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Adobe Premiere rebate: from rumor to reality

July 2, 2011 By

Seems like, for once, I got a good source for my rumors! As I talked you about 2 days ago, Adobe went into fifth gear in its assault on FCPX today with the launch of their marketing campaign by putting the focus on the pro market.

Will it work? I pretty sure it will! The deal is excellent since you can get the suite for around 850$. It is more expensive than FCPX with Motion + Compressor but you get Photoshop and Illustrator included in the deal too! Adobe tailored the whole Premiere website to target frustrated users, it is going to be very interesting to see Apple response.

In my mind, there is only one thing Apple could do: refund everyone and make this first version of FCPX free.

FREE?

This may sound a bit extreme but losing FCPX sales is nothing compared to what could happen if people started to move to CS5. Why? They would quickly realize how PC are faster than Mac when running AE and Premiere Pro thanks to the Mercury Preview Engine. So instead of losing sales of FCPX, they would be losing Mac Pro sales which a much more damaging.

Knifes are out!

What ever happen, we are going to benefit from it! On my part, I keep giving FCPX a chance. Why? It is far from perfect and I am still trying to figure out how to do a few things but it works very well for what I do which is only targeting the web / Apple devices.

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Next version of FCP supposed to be great (?)

November 10, 2010 By

As it is in fashion these days, when you have an issue with an Apple product, you just have to send an email to Steve and wait for a one liner reply. That is what Dustyn Gobler did. You can read its content here. Basically, he is asking Apple to give us more visibility on the pro apps road map. Steve reply?

“A great release of Final Cut is coming early next year.”

This make me sad. I would have liked everything but the great keyword. Great is basically what Steve says whenever he is talking about anything Apple related, I am sure Apple carpet and toilette paper holder are great too!

Why is this important?

Actually, this is not important, it is critical for HDSLR shooters. FCS is losing ground to CS5 on every single front. Premiere Pro can edit in real time H.264 without transcoding (with a compatible NVIDIA card) and send it back and forth to After Effects for grading / compositing without any problems. On the other hand,  you can be pretty sure a roundtrip from FCP to Color is going to mess up your timeline.

What I am trying to say is that CS5 Production suite is now a very attractive alternative to FCS. Even more so if you are shooting with a 5DMrkII. While priced a little bit higher, you get a lot of value and each app is an improvement over its previous version (DVD Studio & Sound Track, I am looking at you!).

So what?

I had a quick chat last night with one of my friend who is a huge fan of Final Cut Pro. Almost to the point of getting a FCP tattoo on his forehead. Yet he told me that he is giving up on Apple if they dont announce something by the end of February and will be moving to CS5/6.

This is huge. If someone like him is willing to make the switch, it means hundreds have already done it and even more are thinking about jumping ship.

In light of this, it does not surprise me at all that Steve sent such a reply, trying to slow the exodus. Final Cut Studio 4 is going to come out at about the same time as CS6 (supposedly) which means Apple can’t just make a great release, it has to be a kick ass release if they want to stay in the game!

What about you?

Personally, I am on the fence. I have already moved from Color/Motion to After Effects and since I need to learn Illustrator, I may just buy the Production Suite and get everything else at the same time (Content Aware Fill FTW!). But what about you? Have you already jumped ship? Are you planning to? In how long?

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Aperture 3

February 9, 2010 By

Finally out! It was about time.

I will not list all the new features (over 200), if that is the kind of stuff you like reading about, head over the official Apple page. Instead, I will list the features that mean the most for us.

First, facial recognition. I already talked about it in my Aperture 3 prediction about 8 months ago. This is a big thing if you are often shooting the same people. I am just worried about how long it is going to take to pass over my 192 gigs of pictures…

Next on the line is Places. Another feature that most travel photographers will love. I know because I had to geotag over 2000 pictures when I came back from Vietnam. Not a fun experience! At the local scale, it is also going to be useful to organize pictures when doing on a location scouting day. I used to import them in iPhoto just for that and it was a real pain.

Video import and playback directly in Aperture! I love this one for two reasons: first because it is going to be useful to do everything in a single operation and also  because it shows how Apple recognize HDSLR as a trend and not a novelty. As soon as I finish the download, I will see if it if possible to batch process video files automatically for conversion to ProRes.

Slideshows. I never used these in Aperture. I preferred working within either Lightroom, Animoto or Motion. But, with the new slideshows, I just have one thing to say: wow! I am impressed. 95% of the work I used to do in Motion is doable in Aperture and it looks even easier!

Finally, Brushes. It was about time Aperture got these! None destructive editing at the pixel level has been the reason why I moved to Lightroom (ok, also because it was faster!). I am glad the feature is now in Aperture since it saves a round trip to Photoshop for 95% of the image corrections.

While waiting for my review, you can read what Chase has to say about it. He was on the beta list so he probably knows more than me!

Note: You can upgrade to Aperture 3 from the Academic version of Aperture 2!

Note2: I havent found an electronic version for the full product, so I had to place an order and download the demo.

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iPhone App: The Best Camera

September 22, 2009 By

thebestcamera
I have always been a big fan of Chase Jarvis. The guy has style, shoot cool things (like Ninjas!) and is really engaged with the community.

So, as soon as I read about him releasing an iPhone app I knew it would be something cool and different. Basically, it replaces your ‘normal’ camera with a twist. Actually, two twists!

First it gives you a few (12) filters to apply to your picture, some classics (B&W) and some others more creative. While the effects are cool, this is not the first camera app to have these so lets move to the other cool feature: the social dimension.

With a single tap you can share your picture on various networks (Facebook, Twitter, email and thebestcamera.com). Actually, you can spam all these network with your pictures with a single tap. If you have nothing to do or need some inspiration, you can tap on the globe icon to see pictures taken by others. I just wasted a few minutes doing so and found a few very creative ones that made me feel like a very bad photographer… I think this is the most interesting part of the app. You can leave it open and pictures are going to fade/fade out in turns.

My only complain is that it does not use the geo location service. Since I use my iPhone camera mostly when doing recon for shoots, if I want to edit a picture before sending it to someone, I have to shoot it with the standard camera, then load it in The Best Camera.

I think the message Chase is getting is message across: the best camera is the one you have with you.

You can get the app here
icon

Chase back his claim by releasing a book displaying pictures he has taken with his iPhone. I guess he got the idea of this when he was tired of carrying his Hasselblad around…

Get the book here

By the way, anyone knows about a good camera app for taking recon shots? Something with geotagging, maps and voice notes would be perfect!

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Yes, I know. Final Cut Studio 3 is out…

July 23, 2009 By

… and there are no mentions of H.264 real time editing. Actually, the whole update took me off guard. I was expecting it to come after Snow Leopard and be optimized to use Open CL so they could show some insane benchmarks. Seems like I was wrong again.

Nevertheless, I still believe real time editing of H.264 in FCS will be possible soon. My source was just too confident about it (and well informed) for me to drop the ball.

Anyways, I am not going to cover the various new features, others have already done a great job at it. Instead, I will act as if it never came out, at least until my bank account recovers from my recent purchases…

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