TecnoTur episode 3 (English): Karl Soulé of Adobe and Tamara Benavente of Ellanvannin Multimedia

TecnoTur episode 3 (English) is now available. Tamara Benavente of Ellanvannin Multimedia tells Allan Tépper and the TecnoTuristas about how she produced her latest short film Lost and Found, using a Sony camera and Adobe Premiere. Then Karl Soulé of Adobe tells us about some little known yet extraordinary features in Premiere CS5. Here are details about this episode contents, and how to hear it free, or become a subscriber.

The exodus from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere CS5 has begun

On April 5th, 2010, I published the article Will Adobe’s new Mercury technology provoke a sudden exodus from Final Cut Pro to CS5?. At that point, the title was still a question. Since then, NAB 2010 came and went without a word from Apple regarding the potential future of Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio. Apple’s complete silence on this topic seems to indicate that Apple is much more focused on the consumer market, especially their mobile devices, and no longer on professional applications and hardware. This is further revealed by Apple’s continuing release of MacBookPro 13” and 15” models without ExpressCard34 slots, which is now offered exclusively in the 17” model… and by the complete lack of direct eSATA ports on any Apple laptop. In the meantime, Adobe has already shipped Premiere CS5 for both Mac and Windows. As stated previously, CS5’s Mercury engine can handle multi-layers of H.264 raw footage in real time very gracefully. (CS4 can also do that, although not nearly so gracefully.) Based upon private e-mails and conversations with editors yesterday, the exodus from Apple’s Final Cut Pro to Adobe’s Premiere CS5 for many began yesterday.

NewTek’s TriCaster TCXD300 ignites 3rd multicam revolution, now in HD

Any video professional with a couple of decades of experience under her/his belt will remember the original Video Toaster, which was a card that ran in a Commodore Amiga computer, and (among many others) included the infamous Kiki wipe. Despite very minor defects, the original Video Toaster —in its era— represented a revolution for multi-camera live (or live-on-tape) productions. Now NewTek has given birth to the HD-capable version of the 3rd-generation product. The TriCaster TCXD300 is an amazing standalone box that works in either SD or HD, and can record internally or externally, in addition to encoding live webcasts in HD. It has a high quality character generator and includes virtual sets. After attending an intense, multiple-hour demonstration in Miami, conducting a radio interview for both of TecnoTur’s audio channels (the current Castilian channel, and the upcoming English channel) with two TriCaster team members, and a followup e-mail interaction with NewTek’s executive VP of engineering, I now know that there is no exaggeration in stating that the TriCaster TCXD300 is indeed the 3rd multicam revolution for HD live-to-disk, HD live-to-air, or HD live-to-web production. Experience many of the details in this article.

GoogleVoice improves its functionality on the iPhone

GoogleVoice has recently improved its functionality on the iPhone by upgrading its optimized iPhone website, both esthetically and operationally. In light of the misinformation published by some other tech journalists, I must clarify that GoogleVoice has been working fine on the iPhone for many months, at least with three of its features. I have been using GoogleVoice on my iPhone since July 2009 to place inexpensive outgoing international calls, which has been my main reason for using it. Since that date, GoogleVoice has also worked for incoming calls to the iPhone, although I don’t regularly use that feature for now. Even though I don’t regularly use the incoming call feature —or GoogleVoice’s other features so far— I do cover all of them in this article, in addition to explaining specifically how GoogleVoice has improved when placing outgoing international calls from the iPhone as a result of this recent update. I’ll also cover how I expect the GoogleVoice service to grow even further in the coming months.

Apple approves voice & video over iPhone’s 3G/Fring + iCall beat Skype

Apple recently approved voice over iPhone’s 3G data connection, and now Fring and iCall have beaten both Skype and Truphone in updating their respective iPhone applications to take advantage of the newly approved feature. The other two possible voice conduits —which already existed for the iPhone and some other smartphones— are GSM and WiFi. In this article, I’ll review what these two applications have done so far, and what they’ve added with this newly approved third option. I’ll also cover Fring’s new video calling over 3G option.

