‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE SUPERMEET

I’m writing this at 9:50 PM from my hotel room at the 2011 NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In less than 24 hours, we will know what the next version of Final Cut Pro will look like. If we are lucky, we may also learn the future of other software in the suite – Apple certainly has enough stage time to tell us.

What I am intrigued by is not what Final Cut Pro looks like – unlike most of the world, I’ve already seen it. What I am curious about is how much it has changed since Apple first revealed it.

When Apple presented the software to the group, they asked us to provide feedback. I provided a great deal, and I’m sure others did as well. I’m curious as to how Apple responded to what they heard.

I will be at the SuperMeet tomorrow, listening and taking notes. And, I’ll do a second NAB blog posting after the meeting about what I learned. But give me a few hours — initial reactions are not always accurate. I want to hear what Apple says, then allow myself some time to think about it.

Nonetheless, I’ve been reflecting about tomorrow night’s blog for almost two months. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts and – even more importantly – getting your reactions.

Tomorrow night is going to be … a jaw-dropper!

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NABSHOWBUZZ.COM — LIVE FROM NAB!

My podcast – DigitalProductionBuzz.com – is at NAB, recording interviews and creating shows. Our first dozen interviews are online – we are posting interviews as fast as we get them recorded and edited. Then, we gather the highlights from our interviews and post a new BuZZ every night.

If you want to hear the newsmakers themselves, explaining what they are doing – in-depth interviews you can listen to quickly — take a listen to our NAB website: www.nabshowbuzz.com.

We haven’t done anything like this before and we are very interested in your reaction!

We hope to create about 20 interviews a day for the next three days, then create NAB Show Specials for the next week.

You’ll find everything posted here: www.nabshowbuzz.com.

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LARRY IS A TWIT!

Well, ah, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. Let’s not get carried away.

Still, Leo Laporte invited me to be his lead guest at the start of his NAB coverage this morning on TWIT.TV. I was on for 15 minutes.

Plus, I’m invited back for an hour-long discussion on media this Wednesday morning on MacBreak Weekly. It will start sometime between 10:45 AM and 11:00 AM – Las Vegas time – this Wednesday.

See you then!

P.S. Thanks, John Stealey, for the screen-shot!

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ARCHIVING UPDATE

I spoke with the president of The Tolis Group yesterday during our setup at NAB and discovered that they have an LTO-tape-based archiving solution, called BRU, for less than $4,000.

I told him that I could not find it easily on their website, at which point he and his webmaster and I are going to meet later this week to discuss this further.

However, I promised in my recent blog that if I discovered anyone with a reasonably-priced, LTO-based archiving solution that works on the Mac, I would mention it here.

BRU is highly-regarded and I’ve received many positive reviews of their gear from readers. Feel free to check it out for yourself.

The Tolis Group: www.tolisgroup.com

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ADOBE’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Adobe announced new upgrades today – they are releasing CS 5.5. But what really caught my attention was their announcement that they were now allowing you to rent their software.

Suspecting this was yet another ploy to get our data in “the cloud,” I spoke with Scott Morris, senior marketing director for Adobe.

What he told me was that when you rent software, your data stays on your system. “This is not software as a service,” he said. Instead, you are buying the full-featured software and installing it as usual. However, when you activate the program, it contacts an Adobe server to find out if this is a purchase or a rental.

If it is a rental, then each time the application starts, it pings the Adobe server to see if the rental is still valid. If it is, the program launches. If it isn’t, the program doesn’t launch.

In all cases your data is safe. If you send your files to someone who has the full program, the files can be opened, modified, and saved. If you stop renting for a few months, then start renting again, your files open exactly as they were last saved.

To me, this is a very elegant solution for people that need the power that Adobe software provides, but can’t justify the upfront cost of the purchase price. What I REALLY like is that our data remains “our data;” it is not forced to be stored somewhere “on the cloud.”

Weblink: Adobe Systems – www.adobe.com

For more details, listen to the Scott Morris interview.

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AVID’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Avid didn’t announce any new products – except for a technology demo of much tighter 3D integration within Media Composer which makes the process of handling 3D materials much more seamless.

However, what did catch my attention was that Avid announced a cross-grade for all Final Cut users to the latest version of Media Composer for only $999.

For more details, listen to the Maurice Patel interview.

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HD IS THE NEW SD

It seems the video world is moving to higher resolutions.

Both Blackmagic Design and AJA announced support for 4K resolution playout. RED showed their Epic camera shooting 5K images. And Sony announced a new F65 camera that shoots 8K.

Clearly, the lesson is buy stock in companies that make or sell storage. These file sizes are going to be massive… And when you add stereo 3D, all your file sizes double!

