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Apple Announces New Pro Software
yroJJory writes "Apparently, Apple has just announced new pro software today. First off is the new app Motion, which is a new motion graphics program with real-time previews, procedural behavior animation and Final Cut Pro HD integration. Second, is Final Cut Pro HD, boasting the beauty of HD with the simplicity of DV. Capture DVCPRO HD over FireWire, edit using camera-native footage and output over FireWire with no generational quality loss. RT Extreme, now for HD, can deliver multiple HD streams, effects, filters and transitions in real-time to an attached Apple Cinema Display. Last, but most important to me, is DVD Studio Pro 3, which has slick new transitions, superb HD to MPEG-2 encoding, Graphical View, support for all professional audio formats -- including DTS -- (FINALLY!!), and integration with Final Cut Pro HD and Motion. Motion will be available this summer for $299. The Final Cut Pro HD update is available now for FCP 4 users. DVD Studio Pro 3 is expected to ship in mid-May." Reader green pizza writes "Apple today introduced Xsan, a clustered filesystem for Mac OS X systems."
Maybe it's just my ignorance of film editing/making, but I was under the impression that motion capture was something done by pro animation studios or 3d modelers. Is it really easy enough now to be done with consumer hardware and software?
Karma: Contrapositive
The XSan just sounds like network mount points. Like I can mount NFS mounts at /usr, another at /usr/local, and make it behavie like it all one system. To do it, it would just require renaming /usr, and then modify the startup scripts to use the new paths. Is XSan different or is it basically a GUI to mount points ?
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Simply, they are the trend setters. Best computer company period!
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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How do they plan to run 1080i HDTV (1Gbps if its YUV, 1.5Gbps if its RGB) over 800Mbps IEEE1394? Are they going to require users to buy a optical IEEE1394 (1600Mbps/3200Mbps) card? How many devices out there support IEEE1394 over an optical medium?
Apple putting out complete and all-encompassing software packages like this make me want to invest in Apple hardware, but I'm lacking enough funds to make the switch...
To me, Apple seems a much better development house than Microsoft (not really necessary to state), and their products seem much more reliable/functional than Microsoft's efforts. Maybe it's the extra time spent in development, maybe it's the extra attention spent on details, or perhaps it's just the hardware.
Even though I don't currently use Apple hardware, I still appreciate what they are doing for the computing community in general with products like these that show what great design teams are really capable of.
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
Of all of these updates, XSan is really at the top of them all. Products like Shake that are meant for using massive render farms, and Final Cut which, on a large enough project, would involve many many editors, will be wonderfully served by giving the users a nice way of accessing a production house's gigantic RAID.
XSan should receive more noteriety for this.
That is not something Apple does much if at all for its products. While silence until shipping is a good move (I would say) in the consumer space. It's bad for the Enterprise space. Apple has been criticized and justifiably so for not pre-announcing key technology so developers and enterprises can plan accordingly.
Now I agree that it's probably better to err on the side of less pre-announcement, but Apple took this to too much of an extreme.
I think this is an indication that Apple is 'getting it' more and more regarding Enterprise/Pro markets.
You have to ask yourself: is Apple chasing away developers because of their great software? Or is Apple filling a gaping whole that windows-centric developers are leaving open.
It is true that Adobe is scaling back some of their Mac operations. But apps like Premier and FrameMaker have been seriously neglected (four or more year w/o and update). So if these are the applications Apple risks losing because of their great software then so be it.
Avid/ProTools treats the Mac like a second class citizen so thankfully Apple has helped give them some competition. If it hadn't been for Apple who would have provide quality compositing, audio, video editing, DVD-authoring and now motion graphics software? Was Apple supposed to wait and hope that someone would come to the plate?
If anything, Apple is capable of producing great software. They will always be reliant on third parties with limited resources (or interest) for supporting great Mac hardware. Their strength is their software. It'd be great if Apple could get out their hardware sinkig ship and concentrate on bring great softare to different platforms.
It does not require optical. It works over normal FireWire. It supports Panasonic's 100 Mbps DV-HD (DVCPRO HD) codec.
1080i HD content can be moved between a Panasonic HD VTR and a computer via FireWire with no generation loss:
"With Panasonic's new, compact AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO HD VTR, 24fps or 60fps progressive scan material shot by Panasonic's AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD Cinema camera or 1080i studio / sports truck footage recorded by DVCPRO HD VTRs can be transferred via the VTR's IEEE 1394 interface directly into Final Cut Pro HD without generation loss. Once transferred, the material is instantly available for real-time editing operations. All footage maintains its camera-original quality, because the IEEE 1394 FireWire interface transfers the native DV-HD high definition files, as originally recorded on tape in the VTR or Varicam, directly to the Power Mac G4 or Power Mac G5 host computer's internal hard drive."
Read the joint Apple/Panasonic press release
Uh, this is awesome and all, but what are you going to view it on? As far as I know there is no DVD that supports HD, and by the origional poster, it sounds like you can only watch it on attached displays at full resolution.
