How many apps do you have on your iPhone? Here’s one more that, you as a video producer, would love to have. We know you’ve been busy shooting and editing and have lots of  video to share, so why not check out Magnify Mobile?

Now with Magnify.net’s new iphone app, it’s easy, fun and it’s FREE!
Magnify.net’s new iPhone app is about to remake the personal video syndication industry. For the first time, an iPhone app will enable iPhone users to shoot, upload, store, and share videos. For free. The app, Magnify Mobile, provides a simple, easy way for iPhone 3GS users to submit videos to channels that they can create – for free – on Magnify.net. Magnify’s platform provides for easy search, sort, and delivery of video based on a site’s niche interests – whether Native American videos, real estate, travel, gardening or skateboarding – and enables discovery and ranking for both relevance and entertainment value. Read the rest of this entry »

Just stumbled upon a blog entry titled “Netbooks = Deja vu all over again?” at TechThoughts. It reminded me of a previous blog post of mine in which I was contemplating taking the Pepsi Challenge with a netbook myself. I ultimately decided against it, and I’m glad I did–the 320GB hard drive in my new 17″ notebook ended up getting almost completely filled up. But this was after I discovered that the machine is truly powerful enough to be a desktop replacement… so it accumulated the release candidate of Windows 7, a huge amount of video, and all of the documents that I could successfully convert from the Mac (they make it easy to go from PC to Mac, but not the other way… grrr…)

Ahem. But anyway, back to the other article: the author makes the interesting point that netbooks aren’t a particularly new idea. The author owned a Sony PictureBook back in the bad ol’ days of Windows Me. It actually had more capabilities than the MacBook Air, arguably the machine that started the netbook movement, depending on whom you ask. And it was an interesting machine in the annals of computing history, in that it is one of the very few machines ever released to use the Transmeta Crusoe processor.

How will history treat the netbook craze? Are they a fad? A nice, cheap computer to use to look for jobs with as the economy emerges from the brink of ruin? Or will they become a fixture in every household? The kind of computer issued to every new kindergärtner? Time will tell.

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.