FCS 3... anyone care to guess?

[Chris Hocking]

Thanks to everyone who read my blog entry! It's very much appreciated!

That's some very interesting comments Liza!

And I'm with Mike - it would be fantastic if you could just point to a "Media Folder" when you launch a project, or at least have the option to enable this kind of workflow. I normally point my capture scratch, caches, etc. to a "Final Cut Workspace" folder, designated for that particular project. Works great!

[Denise Wall]

AppleInsider | Apple expected to release new Final Cut Studio near NAB Show

[Heath McKnight]

But not at NAB 2009, of course.

heath

[Daniel Weber]

They could do it "outside" of NAB like they did 2 years ago. The used a hall at one of the casinos and filled it with about 5000 people. This would be much less expensive than having a booth on the Show floor. I wouldn't be surprised to see a "software event" at or around NAB.

Daniel Weber

[Daniel Weber]

Be prepared for a new FCP that uses the new Quicktime X, which is 64 bit. The big problem with FCP is that the Quicktime code is very old. It will take a complete rewrite of Quicktime before a new version of FCP will come out. I predict that this will take place in Snow Leopard, which is supposed to use more 64 bit code. Expect the new software to utilize the GPU's on the new graphic cards. The new FCP will also only run on Intel processors. All of this is just an educated guess on my part of course....

Daniel Weber

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Daniel Weber

Be prepared for a new FCP that uses the new Quicktime X, which is 64 bit. The big problem with FCP is that the Quicktime code is very old. It will take a complete rewrite of Quicktime before a new version of FCP will come out. I predict that this will take place in Snow Leopard, which is supposed to use more 64 bit code. Expect the new software to utilize the GPU's on the new graphic cards. The new FCP will also only run on Intel processors. All of this is just an educated guess on my part of course....

Daniel Weber

Quicktime X is a playback only API derived from the iPhone. It's designed to be lightweight and evolve with new codecs quickly.

Legacy Quicktime 32-bit will still be there. After all you never know how many old QT files are on the web that need playback with the oldest of QT codecs.

What developers will do in Snow Leopard is utilize the 64-bit QTkit in Cocoa. Depending on what type of QT is needed the OS will either use legacy QT or QTX. That's what I'm getting from some reports for developers. This actually makes sense because as a developer I don't want to worry about what QT I need I want the OS to handle that.

As far as not expecting big updates for this revision of Final Cut. That just sounds pessimistic and devoid of rational thought.

Two years ago Final Cut Studio 2 was announced. The big features were Motion 3D support, Color and the open format timeline and ProRes 422. Final Cut Pro had few UI changes. What that told me was that Apple basically bolted on the new open timeline and added ProRes support and quashed some bugs but really didn't muck too much with the UI nor the guts of the application. Why?

Because they knew before anyone that they had decided to kill 64-bit Carbon and that Cocoa would be the sole framework for 64-bit applications. The future 64-bit apps must be in Cocoa. So they need to effectively target an OS that is going to deliver the necessary 64-bit support down to the kernel which happens to be Snow Leopard that will shipping this summer.

Apple are no fools. They aren't going to ship a major revision of Final Cut Studio 3 on a new major revision of the OS (Snow Leopard) so any thoughts of a fall delivery on Final Cut Studio are most likely folly. The ideal thing for Apple to do is deliver FCS3 running on Leopard . Leopard is stable and by the time FCS3 ships it will be on its 7th revision.

Then Apple can work out the bugs in Leopard while preparing to take advantage of the Snow Leopard features which won't happen en masse until April timeframe 2010. They'll get FCS3 working on SL before 04/2010 but what I'm saying is that Apple always waits until an OS version has been out and debugged a bit in the field and has enough users before they leverage the features (case in point iWork 08 worked on Leopard but iWork 09 really leverages the Leopard API to good effect).

If you look at today's Final Cut Studio it could be argued that it is leveraging 10.4 Tiger API for the most part. Leopard's only been shipping for less than two years and we haven't seen a huge revision to FCS in two years. Obviously this means that before you can claim that we aren't likely to see a difference in the new version one needs to understand at a basic level the differences between 10.4 API and 10.5.

