Michael Cowan sent me a note earlier today that I wanted to share with you.

He was having problems sending sequences from Final Cut Pro to Soundtrack Pro (STP). Since I do this all the time with my own projects, without problems, I couldn’t figure out why he was having difficulty.

First, I suggested that he send his sequences from the Browser, rather than selecting all the clips in the Timeline. I find sending Browser files to STP to be more reliable.

That didn’t work.

Second, I suggested that he trash both his FCP and STP preference files. I have found that corrupted FCP preference files can mess with sending files to STP.

That didn’t work.

Hmmm… time to think. However, while I was thinking, Michael did some research. What he didn’t mention when we were first talking about this was that the sequence he wanted to send contained other sequences in it (what Apple calls “nesting.”) Ah-HAH! Using nests causes problems. As Michael wrote:

“Alas this issue lies with the well-documented nested sequence/XML problem that prevents “Send To” of nested sequences to Soundtrack Pro. I’ll need to change my workflow. There was some guy [Jeremy Hughes] who said he had success by Sending To Apple Color, back to FCP and then on to STP (perhaps Color generates cleaner XML), but it didn’t work for me.”

For those that need more information, here is the link to Apple’s support site:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2155

And here’s the link to Jeremy Hughes‘ Color workflow workaround:

http://filmvideostuff.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-get-audio-from-nested-fcp.html

Thanks, Michael, for sharing this!

Well, Apple Insider felt there wasn’t enough stress in our lives so they published a long blog written by Prince McLean titled: “Apple Scaling Final Cut Studio to fit prosumers.”

(You can read the entire article here.)

Naturally, the entire blogosphere went ballistic.

Philip Hodgetts wrote an excellent point-by-point rebuttal of many of the key points in this article, which you can read here.

While I agree with much of Philip’s point of view – I want to provide some additional points of view.

First, it make NO sense to me that Apple would make Final Cut Pro into iMovie. They already HAVE iMovie – why create it again?

Second, Apple has long been infatuated with Hollywood. For them to burn their bridges into a market they worked YEARS to develop makes no sense.

Third, in my conversations with Apple, the ProAps group is one of the key R&D Centers for audio and video at Apple. Many of the technologies we use everyday on our iPad, iPod, and iPhone first saw the light of day in the ProAps group. These products are very valuable to Apple both for revenue and for research.

Fourth, what Apple is thinking of doing, or not doing, has absolutely no impact on my life today. Apple could be working on cold fusion with free energy for everyone but until they announce it, coupled with a ship date, there’s nothing for me to react to.

If I spend all my time reacting to rumors, I’d never get any work done.

For me, this is the key point — as editors our job is to tell stories visually. The tools we have today do a really great job of helping us put food on the table and pay the rent.

Worrying about rumors in an exercise in driving yourself nuts.

Rumor: Adobe is Buying Avid and giving Media Composer away FREE!

Rumor: New lab discovery shows dental floss to be the ideal tapeless recording medium.

Rumor: Final Cut Studio is being ported to Windows Vista and being renamed “yourMOVIE”.

What does any of this have to do with us? You can’t plan on rumors. Apple has proved this time and time and time again.

Wait for Apple to announce something — THEN panic … or celebrate .. or whatever.

For now, though, I’m going back to work.

Larry

UPDATE #1 – May 18

I got an email from a friend with some inside knowledge of Apple. I wanted to share that person’s thoughts:

1) What happened to Final Cut Express?

November 2007 was the release date of the current FCE 4 Express. For Apple retail stores this was always where they would point people that wanted more out of iMovie, but weren’t ready for a $1000 buy in. It would only make sense to me that they would focus on engineering the interface of FCE to be slightly more user friendly, but not “scale back” the program.

2) The job postings were for interface design.

Why would you hire in an area you are looking to downsize or even delete? As you and I have both seen, the FCP/FCE interface is the one that looks the least “Apple” (whatever that means!). I can imagine they are looking to tweak that look and feel. I can’t imagine after putting out the videos of the Coen brothers, and Francis Ford Coppola, Apple would just want to say, “Screw you guys!” 9/10 of the Oscar-nominated documentaries were made with FCS! That was a huge win for Apple!

3) Steve Jobs

I don’t know if you remember this: Steve Jobs in response to someone expressing concern about Pro Video. “Give us a sign you still care about pro video, and not just the iPad.”

Steve wrote: “We certainly do. Folks who left were in support, not engineering. Next release will be awesome.”

I would rather take Steve at his word, than some blogger. Steve has been known to be discreet about new products, and say that they aren’t interested in something when they are (namely eReaders, and phones), however he wouldn’t say they ARE interested when they aren’t.

Larry adds: Thanks for these thoughts. There will, I’m sure, be lots more to add as time moves forward. For now, though, ask yourself: “just how reasonable do these rumors seem?”

UPDATE #2 – May 19

In an unusual move, Apple today released a denial to CNET of the initial report in Apple Insider, saying they were fully committed to Final Cut Studio.

