We got an early release of Motorola’s new Droid phone and took it for a quick test drive to see if it’s got what it takes to be a competitive camcorder.

Charlie Fulton, our Tech Guru had the chance to play with the phone and was surprisingly pleased with the quality of the video it recorded.  The Droid can upload video directly to YouTube, so when you shoot it now, you can share it with the world in only seconds, a cool feature if you’re the first one to catch the return of Elvis from an extraterrestrial spaces-ship. Now that’s a video the world will want to engage in! Read the rest of this entry »

Here come the next-gen iPods. These little candy-colored players are available at a steal of a price compared to previous generations ($179 for 16GB nano is a great deal, particularly for a genuine iPod). Not only does the 16GB nano also include an FM tuner (about time, if you ask me) but they also include a video camera. It’s a simple camera, to be sure; recording only SD video in H.264 with AAC audio; but for a lot of people, that’s all they’ll ever really need. We’d expect it to operate a lot like a cell phone camera, but just easier to find your footage after it’s been shot (once you sync your iPod, at least).

We’re curious to see if the iPod nano starts eroding the marketshare of the latest pocket camcorders. (At least the SD versions… seeing Apple offer HD versions a little bit later down the road wouldn’t surprise us a bit.)

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Oops, I commited an eggcorn the other day. I meant to say “reining in”. I obviously don’t do anything that comes remotely close to anything equine. And I don’t want to be a monarch being digested inside the stomach of a big cat, either.

Ahem. Here’s a quick roundup of additional Snow Leopard news that we’ve come across:

• Chris and Trish Meyer at ProVideo Coalition have writeup titled “Snow Leopard: Hopes, Misunderstandings and Gotchas“. I wouldn’t have even thought about having to de-activate Adobe apps first… but that makes a lot of sense.
• Avid hasn’t said anything about their Mac video editing apps in particular yet, but ProTools and some other M-Audio tools will have offical support “soon”.
• The always-helpful MacFixIt has a new URL and home at CNET. They note that there are spy reports about an update to 10.6.1 already in the works, and that the 10.6 updater has probably rolled back the version of Adobe Flash Player on your Mac to a version that’s vulnerable to various blackhats.

Apple released a new version of Final Cut Studio today. You can see what’s new here.

While we haven’t had a chance to get our hands on the new version yet, on the outset it looks to be a fairly uninspiring release. Let’s be clear though, Final Cut Studio is an amazingly powerful package for the money, but for my impressions I’m limiting the discussion only to the upgrade between Final Cut Studio 2 and this release, not to the whole suite itself. Lets breakdown the changes involved since Final Cut Studio 2.

Final Cut Pro 7: The addition of new Pro Res codecs to the mix is welcome in terms of versatility. The iChat compatible video collaboration tool is fantastic, and I can see using this in my everyday workflow almost immediately. Easy export is a nice presentation of the sometimes cumbersome compressor interface, and the new speed controls look very intuitive to use. However there are no new native editing modes other than AVCIntra, meaning you still have to do a time intensive transcode for your AVCHD, and XDCAM footage. Media Management still hasn’t changed substantially, and I believe that the differences between Final Cut 6 and 7 are certainly more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. If I had to give it a grade off of the specs shown today, it would be a C.

Motion 4 : This is the little ap that just keeps getting better and more useful in every incarnation. This release is no exception, as Apple’s added many more 3d features encapsulated in an easy to use and intuitive interface. The simple addition of shadows and reflections, depth of field control, and parameter linking make this a stand out release. I’ve found that its behavior based workflow makes it easy for design challenged editors like myself to create very polished animations. A solid upgrade for motion, I’d give it an A.

Soundtrack Pro 3 : Looks to continue its role as a simple Digital Audio Workstation, for video and film projects, rather than for music creation. The addition of some tools to handle common problems, such as Voice Level Match, and the enhanced Noise Reduction will quickly find their way into daily use. The Advanced Time stretch feature, not so often, but when you need it, you really need it. Overall this one is a B.

Color 1.5 : I had really hoped that Apple had taken this powerful tool and re-worked its interface to be more polished and user friendly, which is something that Apple excels at. No such luck I’m afraid. The only real major feature is the round-tripping available between Final Cut’s timeline and Color. 4K support is nice, but unless you have a RED or are shooting on 35mm, it really is not applicable. I feel they made a half-hearted attempt at this release, perhaps realizing it they only incremented the release version by .5 rather than a full version. My verdict: D.

