HD For Indies

Torrey Loomis of Silverado Systems was kind enough to take detailed notes and email them to me from Sunday's press event when they rolled out all their new products. Torrey is a VAR (value added reseller) that handles Macs for video stuff, he's a good guy to talk to if you need to get set up.

His notes follow:
Rob Schoeben – Vice President Applications Product Marketing

Overview from 2004 releases

Bunim/Murray Video
Reality TV overview
30-40 hours per day shoot
Pressure to finish quickly
FCP and Xsan—puts more editors on board
FCP better suited to handle—more flexible

2005--Year of HD Video
16 million HD homes by end of 2005

FCP better positioned to move folks to HD editing

Complete end-to-end solution for HD editing

Brian Croll - Senior Director Mac OS X Product Marketing
OS X 10.4 Tiger
Next big release of OS X
Ships 4/29/05
200 new features
Built-on UNIX
Latest shells and tools
Access control lists

64-bit processing
More than 4 GB RAM
Single process can access 16 Exabytes
Better windows integration

Spotlight
Allows user to find anything on desktop instantly
Built into the OS
Metadata and content searches
Smart folders—multiple file types, mail, calendar, Metadata mega search
Can add your own Metadata tags to your files

Dashboard
Instant access to Widgets
Calculators, weather, flight trackers...information at a glance
Can create your own widgets
Based on HTML
Hot key based

QuickTime 7
Standards based -
350,000,000 downloads of QT 6
Single format - acquisition to archive
H.264 – next gen MPEG open standard
MPEG-4 Part 10, ISO/IEC

Comparison photo between MPEG Part 2 and Part 10

iChat AV
4-way video conferencing
10-way audio conferencing

Just a few of the 200 features of Mac OS X

Frank Casanova – Senior Director at Apple
Demo of spotlight
Search for “BBC”
Spotlight window can organize by time, date, contact, etc...

Smart folders
Search for “H.264” by encode codec and copyright by BBC.

H.264 demo video
Did a Spotlight search for video
Full 1920 video at 8 Mbits
Full screen HD video of “Fantastic Four”

iChat AV demo
Scrubs demo of iChat AV
Four way video conference with three editors and one window with a Scrubs sequence
Creative parties can be involved and review edits with a virtual cutting room
Plays a scene in Scrubs for review
Producer wants to see alternate take
Editor plays alt take - producer likes it
Producer specs a transition, editor does it in real time and previews it in the iChat window
Another window for timecode for composer
Unknown if

Rob back
Need beautiful video, stunning graphics, the perfect soundtrack, next generation DVD’s

Introducing Final Cut Studio
Final Cut Pro 5
Edit anything, wait for nothing
Native HDV
Edit camera-native long-GOP MPEG2
1080i 50/60 720p 30
Hundreds of real-time effects
NOT an intermediate codec

Sony – Hiroyuki Sato – Sr. GM Digital Imaging Business Group
HDV products – HDR-FX1, HVR-Z1 cams and HVR-M10
HDV format chosen as most pop format by volume sold
30,000 cams shipped by March 2005

Rob back

Back to FCP 5
Edits anything – shows matrix
Native IMX support added
HD – uncompressed, HDV, DVCPRO HD

Real time
Dynamic RT Extreme
Frame-rate and image quality changes dynamically
Playback optimization based on CPU speed and video format
Maximizes real time performance

Panasonic P2 card
Solid state
Transfers files directly to Browser
DVCPRO, DVCPRO HD

Multi-channel audio
One pass capture of multiple channels
24 channel audio input/output
Work with 24-bit/96 kHz audio

Multicam Editing
on-the-fly editing during playback
Group up to 128 sources
Playback 16 sources simultaneously
4-up, 9-up

Paul Saccone Product Marketing Manager
Demo

San diego news clip in HDV
3.2 MB second
FCP tackles compute intensive tasks with ease
Scrubbing is seamless
Add real time effects
Plays real time backwards
All done in software

DVCPRO HD video
Dynamic RT Extreme
Playback video quality adjusts on the fly
Adapts from one stream to 16 on the fly

