Mike Curtis from HD for Indies on EOS C300

Mike Curtis from HD For Indies, has a good take on the C300 with good and bad. It looks like the Camera is aimed at the Sony F3, and not the red one.

It has some better features, but some not as good.

As I said elsewhere, why can the less expensive scarlet autofocus with Canon EF lenses, but the Canon cannot. It also cannot do 444 out, like the Sony can (with an expensive upgrade) which would bypass the Long GOP MPEG 2 compression, making the Sony seem the better choice, especially with it’s higher frame rate (1080p60 vs 24) and 444 capabilities (even if both are after a firmware upgrade to the F3.

Personally I think Canon screwed the pooch a bit, as they missed the price point. At under $10,000 this would be huge, but at $16-20,000 it is too expensive, without enough high end features. And for film it seems that the Scarlet would be better, though of course it does have a much harder workflow.

Just Installed Magic Lantern to my Canon EOS 60D

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I just installed the amazing Magic Lantern Firmware add-on to my Canon 60D. It modifies your original firmware to boot software from the card, and adds a huge amount of amazing functionality for shooting stills and video.

It adds on screen histogram or waveform and zebras while shooting video or stills, cropmarks, spotmeter, magic zoom for focusing, bit rate control, movie logging, up to step HDR bracketing. This is just awesome!

I am blown away! Canon should buy this or hire these guys. It is amazing how much more my camera can do for free!

The Red Scarlet has been Announced

Scarlet-X-all-grown-up

So Red has announced it’s Scarlet tonight, to take the shine away from Canon and it’s EOS C300, and it is shipping this year with a Canon Mount with Autofocus (unlike the canon mount on the C3800). And it is $9750 with the Canon AI mount and side SSD, $11250 with TI PL mount or TI Canon Mount, and $14015 as a package with the canon mount (as well as aside handle touch lcd, redvolts, redmag 64GB red station and AC adapter).

It shoots true 4K, though not with ramping (and if you try hdrx mode it only shoots at 12FPS in 4K). It shoots at 50MBps, which is much higher than the Canons 50Mbps.

Still harder to shoot with as RED is a process, but is certainly the superior camera, but sounds like the EOS is more going against Sony.

AVID announces Media Composer 6 64 Bit

cw_320x240_MediaComposerSoftware
AVID has announced the fully 64 Bit Media Composer 6, and if you buy or upgrade to Version 5.5 from October 15th you get a free upgrade to 6 when it comes out.
They also announced a software only version of Symphony.

The most exciting thing is being able to use AJA, Black Magic and Matrox I/O cards, no more need for expensive AVID hardware. And AVID has made the program completely 64 bit without losing features (yea screw you Apple). And it has a new interface which has added tabs to bins (taken from FCP 7, which FCP X does not use), but still looks familiar, if darker.

Full ProRES support on a Mac (read only on PC) including being able to just wrap them in an MXF for full AVID support, without re-rendering. Nice!

This is exciting as all hell!

The prices are as follows:
Media Composer 6.0 starts at $2499 with upgrades starting at $299. NewsCutter 10 starts at $2499 with upgrades starting at $499. Symphony 6.0 starts at $5,999 with upgrades starting at $499. Nitris DX starts at $5,499 USD.

Canon EOS C300 Announced

Canonrumors has the info, and they were right the EOS C300 has been announced.

  • 8.3mp 2160×3840 Super-35 CMOS sensor (4K resolution)
  • DIGIC DVIII Processor
  • Canon XF Codec 
  • Dual Compact Flash Slots
  • Exposure and focus are both manual only
  • Uses existing BP-955 and BP-975 batteries
  • Sold as a system, including LCD monitor / XLR audio unit, side grip, and top handle.
  • Availability: Jan. 2012; Price: appx. $16,000 USD


And there is a PL mount version and an EF version, and a slew of new EF cinema quality lenses.

They are also opening a Canon center in Hollywood to deal with the cameras and really push into Cinema.

A bit more expensive than I had hoped, and I want to know more about compression and codec.