The backbone of a media manager needs to be solid and fast persistent storage and metadata. Well those two areas got a big boost in the API revisions in the jump from 10.4 and 10.5. Spotlight technology improved drastically with the addition of extended attributes (metadata that other OS use) and Core Data (persistent storage).

Another biggie is Applescript. You as the end user don't have to care about writing scripts but they are the key to automating a lot of tasks that you would do within a NLE. With Leopard Apple created a scripting bridge that lets 3rd parties use Ruby or Python to control applescript apps. So far the developers I've chatted with say it's ok but Apple always improves stuff greatly in 2nd and 3rd generation version.

Chris that was a very entertaining read and I think you're going to have a pretty good hit rate once FCS3 hits. Clearly Apple put a lot of effort into ProRes and I can totally see them working developing a more unified timeline and "room" workflow for managing assets and working on projects.

Hasn't anyone wondered why it's Q1 09 and we're looking at the pending release of 3 Apple Pro app revisions.

1. Final Cut Studio (Almost 24 months since last major revision)
2. Logic Studio (18 months since last major revision)
3. Aperture ( 13 months since last major revision)

It looks like there's the potential for Apple syncing these apps up into a unified workflow much like they have the Media Browser in Apple and 3rd party apps I expect there to be a Pro Media Browser that drops in files from Logic or Aperture with ease.

HM

[Daniel Weber]

Originally Posted by Harrison Murchison

Quicktime X is a playback only API derived from the iPhone. It's designed to be lightweight and evolve with new codecs quickly.

Legacy Quicktime 32-bit will still be there. After all you never know how many old QT files are on the web that need playback with the oldest of QT codecs.

What developers will do in Snow Leopard is utilize the 64-bit QTkit in Cocoa. Depending on what type of QT is needed the OS will either use legacy QT or QTX. That's what I'm getting from some reports for developers. This actually makes sense because as a developer I don't want to worry about what QT I need I want the OS to handle that.

As far as not expecting big updates for this revision of Final Cut. That just sounds pessimistic and devoid of rational thought.

Two years ago Final Cut Studio 2 was announced. The big features were Motion 3D support, Color and the open format timeline and ProRes 422. Final Cut Pro had few UI changes. What that told me was that Apple basically bolted on the new open timeline and added ProRes support and quashed some bugs but really didn't muck too much with the UI nor the guts of the application. Why?

Because they knew before anyone that they had decided to kill 64-bit Carbon and that Cocoa would be the sole framework for 64-bit applications. The future 64-bit apps must be in Cocoa. So they need to effectively target an OS that is going to deliver the necessary 64-bit support down to the kernel which happens to be Snow Leopard that will shipping this summer.

Apple are no fools. They aren't going to ship a major revision of Final Cut Studio 3 on a new major revision of the OS (Snow Leopard) so any thoughts of a fall delivery on Final Cut Studio are most likely folly. The ideal thing for Apple to do is deliver FCS3 running on Leopard . Leopard is stable and by the time FCS3 ships it will be on its 7th revision.

Then Apple can work out the bugs in Leopard while preparing to take advantage of the Snow Leopard features which won't happen en masse until April timeframe 2010. They'll get FCS3 working on SL before 04/2010 but what I'm saying is that Apple always waits until an OS version has been out and debugged a bit in the field and has enough users before they leverage the features (case in point iWork 08 worked on Leopard but iWork 09 really leverages the Leopard API to good effect).

If you look at today's Final Cut Studio it could be argued that it is leveraging 10.4 Tiger API for the most part. Leopard's only been shipping for less than two years and we haven't seen a huge revision to FCS in two years. Obviously this means that before you can claim that we aren't likely to see a difference in the new version one needs to understand at a basic level the differences between 10.4 API and 10.5.

The backbone of a media manager needs to be solid and fast persistent storage and metadata. Well those two areas got a big boost in the API revisions in the jump from 10.4 and 10.5. Spotlight technology improved drastically with the addition of extended attributes (metadata that other OS use) and Core Data (persistent storage).

