The New NVIDIA TITAN X is the King of the Hill!

Yes there is a new king of the hill in the consumer video card arena, and that is the new NVIDIA TITAN X. I had expected this to take a while to come out after them releasing the new 10 series, 1080, 1070 and 1060, but it was quickly announced and is coming out August 2nd! Wow! And the specs are amazing!

GPU Engine Specs                                               TITAN X                 GTX 1080

NVIDIA CUDA® Cores                                          3584                         2560

Base Clock (MHz)                                                   1417                         1607

Boost Clock (MHz)                                                  1531                        1733

Memory Specs:

GbpsMemory Speed                                                10                              10

GDDR5XStandard Memory Config                        12 GB                       8 GB

Memory Interface Width                                         384-bit                      256 bit

Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)                                 480                           320

Thermal and Power

Maximum GPU Temperature (in C)                       94                             94

Graphics Card Power (W)                                       250 W                     180 W

Supplementary Power Connectors                          8 pin and 6 pin       8 pin

That is an extra 1024 CUDA Cores for Adobe Creative Suite to play with, and an extra 4GB of faster RAM for not that much more power draw!

If you have been reading my posts, I have come to the realization that my next computer won’t be a Mac, and have been looking at custom build PC’s like Origin PC or Puget Systems. For a bit I was thinking that maybe 2 SLI GTX 1080’s would be the answer for my CUDA needs, but that would basically eat all of my PCI slots. And I likely need some sort of Black Magic Design card to kick out video at least to an HD Monitor for editing, if not an Intensity Pro 4k. And while I can get a USB 3,1 external Raid for hard drives (as I likely won’t get a ThunderBolt 3 Motherboard, unless I decide to build for myself), so I could live without a raid controller I would like need a Firefire PCI board to deal with my all my old hard drives until I can afford new enclosures.

So it looks like the new NVIDIA TITAN X would be my $1200 card of choice.

The Palette Gear Controller

I can’t believe I never heard of the Palette when it was in it’s Kickstarter campaign, but this is a fully customizable controller with analogue controls. It has 4 levels of kit from $199-$899mfor a wooden controller,mand you can also get additional buttons, controllers and sliders which are all controllee by the core untit, amd they have programable lcd lights, so you can remember which button is set for what.

This sounds very cool, and I would love to try one out, though the lack of SpeedGrade control makes it certainly not as impressive, though it does work with basically the rest of the suite.

Jonny Elwyn has an awesome review, which goes heavily into the details.

Adobe Creative Cloud blog on the Essential Sound Panel in Audition CC

Durin Gleaves at the Adobe Creative Cloud blog has an awesome article on the new Essential Sound Panel in Adobe Audition for mixing DIalogue, Music, Sound Effects, Ambient or Environmental Audio in easy, but powerful ways. It can even retime or recompose a music clip to match a certain time!

Well worth a read, I am looking forward to trying this out, though wish it was integrated into Premiere so I don’t have to do a separate mix, but could instead have it happen with the timeline (which I already put on different tracks for different mix types).

Adobe has licensed Apple ProRES playback for Wndows

Adobe today announced that they have licensed playback of Apple’s ProRES, so it will be natively supported within Adobe Creative Cloud, without having to use Apple’s Quicktime to do so (since it has been killed for Windows). Now it won’t be able to write out to ProRES (so Window users will need another format), but it will be able to be read, and should be out soon.

They are also adding export support of mov wrapped DNxHD and DNxHR as well as playback of AAC audio and PNG compressed frames, and the native reading and writing of the legacy Animation format.

At least this gives ProRES a lifeline, though it is really too bad that it won’t be able to write it as well, as ProRES is a great format, that looks to be in decline from now on.

I love that Adobe is doing this, but I still can’t wrap my head around Apple’s thoughts on this. Sure it saves them money in development, and in licensing fees, but to have a really pro format it needs to be cross platform!

Honestly with Apple’s history with Pro Products (constantly making them great then killing them), and with the MacPro not being customize-able or upgrade-able at all (and not having been upgraded since it release in 2013), it looks to me like Apple is moving completely out of the high end pro market, and I worry that any of their high end software may not survive either!

Yet again it looks like no SpeedGrade Upgrade in the next version of Creative Cloud

RedShark has a post on the Roadmap for the next version of Creative Cloud for Video to be shown at NAB this year. And the rumors look like once again, no more upgrades for SpeedGrade.

At a press briefing a few weeks ago where we first learned of these upgrades, but of course were not allowed to speak until the official announcement, a journalist questioned Adobe about Speedgrade future development and received a response to the effect of “we’re concentrating on Premiere Pro in this iteration.”

Actually what Adobe is doing with SpeedGrade seems to mirror what Apple did with Shake. Buy it, make it cheaper without changing it much, and integrate some part of it’s tech into it’s other apps, then stop updating it, until they just eventually kill it.

