Folks. I think I have been sitting on this news long enough. As you all know, one of the most frustration thing about video editing in HD is that you can never work directly with the original clips without some serious performance hit and frame skipping.

The solution to this issue, so far, has been to either use proxies or transcode the clip into a format that can be rendered in real time (ex: ProRes 422). Each of these solutions has a disadvantage. Proxies add complexity to the workflow (I wish Premiere or FCP would handle them like After Effects does) and if you transcode to another codec, you are losing some image quality (they don’t handle the color the same way). The lost might be minimal but it is there. That is why some people just keep editing in H.264 and accept the ever present render bar as a necessary evil.

Well, it is time to rejoice because very soon all of these issues are going to be history! I have learned that the next version of Quicktime (coming with Snow Leopard) is going to allow real time editing of the Canon 5DMrkII H.264 clips!

I have yet to figure out if this improvement will be the benefit of Core Video optimization or new hardware coming in the next Macs. I guess we will know about it at the developer conference.

Of course, this is just a second hand rumor so it has to be taken for what it is: a rumor. I publish this because my source is very credible and it fits nicely in Apple video editing strategy.

I have another rumor from the same person that might be of even greater interest to us but before posting it, I will wait for confirmation of this one. After all, I dont want to be known as the guy who keep posting false rumors!

No, this is not a review of iLife ‘09, or iPhoto. There are already plenty out there. 

Instead I want you, me, us, to think about how that face detection thing can change the way we work. I played with it a bit and while it is not perfect (according to iPhoto my girl friend looks like a guy as soon as she wears a hat…) it shows promises and it is a first step in the automated meta-tagging world. 

As a photographer, I tag all my pictures with at least 3-4 tags: the location, the subject, the dominant color (if any) and the activity (if any). This is a tedious and time wasting process that is probably going to go away in a few years. Lets see how.

Location

Probably the easiest tag to apply to a picture is its location, even more so when it is linked to a GPS coordinate. The possible level of detail here is incredible, once the system knows the approximate location, it can check in the address book if its close to one of your relative house, the internet for a store or important land mark, etc…

Subject

While not perfect, iPhoto face detection works well enough to allow us to see that it is not a gimmick and that more development is going to be done in this field. Imagine if it could recognize pets, houses, bird species… A lot of metadata could be automatically guessed and submitted to the photographer for approval. This would be a big time saver and I am half expecting Aperture 3 (or 4?) to have this feature.

By the way, I did some serious testing to see if iPhoto could recognize cats face and it does not. If is limited to humans… 

Dominant color

If you ever had to create a picture book, you know how useful it is to have all your pictures classified by main color. Again, this is not a new technology, stock photo sites have been using this for years.

Activity

By activity I mean: travel, sports, cooking, etc.. I dont think we will see this kind of automatic meta-tagging soon, but there are ways to make the job easier for us. For example, if from one picture to the next the background and location is the same, the system could suggest the same location as the previous pictures.

Conclusion

This is just the beginning. Automatic meta-tagging is coming and anyone who ever had to tag pictures after a long weekend shooting should be happy.

Aperture team, are you reading?

DISCLAIMER: these parameters were not discovered by me, I found them somewhere on the net and never wrote the URL. I will update the post if I ever find the URL again and give due credits.

Here is a quick tip on how to achieve a cross process look in Aperture without buying an expensive plugin (I am looking at your Silver Fx!).

What is cross processing? Because a picture is worth a thousand word, here are the before and after images.

Neat hein?

The result is very easy to achieve in Aperture. To do so, in the Level panel,

• select the Red channel and set the 3 values (B,G,W) to : 0,21, 0,53 and 0,92
• select the Green channel and set the 3 values (B,G,W) to : 0, 0,42 and 1
• select the Blue channel and set the 3 values (B,G,W) to : 0, 0,44 and 0,94

You can then save this as a preset for later use by clicking on the little gear on the top right of the panel and clicking on save.

Now, just dont over use this technique because it can grow old very quickly, like over cooked HDR… Oh and it tends to destroy skin color too so be careful!