Sigh…

I really didn’t want this to happen, but my November Final Cut Studio newsletter won’t be out till December… and I didn’t want you to worry about missing your issue.

I’m currently in the midst of editing two series, as well as traveling this coming week to Washington, DC, to cover GV Expo for my podcast – Digital Production Buzz.

I’ve started the newsletter and am really looking forward to sending it out, but it just won’t be until early December. (I’ll probably roll November and December into one issue.)

We have some interesting product reviews, hardware releases and, my favorite section, lots and lots of reader mail. (I truly do love hearing from you – even when I don’t have all the answers.)

So, if you haven’t read my current newsletter, here’s the link. I’ll keep this live until the new one is posted.

If you want to listen to all our live coverage from GV Expo, click here to see what’s available.

And if you are waiting for the next issue — it’s coming, just not before the end of this month.

(By the way, I am always looking for video tutorial ideas. To see what’s available, click here. And to send me a suggestion, click here.)

Take care, edit well.

Larry

P.S. To sign up for my FREE monthly Final Cut Studio newsletter, click here.

It’s Thanksgiving in the US this week, where many of us take time off to visit friends and family.

To give our staff some time off, we pre-recorded our podcast – the Digital Production BuZZ – this week. And, as I was creating this episode, it quickly became one of my favorites. If you have some spare time this weekend, give it a listen!

Click here to listen to podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS

Les Perkins, a long-time producer and editor for Disney, describes his experiences searching through the Disney film vaults looking for long-missing footage from the original Mary Poppins film. If you think your media managment is messed up, wait till you hear Les’ story!

Philip Hodgetts, CEO of Intelligent Assistance, and I have been having an on-going conversation on advertising and production funding. This week, Philip has distilled his thinking into four questions that need to be resolved to stop the free-fall in production spending.

By the way, you can read more about this on Philip’s blog – click here.

Thinking of money, Stacey Parks, CEO of Film Specific, provided some extremely helpful pointers on what you can do to make your projects more attractive to distributors. In fact, I’ve already started applying two of these. Stacey always has good information, but these I thought were especially helpful for independent producers.

Scott Gordon, CEO of Word Wizards Inc., and I had a long conversation on the benefits of using transcripts as part of the editing process; especially for documentaries. Scott also has suggestions on how to work with a transcription house.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention that Mike Horton had some especially helpful, um, cooking tips as he was beating up his Thanksgiving turkey. (Yes, I know, sometimes its hard to tell Mike and the turkeys apart…)

I liked this show a lot – it has lots of good tips and some great guests and Mike was hysterical.

Give it a listen here — and, as always, let me know what you think.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Larry

P.S. You can also find us on iTunes – please put us on your download list!

I just got an email from Adobe that Premiere Pro CS4 updated to version 4.2 today. I wanted to share their email with you, because it has an impact on Final Cut Pro 7 users.

Adobe writes:

This morning Adobe announced the availability of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 version 4.2, a free update for existing customers of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. The new version provides compatibility for Panasonic’s AVC-Intra format. Support for AVC-Intra augments Adobe’s existing support for tapeless cameras such as RED, Sony XDCAM EX and HD, Panasonic P2, and AVCHD, providing users with the industry’s most efficient workflow without transcoding or rewrapping.

Other features include critical updates for leading post-production hardware, including third party IO support, Final Cut Pro import, and other bug fixes. Final Cut Pro 7 users can now transfer projects directly to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 version 4.2 without conversions or re-rendering, preserving commonly-used effects and transitions.

A data sheet and Adobe TV video are available with more information on this release.

The update itself can be downloaded from the Adobe Updater tool in the software, or at the updates page on adobe.com.

We know many CS4 customers have been eagerly awaiting this update, so please help us communicate its availability to your members.

Future Releases of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, 64-bit Only

As you may have heard, last month Adobe announced that future releases of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects will only support 64-bit operating systems. 64-bit operating systems provide video professionals with significant performance enhancements and because of these benefits, the majority have already transitioned to 64-bit capable systems.

A white paper is available to explain more details.

Several things to note here:

1. The improved import of Final Cut Pro projects. Keep in mind that Premiere Pro is the only way to open a Final Cut Pro project on Windows. This can often help when trying to show something to a client.

2. Future versions will be 64-bit only. This means Adobe is also moving to Intel-only systems running Snow Leopard. So, while it still makes sense to avoid upgrading to Snow Leopard for a while longer, witness Apple’s release of version 10.6.2 earlier today cleaning up a host of bugs, at some point Snow Leopard is in all of our futures.

