When will FCP/E support come?

[Jack Zhang]

AVCHD support MUST come in the next FCP and FCE! The only thing is that it might take a while for Apple to jump on the AVCHD bandwagon.

[Chris Hurd]

AVCHD is still very new. Gotta give it some time. It always takes awhile for the NLEs to catch up.

[Jack Zhang]

Maybe new news might come at the WWDC? Or did it already pass?

[Pierre Barberis]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

AVCHD is still very new. Gotta give it some time. It always takes awhile for the NLEs to catch up.

Which is , IMHO, totally unacceptable. AVCHD has been announced a year ago, every decent NLE editor , with a product well architectured ( may be that's the glitch...) has had plenty of time to be prepared. And the Hardware manufacturers ( Sony, Pany,...) should have favored and supported this move, given the relative size of these Cies visavis the NLE editors ( But Vegas...) ...

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Pierre Barberis

Which is , IMHO, totally unacceptable. AVCHD has been announced a year ago, every decent NLE editor , with a product well architectured ( may be that's the glitch...) has had plenty of time to be prepared. And the Hardware manufacturers ( Sony, Pany,...) should have favored and supported this move, given the relative size of these Cies visavis the NLE editors ( But Vegas...) ...

That's simply ridiculous. A format set of STANDARDS was announced. There are lots of ways for manufacturers of cameras to do things. Sony/Panasonic announced in July that they're moving forward with AVCHD, and already since then, Panasonic has announced a shift away from what they'd jointly announced. You can bet Canon/Sharp/JVC/GE/Sanyo/Samsung/whojiwhatsit will have their versions of AVCHD.

AVC HD won't standardize the industry, it will fragment it further, IMO, because we're not locked to a storage medium. The faster the storage, the more we can store...it all means more different.

Ain't no way manufacturers can be up to speed exactly when the cams ship. Never really been the case in the past, why would it change now?

[Chris Hurd]

That's exactly right... let history be your guide. The situation *is* acceptable because that's the way it's always been (that is, waiting for the NLE companies catch up to the camera manufacturers), and most likely always will be for the foreseeable future.

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

AVCHD support MUST come in the next FCP and FCE! The only thing is that it might take a while for Apple to jump on the AVCHD bandwagon.

Apple still hasn't added support for 24p HDV or 24F HDV, both of which have been available for a year or more (not just announced, but commercially available). Demanding them to have full support for a new format that isn't even on the market yet is a bit premature, me thinks.

[Pierre Barberis]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

.....
AVC HD won't standardize the industry, it will fragment it further, IMO, because we're not locked to a storage medium. The faster the storage, the more we can store...it all means more different.

Ain't no way manufacturers can be up to speed exactly when the cams ship. Never really been the case in the past, why would it change now?

I think we are saying the same thing ...
So i hope that when you say "That's simply ridiculous" , "that" refers to the situation which has been created by the industry rather than to my post...
And the fact , as noted by Chris Hurd, that "it has always been the case" makes the situation even more ackward. Usually , people learn from the past and improve! Even Microsoft did !

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

No, Pierre, I'm suggesting it's ridiculous to expect NLE developers to be releasing NLE support for new camcorder formats at the same time as the camcorders are announced or even immediately shipping.

To develop NLE support, encode/decoding needs to be developed, optimized, and implemented. Big software companies cannot do this overnight. As Barry Green pointed out, there are flavors of many camcorders out there that have no support from various NLE's at all, and those camcorders have been shipping for at least a year or more.

To develop decoders/encoders, it usually requires an SDK, and sometimes that costs money, sometimes a ridiculous amount of money that will never be returned for lack of sales or lack of success of the format. Sometimes it merely requires a camcorder. Should manufacturers of camcorders ship out several dozen cams to developers? Should developers buy the camcorders? How can they buy or access camcorders that have just now been announced but not developed or shipping yet? therefore, how can they develop support for a new format as soon as it's released, let alone announced?

That's what most folks would call "putting the cart before the horse." Software developers want to see how a format does before spending thousands or hundreds of thousands of $$ developing support for a new format.

[Jack Zhang]

Well... Vegas 7.0 was just announced but it stated that the H.264 support was already in Vegas 6.0d. Has anyone tried to edit the AVCHD samples with Vegas 6.0d yet?

