Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films on Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro CC and Avid Media Composer

Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films has an awesome article, where he goes into not only the best things about AVID and Premiere Pro, but also his first attempt at using FCP X. And his is the first article that makes me interested in taking a look again at FCP X, though maybe once they fix audio issues.And I still say that for graphics heavy projects, even longform (at least 28:30 Direct Response), I think Premiere Pro with a proper video card can easily outdo AVID, which is still archaic in how it deals with Alphas (and importing them) even if it is the king of media management. And those same projects would be a mess in FCP X without the ability to have tracks for organization.I mean my current sequence has 18 tracks of video going all organized into different layers.

Larry Jordan compares Apple Compressor 4.1 to Adobe Media Encorder CC

Larry Jordan did an extensive comparison of the latest Apple Compressor to Adobe Media Encoder.He ran the tests twice, as at first he used default settings and didn't check image quality, but his seconds test are more equivalent, and the results surprised me as I gave up on Compressor a long time ago.Basically it looks like for Single Pass encoding Compressor is faster, but for Multi-Pass (though it defaults to single pass) or resized compressing Media Encoder is faster, and it looks better at lower file sizes, though Compressor has more ability to customize settings.The article is certainly worth a read, especially for all those who do a lot of compression.

Mac Performance Guide on a month with his new Mac Pro

Mac Performance Guide now has a month into using his new model Mac Pro and has an article about speed increases over his old Mac Pro.Now he is mostly using Photoshop and not video programs, but isn't seeing too many speed increases, as most software can't use many cores and or don't have GPU acceleration for the new MacPros.

Sonnet has announced a rack mountain solution for the new MacPro, the xMac Pro Server

Sonnet has announced it's xMac Pro Server, to add the new MacPro to a Rack. Of course that is not all as it also adds PCI expansion through Thunderbolt 2, room for optical drives and ports. It is $1499, but adds 3 PCIe Ports to the MacPro including a Red Rocket (through Thunderbolt 2, so no graphics cards) with a 300W power supply, places (with additional kits) to install optical drives and additional hard drives.A very cool idea, if a bit expensive.

Sony adding a paid upgrade to ProRES and DNxHD for the F5 and F55

NonLinear Post has the news.This is so exciting as Sony has always loved their proprietary formats, even proprietary media, and for them to be opening up their amazing cameras to ProRES and DNxHD even with a paid upgrade is huge. Especially with the F55 which has a Global Electronic Shutter, which gets rid of the rolling shutter problem of CMOS image sensors!And it has beautiful image quality.

Macrumors is reporting that the next version of iTunes restores local contact and calendar syncing, and my iCloud Bookmark solution.

MacRumors has the news that iTunes 11.1.6 Beta has returned local iTunes Contact and Calendar sync to your iOS devices. I have railed about this because iCloud syncing is very very broken, especially without the ability to easily overwrite the iCloud information from your computer. Now if only they would add back Bookmark syncing so I could forget about the damn iCloud which seems to constantly screw up my bookmarks! Honestly I have now figured the only solution which seems to get clean bookmarks to my iOS devices. I use x-marks to sync my bookmarks, as I use Chrome as my primary browser with Mozilla as my secondary browser. Since I am not a PC (which has the great iCloud Sync extension for Windows) I have to get my bookmarks into Safari on my mac to be able to sync bookmarks to my iOS devices, so I use X-marks, but while my Safari seems to then have good clean bookmarks, it does not follow that my iCloud bookmarks are at all the same. Instead I seem to end up with many duplicate folders, but most of which are empty in random orders. In order to fix this, I have found that the aforementioned iCloud plug in for Safari only available on PC's seems to actually overwrite the iCloud bookmarks, which I can't seem to manage from my Mac. So I boot up Windows 8.1 in Parallels (can also be done in BootCamp) and launch Chrome for PC. Then I download clean bookmarks from Xmarks and wait for iCloud to sync, and that seems to clean up my bookmarks for a little while at least. Why Apple can't add a control to iCloud to control overwrite, like they used to have for syncing, or like x-marks has I will never know. I mean if there weren't issues they wouldn't have brought back local syncing in any for. Lets hope they bring back local syncing of bookmarks soon, so I can forget about the broken iCloud bookmark syncing!!!

Red Giant Releases Universe Plug In

Red Giant has released a new set of GPU accelerated plug ins called Universe. Right now you can try out the Free plan which includes 32 free plug ins, and you will be able to get Premium plug ins, or create your own. They are also updating many of their old plug ins to work GPU enhanced in universe. Supernova: Behind the Scenes of Red Giant Universe from Red Giant on Vimeo.There is the free membership, a $10 a month Premium Plan or a $99 per year plan, or a $399 Lifetime plan that does not expire!The Plugs include: Universe Free Tools Universe Blur (7 plugins) Universe Distort (8 plugins) Universe Generators (4 plugins) Universe Glow (3 plugins) Universe Transitions (9 plugins) Universe Premium Tools Universe Chromatic Glow Universe Holomatrix Universe Knoll Light Factory EZ Universe Noise Universe Premium Transitions Universe Prism Displacement Universe Retrograde Universe ToonitThis sounds very cool, and I have already installed and am looking forward to trying them out. Not sure about the monthly pricing unless they do add as many effects as they say they will, but the Lifetime is probably the best deal here, especially seeing things like Knoll Light Factory being added with GPU support.Also is an addition is called Red Giant Supernova, which allows you to program plug ins quickly using the Red Giant Universe Library. So it fairly easy to create your own plug ins. Supernova: Behind the Scenes of Red Giant Universe from Red Giant on Vimeo.

FCP.co long term testing of FCP X and the new MacPro and my thoughts.

FCP.Co has an extensive article on long term testing of the new Mac Pro with Final Cut Pro X. And the results do sound pretty impressive, even if there are some problems with expansion. Seems like you need to use Thunderbolt, as a NAS over GigE is just too slow, and you will quickly use up your thunderbolt ports and be daisy chaining, especially as new devices come out.And this lack of expansion is what worries me. Do I stay with Mac which I love, or go with a huge expandable PC that can have all the internal storage and external expansion I could ever want? Not that Windows 8.1 is all that great. I have had my Bootcamp install go down multiple times in a short period, for no reason.