3. Adobe is providing increasing support for a wider variety of video formats, including aggressively supporting many of the new tapeless formats.

Adobe is rejoining the editing horse race between Avid and Final Cut. And, like any good race, it will be fun to watch.

Larry

Sorenson Media released Squeeze 6 today.

Normally, I put product releases in the Latest News section of the Digital Production BuZZ website, but in this case, I have a bit more information about this product which I want to share with you.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the folks at Sorenson Media asking if I wanted to get an advanced look at the new release, provided I not talk about it until they released it. Since video compression is a subject I enjoy talking about, and I’m a past user of earlier versions of Squeeze, I happily said “Yes.”

You can learn more about the new release at Sorenson’s website.

MacWorld provided an overall product overview here.

Yesterday, I spoke with Peter Csathy, CEO, and David Dudas, product manager, for Sorenson Media about the new products.

One of the things that is very interesting about this announcement is that Squeeze follows Apple’s lead in Final Cut Pro 7, as articulated by Brian Gary, in that Apple does not view compression as an end in itself – rather, compression is part of the process of publishing your information. So, with the new Compressor 3.5, Apple integrated a publishing option with compression — you can compress and publish your work to YouTube, or Blu-ray Disc, or standard DVD, or … You get the idea – the reason most of us compress things is so that we can put the video somewhere other people can see it.

Sorenson has taken this a LOT further – by coupling Squeeze 6 with Sorenson 360 — their video delivery network. I learned about Sorenson 360 a while ago, but didn’t pay it a lot of attention… it seemed like another version of Akamai to me.

However, what you can do when you couple a compression program with a distribution system is that you can create your videos in Final Cut, compress them in Squeeze, then automatically send them to Sorenson 360 for secure review and comments, publishing to the world, or streaming. In other words, this is the next step in integrating compression with high-power distribution.

Even better, the purchase of Squeeze 360 comes with a free Sorenson 360 account. If you are constantly sending videos to clients for review and approval, this is a much more efficient way to work.

Peter stressed Sorenson’s goals of “Quality, Workflow, and Speed” over and over. (If I hear the words “pain points” one more time, I’m probably going to turn green.) However, it was clear in listening to them that they are trying to find out what makes compression difficult for most people and then fix it.

The interface of Squeeze can be intimidating, so Sorenson Media has taken pains to provide tutorials and optimized setups to get new users started in the right direction. While their price precludes people who dabble in compression, I agree that making new users feel comfortable with the program is a worthy goal. I haven’t used Squeeze for 3 or 4 years, so I don’t know how much of the interface is modeled after the most recent Squeeze 5. However, it does take a different approach to settings than Compressor, so it will take a bit of time to learn to use well.

After our phone conversation, I sent Peter some additional questions that I wanted to share with you, because the answers illuminate some of the challenges we face as we look for ways to compress video faster, but with higher quality.

Question 1: Does Squeeze take advantage of multiple processors for compression?

Yes, it does but not all codecs are created equally.
- MainConcept’s H.264 is multithreaded and takes advantage of multiple processors for a single file. Because this codec already maximizes processor utilization, we do not enable Squeeze to encode more than one output with this codec at a time. Doing so with this codec would actually slow it down.
- On2 VP6 got a speed bump in Squeeze 6 and it is handled differently. It does not utilize multiple processors as efficiently as MainConcepts H.264 but it does work well when encoding multiple files simultaneously. The other codecs in Squeeze are handled similarly to VP6.

Question 2: Does Squeeze take advantage of multiple computers (separate boxes) for compression?

No.

Question 3: Does Squeeze run on Windows?

Yes.

Question 4: Does Squeeze run on non-Intel systems?

Not any more. Squeeze will run on the PowerPC but we have decided not to support it going forward based on Avid, Adobe, and Apple’s decision to drop it as well. This will allow us to have better focus on Intel based platforms.

One of the features in Squeeze that I liked a LOT was its Preview function. Unlike Compressor, which previews filters and geometry, but not compression settings or frame controls, Preview in Squeeze allows you to see a short (five-second) sample of your video fully compressed with all filters and effects. This is a huge benefit to folks trying to get the smallest possible file sizes with the best quality (think mobile phones).

Yes, it is a true preview and does an actual compression of five seconds of your video, based on the position of your playhead in the preview window.

I have not run the software, so I can’t speak to how well it works, but based on what I’ve been told, this is easily a product worth looking at. The retail price is $799, upgrades start at $199. I find the price a bit daunting, but the free Sorenson 360 account helps make the pricing much more attractive.