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MacCentral: Fox Sports relies on Mac for NASCAR broadcasts

MacCentral: Fox Sports relies on Mac for NASCAR broadcasts

Fox Sports relies on Mac for NASCAR broadcasts

AJA Video Systems Inc. announced Friday that a Power Mac G5 equipped with Apple's Final Cut Pro HD software and AJA's KONA 2 video cards is helping Fox Sports broadcast this year's NASCAR races, beginning with the recent Daytona 500 on February 20, 2005.

Similar configurations have been used by Fox Sports to help broadcast last year's World Series games and this year's Super Bowl. AJA says that Fox Sports will use the Power Mac G5 throughout the NASCAR 2005 - 2006 season.

Apple - Pro/Video - HIgh Def Aquarium Footage at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Apple - Pro/Video - Mark Shelley, p.1

How They Did It

Post Set Up
The postproduction team — a film editor, musician/sound editor and graphics artist — was stationed in 3 adjoining rooms, each equipped with a dual 2.0Ghz Power Mac G5 computer connected over gigabit Ethernet. The editors system was connected via fibre to an Xserve RAID.

Workflow
To create graphics and sound, the editors shared the DVCPRO HD QuickTime files from the film editor’s Xserve RAID. The editor assembled project files with the newly created video, graphics and sound takes on the timeline. Because of the low bandwidth of the DVCPRO HD footage, there was a negligible tax on the film editor’s system.

Edit
All work was done online in DVCPRO HD 720p at 24fps — there was no offline edit. As the editing progressed, the film editor exported small QuickTime MP4 movies for the music editor to score to. Using Logic, he would create original music then send back mixed-down AIFF files."

iMovie HD, iDVD 5: White frames appear at chapter markers in some DVD slideshows

iMovie HD, iDVD 5: White frames appear at chapter markers in some DVD slideshows: "  Workaround for the white frame problem.

iDVD: Questions and Answers

iDVD: Questions and Answers: "  Apple's FAQ on iDVD - good reference if you don't have DVDSP3

Final Cut Pro HD: Importing Motion project files requires Motion

Final Cut Pro HD: Importing Motion project files requires Motion: "  Sounds obvious but...

Final Cut Pro HD: Importing Motion project files requires Motion

If you downloaded the 'Using Pro Apps Together' PDF guide, which contains useful information about integrating Apple's professional audio and video applications together, and can aid in developing creative workflows, please note that there is an error on page 8. The following statement on that page is incorrect:
Whether or not you have Motion installed, you can import Motion projects into Final Cut Pro in the same way you would import other media.

In reality, you must have Motion installed on the same computer as Final Cut Pro in order to have this functionality. As a workaround, you can install the Motion Trial.

Apple - Downloads - Video - Boris RED 3.02

Apple - Downloads - Video - Boris RED 3.02: "About Boris RED The only solution for editors who require broadcast-quality features for titling, effects compositing and 3D directly inside their nonlinear editing system"

Red goes to 3.0.2 - some bugfixes and implementations for other editing systems.

MacCentral: Magic Bullet Suite 2.0 goes HD, more

MacCentral: Magic Bullet Suite 2.0 goes HD, more: "San Francisco-based Red Giant Software on Tuesday released Magic Bullet Suite 2.0. The upgrade to this collection of 18 Adobe After Effects plug-ins offers support for high-definition video, eliminating the separate HD-capable set that was previously available"

(Via http://www.macworld.com .)

Actually, they always had an HD version...they're just no longer selling it separately.

Video to Film Transfer - Tape to Film Transfer

Video to Film Transfer - Tape to Film Transfer: "Nearly all plug-in and built-in de-interlacers reduce vertical resolution by 50%. But DVFilm Maker works by analyzing motion in each frame, and only changing pixels in areas of the screen in which there is movement. "

Better deinterlacing from dvfilm.com

Guide to editing uncompressed SD from Apple

Uncompressed SD editing guide

Back from FCP version 4.1 - but it'll get ya in the ballpark to getting an SD workstation up and running

Silhouette ROTO ships

First the PR release info:

Silhouette Roto, the much anticipated first product from Silhouette FX,
LLC. has begun shipping. The plug-in is also compatible with Apple's Final Cut
Pro.

Rotoscoping (roto) is the process of manually extracting or isolating a
portion of an image. It is one of the most fundamental tasks in visual
effects. Beziers and b-splines are provided along with flexible and easy-to-use
tools for drawing, reshaping, and transforming shapes.Final composites can be previewed live as you work. Rendering is
extremely fast, assisted by OpenGL(R) hardware acceleration.

Silhouette Roto, as a plug-in for Mac OS and Windows systems, retails for
$395 http://www.silhouettefx.com.

The rest of the details are in the extended link.

What does this mean??
Up till now there was no way to hand draw a mask in FCP. You took the work out to After Effects, Motion or Commontion.

Let's say you wanted to isolate a product, a person, anything. The only tool you had was the 4 or 8 point garbage matte. Now you can hand draw complex mattes. I've tried this product out - it's amazing. I love the feathering control it has...plus a tracker (so it can adjust points).

The second thing is the usage of B-splines. Most of you have used bezier curves. These are great for angular shapes (boxes, edges) but not great for drawing around organic items (like faces).

This is a long overdue product for FCP.