Another biggie is Applescript. You as the end user don't have to care about writing scripts but they are the key to automating a lot of tasks that you would do within a NLE. With Leopard Apple created a scripting bridge that lets 3rd parties use Ruby or Python to control applescript apps. So far the developers I've chatted with say it's ok but Apple always improves stuff greatly in 2nd and 3rd generation version.

Chris that was a very entertaining read and I think you're going to have a pretty good hit rate once FCS3 hits. Clearly Apple put a lot of effort into ProRes and I can totally see them working developing a more unified timeline and "room" workflow for managing assets and working on projects.

Hasn't anyone wondered why it's Q1 09 and we're looking at the pending release of 3 Apple Pro app revisions.

1. Final Cut Studio (Almost 24 months since last major revision)
2. Logic Studio (18 months since last major revision)
3. Aperture ( 13 months since last major revision)

It looks like there's the potential for Apple syncing these apps up into a unified workflow much like they have the Media Browser in Apple and 3rd party apps I expect there to be a Pro Media Browser that drops in files from Logic or Aperture with ease.

HM

Good points. Thanks for clarifying a few things, like I said I was guessing and I am not a developer just a long time end user.

Let's hope that you are right.

Daniel Weber

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Daniel Weber

Good points. Thanks for clarifying a few things, like I said I was guessing and I am not a developer just a long time end user.

Let's hope that you are right.

Daniel Weber

It actually makes me feel good that Apple's taking QT and making it really efficient for playback.

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Snow Leopard

Originally Posted by Apple

Media and Internet

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, a streamlined, next-generation platform that advances modern media and Internet standards. QuickTime X features optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback, making it ideal for any application that needs to play media content.

The words that are heartening to me:

"streamlined"
"optimized"
"efficient"

Thus far I've avoided attaching QT files in documents simply because on my Mac this action brings the exact opposite of the aformentioned attributes.

[James Venturi]

The main issue for me is the 2.5Gb of RAM limitation. With Snow Leopard this changes, so for me this would be the biggest improvement.

[Heath McKnight]

The one thing I'm almost expecting is to see Apple drop support for PowerPC (G5, G4) with some of the new pro apps, much like parts of Adobe CS4 don't work with PowerPC (like After Effects CS4).

Late April is the new rumored date, so let's see what happens.

Heath

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by James Venturi

The main issue for me is the 2.5Gb of RAM limitation. With Snow Leopard this changes, so for me this would be the biggest improvement.

Should be once they leverage more 64-bit processes. The new Mac Pro easily take 32GB of RAM for the dual proc systems.

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

The one thing I'm almost expecting is to see Apple drop support for PowerPC (G5, G4) with some of the new pro apps, much like parts of Adobe CS4 don't work with PowerPC (like After Effects CS4).

Late April is the new rumored date, so let's see what happens.

Heath

Yes in fact I'd like to see Final Cut Studio be Leopard only in addition to Intel only. If people really need the features and are still running G4/G5 it's time to upgrade the hardware. Going Leopard only means Apple can focus on just the featureset of Leopard and quickly get FCS running on Snow Leopard before years end.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Originally Posted by Harrison Murchison

The new Mac Pro easily take 32GB of RAM for the dual proc systems.

Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings: the new 8-core Mac Pro does. The quad core has an 8GB RAM limit, if I'm not mistaken.

[Heath McKnight]

Yes, you can put 32GB of RAM in quad-core Mac Pros:

Mac Pro Memory - Apple Mac Pro Xeon 8-Core and Quad Core Memory Upgrades DDR2 Fully Buffered 240 Pin DIMM 800MHz PC6400 / 667MHz PC5300 at OtherWorldComputing.com

heath

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Yes, you can put 32GB of RAM in quad-core Mac Pros:

Mac Pro Memory - Apple Mac Pro Xeon 8-Core and Quad Core Memory Upgrades DDR2 Fully Buffered 240 Pin DIMM 800MHz PC6400 / 667MHz PC5300 at OtherWorldComputing.com

heath

Yes there's no hard limit. Apple just doesn't offer BTO 4GB or larger RAM chips for the Quads.

[Heath McKnight]

Interesting, but they offer it for the 8-Cores. I remember reading that you could conceivably put in a TB or more RAM in an 8-Core. Probably marketing hype.

heath