I was watching the highly recommended Editor’s Lounge series of videos from the Why we make the Edit night and naturally the discussion turned to the increasing pressure to get work done faster. Derek McCants noted that where once he would have three weeks to cut an allocated segment, the expectation was it would now be done in one week. (more…)

iTunes 10.4 is now AV Foundation based, not QT http://tinyurl.com/3b2auaj

As I’ve written before, AV Foundation is the modern media playback framework for OS X. Originally developed for iOS and OS X it came to OS X with Lion, but Final Cut Pro X uses it, even on Snow Leopard (where AV Foundation is installed as a private framework in 10.6.7 and 10.6.8).

I think Apple are sending a strong message that QuickTime – as a framework for applications to use to play media – is not the way of the future.  Particularly if you want a 64 bit application. While many parts of QT have been rewritten with a 64 bit wrapper as QTkit, the future is clearly away from QuickTime on OS X.

In fact, the use of QuickTime has been fading over the last decade as Apple moved to H.264/AAC in an MP4 wrapper for distribution purposes early last decade.

And now another of Apple’s media-rich applications appears to be built on AV Foundation now, instead of QuickTime, only falling back to use old QT codecs not supported under AV Foundation.

Over the last year I’ve managed to have some valuable insight on the direction Apple has been, and is, going with what became Final Cut Pro X, but of late the timing – June 21 – has got me thinking. One of the things that has bugged me is that Final Cut Pro X seems like it’s only most of a story. That there are still “other shoes to drop”. Since I don’t know how to quit when I’m “ahead” on the forward looking insight, here’s some more.

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The anticipation might soon be over. At next Tuesday night’s Supermeet in Las Vegas we may get a sneak peek at what Apple has been working on. For those who aren’t regular readers of my blog, here’s links to my evolving thoughts on why Apple needs to rewrite both Final Cut Pro and QuickTime into a modern codebase, and why they may take this opportunity to not just rewrite, but to rethink how modern NLE software works.

The posts in bold are the key ones.

• June 2009: What about Final Cut Studio and Snow Leopard?
• January 2010: What about 64 bit support in Apple apps?
• March 2010: What is Apple doing with Final Cut Pro?
• May 2010: Pro Apps Interface update?
• May 2010: Why Apple Insider couldn’t be more wrong!
• June 2010: Randy Ubillos, Chief Architect of Video Applications at Apple
• June 2010: Why Apple should drop Log and Capture from FCP
• August 2010: Introducing AV Foundation and the future of QuickTime [Updated]
• September 2010: Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop (from MacSoda)
• September 2010: What should Apple do with Final Cut Pro?
• October 2010: Apple Keynote – Back to the Mac: Implications for Final Cut Pro
• November 2010: What would a 2011 Final Cut Studio look like?
• November 2010: So Final Cut Pro 7 was to be the 64 bit release?
• January 2011: Why are we all worried Apple will abandon Pro Video… [Updated Jan 16]
• February 2011: Why we want Final Cut Pro rewritten to Cocoa!
• February 2011: A new 64 bit Final Cut Pro?
• February 2011: What is Apple doing with QuickTime?
• March 2011: What would a new editing interface be like?

No doubt there’s some things I’ve written that are just plain wrong. But I’m expecting that on Tuesday night we’ll see the 64 bit Cocoa Final Cut Pro (using AV Foundation) that I wasn’t initially expecting until 2012, with a complete rethink of the NLE interface for the future.

This paragraph from John Gruber’s reflections on Apple’s iPad 2 event really stood out for me:

iMovie for iPad seems like the realization of Randy Ubillos’s vision for movie editing software. Seldom does an app as popular and useful as iMovie get a genuine “let’s just start over from scratch” redesign like iMovie did on the Mac several years ago. And the current Mac version is, without question, a major improvement over the initial redesigned version. This iPad version, though, feels like the real deal, and makes the Mac version seem like the imitator. The concept, visual layout, and intended workflow are naturally suited to touch. This is what the new iMovie is supposed to be.

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As expected, AV Foundation from iOS 4 will be added to Lion. My take is that signals the end of QuickTime as we’ve known it. But it’s not only that there’s a new Framework for working with time-based audiovisual media – there’s a lot more to QuickTime than that, and it’s all the interactive and additional technologies in QuickTime that don’t appear to have a future. Features that were important when QuickTime MOVs were the preferred (at Apple) distribution format.

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Attack of the Minis http://tinyurl.com/46an3wm

Light Peak is an interesting technology and one I want to see sooner rather than later. Essentially it’s one connector for all purposes: peripherals (storage, i/o), networking (short distances in first release, longer later) and a replacement for the connectors we use now (which will largely work with adapters. The only protocol that may not run over Light Peak is USB 3, but USB 1 & 2; FireWire 400/800, eSATA, SAS ethernet and Fibre Channel could all be replaced with a single Light Peak connection at 10 Gbits/sec.

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Light Peak “ready to go” says Intel http://tinyurl.com/2vdqoyu

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iLife 11 still 32 bit. http://tinyurl.com/27dckw3

Seems like all Apple’s Apps – pro and not – that have QT dependencies are 32 bit. Just because most of QuickTime (other than fairly simple playback) is still based on 32 bit C APIs and Apple haven’t worked on QTkit (the 64 bit Cocoa version of QuickTime) since the release of Tiger OS X 10.4 some three years ago.

So it’s not just Apple’s Pro Apps that are having trouble moving to 64 bit Cocoa – it’s any of their apps that have a heavy dependency on QuickTime.

I haven’t bene able to confirm, from the tiny amount of information that was given at the show yesterday, whether or not AVFoundation has come to OS X but the introduction about bringing technology back from iOS to OS X desktop certainly augers well.

OK, no-one has told me anything about next week’s OS announcement but, as it relates to QuickTime (and my expectation of a new footing with AV Foundation from iOS) here’s how the script might go:

QuickTime has been one of our biggest success stories: powering not only iTunes but our professional video and audio applications as well. With 10.6 Snow Leopard we introduced QuickTime X, built on what we’d learnt from playing media on iPhones. Since that time we’ve learnt a lot more. In fact we’ve built a powerful new media foundation in iOS that we think takes QuickTime to a whole new level in media creation, playback and management power.

Or something like that. It’s very consistent with the way QuickTime X was pitched for Snow Leopard and Apple’s self congratulatory style.  If I hear any words vaguely like that, I’ll be cheering.