Compressor 3.5: Another .5 release with a very limited set of real improvements. The exception being Blu-Ray support which is something that Final Cut users have been clamoring for, for a long time. However it looks to be quite limited for authoring, relying on Apple’s pre-set menu designs, or exporting to another more capable disc authoring program. I’ll give it a C for Blu-Ray.

DVD Studio Pro 4: No link to this as it simply hasn’t changed at all since the last version. Or the version before that one. It’s still a good program, but it looks like Apple has abandoned development for disc authoring. I’ll give this an F for plagiarism, they’ve turned this paper in twice before.

The price: $999 for the full version, which is a nice reduction. $299 for the upgrade, which is cheap enough to make it a no-brainer to upgrade, even considering the lackluster release.

I have to admit to being slightly concerned with Apple at this point. With the recent dumbing down of their MacBook Pro line, and a pretty underwhelming Final Cut Studio refresh, I’m starting to believe those who say that Apple is turning away from its professional line of computers and software for the much more profitable consumer market for iPhones and iPods.

It’s been two years since the last Final Cut Studio releases, and instead of increasing the lead on their competition, Apple seems to have just striven for some kind of feature parity. I predict if Apple waits another two years, the competition in the pro video editing space will have greatly surpassed them.

Press Release Below:

(Cupertino, California–July 23, 2009) Apple® today announced a significant update to Final Cut Studio® with more than 100 new features and new versions of Final Cut Pro®, Motion, Soundtrack® Pro, Color and Compressor.
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Today is the first day of the 2009 Apple World Wide Developer Conference, which runs through Friday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. As a result, there are a few new press releases that crossed our desk. We are now happy to present a roundup of the most interesting.

• The aluminum MacBook has been rechristened as the 13″ MacBook Pro (starting at $1199), and has regained the FireWire port (an FW800 port, as a matter of fact.) The MacBook is now solely polycarbonate again. All MacBook Pros now include LED-backlit displays, NVIDIA graphics, integrated batteries and SD Card slots. However, Apple appears to have angered some by dropping the ExpressCard slot from the 15″ model. (And I’m personally still disappointed that the 17″ model still doesn’t have a numeric keypad… but that’s neither here nor there.)
• Snow Leopard, er, Mac OS X 10.6, will be shipping in September. Existing Leopard users will be able to get a single license upgrade for $29 or will be able to upgrade up to 5 licenses for $49 (plus $10 for S&H). Visit Apple’s Up to Date Web site for particulars on or after next Tuesday (June 16). Apple claims a number of major improvements, such as more native 64-bit code, more threading of applications, a new version of QuickTime, OpenCL support, and native support for Microsoft Exchange servers.
• And, for all of you Web users, there’s a new version of Safari waiting in the wings. Version 4.0 includes stability and speed improvements according to Apple. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: if you are still using Internet Explorer (particularly a version before 7), you should really try out something different, whether it be Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or a number of other browsers.

Manufacturer of unauthorized Mac clones Psystar has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. We have some mixed feelings about this news. A little healthy competition would be good for Apple, as obviously unexcited they are about that prospect (hence, their deauthorizing PowerComputing, Motorola and Umax from building authorized PowerPC-based Mac OS computers a little more than a decade ago)–being able to get a different selection of hardware at a more attractive price point could bring more people into the Mac-using fold. By extension, this might mean fewer viruses in the wild, it might have made Apple consider different hardware configurations (*cough* headless iMac *cough*), it could’ve meant a bigger dent in sales of Windows machines (and Microsoft is using this in their advertising now–PCs with similar specs selling for less are looking pretty attractive to a lot of buyers in this economy.)

The availability of a Mac clone could help video editors–there are a lot of editors who feel more at home on the Mac but can’t afford it, particularly when it comes to being able to add storage, exercising video options, etc. We wish Apple would allow clones again, but it seems unwise to try holding our breaths. Of course, with their reliance on TPM as a mechanism to make sure the “Mac tax” has been paid (and we know this is all about profits on hardware), Apple could simply sell a kit containing a copy of OS X and a PCI Express x1 card (or, for the laptop version, an ExpressCard/34) with a TPM module in place to any PC owner willing to shell out for it. This kit could be $300-350. Apple pockets a few hundred bucks and counts another user of Mac OS X, and everyone’s happy. I’d certainly consider doing this on a couple of my personal machines, if the option was available to me.