This also brings up something with the Panisonic HD DV camcorder simply because it is the only major minidv HD camcorder being pushed.
Good job apple.
Apple seems to have remade itself into a premium software developer. I used to think of Apple as the cool hardware manufacturer but now they are bringing that same innovation, simplicity, and style to software. No wonder Adobe has been wary recently. They must be wondering when Apple will be competing with them across their entire product line.
Shake is also costs twice as much for linux. Enough that it's cheaper to get a powermac and shake than to get a linux box and shake.. that's intentional.
It should be noted that Weta Digital opted for the more expensive Shake+Linux combination than going the full Mac route, heh
Sunny Dubey
I'm glad Apple has taken the lead in giving what would have been 3rd party apps (they bought the foundations of the iTunes music app, FinalCut, etc. all from other companies) and polishing them up to get new customers. When companies start going cross-platform (ie, from a pure-mac stance to a Mac/PC one), it's almost inevitable that one of them (the Mac side) gets short-changed. Some manager or number cruncher decides that there's more money on the Windows side, the Windows side eats up more than it's share of the allocated programmer budget, Mac programmers leave and are replaced, not by Mac programmers, but by Windows programmers, they decide to unify the code base but end up with all of the Windows bugs on the Mac side because their compiler tools are all Windows-based now, etc.
The other advantage in having Apple take these types of software under their wing is that they can strategically coordinate releases of both software and hardware. Looking at the Xserves, the XSAN, the software tools, OS X, etc., you can clearly see that they're targeting high-end, corporate users of media software (ie, entertainment). The scientific community is already sold on the Unix underlayer of OS X - X11 make is possible to port a lot of apps.
Things like these tools are something that's really missing from Linux. Is there a project similar to WINE that reimplements the OS X API under Linux?
Motion is a sorceforge project, for detecting motion in a security system.
Windows is what you look through to see outside, it's not really a OS, you can tell by how many restarts you have to do in a day.
It seems worth mentioning that apple also updated Final Cut Express to a new patch. The patch corrects several severe issues with the program, specifically the 'blank frame' issue which has plagued virtually every user of the program. It also corrects problems with dropped frames and timecode breaks.
Now that these problems are fixed, I can safely say that Final Cut Express is the perfect entry-level video editing solution. At $299, it's a steal compared to the competition (Final Cut Pro is already a steal!). Plus, if you decide to upgrade to pro, Apple only charges the difference in the price, meaning you lose no money.
Talk about a company that's nice to their customers. Apple definitely sees the pro market as an area to capitalize - it has always been their strong point in the past. You can tell that apple's trying to capitalize on their strong points as they attempt to regain the Education market with the $799 1.25ghz eMac. The pro markets are faithful to apple, and can easily afford their hardware and software - compared to the 'real' pro-level stuff, Apple's a bargin (SGI workstations used to cost upward of $10k without software)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
One thing I heard was that AVID needed some sort of an improvement or customization of the Apple platform to continue it. Apple turned them down but IBM accepted them.
I think it was the need for multiple PCI busses, as at least AVID Mojo requires a "segmented PCI bus" in order to work at full capacity. Most Xeon-based machines sold for the last five years have had two PCI busses. I don't know if the PCI-X slots on the G5 now would have addressed this need had they done it back then, because I think each PCI-X slot in that machine is its own bus.
If you are looking to buy a notebook, looks like Apple is going to introduce some updated models tomorrow.
m l
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/aprillaptops.ht
This is kind of odd, they usually announce new products on Tuesdays.
I wonder what particular anti-Apple axe the slashdotters will have to grind today. Surely this can't be good news!
Just check this site tomorrow. The axe is getting ready to fall already...
Slashdot headlines aren't known for being "layman-oriented" in nature, but I think this one sets a new standard with its incredible density of TLA's, product/company names, and industry terms. All I can say is, way to go Slashdot. This is the kind of standard setting (and breaking!) I've come to expect from the premier "geek news" site on the Internet.
And it's good to see a standard set that Slashdot can be proud of, after holding previous records so long for "duplicate submissions" and "spelling mistakes in submissions".
Not being a creative type, this article is almost entirely Greek to me. Like that Farside cartoon about dogs (or was it cats?)...
What slashdot wrote: (see above)
What I hear:
Apparently, Apple has just announced new pro software today. First off is the new app Motion, which is blah blah blah blah blah. Second, is Final Cut Pro HD, boasting blah blah blah. Capture blah blah over FireWire, edit blah blah blah. Blah blah, now for blah, can deliver blah blah blah to an attached Apple Cinema Display. Last, but most important to me, is DVD Studio Pro 3, which has slick new transitions, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and integration with Final Cut Pro HD and Motion. Motion will be available this summer for $299. The Final Cut Pro HD update is available now for FCP 4 users. DVD Studio Pro 3 is expected to ship in mid-May.
Apple today introduced Xsan, a blah blah for Mac OS X systems.
Apple simply can't compete on PC hardware. Not at the volume they deliver. They have two long term options: 1, increase their volume. 2, get out of hardware.