Multicam demo
Multiclips—three video and one audio
Shows where clips overlap
Three streams of HD – exclusive shot of Black Eyed Peas
Pumped up to 9 angles
On-the-fly rearranging
New button bar for multicam
Edited a sequence with a mouse—choices laid out after playback ends
Can change any angle to another angle

New demo with uncompressed HD
Uncompressed HD with real-time effects – two streams!
With titles, color correction

Panasonic HD
Support for P2

John Baisley President Panasonic Broadcast and TV Systems
AG-HVX200 P2 cams
MiniDV tape drive
3 chip 1/3” 16:9 progressive CCD’s
DVCPRO 50 and HD to P2
FireWire AVC and SBP2
Variable Frame Rates like Varicam!

Encouraged by Apple to incorporate HD into the camera
No deck is needed
Price is $5,995
Avail Q4 '05

Rob back

Motion graphics
Apple Motion recap
Mekanism demo –Rock the Vote

Motion 2 intro
Advanced animation—instant gratification
Film quality rendering
32 bit float GPU acceleration
8 bit, 16 bit float or 32-bit float
Unlimited RAM access
Replicator – innovative pattern-based design tool
Automat. duplicate graphics and movies along any pattern
150 replicator presets included

MIDI behaviors
"Play" Motion like an instrument
Trigger animation changes from MIDI devices
Adjust multiple parameters at once
Motion and After Effects – drag and drop Motion projects into AE compositions
Launch Motion from After Effects
Changes to Motion project automatically update

Real-time FxPlug
GPU accelerated 32-bit float plugs
Advanced UI controls
3rd party devs include Zaxwerks, Boris Effects, and DV Garage

Dion from Apple – demos Motion 2
Replicator places things on grid
Pattern can change geometry
Individual panes can be modified and altered
Keyframing greatly reduced

Motion 2 filters
3D rotation--adjust perspective
Boris 3D cube plug-in
Zaxwerks flag plug in real time
Earthquake plug built-into Motion 2
Mapped MIDI input to earthquake plug
Scrubalicious demo – MIDI keyboard created a 30-second commercial with just music key strokes

Rob back
Perfect Soundtrack
Introducing Soundtrack Pro
Built for digital audio post
Action based editing
Non-destructive and sample accurate
Action layer list with complete edit and processing history
Find and Fix
Automatically identify problem audio
Correct clicks pops hums
Selectively remove background noise
Audio processing - 50 pro DSP plug-ins from Logic Pro 7
Apply to tracks or clips
Supports Audio Units
Sound effects – 5000 cinematic sound effects and Apple loops
Explosions, impacts, foley effects, environmental ambiance
AppleScript Automation
Create AS droplets
Use Automator to streamline workflows
Execute scripts in FCP 5

Walter Murch / Sean Cullen video

Phil Jackson - Apple Product Specialist
Find and fix problems
Trailer – Batman begins with lots of pops and clicks
Automatically fixes clicks and pops in Soundtrack Pro
Sent back from SP to FCP 5
Allows you to create custom sound effects
Ships with lots of foley
Paste mixed a crash with a thunder effect
Adding some edge
Time stretched another effect and paste mixed into the track
Added a pitch shifter - combined two pitch effects
Actions list allows stepping through every part of the mix
Can re-order effects based on list
Fully supports control surfaces

Next Gen DVD’s
HD DVD and Blu-ray participants
DVD Studio Pro 4
Delivers HD on a disc today
H.264 for HD at SD bit rates
Author discs to current HD-DVD specification
Convert legacy projects to HD
Shows Clapton HD project in HD via DVD
Industrial Strength encoding
Optical Flow image analysis for format conversions
Qmaster distributed encoding
Integrated Dolby Digital Professional (AC-3)

Recap of Final Cut Studio

All available separately
As a suite - $1299
Upgrade $699

$499 from Production Suite
Available in May

Xsan environment at booth with 150 Tb
Shake 4 intro’d

Demo movie