[Pierre Barberis]

DSE,
i dont want this debate to heat up.
I dont know how familiar you are with software development.But, As a Software developper Professional for dozens of years, i can tell you that , IF WELL PLANNED, integrating new codecs into ANY WELL ARCHITECTURED NLE does not require neither the cost nor the time that you mention. Camera companies test their product for several months before launch, (several years after defining the format) and these months should be taken adavntage of to develop and test the necessary NLE extensions.

Of course MOST of the NLEs we know are indeed ILL DESIGNED from day one, and it makes this task more difficult. But the camcorders companies, as i stated before , do NOT seem to have NDAs and SDKs programs to make software developpers happy. I agree thyey should not have to buy cameras, experiment themselves, but should be sent file samples of the streams to handle...
As a counter examples

1./ the NLEs have been fairly long to support MPEG2 even in SD, while MPEG2 encoders / decoders where widely available. Why so ?? And it was a minuscule cy like womble who deliverd the first viable product ??

2/Cineform HD intermediate format has been supportive of "new cams" or "new formats" within weeks of the emergence of the various HDVs cams around . From their answers, it seeml that they were totally kept out of the loop for AVCHD codecs, but can/will do it reasonnably easy.

So i stick to my point, which i do not find to be ridiculous.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Pierre Barberis

Of course MOST of the NLEs we know are indeed ILL DESIGNED from day one, and it makes this task more difficult. But the camcorders companies, as i stated before , do NOT seem to have NDAs and SDKs programs to make software developpers happy. I agree thyey should not have to buy cameras, experiment themselves, but should be sent file samples of the streams to handle...
As a counter examples

1./ the NLEs have been fairly long to support MPEG2 even in SD, while MPEG2 encoders / decoders where widely available. Why so ?? And it was a minuscule cy like womble who deliverd the first viable product ??

2/Cineform HD intermediate format has been supportive of "new cams" or "new formats" within weeks of the emergence of the various HDVs cams around . From their answers, it seeml that they were totally kept out of the loop for AVCHD codecs, but can/will do it reasonnably easy.
.

Within "weeks of the *emergence* and that is the key word. Emergence. The cams are not announced, but you're demanding that NLE's announce support for yet-unannounced cams.
Yes, I'm familiar with software development, having been in the business myself for several years, and still in the business today.
You're wrong in the NDA's and SDK's are not needed; they generally are. Not always, but generally.
Why was MPEG2 so long in coming to the editing side? Because for the most part, MPEG2 was not seen as an acquisiiton format, but rather a delivery format. No one wanted to help pirates rip DVDs and edit them. Beta SX was MPEG to be sure, but it was also acquired via SDI and often converted. Ulead had MPEG editing early on, and all one needs to do is search the forums and you'll find that pirates *loved* Ulead Media Studio. And ironically, they were using pirate copies of UMS, too.
The AVCHD codecs are difficult to decode efficiently, and the format was only announced on July 13. But before the cams are shipping, you're demanding that the NLE manufacturers support it already. That to me, is ridiculous.
I have worked extensively with the AVC HD acquired streams; I'm quite certain you haven't. The camera still isn't shipping. If it were easy, my company would have a product out to support it as well. And we'd have announced it at IBC, like everyone else.
When the cameras "emerge" as in "begin shipping" then it's a different story. There are/were no cameras for developers to work with.

Bottom line? If it's so easy, why isn't everyone doing it? Tell you what.... Since you're a software developer of many years, develop a cheap, fast, efficient decoder/encoder for AVCHD that can run on virtually any computer out there, and I guarantee you'll be rich very quickly.

If all of the NLE's available are "ill-designed" then I'd make the same suggestion about an NLE. Come up with one that isn't "ill-designed" and you'll be quite wealthy.
Of course bear in mind that several companies have developed what they felt was the ultimate NLE, and have failed.

[Pierre Barberis]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

....Come up with one that isn't "ill-designed" and you'll be quite wealthy...

Done already, in another Software domain. "Rich" or "Wealthy" indeed I am..
So i suggest we stop arguing on this sub-subject... No bad feelings.