RedGiant Universe is out of Beta

Red Giant has released version 1.0 of it’s new GPU accelerated Universe Plug ins. These include 31 free GPU accelerated plugs ins and currently 19 Pro plug ins that can be had for $10 a month, $99 a year or $399 for a lifetime subscription. And they promise dozens of new tools in 2014 alone. Already these protools include a version of Knoll Light Factory, Toonit and Holomatrix.

I love Red Giant’s stuff, so this is a great thing. Not sure about all these subscriptions though. So far the small businesses I work with have been very averse to a monthly fee, but the free plug ins are great to have.

AJA Cion Camera

So following BlackMagic Desings lead, AJA has jumped full force into the Camera creation game with their new CION.

This is a 4K ENG style Camera with only PL lens mounts (unlike BlackMagic having Canon EF Lens models) and even without a viewfinder (except a small LED on the left side). I will cost $8955, and doesn’t even have a viewfinder, but can use industry standard ones, and rails and batteries. You will need to get AJA storage though, as it uses yet unpriced AJA Pak SSD drives and a USB 3 Dock for them, unlike the BlackMagic which uses CFast 2.0 Media.

It does seem to be more a standard size and use more industry standard accessories than BlackMagic, and has a higher resolution recording capabilities, even without a replaceable sensor.

We will have to wait and see image quality, but this 4K APS-C sensor camera is certainly going to give BlackMagic a run for it’s money.

HDSLR Shooter compares AJA Cion to the BlackMagic Ursa

Jesse Peppin at HDSLR Shooter has a great look at the new AJA Cion vs the BlackMagic Ursa, and he likes the AJA better overall, at least for his purposes.

Overall it sounds like the AJA is a little more Pro, with the ability to record above ProRES HQ in ProRES 4444 (even with the URSA’s upgradeable sensor). Still with no viewfinder you either need a bigger investment or to already have rails and other gear to go with it.

And the worst thing of the Cion, other than not having a viewfinder of it’s own, is that is uses AJA created storage, unlike Blackmagic which uses off the shelf components. Of course hopefully you can then trust them more, but they will cost more.

He is right though, this looks to be the Canon/Nikon of the Videography set.

Lytro pre-order for new Illum SLR style Camera

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Lytro has put up a pre-order for their new SLR style Illum camera. It is $1499 with a $250 deposit to preorder.
 
It has a higher resolution 40 Megaray sensor than the previous Lytro camera, but will export a 4 MP 2D image. It has a 30-150mm equivelant lens with a constant f2 apperature through the zoom. And a 480 x 800 LCD. You can check out the specs at their site.
This is an exciting camera. I just can’t wait until they create a video camera with this tech!

Using a Quo Computer to run Final Cut Pro 7

I have been considering building a hackintosh to replace my venerable 4,1 Mac Pro for some time. Either that or even moving to Windows, because the new MacPro does not seem like a viable replacement. It just isn’t expandable enough, and I can’t use NVIDIA graphics cards which are key to so many high end graphics programs. I don’t want to leave Mac, but I want NVIDIA and more expandability, and more internal storage.

Well one of the companies I work for picked up a Quo Computer to run as a Mac for editing with Final Cut Pro 7 (and we will be testing it on Premiere Pro on the job starting now). If you don’t know about Quo, they started as a Kickstarter Campaign to make a Hackintosh computer that can be legally sold as they don’t sell or install OS X for you, but the motherboard is built with many standard Mac components to make it the most compatible Hackintosh board out there. It is a Micro-ATX motherboard, so it is limited in PCI slots, but does have built in capabilities for Firewire 800, USB 3 and Thunderbolt. It is an older board design, so does not use the latest Haswell processors, but is still quite adequate for using Final Cut Pro 7.

There is a great article on the systems over at TechSpot, that is worth checking out.

This is is how it shows up in About this Mac.

This version includes an SSD for startup, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 for Graphics, and 3 internal Drive bays. It has USB 3 on the back as well as USB 2, Ethernet, 1 Thunberbolt and a Firewire 400 port. On the breakout in Front it has 2 USB 2, 2 audio ports, another Firewire 400 and an ESATA that is not hooked up. Unfortunately though it is on the motherboard there are no Firewire 800 ports (it really needs a custom breakout in front with USB 3 and Firewire 800) which can be a bottleneck when you have a ton of Firewire 800 drives laying around!

We tried a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, but didn’t realize it is not hot swappable, so it must be attached when the computer turns on to work, which is really inconvenient for external drives. No hot swap with Thunberbolt. Yuck!

Also the PCI Slots are a little spare because of the size of the board, it has 1 PCI2x16, 1 PCIx8 and a couple of PCIe x1 for USB 4 and Wifi cards, which are used up. So with a single graphics card, you get one slot, so you might want to consider a USB 3 or Thunderbolt video in and out card, though we are running an Intensity Pro, filling our single expansion slot.

Overall I have to say the machine is pretty kick ass. It seems rock solid going through a the edit and graphics on a 28:30 Direct Response Infomercial with no problems whatsoever. We had a little scare when out MacPro went down and we had to put an ATTO SAS card into the machine, and once installed it showed command line before boot, but it booted fine.

The only complaint, other then the lack of Firewire 800 ports, and an SATA slot that is not connected, is that the support from Quo is not the best. They don’t get back to you too quickly, which is really a shame. Honestly they could be really filling the niche left for expandable Macs. And if they made a full ATX Haswell board, they could really take over the high end Mac Market, especially as the machines are considerably less expensive than a new MacPro Trashcan!

Honestly this thing works so well I am much less worried about Hackintosh Machines, now if only we can guarantee that NVIDIA cards will still work even without a machine to install them into in Apple’s lineup of machines!

You knew it was coming, but it seems that subscription is going to be the way going forward for most software companies

It all started with Adobe and Creative Cloud which is $49.99 a month with a yearly subscription, and $79.99 for a per month basis. And with no other versions available, it means you need it if you need the latest and greatest.

Now they have been great with rapid upgrades, and with the full suite so necessary for most video post work this is basically a necessity.

Not sure how it will work for Media Composer with the same pricing. Most places buy a version and keep them on non-upgraded machines so they can just stick with the same version. Not only that, with Creative Cloud you get the full suite of apps, including Premiere Pro, and with Media Composer you just get Media Composer. Sure you get more options, like Symphony, NewBlue Titler Pro 2, Sorenson Squeeze Lite, and Boris Continuum Complete Lite, but it is still basically just an editing and finishing system, so seems like buying it is a better idea (at least while they still offer the ability to purchase) at least unless you just need it on a month to month basis and can bill a client for it.

And now Smoke 2015 is getting it, though it is a $3500 program that is $195 a month or $1750 a year. Or $3500 every 2 years, which makes sense if they continue to do an upgrade every 2 years, which they have done once now.

Still it is depressing for us independent post guys, as more monthly expenses does not seem like a good thing overall.

Cinemartin makes Premiere Pro Plug-ins for ProRES and H.265 HEVC for Windows

Studio Daily reported the news from NAB.

A 30 Day Trial is available for download.

They will have various versions:

•ProRES 422 including LT and HQ in 1080p 30FPS for $68 with Single Core Encoding

•ProRES 4444, UHD, 4K and H.265 (v2) at up to 60FPS for $137 with Dual Core Encoding

•H.265 SQ and HQ and up to 6 Core Encoding for $551

ProRES is so ubiquitous that this is great news.

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.