DigiDesign posted this the other day:
Pro Tools Compatibility with Upcoming Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Apple has announced that they will begin shipping the new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard 64-bit operating system in September 2009. Avid is working closely with Apple to deliver compatible, high-quality versions of Pro Tools® as soon as possible. Please check back periodically for updates on Avid’s Snow Leopard support status.
So this might be the break we have waited for. One of the most annoying things about ProTools in the broadcast environment is the lack of a 24-hour timeline, hindering us to use TOD a TC reference when recording concerts that lasts over midnight. At IBC or NAB many years ago I was told that this could not be fixed until ProTools was written with 64-bit code.
We just received a test unit of EditShare Field. It’s not very cheap, but it may be a brilliant product for reality/documentary productions in the field with neat logging options, raid protection and the possibility for syncing with a EditShare at home aswell.
I’m keen to know if the project sharing workflow actually works, or if it’s mainly media sharing and painful project sharing. Also the deletion scheme seems like a bit work for the sysadmin, but then again, I have never heard of a sysadmin that doesn’t have to spend a lot of time deleting material.
EditShare has had some problems earlier, which the salespeople doesn’t like to be reminded of. Some productions have suffered really fatal data corruption with an earlier version of a FC driver supplied by a third party. Maybe colored by this, my gut feeling is that Quantel, Avid, GVG and all but maybe Lightworks, offer more filesystem/project/database reliability. EditShare is now 5 years old, and may have matured enough to take the step out of smaller post-house environments into enterprise broadcast and larger postproduction facilities.
It works with both Avid and FCP in addition to some other NLEs with less clever workflow benefits. I’m going to test the unit with FCP, and already it has proved not to work with Thursby’s AdmitMac, so I had to use Apple’s own Samba implementation. EditShare recommends a certain version of Thursby’s DAVE, but that doesn’t solve my needs within the company so I’ll stick with Apple Samba.
I’m returning the unit in a couple of weeks, so I should write something more substantial by then 
Clever way to use V-mount on other stuff!
Element Technica gives you a way to attach V-mount equipment on either 15mm or 19mm rods with V-Dock. The ISO Plate also gives you a way to attach RED-RAM or other drives to a V-mount adapter.
The makers of two tools we use a lot are Graeme Nattress of Nattress Productions and Wes Plate of Automatic Duck. They are also quite active on Twitter as it turns out, and you can follow them here:
Graeme & Wes
Of course, Graeme twitters mostly about single malt Scotch and RED workflows, but Wes never rests as it seems..
So I just ordered the Matrox CompressHD card.
I was able to check it out at NAB, and even though my guess is that we will get the same kind of acceleration with some GPU acceleration with Snow Leopard, I still find the need to use a computer as a transcoding engine for proxy needs, ipod/iphone output, versioning for audio sweetening.
But is the near realtime performance sacrificing the quality we love from the very timeconsuming software transcoders?
So, what is more important? Speed or quality? My feeling is that I will say yes to the most speed as quality allows me. My quality curve has a knee, while speed doesn’t!
And of course, this does not compare to the ElGato TurboH.264HD unit I use to compress my DVDs to AppleTV friendly QuickTime files!
More often than I like, I see crews coming back from shoots without using SPG’s or sync devices like Ambient’s ClockIt..
For FinalCut Pro you can now sync up several ISO’s by automatically comparing audio waveforms with PluralEyes from SingularSoftware. I have not tried it yet, but I guess I’ll get a chance sooner rather than later!
PluralEyes™
We just recieved our HXR-MC1P, a small and portable AVCHD recorder which is not exactly a lipstick camera, but it comes pretty close. The image quality is decent, but there is one really annoying detail about this camera: The cable is not detachable! You don’t need a lot of foresight to predict that people are going to treat this camera in a fashion that is going to break this cable.
André Aulich, formerly half of Aulich & Adamski, the duo who first brought us 50p editing on FinalCut Pro back in the days, has announced some new tools for Final Cut Server!
The Rough Cut Editor that some of us knows from Proximity Group’s ArtBox system is not back, but ConSol has made what seems to be a nice substitute.
They have also made a tool for XDCAM ingest which must be a nice addition to the lack of an IT-only solution without FinalCut Pro.
I have been looking for a portable signal generator, analyzer and monitor that can measure eye and jitter. And there is not a lot of products out there, and those out there are pretty expensive. I was lucky enough to fondle with the Phabrix SxE at NAB, and it seems like it has the right stuff. Still though, as a software feature, the eye and jitter ups the price with about $5000, that’s not cheap.
I don’t think I can hold of buying one, but does anyone know of any other product that does the job, DM me on twitter.
Phabrix SxE
Convergent Design has made many neat devices I’ve enjoyed for many years, including the FireWire – SDI bridge some years ago. Now, they have released the NanoFlash, which records HDMI/SDI/ASI to up to two Compact Flash cards! Native support for these NLE’s:
Final Cut Pro: All Formats
Avid Media Composer: All Formats
Edius: All Formats
Matrox Axio: All Formats
Vegas: Long-GOP Formats only
Premiere: 35 Mbps 4:2:0 only
NanoFlash
