The day before the keynote is usually very very quiet, which has always surprised me. Why NOT try to get your story heard before the big wave hits? Maybe there will be more news later in the week, but here are a handful of stories for media creation pros that shouldn't get lost in the flood.
Maxon To Showcase 3D For The Real World At Macworld 2008 I list this one first because it affects the most apps: "render straight out to popular editing and compositing applications including After Effects, Final Cut, Shake, Combustion and others, on the MAC OS X."
GenArts Announces Upcoming Sapphire Plug-ins Support for Apple FxPlug Products If you haven't dug into FxPlug, and I mean dug really really deep, you're missing the most exciting development for content creation pros on the Mac since, well, I can't even say when. The cool thing about this announcement for folks already using the world-renowned Sapphire plugs in FCP and Motion, this major new capability is being added for free. Yeah, yeah, they're behind Noise Industries and Boris FX on this news...but did I mention that it's Sapphire? And that it's free?
Experience Holophone®’s H4 Supermini Firsthand At MacWorld 2008 Dude, a single microphone for recording the whole 5.1 surround from a scene? You're kidding, right?
"H4 SuperMINI features an integrated multichannel pre-amplifier and monitor. Offering users added flexibility, the mic also comes equipped with an audio zoom button, which increases the forward bias of the pick-up pattern and an auxiliary center channel microphone input (XLR) for attaching an external shotgun or wireless lavalier microphone."
Apparently not kidding.
Ambric Am2045 GT Video Reference Platform Brings H/W-Accelerated Performance to Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 It has always mystified me that there's no hardware acceleration of effects performance and rendering on Mac - it's been a staple on PCs for years. Of course it USED to be on Mac for FCP - offered by Matrox and Pinnacle. Folks who've been with FCP from the beginning will join me in saying "Oops."
The story here is not just acceleration for effects, but for HD H.264 and MPEG rendering at 8x software speeds. Very cool
So why is this only for Premiere Pro? For one, Adobe has always been aggressive about third-party hardware partnerships. For the other, well, with 2 notable exceptions, Apple has never been committed to long-term third-party partnerships. Again, folks who've been around for a while can think of several other Oopses, some going back nearly a decade now.
Godspeed AJA and Blackmagic Designs. May you continue to sail with the wind at your backs.
In the meantime, if you want to see hardware acceleration for effects and rendering, don't talk to Ambric. I'm sure they'd love to see it happen. Talk to Apple.
And I guess it turns out that I'm not as mystified that these products are so late in coming to Mac. I'm mystified that Mac users aren't in Cupertino with pitchforks and torches demanding the same performance for Mac that PC users have enjoyed for so long? Is it that Mac users don't know how much faster PCs can be, or that they don't care? You tell me.
Pyro AV Announces Pyro Kompressor HD for Super-Charged, High-Quality HD Video Compression
See above. Awesome story, way overdue on Mac, not currently plugging into FCS.
The good news about Kompressor HD, though, is that it's a standalone app. Presumably you can send out your ref movies from non-CS apps and pick up the accelerated render that way.
Looking for direct FCS integration? Again, talk to Apple.
Okay, you know as well as I do tha news is getting ready to pour out of MacWorld. Later in the week I'll be following up with other stories that might have gotten lost in the shuffle.
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