Canon is now hosting a full page in its digital learning center about the FCP E1 Plugin that we previously talked about.
Canon also used the opportunity to send a quick jab to Nikon when talking about H.264: This is an ideal file type for video capture in an SLR camera, delivering relatively compact file sizes with image quality noticably superior to alternate video compressions (such as Motion JPEG).
From what I have been able to gather from the various screenshots, there is not much new. On the contrary, some of the wished for features (lens & exposure metadata) are not present.
As I predicted, the sentence ’start editing right form the CF card‘ wasnt really true. The plugin converts the clips to ProRes (you can pick any variations) before you can do anything with them. Canon talks about a 3x speed gain over the standard Compressor transcoding. That is nice but that is about the same thing you can get by using MPEGstream clip. Actually, I wonder if that is what they are using under the hood!
For who is this for?
Log and transfer is a workflow tool. It is near useless for 95% of the 5D users, but, for those who are going to use it, it is incredibly useful at helping them to organize their files and automating their backup strategy. Oh, there is also that Timecode thing that would be so useful if there was an easy way to synchronize the date/time on multiple camera at once.
While there is no harm in installing the plugin once it is available (March), unless you are shooting against a script, the organizing features of the plugin will be overkill.
BTW, thanks to David Guset for the link to the Canon page.
We talked about it earlier and now it is official. You can read the press release here. The interesting part is Canon talking about a 2x gain in speed for Prores 422 HQ transcoding compared to Compressor. Then again, if you are using MPEG Streamclip, the speed gain should be about the same.
This last sentence sound a bit weird to me:
Additionally, users will also be able to add timecode, reel names and metadata to footage quickly and easily – further enhancing the experience of EOS MOVIE users when editing their footage.
This could mean that we will not have access to the camera metadata, something that was part of the original product developed by Gluetool.
Release date, for the free beta, will be in March so new features might pop in until then.
Note: Thanks to Peter Wiggins for the link on this one, almost missed the announcement!
Vincent Laforet just made a post about something one of my friend has been talking to me about for a few while: a plugin to log and trasfer HDSLR clips directly in Final Cut Pro.
As Vincent points out, this is a big thing for a lot of people. It will not make your images look better but it will help you to get the job done. The more complex your project is, the more you will like this tool. Lets just hope it has a reasonable price tag.
Vincent covers the tool very well in his blog post.
Just for the record, until now, only the GH1 was able to use the Log and Transfer menu.
So you want to create a miniature effect like this :
Without having to buy one of these:
Easy! just download the (free for this week!) ShrinkRay plugin from Crumple Pop. Even if you don’t own FCP3 now, get it in case you decide to buy it later on! They also have a few other cool free FCP plugins, pay them a visit.
I prefer using this plugin to the Photoshop action filter because (1) I dont have to go into photoshop and (2) the controls are easier to manage.
Thanks to FinalCut Montreal for pointing out this promotion.