Is Apple Killing the MacPro

After reading this report from AppleInsider I wrote the following letter to Apple and left it to them as feedback. I know they won’t listen and don’t really care, but I sure do.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is considering killing the MacPro as it is no longer profitable.

What I don’t think you get is how many graphics houses and editing houses will be leaving the Mac completely if this happens.

Without NVIDIA cards you can barely edit with Premiere Pro or even use programs like SMOKE, and if the artists are going to move to PC, there whole facilities will go PC, and Apple will lose a lot of it’s coolness, and a lot more business than they think they will.

AVID already gives you PC and Mac Versions on one disc, and without a MacPro, and it’s PCI cards you lose a lot of functionality, like AJA or Blackmagic cards (and no the thunderbolt cards are not as good, and there is no SAS storage solutions for thunderbolt).

Still an Alienware is looking better and better. Kick ass NVIDIA graphics make it the only choice for an editing laptop (since Premiere Pro needs an NVIDIA card), and if the MacPro goes, then it is time to move PC.

I already feel betrayed by you for what you did to Final Cut Pro X, as I have been an avid Final Cut Pro supporter since version 3, and Final Cut Pro X is not it’s replacement, but a program that has some of it’s functionality and is not superior to AVID or Premiere Pro, and if you get rid of the MacPro that will be the last straw.

I am not a windows fan, and think the fact that the main programming language for Windows 8 being HTML 5 is just shooting themselves in the foot, but at least I can use high end graphics and will still have PCI slots!

Please Apple I love you, and have since my Apple IIC, but more and more it looks like you are leaving me the graphic pro and video editor behind, and it makes me sad, but you are making a PC and windows look more and more attractive.

Please keep making MacPro’s and keep updating them (quicker than you have been) and make them compatible with more graphics cards, because we will keep buying them, but if you stop making them we will be leaving the Mac in Droves.

Jonah Lee Walker
Video Editor and Graphics Artist

Automatic Duck Plugs Ins are FREE!

thankyou

I honestly thought with them moving to Adobe that the old plug ins were gone for good, but it seems not as Automatic Duck has released all their old plug ins for FREE!

I already owned Pro Import AE 5.0, which allows you to import either Final Cut Pro 7 or AVID Media Composer sequences into After Effects. You use Free XML exporter for FCP and it works almost perfectly. A must have.

Pro Export FCP 5.0 is for FCP X and is to allow OMF export.

Pro Export FCP 4.0 lets you export either OMF or AAF from FCP to AVID, and I previously owned this.

And their is Pro Import FCP 2.0 which allows you to import an AVID sequence into Final Cut Pro.

And they are all FREE. So download them now. Sure they will not be updated again, but free is a huge price drop!

Walter Murch on FCP X

FCP.co is reporting on some things reported in twitter feeds from the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group where Walter Murch spoke. And a report from Chris-Portal on the event, and it seems that he doesn’t like it, and may be done using Final Cut Pro to edit features with.

While Walter is encouraged by the updated FCPX version last month, he hasn’t used it on any real work yet, so he is cautiously optimistic (and still traumatized he says). “Do they love us? No…I know they like us….but they keep saying they love us??”



Actually sounds like he while he has used AVID in the past, he is going to try Premiere Pro to see where it is at, and then see if it is AVID or Premiere Pro.

Personally I am liking Premiere Pro, though it still needs some features to go on par with FCP 7 (though it does beat it in others).

Finder weirdness in OS X Lion

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I don’t know if this just affecting me, but I am having some finder weirdness in Lion.

First off it is not working as it did with Spaces when I had it set to have one finder for all windows, though I have the finder set for all, it seems I get some finder windows in some of the windows in Mission Control, and not in others.

And even weirder, I often have the same folder open in two different windows by different sorting methods, well it seems that this can’t be done anymore. When I change the sorting method in one window, it changes other windows with that same content to the same sorting method. WTF? This is horrible, and not how it should work at all!

Is this just happening to me, or have others noticed this?