Creative Suite 5 is Shipping

Less than three weeks after “launching” Creative Suite 5 at NAB, Adobe has started shipping it, including After Effects and Premiere Pro. In case you missed it in the middle of the NAB information overload, Scott Simmons has already (p)reviewed Premiere Pro CS5, and we did the same with After Effects CS5. I imagine we’ll all have a lot more to say once we get a chance to use it more in real-world situations; stay tuned…

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Panasonic’s AVCCAM incomplete native progressive recording modes

I applaud the fact that Panasonic made the 720p23.976 recording native in many of their AVCCAM cameras. (AVCCAM is Panasonic’s brand for AVCHD professional.) However, I am concerned about the fact that they did this in a very incomplete way. In this article, I’ll cover the advantages of native progressive recording, how Panasonic and other brands have done a complete job in other cameras, and why there are missing certain native progressive recording modes in current AVCCAM models.

Another video editing app coming to the iPhone

NAB ‘10 - Vericorder 1st Video from Hand Held Hollywood on Vimeo.

VeriCorder Technology was showing an entry into the iPhone video editing app with 1st Video. Hand Held Hollywood grabbed a little demo video of the app in action. It has apparently been submitted to the app store for approval so it may come to life any day now.

NAB2010:  The Story Of The Number “3” And The Letter “D”

I would have posted this last night, before NAB2010 actually started, but I refuse to pay the extortionate $13/day that hotels here think is their God-given right to collect for the same (or worse) Internet access that is free virtually anywhere else.

In making the rounds of the Panasonic and Sony press conferences on Sunday, I was just dumbfounded to hear the breathless fawning over what is at best nascent 3-D television technology.  In a country (the US) where only about 40% of people have invested in HDTVs so far, the cravenness of manufacturers expecting people to rip it all up and buy new equipment already is breathtaking.  This is not to say that 3D can’t be compelling - in the right hands, and with the right content, the effect is impressive - but let’s not kid ourselves.  It is just an EFFECT, after all.  Have you have seen the recent Samsung 3-D TV ad where a dad cuts a block of water out of an aquarium, takes it home, pushes it into their HDTV and then the family is suddenly awash (ahem) in fully-immersive 3-D fish?  That spot verges on fraud, IMHO.  The 3-D effect is limited to the inside of the monitor’s bezel.  And lets face it, not all that much content out there deserves hi-def treatment, much less 3-D.

Here’s hoping that consumers recognize this latest gimmick as just that - a gimmick - and send the gear manufacturers (and their junkie enabler, the Consumer Electronics Association) the 2x4 to the head they so richly deserve.

So am I too much of a curmudgeon?  What do YOU think?

After Effects CS5

Adobe has officially launched Creative Suite 5, which includes major updates to virtually all of their applications. Adobe has seeded us with preliminary versions, and hired us to help create some documentation on the new release; we wanted to share with you our own impressions plus insights into the new features in After Effects CS5.
In addition to this preview, we also have a 2.5 hour course we’ve created for lynda.com on AE CS5 called After Effects CS5 New Creative Techniques. (If you don’t have a subscription, click here for a free 7-day all-access pass.) Finally, we have completed on the fifth edition of our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (“CMG5” for short), which covers the major new features in both CS4 and CS5. Meanwhile, here’s some of the significant new features in After Effects CS5:

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Music Video Workflow class at NAB

Are you attending the Post|Production World conference at this years NAB next week? Interesting in music video workflow? In addition to the Avid Media Composer for Final Cut Pro Editors class that I am teaching I’ll also be leading one called Music Video Workflow on Wednesday from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. This will be a useful class for editors who are new to the unique challenges of editing multiple take music videos or to the production person / company to offers music videos as part of their turnkey production services.

Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 4: Space Conversions

We’re in the process of serializing the Deeper Modes of Expression bonus chapter from our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects into a set of 12 posts here on PVC. As you work with Position values and expressions, you will run into the problem of what the Position value really means: Is it a position relative to the layer (such as an effect point), is it a position relative to a parent layer, or is it a position relative to the overall comp (sometimes referred to as “world space”)?

Fortunately, After Effects has a number of layer space transform methods designed to help you move between these different definitions of Position. These are described in the online Help (press F1 to open). Most are straightforward, but there are a few useful transformations that need some extra thought.

Will Adobe’s new Mercury technology provoke a sudden exodus from Final Cut Pro to CS5?

As has already been covered by Chris and Trish Meyer and other colleagues at ProVideo Coalition, Adobe’s new Mercury technology will be officially announced on April 12th, at the start of NAB 2010. Anyone who has seen a Mercury demonstration knows that it is quite impressive, and may attract a large number of Final Cut Pro users to “jump ship” and switch to CS5 when released. At the crux of the compelling features is not only that Premiere CS5 can natively edit long-GOP H.264 (i.e. raw footage from Canon 5D MKII, Canon 7D, and recent Kodak & Sanyo cameras) with real time transitions, and that of AVCHD camcorders —which also use the long-GOP H.264 códec (including very recent professional models from both Panasonic and Sony). I say “not only” because even Premiere CS4 has been able to do that. The big difference is that Premiere CS5 can do it easily and gracefully… even with several layers. especially (but not exclusively) when it has a supported GPU. As you can tell, for someone who would like to edit that raw footage natively and in real time, Adobe’s Mercury technology is potentially kryptonite for Apple’s continuing sales of Final Cut Studio. Of course, there is a possibility that Apple will shock us at NAB time with announcement of a new version of Final Cut Pro that will finally take advantage of MacOS 10.6’s (Snow Leopard’s) OpenCL-facilitating technology. That is properly spelled, and stands for Open Computing Language. It is also possible that one of the professional interface manufacturers (AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, or MOTU) will announce a way for their hardware to assist FCP to accomplish the same via OpenCL… or some other technology.

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