Just as a rough guide, a 4K file is 4 TIMES bigger than a 1080p file. An 8K file is four TIMES bigger than a 4K file.

For more details, listen to the Nick Rashby interview.

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THUNDERBOLT IS STARTING TO APPEAR

We are seeing previews of Thunderbolt support from a variety of vendors — AJA and Blackmagic Design for image capture and playback; and Promise, G-Technology, and LaCie for hard drives — there are probably others that I didn’t make note of.

Thunderbolt is in the very early stages of adoption – the real roll-out will occur this summer. But it promises to be everything we could want for speeding up data transfers and handling the massive file sizes we are about to experience.

Sigh… Just watch. Someday, not that far in the future, we’re gonna say: “Boy! I wish there was something seriously faster than Thunderbolt.” We are never satisfied…

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More later, I’ll write again after Supermeet.

Larry

Adobe Systems has announced that they will be announcing ALL their new CS5 products on Monday, April 12.

As a note, we will be covering their announcement on our NAB Special Reports, which you can hear as part of the Digital Production Buzz. We’ll have more on that as we get closer.

One of the exciting new features in Adobe Premiere is what Adobe calls their Mercury Engine – a REALLY fast rendering and playback engine exclusively for Adobe Premiere. For those of you wondering what 64-bit memory addressing and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) support can mean for video, you need to see what these new versions can do. This also gives MacPro owners a reason for owning all that horsepower.

Anyway, this morning, Adobe sent me a note about rumors that are floating around about this new version — many of them are not true. So, if you are interested in learning more, check out this Adobe blog posting debunking Mercury myths:

blogs.adobe.com/VideoRoad/2010/03/debunking_mercury_myths.html

Larry

P.S. I’m getting a lot of email asking what Apple is doing. I am sure that Apple is not standing still. However, April announcements belong to Adobe.

Today, Apple announced its new tablet – the iPad. Which is great for watching videos, but not so great at creating them. For that, we still need laptops and tower computers.

With that in mind, I’m up in San Jose, CA, this week in a series of meetings with Adobe about all kinds of interesting stuff.

During the course of our conversations, I learned a couple of things that I wanted to share with you.

First, Adobe made the decision that all their future applications will be 64-bit only. For Mac users, this means that this will require hardware that can run OS X 10.6. Fortunately, Apple has made 64-bit support simple by building it into the OS. If you can run Snow Leopard, you are all set.

For PC users, the issue is more complex. 64-bit means that you need to buy a 64-bit-capable system. However, many less expensive PC computers on the market today are only 32-bit. This means that whenever Adobe releases new software, it won’t even install on these 32-bit systems; even if you bought it recently.

(Note: This also means that new Adobe software won’t install on Macs that can’t run Snow Leopard; which includes all non-Intel/Macs and anyone not running at least OS X 10.6.)

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As a side note, the reason that 64-bit support is so important is that it provides support for vast – and I mean truly HUGE – RAM memory. Currently, 32-bit systems, like Leopard, only allow an application to access 4 GB of RAM. 64-bit systems allow applications to directly access HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of TERABYTES! Sheesh….!

The second big benefit of 64-bit support, according to Adobe, is that applications run much faster because they need to access the hard disk much less frequently.

Better speed and performance are both good things in my book!

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A second new technology that Adobe is talking about publicly is what they call the Mercury Playback Engine. Currently, this runs only in Adobe Premiere Pro and what it provides is blazingly fast performance for video editing.

The Mercury engine works in both software and hardware. And, using just the software engine, its pretty interesting.

However, when you add hardware, the speed explodes into almost frightening performance. The key point, though, is that the playback engine is optimized for NVIDIA graphics cards. (Meaning that ATI graphics cards are not supported.)

When you connect an NVIDIA graphics card to your system, performance is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Real-time multi-camera playback of four native RED 4K files. Real-time color correction with multiple filters applied to the same clip. Real-time editing of native AVCHD video, no transcoding required.

Adobe tells me that when assisted by an NVIDIA card, Premiere Pro operates 50-100 TIMES faster than it does in software alone.

At this point, both of these are technology demos. Current versions of Adobe Production Premium don’t support these features. However, as you are planning your hardware purchases for the year, you might want to keep these thoughts in mind.

Currently, Final Cut Studio does not support 64-bit memory addressing, nor does it support hardware acceleration (Motion does, but the other applications do not).

Adobe is giving us just a glimpse of what we can look forward to later this year. Hopefully, Apple will follow suit.

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One other note. Next generation Adobe software will also be multicore aware. This means that the more processors you have in your system, the faster the software will run. This, too, is something Final Cut Studio does not currently support.

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