The road to a product review is rarely smooth, but a review that I’m currently working on was especially rocky – mostly due to me – but the back-story is interesting, so I thought I’d share it with you here.

Last December, I saw a demo of Telestream’s Pipeline and thought it interesting enough that I should cover it in my newsletter. So, I asked Telestream if they would send me an evaluation copy to look at.

Telestream graciously agreed and by mid-January, a gleaming new unit was sitting in my edit suite. However, Pipeline requires SDI video and all my video sources were either composite or S-Video — both analog.

Hmm…

So, I contacted some friends at Blackmagic Design and asked if they could lend me two of their new mini-converters which takes analog video and converts it to SDI.

After filling out the necessary forms, answering the usual twenty questions and waiting a couple of weeks, two brand-new mini-converters were sitting right next to the Pipeline hardware.

Except…

Pipeline requires OS X 10.5, and I’m still running on OS 10.4.11. This was a problem. Long-time readers of my newsletter know that my basic philosophy is that if your editing system is running properly, don’t upgrade.

While it is true that upgrading to OS X 10.5 does not provide any new features to Final Cut Studio, an upgrade would allow me greater access to third-party products.

There are three OS X 10.5 products that, individually, are almost enough to make me upgrade. Together, they finally tipped me over the edge. These are: Telestream’s Pipeline and ScreenFlow, and Noise Industries: FXFactory.

I’ll be writing about Telestream’s Pipeline in my next newsletter, coming out next week. (Click here to subscribe.) I’ll be writing about the other two in an upcoming issue.

So, I decided the time had come to, finally, upgrade to OS X 10.5. But when?

I had all the hardware, but I was about to head out of town for a three week road trip in the UK doing seminars. This struck me as a bad time to upgrade – never demo newly installed software in front of 200 people. Unpleasant things have been known to happen.

So, it wasn’t until this week – about three months after I started this whole process – that I was finally able to upgrade one system to OS X 10.5. (By the way, I did an Archive and Install, and everything worked great — except email, which took a phone call to Apple to resolve.)

Whew!

I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned about Pipeline in my next newsletter. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do so. Its free and will be emailed directly to you as soon as I finish getting it written.

Janet Swift, in PR over at Telestream, sent me a note this morning reminding me that last week, after two years of work, Telestream released the Windows version of Episode.

Janet wrote: “Episode now supports cross-platform environments, PC and Mac. Also Episode desktop now includes watch folders for both Mac and PC users – in addition to all its other great attributes: virtually any format in & out, extensive filters and fine-tuning, plus it’s fast and easy to use.”

“Episode products provide a fast, flexible and future-proof solution for virtually any SD or HD compression need. Episode desktop products include extensive fine-tuning compression capabilities, batch encoding and many presets which enable users to quickly create extremely high-quality output files. Cross-platform support in Episode and Episode Pro 5.1 means that users and organizations no longer need to learn and support multiple encoding tools for different purposes. The addition of watch folders in version 5.1 saves time and effort by enabling users to simply drop finished projects into folders for automatic encoding.”

Episode is a high-quality, professional-grade compression product. If all you need is QuickTime movies, Apple’s Compressor may well meet your needs. But, if you need Window Media, Flash, or need to create multiple versions of the same media, Episode is definitely worth checking out.

Here’s the link: http://www.telestream.net/company/press/2008-12-11.htm