As we turn to the future of creative software and how the Mac will play a role, we first need to be clear about the focus. To us, video and film workflow centers around non-linear editing (NLE) software. This software often begins and sometimes ends the creative process with the moving image, especially when the footage being used is acquired from the real world. It is NLE software, therefore, that has the biggest stake in future collaborative workflow design. Sadly, we also feel that its utility and usefulness on the Mac OS is waning.
To contradict this hunch, we must first state that even our mothers know that Apple is coming out with a new version of Final Cut Studio in the Spring of 2011. Mr. Jobs himself made sure of that with not one, not two, but three of his famous response emails to patrons questioning Apple’s commitment to the Pro Video market.
Today, as it was in 1999 when FCP first came out, when workflows diverge from the essential magic that QuickTime and its ubiquitous wrapper brings, pain ensues. That’s not to say that there are workflows that seem to be inching along using pure MXF-wrapped files. The other two “A”s, Adobe and Avid, are banking on MXF-based workflow as a means by which to bring FCP defectors back into their fold. They have pinpointed their entire marketing differential on MXF workflow, specifically because Apple has abandoned it.
Apple drew its line in the sand when it developed ProRes. Seemingly taking a page out of Avid’s playbook with their DNxHD offering, Apple invented a beautiful almost-perceptively-lossless codec that would preserve the right kinds of video information and survive multiple cycles of color correction and compositing. As they brought this codec to market, they also clearly showed they were no longer interested in developing native support for whatever new codec came out year after year from acquisition manufacturers. Apple did its deals with the devils of Panasonic (the DVCPRO-based codecs) and Sony (the XDCAM-based codecs) in the pre-ProRes years, and in 2009, provided a half-baked solution for AVC-Intra (which allows the rewrap of the codec into QuickTime during acquisition, but then forces the use of ProRes for rendering and export.) But after that, the trail goes cold. “Rewrap into QuickTime and transcode into ProRes” is the current, steadfast message.
And we must defend Apple’s decision, because the spec for MXF is so absolutely baseless and without form that most manufacturers have forged their own interpretation of the the wrapper and underlying data essences. This means that their own brand of MXF can only work seamlessly with other workflow components that they have either designed in-house or kludged via strategic alliances with other manufacturers. MXF has, by virtue of its vague specification, provided more splintering and clinging to brand-specific workflow than any other “standard” in recent memory.
In order to change public perception that ProRes is a proprietary codec that only Mac-based workflows can handle, Apple has nearly thrown the codec at any software or hardware manufacturer willing to adopt it. Licensing agreements have required the payment of very little or no money to Apple. On the hardware side, besides AJA and its Io and Ki products, there are hardware de/encoders built into products from ARRI, EVS, Matrox, Telestream and VSN. A free ProRes decoder exists for QuickTime for Windows, enabling many software workflows on that platform to import and play back the codec. There is even hushed talk that, around the same time as Final Cut Studio 4 debuts, a software-only ProRes encoder for Windows will quietly make its way to certain software makers as an added benefit (available only with purchase, of course).
But explain all of this tireless groundwork to a broadcast engineer, especially one with a particularly grey ponytail, and he will stare at you, non-plussed. The fact is that the world acquires and almost certainly plays back video content within MXF wrappers. And it takes time to rewrap and transcode, no matter how large or fast your transcode farm. And the nail in the coffin, as we have stated before, was the imminent removal of the boxes that allowed us to do these intrastage magic tricks.
So we have a dulled excitement for the debut of Final Cut Studio 4. Dulled because we know that MXF-native workflow will never be a feature, even though it is the feature we need to keep the ball rolling.
So are there other options? There is the Avid prison, within which the only real benefit these days is that the starting price point is way down from before. There is Adobe Premiere on both Mac and PC. But ask anyone who hooks up a hardware capture/playback solution to it and you’d think you were talking to someone working with Premiere in 1998.
By now, I would have liked to offer up developments for professional editing software within the open source community, but there is really nothing that even seems promising.
The other departments within the creative facility have far more options. Almost every post facility we serve has non-editing software running on Windows. And so, looking ahead, their software needs will be easy to fulfill.
In the Linux world, there are bountiful communities making huge strides in professional audio, with ardour and rosegarden, and 3D modeling applications such as blender. Even Blackmagic Design seems to be getting in the mood by providing drivers for its capture and playback hardware on Linux. But as we continue to troll this area for developments and breakthroughs, we know that within the Linux world, we are too early for the main parade of useful software.
So for the time being, Final Cut Pro and its cousins within the suite of the forthcoming Final Cut Studio 4, will have to do. As our colleagues are wowed by all of the new sparkly features within the application, and the speed with which it renders effects in real time and transcodes in and out of the ProRes codec and QuickTIme wrappers, we will stand outside the reality distortion field and mourn for the one important feature that it will go without, and tirelessly search for the future solution that will coalesce the worlds of acquisition, production and delivery with an effortlessness that made us all adopt FCP in the first place.
Sad you are so short-sighted to see Avid, Premiere and Smoke are viable options considering Apple's FCP X has no intrinsic value other than catching up with the other "A" companies (Autodesk, Adobe, Avid).
It's mac fanbois like yourself which tarnishes the Apple brand and shows your sheer ignorance of what's out there in your so-called field of experience.
Shame on you for being so closed-minded.
Posted by: me | April 20, 2011 at 10:09 AM