Oh my!   So many new toys, so little time to play.   Let’s get to it.  Here is a recap of my day in NAB 2007.

I started out by visiting the Avid booth (since that the main one when you enter the show floor).  Anyhow, besides the cool looking booths they had, nothing from them really interested me (though they did have a booth dedicated to both event and corporate videographers, which is a sign of the times….that is, everyone is videotaping these days and Avid wants to get a piece of that pie…funny, Adobe and Apple are going the other way…that is towards film).

Anyhow…After I passed the Avid booth I went straight to the Apple booth (by-passing momentarily the Adobe booth).   I was really excited and interested in seeing the new Final Cut Studio (especially Color) and also Final Cut Server.  So let me start with Apple.

Final Cut Studio 2.0 now consists of  the following applications:

Final Cut Pro 6.0 – Video Editing
SoundTrack Pro 2.0 – Audio Editing
Motion 3 – Graphics / Compositing
DVD Studio Pro 4.0 – DVD Authoring
Color – Color Grading
Compressor 3 – Compression (Duh!)

Final Cut Studio 6
Apple introduced a new codec called Apple Pro Res 422, which is supposed to give you SD file sizes for HD clips.   They also introduced a new open file format which allows you to mix a variety of video content (such as DV, HD, HDV) and play them all back in real time.  They also added a new “smooth cam” feature (taken from Shake) that allows you to easily stabilize shaky video. 

One of the coolest things (of many) are the new Motion templates you can import directly from motion with “drop zones” (more on that below under “Motion”).   This allows you to easily create quick bumpers, lower 3rds and motion graphics within Final Cut Pro.

Another neat feature is the ability to create a sequence and then drop a video on that sequence and FCP will ask you if you want to match the sequence settings to your video settings.  In other words, you don’t have to worry any more about setting up the correct settings for your sequences, FCP will do it for you by taking the settings from the first video you drop in that sequence.

FCP now has a new “Log and Transfer” (instead of log and capture) window for P2 users (such as HVX 200 shooters).  Cool feature…just wish I had an HVX 200 to test it with.

You can easily drag and drop images from Aperture directly into FCP now, which is nice if you create photo montage videos, etc.

There is a new “Send To Color” (read below) in the File menu to send your current sequence to the new Color application.

Overall, FCP 6 seems like a great upgrade especially if you are on anything less then FCP 5.

SoundTrack Pro 2.0
This is my application of choice (especially now that Adobe dropped Audition in the Production Studio and replaced it with SoundBooth) for doing my podcasts.  I love this application and it has gotten better. 

A cool new feature is the ability to click on a fade and choose the type of fade you want (linear, slow, fast, etc.)

If you have ever worked on a multi-track project and needed to edit your clip in the clip editor, you’ll love this new feature.   You can now just select the clip you want to work on, and the sound editor appears below your multi-track project.  No more going back and forth between single file edit and multi-track project.  This is a huge time saver!   You can just single click on any clip in your multi-track project, and right below, your editor will update with that clip and any edits you did on it.   Nice!

Neat little “extra” is the ability to click on the “~” (tilde) key and you get a contextual pop up toolbar.   This works similar to the Loupe in Aperture.

Straight from Adobe Audion, STP finally brings into it’s arsenal of editing tools the “spectrum view”.  You can now see your audio not only as a waveform, but as a colorful wave that you can edit by selecting any audio frequency you want and just “cutting it out”.   It’s a more precise way of editing, for example, you can “see” cell phone ringing in the spectrum editor and just remove it without affecting any dialog happening on top of it.

Multi-take mode allows you to pick from a variety of takes (say, 2 or 3 ADR tracks and the original track) and see which one sounds better.    You just enable your clip as a “multi-take” clip and then below the tracks, you can pick how many different takes you want to hear.  Then you can hear the entire track with different takes.  You can even cut pieces from different takes and “mix them up” into the original clip.  It’s very cool.

Another neat feature is the “3 up video HUD” which you can use to align sound and picture.   For example, if you want to add a nice sound effect to the door closing, you can just click on clip of the door clothing thump and press the OPTION key.   When you do that, you get a 3 up video HUD and you can then start moving your “thump” until you see the door close in the video.  Then let go and now you are in perfect sync!  No more adding marks to your audio and to your video and then trying to align the marks.

You can also conform one project.   STP will group the changes by confidence level and you can approve and/or disapprove those changes.

Your STP projects can now be either stereo and/or 5.1 surround.  In fact, you can easily mix mono, stereo and 5.1 tracks in the same project.  They even introduced a surround planner that lets you easily “move” your sound in the 5.1 listening plane.   If you are set to latch and/or touch, you can even record those movements on the fly.

Finally, they added hundreds of new royalty free sounds effects and music that you can use in your production.

Motion 3.0
I don’t use Motion much, I must confess, but this new version is probably going to change my workflow and I most likely will start using Motion quiet a bit more.  To start out with, Motion 3 now comes with Match Moving capabilities.  It is very easy to track movement to any video.  Also, there is a new vector based painting engine that you can keyframe with hundreds of different brushes.  You can create very organic and beautiful brush strokes.

The major new improvement in Motion 3 is a 3D engine.  You have full 3D capabilities including a new swivel tool, perspective mode which allows you to easily see different views of your 3D environment and camera movements, 3D text capabilities (animate your text in full x, y and x axis) and a full 3D particle engine (that’s cool!)

One final item worth metioning are templates.  You can take any of your projects and create templates with video drop zones (that is you can take your video out and make them drop zones so that you can drop any video you  want in future projects I the same location).  You can then take the template and use it in Final Cut Pro without rendering out of Motion.  You can even “drop” videos in your drop zones within FCP.

Color
By far, this IS the application that got me the most excited.  Color is the renamed Final Touch application Apple bought last October which you can use to color grade (color correct) your footage with.

Now, I’m in corporate video, not narrative film, however, when I saw this, I realized that the 3 color wheel plug-in in FCP and/or Adobe Premiere Pro is so lame, that it’s laughable compared to the new Color application.  Watching the demo of Color, I learned how to see “color correcting” and secondary color adjustments as an incredible art and as important as having a fantastic DP or editor.

You start using the application by doing your primary color correction (contrast, highlights), once you have that completed, you can move on to the secondary color correction (you can have up to 8 secondaries).

Color includes a 3D vectorscope that allows you to rotate your scope around in the 3 axis to better understand what is happening with your footage. 

It comes with an auto balance button that works extremely well.   You also get a “pan and scan”.  There is tab for effects where you can create your custom looks an save them as presets.   Color comes already with some ready to use presets that you can drop onto your footage, but fully customize to not make it look “canned”.   Events are created using nodes, just like in Shake.  So if you are familiar with Shake (or any other node based software), you’ll be very comfortable in this tab.

One of the features I enjoyed the most was seeing the control you have in secondary color correction using geometric shapes as masks.  You can easily create a square, circle or custom mask that you can use to affect only certain portions of the footage to give it a customized look on the footage.  So, for example, you can crush the blacks around a person, but not the person itself so that the person “pops” from the scene, while still holding detail in the blacks on the person.

It’s truly an amazing application that I can’t get a hold on to start improving the looks of my corporate training videos.

Well, that’s it.  As you can see, Apple introduced a fantastic and impressive upgrade to it’s Final Cut Studio.    I know I didn’t cover Compressor and DVD Studio 4 in this blog, but as you can see, it’s long enough already.

One last thing, FCS 2.0 will not be out until May.  The cost is $1299 for new, $499 for upgrade and $699 for upgrade from any version of Final Cut Pro.

Until the next blog!

Chau!