Walter Biscardi on AVID Media Composer 6 at Creative Cow

Walter Biscardi from Biscardi Creative, has a great article on beta testing AVID Media Composer 6 over at Creative Cow.

It is most interesting because he was a die hard Final Cut Pro user, who only used AVID when it first came out, but now seems totally sold on AVID. And says it is more rock solid with an AJA Kona 3 than Final Cut Pro ever was, and way better with it than Adobe Premiere is.

Way to go AVID! I just think they should permanently make the upgrade from FCP $1000 instead o $1500, but any which way they are going to slaughter the market, I just hope Adobe is up to making enough competition to keep the innovative, just like Apple did for them.

Mike Curtis from HD for Indies on Red Scarlet

Mike Curtis from HD for Indies has a good article on the newly announced RED Scarlet. And it’s pros and cons. It is well worth a read.

It does seem that the Scarlet is the better deal here, though the process is harder to shoot with, but the results should be better.

The Canon lenses issue is the same with both Cameras, and could actually be solved with the new Canon EF Cine lenses they are releasing with the EOS C3800.

I still think both cameras are a bit too expensive, and the Scarlet will have beta issues as it is s RED.

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

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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

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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.