions to meet customer desire (heck there was even an obscure reference to Multicam in the FCP 4 manual suggesting it was, at one time, proposed for that version); or reasonable inference (CoreVideo technology in the OS would enhance FCP’s real time). New applications for sure - that’s called progress and until Apple have a full and complete set of professional tools in the Pro Apps product lineup then they’ll keep announcing new tools.

Since I am only guessing and have no knowledge, I won’t be publishing my guesses here or on DV Guys but ask me privately and I’ll make my guesses. Even though I think I’m as good at guessing as the next person I still expect to be surprised and impressed come NAB.

But that’s not the point - lots of opportunity for rumor mongering all over the place. It doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t influence business or buying decisions so why is there this intense speculation about what Apple might be going to announce? And why mostly Apple? Avid haven’t pre-announced their NAB releases. There’s the same level of secrecy going on but not the speculation.

Is this some bizarre desire to be “on the inside”? A sort of technological one-upmanship? It’s not like knowing there’s a new version of Final Cut Pro coming sometime (probably) in the next 2-3 months makes editing any easier today, or eases the pain of any “undocumented features” currently existing.

Until this last year or so I was as keenly interested in listening to, and spreading, any rumors I could find and yet now I find myself strangely disinterested. Curious yes - I’ll go read the rumor and consider whether or not I think it’s reasonable - but I find myself not as interested in spreading the guesses and inference.

I wonder why that is? Is it finally maturity, or is it finally evidence that I am, officially, jaded?

Update March 1 - there’s just been a purported “leak” of Avid’s NAB announcements. While the leak is almost certainly bogus, this type of malicious leak can be very damaging. The supposed prices are way below what is reasonable for Avid (although if true, would be a real change of direction) and there are other key giveways for the educated reader, that this is not a real release. But now, whatever great announcements Avid had for NAB will be compared with a totally unrealistic, bogus release setting up expectations that were never reachable.

At least that’s my take. If not and Avid do announce $5000 Unity and open interoperability with AJA and Decklink on April 16, then that paragraph will have never happened

I’ve just added a comprehensive briefing paper to the Pro Apps Hub on HDV called, as the title of this post suggests, “Is it something or is it nothing?” Bottom line, it’s something all right and it’s going to be the final factor that drives production inexorably to HD.

Here’s the introductory paragraph:

“It’s hard not to be caught up in the HDV hype but is this 19/25 Mbit High Definition format going to take the world by storm, or does the heavy compression make it unworkable? This briefing paper takes a look at:

• the format and how they fit an HD signal on a DV tape,
• how it looks in practice,
• how HDV can be edited,
• distribution HDV, and
• how it is likely to fit into, and change, the production and post-production industries. Particular attention is paid to working with HDV with Apple’s editing applications.”

You can access the briefing paper by downloading the free Pro Apps Hub software and following the link to download. The Pro Apps Hub is the most up to date, no time-wasting news for Apple’s Pro Apps users, daily productivity tips, briefing papers, the only index to the best of what’s free on the Internet - tutorials, articles, resources, forums so you don’t waste time with what isn’t great, and an online catalog. (Did I mention that I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve created with the Pro Apps Hub?)

Check out the HDV article and follow the link at the end of the article back here to comment. This entry will load directly in the Hub.