Skype’s certified HD webcams: a first look

As I explained in the related article Skype goes HD, Skype software now supports full-raster HD 720p (1280x720) for Windows computers, and I expect the same support for Mac computers very soon. So far, Skype has certified HD webcams from two different manufacturers. All of these certified models use onboard H.264 hardware encoding to alleviate CPU cycles and bandwidth, and are expected to be available in early 2010. In this article, you’ll see the their photos, prices, and published specs. Each manufacturer has chosen to emphasize different types specifications, as you will read.

Skype goes HD for computers + embedded in certain consumer HDTV sets

Earlier this month, Skype announced its support for progressive, full-raster HD 720p (1280x720) on Windows computers, and is to be embedded in certain consumer HDTV sets. For readers unfamiliar with it, Skype is free software for Mac & Windows computers —in addition to certain mobile phones and other handheld mobile devices— which facilitates 1-on-1 or multi-user communication. Skype software offers any combination of text chat, high-quality audio chat, and video chat (device dependent). Regardless of the device used at either end, all Skype-to-Skype communication is free (less the cost of the device itself and the Internet connection. In addition, at extremely low cost, Skype optionally offers the placing Skype calls to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) numbers, and/or receiving POTS calls via Skype. As has been Skype’s historical fashion, the company has upgraded the Windows versions of the software first, although I expect the HD capability added to the Mac version shortly. Skype is also used for remote invitees in TV talk shows, and the addition of HD 720p will certainly augment its use in that application.

Avid Media Composer 101 courseware translated/localized for Latin America/Spain

After many months of teamwork, the Avid Media Composer 101 courseware is now available in a translated and localized version for Latin America & Spain. As a result, many Avid MC101 students in those areas can now benefit from having this courseware in their own language. My friend Rubén Abruña of iLevel and I had the honor of receiving this contract from Avid in 2009. The first draft of our translation/localization was initially used in September 2009 at an Avid training event in Santiago, Chile, South America, both to teach a group of new students, as well as to generate feedback from certified Avid instructors from the region. In this article, you’ll see the behind the scenes of this project, which combined our knowledge of the techie video terms in each language, as well as that of the regionalisms and political debates that surround this type of a project.

Tépper’s predictions for iPhoneOS 4.0

While many writers are concentrating on the anxiously anticipated Apple tablet, I have chosen to leave that topic alone until after its official announcement. If you are interested in that, see Alex Lindsay’s and Chris Meyer’s great articles here in ProVideo Coalition. I have decided to publish my predictions for iPhoneOS 4.0, based upon my own desires for features, as well as those expressed by the general market, and some features offered already on some Google/Android-based mobile devices —especially the recent Nexus One— which are currently missing from the iPhone. I am surprised that these desirable features haven’t even been mentioned by other popular media outlets who have reviewed the Nexus One. So keep reading to discover my predictions for iPhoneOS 4.0, and some little known capabilities of the Nexus One and some other Google/Android devices.

SFTP: An open letter to all software developers with FTP-only support

You know who you are: Adobe, Apple, DVcreators, elGato, Telestream, and others. Even though we would love to have a utopian world —and a utopian Internet—, we are certainly not there yet. There are bad guys out there, and we can’t afford to make it easy for them. That’s why there are secure websites (https) and secure e-mail encryption (SSL). Fortunately, there are many good software programs that already support SFTP, including CoreFTP, Cyberduck, Fetch, Transmit, and Übercaster. And from Apple, even iWeb (starting with the ’09 version) supports SFTP. So why don’t Adobe Media Encoder, Compressor, DVKitchen, Turbo.264HD, and EpisodePro support SFTP too? All of these are professional tools, but for some unknown reason, they alarmingly all lack SFTP support as of the publication date of this article.

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