Now I'm not saying that their current hardware isn't competitive, nor am I saying that their future hardware won't be competitive. I'm saying their hardware isn't profitable.
Apple has some great consumer and professional applications. They have the potential to deliver more. They have a world class operating system (that is very portable) and they have the best GUI/OS and store for portable music players. They also have a cash hoard that could fund a move away from hardware.
Let's put things into perspective. Adobe and Apple are about the same size in market capilization. Apple employs three time as many people and has 5 times the revenue that Adobe does. Yet Adobe is more than twice as profitable.
Who would you rather be, Adobe or Apple. Adobe isn't competing against every PC manufacturer for market share. In fact their business is healthy regardless of who wins the PC war. Apple could easily be in the same enviable position as Adobe with one significant differnece: Apple has two great operating systems too.
- BSD backend with full hardware/software support
- Incredible battery life. (I get 4+ hours with normal use)
- Weight
- Internal wireless with antenna integrated into the display
- Plenty of OSS software available
- Apple software bundle is impressive
- And lastly, all this for only $1099
Needless to say. I'm loving' it.*twitch*
Apple's basically replacing the now-defunct SGI Workstations.
And doing it very well.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Other companies offer SAN control software as well, such as SGI and their CXFS filesystem, part of their InfiniteStorage suite. CXFS supports many different platforms as well as many different models of fibrechannel cards and swtiches. The only catch is that the metadata server must be an SGI Origin 300 or Origin 350. Veritas also makes SAN software and is popular on Solaris and Windows.
If you do the math, Apple's hardware RAID setups and per-seat SAN software prices are the lowest in the industry for now. BUT, the others have much longer feature lists and have many years of market experience. Basiclly, I wouldn't want to be the first one to trust my data to a new Apple SAN. Remeber, on a SAN each machine has direct access to the data via fibrechannel. There is no fileserver involved, just the SAN "traffic cop" management software. When things go bad on a SAN, very bad things can happen.
Adobe has no business talking about performance, they couldn't optimize their way out of a paper bag.
Their purportedly multithreaded renderer in After Effects is so poorly done that you can damn near double a multiproc box's performance by running two jobs at once. Their multithreading is so poorly done a user can do it 2x better by making a few extra mouse clicks in their software.
What stuns me is that Apple have managed to create both a geek computer and a home computer that is easy to use. I'm sitting here typing on an iBook that I regularly use in terminal mode to compile programs, yet it is the same computer that my wife uses for instant messaging and email. It flabbergasts me how me they were so sneaky to do this. People say their switch campaign didn't work but I'm not convinced: 4 of my geek friends switched to macs and 3 newbie friends bought macs after trying mine. Good luck Apple.
I worked for Avid for 18 months under contract as a consultant to help reposition the marketing message of Avid after they made the ill-fated "We're going to be PC-only" at NAB and set their predominantly Mac-only user base on fire.
Yeah, I remember that fracas.. One incident I loved hearing about was one Avid customer asking his sales rep "what about Mac compatibility?", only to be told "we don't have to be compatible with the Mac". The customer was incensed, and told the idiot "You have to be compatible with your own installed base, asshole."
There were a bunch of Avid customers who decided right then and there that Avid was history as soon as they had an alternative.
It's not free, and it's not open source--it's always the same complaints leveled at almost every single commercial solution.
People, that money people use to pay for things actually goes back to the company and gives employees an incentive to sit there hacking away for 12 hours producing quality code and designing amazing new hardware. Volunteer work won't give you that kind of motivation (admit it, it won't), and it also won't let you quit your day job to devote all your time and energy to it.
Apple has the perfect balance--the kernel and rest of the OS is open source, but the stuff that really matters like their GUI and other software is proprietary closed. Ya have to buy it.
Yes, Apple makes good products -- I just bought an iBook as my new laptop and would buy one again. It's a good machine. The hardware is well designed if expensive, the software good, if not the best of breed. But Apple is a bunch cut-throat-DMCA-loving-money-grabbing capitalists like Microsoft, just without the monopoly, and Steve Jobs eats his chocolate one bite at a time, just like everyone else.
Good software? Yes. Great software? No. Mac OS X doesn't play well with others, it drops those pissy little .DS_Store files in every single folder of a network it can find. iMovie can't deal with letterbox DV (like even Kino can). Mail doesn't know TLS (which even the Beta of Mozilla Thunderbird can do). iTunes can't natively play Ogg Vorbis. Listing the ways that DVD Player is inferior to VLC would take pages, and don't get me started on all the hacks that have been installed to cripple the iBook to make the PowerBook look better (starting with the stupid Spanning Block that is supposed to make sure that only what you see on the screen can be sent to a second monitor or TV). Good, yes. Great, no.
Dear astroturfers, on the long run you'll help Apple more by giving a balanced, fair view of what is offered instead of this mindless drooling cheerleading. These machines are, so to speak, merely human, not gods, and even at 10.3, OS X has lots of room for improvement.