the silence is deafening...

[Mark Kubat]

and it's had ramifications.

My boss at the indie t.v. station I work for today signed up with Canopus - we're getting the big time HD-realtime solution they first announced a while back and now with the announcement for cheapie HDV editing via Edius pro 3, that's it - my boss proclaimed today all through our office that the Macs are all gone and we're migrating 100% over to pc... it just seems the apple side of things for HDV is lagging and it's not even certain when and if it's going to catch up - our pal-fx1-e's are coming in next week from b&h and we're pre-ordered for pro-z1's - downsampled HDV to SD looks amazing and we're going HDV for field work and all our original content programming... my boss put it frankly when he said our competitors are gaining by having the latest and best NOW - the final death knell came after a long conference call with his top insiders at Apple Canada and basically it's gonna be s-l-o-w for HDV'ers on the Apple side for a while yet...

I personally am gonna be sorry to see our liquid cooled G5's go... maybe I can score a deal before they go on e-bay.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Did you hear that Apple? You should get your arse's out of iPOD land for a while and re-focus a little energy on your computer support!

I know, I know...the stinking iPOD makes lots of $$ for them. But, I don't own one of those....I own a G5 w/ FCP HD!

Murph

[Chris Hurd]

<< it's gonna be s-l-o-w for HDV'ers on the Apple side for a while yet >>

Maybe not good for Apple... but good for Lumiere.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

True....true.

[Kevin Shaw]

Interesting to see that Apple's apparent lack of HDV support is not just a minor nuisance for people doing real-world video work. Welcome to the wonderful world of Canopus, which has its share of problems but may surprise you with the efficiency of their products. Be sure to check out the Canopus user forums, where you can get answers to any questions you may have on a wide variety of topics (both product-related and otherwise).

http://forum.canopus.com/

[Rhett Allen]

He's not even going to wait for the "professional" version to come out first?
To dump on a program or platform for being slow to respond to the market is really lame when the camera isn't really even on the PRO market yet! I would definitely buy one of Sony's beautiful new HVR-Z1U's. But I'm not stupid! I'm not going to be the first, (price, reliability, flaws, need I remind you of the Audio problems with ALL the first VX's and PD's) which brings me to another point. Your boss is buying "consumer" cameras, you know, the one's that Sony has been infamous for not repairing because they are NOT for professional use and thus not expected to be held to "professional" standards.
Sorry to rain on your parade but you guys are making a big mistake. I think Canopus has a great product line, and if I could run them on my Mac I might consider some, but I switched from the Windoze world for a reason (reliability) and it hasn't changed one bit yet! Sounds like you guys got SOLD a load of phooey!

IF, these cameras had ANY sort of track record, it would be a completely different story, but it's not. I'll bet all those guys who bought DVX100's wish they waited for the DVX100a's

... on second thought... I think it's a great idea, we need guinea pigs to blow money making mistakes so when I buy, it's all worked out. My PD170 is still working fine. I will ADD to my collection, not replace it all at once. That's a certain recipe for disaster. Besides I just want it for the 16:9 and DVCAM work at this point, which suits me fine.


p.s. We are talking about HDV and not HD because FCP has been able to handle HD for quite a while now, and yes with the right cards and drives, real-time too. This isn't really HD though. Just be patient, as it gets closer to being accepted professionally, all will be worked out.

-edited by Rhett because I really didn't mean to come off like such an A-hole!

[Robert Mann Z.]

welcome to the club..i have been using edius 3 pro since fridayand all i can say is ...

well i hope you guys didn't depend on keyframing or alpha channels much..edius has no support for alphas in its filters and very limited alpha support on transitions...and nill on the keyframe support...there is a dvd ripping app though :)

it is real ..real time though..no proxy stuff here

[Kevin Shaw]

Rhett: I've been using Canopus products for several years now, and they've consistently worked great for me for long projects on several different computers. Their software apparently doesn't compare to Final Cut Pro in terms of overall features, but for basic to intermediate projects it's rock-solid and fast. Canopus is one of the main reasons I haven't bothered with Macs since switching to PCs a few years ago.

That said, I'd agree it might be a bit hasty for someone to ditch everything they've been using in favor of a new camera format and all new editing equipment. It would have made more sense to add a couple of Canopus workstations into their existing editing mix and make a gradual transition to HDV, making use of all the best of both computer platforms and hardware/software options. As you said, we can be grateful to them for volunteering to work the kinks out of all the new products.

[Rhett Allen]

I don't doubt the quality of Canopus' products. I have actually used ProCoder a little and was quite pleased with it's results. I also know that Canopus has probably the best DV codecs out there. I wish I could try it more (even on Linux) My qualm is with Windoze itself. I just couldn't get anything accomplished with any sort of reliability (using iFinish and Media100). I still have 3 PC's and they are all junk for reliability! I won't be buying another one.

But this wasn't meant to be a this vs. that discussion, sorry.

I can only imagine what it's going to be like when there is some catastrophic failure and all of the equipment they are comfortable with is gone, replaced with new, unproven (by them anyway) gear. Bad move... very bad move.

[Steve Nunez]

Bottom line- Apple has to step to the plate and provide some real HDV workflow for the curent crop of cameras and the slew of cameras to come- if they're late to the party- many people may switch "back" to the pc........I hope they use some of the iPod revenue and "gets to crackin" with the HDV flow for FCP4 HD users.....

.....I can imagine it now- people actually switching to PC's because Apple didn't have a "workflow" for HDV cams- that would be sad-

...thankfully we have Lumiere to work with- or else we'd really be stuck!
Apple has always been known for being cutting edge and on the creative side of things- let's hope they get on the ball- they're doing great with HD but HDV is a different format..keeping my fingers crossed...don't tell me my dual 2.5 G5 isn't up to the task??? Let's go Apple!!!

[Dylan Pank]

The problem at the moment is that FCP cannot handle IPB frame compression properly (though it can load and display quicktime friendly m2v files). That's probably what they're working on right now.

They're also probably trying to figure out how to get live-through-firewire playback to a monitor to make the whole thing as DV like as possible.

Also, maybe they're developing a recompression scheme that involves only recompressing GOPs that need it (for effects/CC/transistions) and leaving as much native data behind as possible.

I admit this is more of a wishlist that informed speculation.

[Steve Nunez]

I have no clue what IPB compression is- but it seems some pc software companies have figured it out- why can't Apple?

I don't wanna trade my new G5 for an Athlon machine- don't make me call Steve Jobs!

[Dylan Pank]

By IPB compression (I'm probably not using the correct term) I mean the interframe compression that MPEG2 uses, compared to the discrete intraframe compression that DV and MJPEG use.

As far as I know, only Vegas actually deals with native mpeg2 for editing - Adobe and Cineform recompress the footage albeit with barely any change in the image.

As for why Apple haven't figured it out, my guess it's to do with Mac OS' systemwide reliance on quicktime for video. I think any update to FCPHD will also come with an update for Quicktime to support HDV properly.

[Davi Dortas]

If I know Apple, they aren't going to release any HDV solution for FCP, until they make it easy and painless as editing DV.

[Robert Mann Z.]

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Pank :

As far as I know, only Vegas actually deals with native mpeg2 for editing - Adobe and Cineform recompress the footage albeit with barely any change in the image. -->>>

edius can edit native mpeg 2 with rt output to a monitor i might add