And the unfortunate thing is that SpeedGrade is a really great program, and the fact that a full grade comes back into Premiere Pro as a plug in is so much greater than having to render out each shot in DaVinci. And really the only thing it needs to get better is to let you move windows to a seperate monitor so you can have scopes be as big as you want.

And while it is great to have more SpeedGrade tech in Premiere (and even better to have it carry into After Effects), the simplified Lumetri color panel is so much less powetful than a full grade from SpeedGrade that it is almost useless. And really should have a more advanced version that allows for more powerful grades instead of lightroom like simplified controlls!

Adobe Media Encoder won’t put chapter markers in H264 Video

So this is something that has annoyed me for some time, and has really been annoying me of late, so I have been trying workaround.

So basically the issue is that you can create Chapter Markers in Adobe Premiere Pro in your sequence, which are ostensibly for use in Adobe Encore, but that program stopped with CS6, and after my last hard drive bailed after the El Capitan Update I don’t even have it installed on my current hard drive.

Anyway, back in the day with Final Cut Pro 7 I could export a video with chapter markers and compress an H264 video with chapter markers using compressor. It would make Apple Compatible m4v files instead of a normal mp4 files, but chapter markers would work in most programs and show up on the web in most cases.

Unfortunately Adobe Media Encorder won’t do this, as it only makes straight mp4 files, and since Encore is a dead program, the Chapter Markers in Premiere Pro are pretty much useless.

After much searching, and seeing all the ways people were making chapter markers (most of which are really a pain the ass, and don’t use standard formatting for either the text file, or the timcode), I went back to basically my old way of doing this.

This is to export my video as a ProRES video which includes chapter markers, and then use HandBrake to encode it with Chapter Markers. Now not only this take longer, but also take up more hard drive space, but at least the chapter markers work!

And while m4v is a subset of mp4, it does play in most players including directly in Firefox, though doesn’t show the chapters markers, but at least it plays fine. And I am OK with my chapters only working on Macs, because at least they will show for most people looking at my reel.

Why are there not Ergonomic Editors keyboards?

So I have been an editor for a long time now, and I spend so much time on a computer that at times I get massive Carpal Tunnel attacks. I have figured out solutions, and my main one is to use an ergonomic keyboard. I currently use a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

In fact I own 2. And I carry one to work with me ,as well as Kensington Expert Trackball as I never really got why you would need a wireless mouse or especially trackball.

 Of course at home I still use my last (my 3rd) Microsoft Trackball Explorer, which they stopped making years ago, and now sells for around $200 on ebay for a used one, and will never be replaced as the best Trackball ever made. No idea what I will do when my current one dies, but that is a bit off topic of this post.

So back on topic, I always use an ergo keyboard, and have an Aeron on home to help with my wrists (as well as some exercises with rubber bands I do when things get bad), but I would love to have an Editing keyboard. Yes I know most of the keyboard shortcuts I use on a regular basis, but there are still some in Premiere I don’t know or think about and would love an a Premiere Pro editing keyboard, but they tend to be the standard Apple keyboards, which are flat and have no key travel (I like my keys to click and loved the old apple clicky keyboard) and they hurt my wrists! WHY OH WHY HAS NO ONE MADE AN ERGONOMIC EDITORS KEYBOARD?

I mean most editors spend way too much time on a computer, so you would think someone would do this! So if anyone is listening an Ergonomic Editors keyboard would be AMAZING! AS would someone copying the Microsoft Trackball Explorer, though unless I someday become a billionaire I doubt either will ever happen! Oh well.

Problems with MXF files that have been imported into Final Cut Pro X

So I was given some footage with absolutely no knowledge of how it was shot, or what format it was, but was not worried as I have am running Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Unfortunately I was wrong.

They all appear to be quicktime movies, but will not open in anything, or if they do only audio appears. And when I opened them in VLC it says it is a missing XALG encoder.

The only thing I could find on this issue is this unanswered post at Adobe Forums, and it seems to be my exact problem.

It turns out these are MXF files shot from a Sony Camera, and they were brought in through Final Cut Pro X (which I do not have on this machine), and it wrapped it in an MOV with the XALG encoder. The strange part is I do have the latest version of Motion so that I can get the Apple Pro Codec Updates, so you would think it would have the codec to play the video, but even motion won’t open this quicktime movies.

Luckily I was able to get the person with the footage to send the original cards that the footage was shot on, and was able to copy them over and import the MXF files directly into Premiere Pro with no problem, but I can’t seem to get the MOV’s that Final Cut Pro X to open in anything. I figured Motion would do it, and was thinking maybe Compressor, but if Motion can’t do it I am not spending the $50 on compressor, and certainly not paying Apple for Final Cut Pro again because it made some video footage useless.

This is a huge issue. Final Cut Pro X should not do anything to the files it imports, it should just play them all natively. That it wraps them in another file that makes them unusable by other programs makes me dislike this program even more.