You can read the full report here.

Whew!

Here’s another technical question that came in recently.

Sourabh asks:

I am a huge fan of your newsletters. I see you mention in quite a few newsletters burning an AVCHD disc (on a standard DVD) using FCP 7 that will give greater quality than a SD DVD. Could you please go over the process?

Larry replies: Thanks for writing!

This is a new feature in Final Cut Studio (3). Both Compressor and Final Cut Pro 7 can now create Blu-ray Discs. This means that it is now possible to put HD content onto what looks like a traditional DVD.

However, although the physical shape of the disc is the same, there are actually three flavors of DVD:

1. Traditional DVD. This is the ONLY format that DVD Studio Pro creates. All DVDs created by DVD SP are standard definition (SD) video. Yes, I know that DVD SP creates HD DVDs, however, that format died in the marketplace two years ago. If you are creating a disc only for yourself, you can use this format. However, there are no players on the market today that can play this type of disc. For this reason, use DVD SP to only create SD discs.

2. Blu-ray Disc. This is the new HD video format that you see promoted in all the stores. It requires compressing your video to meet the specs of this format and, for Macintosh folks, also requires that you purchase a separate Blu-ray Disc burner for your system. No burners shipped by Apple support this format. Also, keep in mind that as of today, no Macintosh can play a Blu-ray Disc natively on their system.

3. AVCHD Disc. This is a hybrid format. It records Blu-ray compatible video on a standard DVD disc. The benefit of this is that your current DVD burner can create this disc using standard DVD media. The disadvantage to this is that because a standard DVD only holds about 4 GB of media, while a Blu-ray Disc holds at least 6 times more, you can only get about 20-30 minutes of material on a disc. Also, because AVCHD discs require a lower data rate, it could be argued that the video quality is close to Blu-ray, but not quite equal to it. Still, the benefits of using AVCHD for short projects are great. This format also requires a Blu-ray player to be able to play the disc.

There are essentially four ways to create an AVCHD disc:

1. From within Final Cut Pro.
2. From within Compressor.
3. Using Roxio Toast 10.
4. Using Adobe Encore CS4 or later, which is part of Adobe Production Premium.

Let’s look at each of these.

The benefit to using Final Cut Pro is that it is easy. Select the sequence, or clips, you want to burn to a DVD in the Browser. Choose File > Share. Then, from the pop-up menu, select Blu-ray Disc. A side menu appears allowing you to set various parameters. You can also use this approach to create an AVCHD disc – keep in mind that you are limited to a project length of 20-30 minutes.

The disadvantage to using Final Cut is that menus are only templates and it is really designed for putting one movie on a disc. You can’t author a title or design menus the way we can in DVD SP, for example.

Bruce Nazarian has told me that the compression settings Apple uses to create Blu-ray Discs are actually very good — the image quality looks excellent.

The advantage to using Compressor is that you can adjust your compression settings; for example adding watermarks or resizing your video. However, the end result is the same as Final Cut Pro – menus are templates designed more for creating review copies of projects, not a commercial-grade Disc.

Roxio Toast 10 provides more flexibility, but the menus are still templates. You can easily add more movies. You can create your own menu graphics. But, in the end, the look and feel of the Disc is driven by the templates. Branching menus, scripting, stories, and other advanced features in DVD SP are not available.

Roxio Toast is the best choice when you want to provide a variety of different movies on a disc, using a single menu. Think demo reels.

Adobe Encore is the only application currently on the Mac that provides full authoring capability for Blu-ray Discs.

Based on what I’ve learned and in talking with others, the workflow that I would suggest when using Adobe Encore is to edit your project in Final Cut Pro. Export it as a high-quality, self-contained QuickTime movie. Compress it in Compressor as a Blu-ray file. Import the compressed file into Adobe Encore and create your HD title.

As alternatives, you can edit in Premiere and compress in Encore — it all depends upon which programs you are most familiar with.

If your project is short, create an AVCHD Disc. If you have more than 30 minutes of material, create a Blu-ray Disc. In both cases, you’ll need a Blu-ray Player to view the resulting files.

I’m trying to catch up on the backlog of technical questions I get asked each month for my Final Cut Studio Newsletter. So, I’m hoping to address a number of them here in my blog. This question is typical of many:

Mitch writes:

I thought that Compressor (I have version 3.5) could transform PAL QuickTime Movie files to NTSC .mov files. I’ve gone through your compressor lessons on Lynda.com but either didn’t see or didn’t find (because it doesn’t exist) any conversion command. If Compressor can’t do the conversion could you recommend a Mac software which can? Thanks as always.

Larry replies: Mitch, Compressor CAN convert NTSC to PAL and vice versa. But it is very, very slow.

A much better utility is Graeme Nattress’ Standards Conversion (www.nattress.com). Much, much faster and better results. It is considered the best choice when using software to convert formats.