NAB Roundup
Page 7 of 9
Wednesday
As the NAB 2003 tour on DMN draws to a close, the feet get weary, but the head is filled with new technology and its benefits for digital video editors, and broadcasters in general. Today was one of digging deeper, finding out more about some of the products that have heads turning all around the huge Las Vegas Convention Center, a building big enough to host an indoor air show. Speaking of air, what was in the air on Day 4? The winds of change, that's what.
The first whiff of change in the air came from the direction of the whisper suite of Apple, where two of my esteemed DMN colleagues and I were honored by the presence of twelve (count 'em, 12) of Apple's finest engineers, coders and PR types, all intent on showing us the latest blessings from one of the world's best software companies. I must say that I've never met a nicer, more cordial, more professional and articulate group of digital video gurus than this. It was flattering that the company that I've so often dissed on these pages would see fit to dedicate such a stellar squadron of talent to show and tell me about the company's latest masterpieces.
First we took a look at a few of the over 300 new features of Final Cut Pro 4, which we will fully review here on DMN as soon as it's shipped in June of this year (2003). We got a close look at the creative tools that make FCP4 more productive, the Pro features that enhance the app's image quality, and the flexibility of the new version. On all counts, the shiny new Final Cut Pro software did not disappoint.
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In the real time department, I was happy to see Final Cut Pro now able to preview video on an NTSC or PAL monitor in real time. This was a glaring omission in Final Cut Pro 3, and is a great enhancement to its productivity. We were shown the software playing back five layers in real time in a quarter screen window, just like I noted in the Sunday introduction event. But then, the number of effects you can preview in real time depends on your processor speed, the complexity of the effect, and the quality in which you'd like to preview. The extended real time capabilities of this new version are particularly welcome, making it easier to view color correction and to determine timing of more complex composites. That's what they mean by that overused word, "workflow" -- in this case, it makes your job easier when you can place a dissolve between two clips, for example, and then play it back right away to determine if that effect was long enough. The biggest influence on the interactivity of this process is the speed of the computer chips you're using. So if your processor is powerful enough, your workflow is decidedly enhanced.
I guess it'll never be powerful enough for me, though, because if I create a chromakey, for example, it won't play back smoothly in Final Cut Pro 4, not even in quarter-screen resolution. That brings up an important, and sore point that I am not afraid to express: Mac fanatics can say what they will, but I think it's becoming increasingly, even glaringly obvious that there's a problem with Apple's hardware. It was obvious to me that Final Cut Pro was hobbled by the limp-wristed hardware on which it was running in this demonstration, a Mac dual G4 workstation. If you're planning on using Final Cut Pro, I'd recommend looking into one of the hardware accelerators like Pinnacle's CineWave, and then you'll see what this software can really do. Making matters even more frustrating, elsewhere on the show floor I kept seeing cheap-o junk $800 PCs with consumer-grade software running real-time circles around this lame-performing G4 running Final Cut Pro. Hardware like that which lurks inside the Mac is not even worthy of sharing the same spotlight with brilliant software triumphs like Final Cut Pro 4.
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