| Feature:
The LA Debut of FCP 5 and Soundtrack Pro |
May, 2005
FCP 5 and
Soundtrack Pro
(Q and A with the FCP and
STP Team)
by Michael
Horton
Close to 800 people braved the traffic and parking
problems of Hollywood to watch Apple's Alec Little, Brian
Meaney and Paul Saccone show off FCP
5 and Soundtrack
Pro. The show took place at the historic ETC/Pacific
Theater on Hollywood Blvd and it must be said right at the
top, that if there is a better venue on this planet to show off
these two applications I'd like to know where it is.
With HUGE thanks to Gefen
we were able to run DVI, HD-SDI and digital audio from the Dual
2.7 PowerMac to the ETC's
2K Digital Cinema projector and THX sound system, a distance
of more than 200ft. The result was a crystal clear image projected
onto the theater's 37ft screen with audio that can only be described
as jaw dropping and seat shaking.
Show began with a demo of the ETC's state
of the art Digital Cinema projection system by ETC Theater Manager
Paul K Miller. The demo included clips from 2D, 3D and
HD movies as well as movies shot on film. It's hard to imagine
a better movie experience than digital cinema projection. If
you have the choice, for goodness sake go see Star Wars at a
Digital Cinema.
Ted Schilowitz
of AJA was next up and as is
always the case with Ted, entertained the crowd with humorous
anecdotes gathered from his first hand experience supporting
the engineers and editors working with FCP and the Kona Card
at the 2004 World Series and 2005 Super Bowl. Needless to say
everything worked flawlessly but was a knuckle grinder nonetheless.
 FCP Product manager Paul Saccone then
took to the podium mic to show a brief overview of the new products
announced at NAB 2005. Now since most of you reading this article
already know what products were announced, I'll skip that part
and merely tell you what Paul listed as the NEW "big ticket
items" in each one.
FCP 5
Native HDV
Multicam
Dynamic RT Extreme
Multichannel Audio
Panasonic P2 support
Native IMX
Enhanced Xsan Support
Cinema Tools 3
(Many more enhancements covered later in this article)
Motion2
32-bit Float Rendering
Replicator
Midi Behavior
After Effects support
Enhanced Keyframing
FxPlug
Soundtrack Pro
Written from the ground up
Action Based Editing
Find and Fix
multitrack Editing and Mixing
DSP Audio Processing
Sound Effects
AppleScript
(Many more enhancements covered later in this article)
DVD Studio Pro 4
Support for HD DVD and Blu-Ray
HD Authoring
Distributed Encoding
Integrated Dolby Encoder
GPRM Partitioning
VTS Allocation
Digital Cinema Desktop
 Soundtrack
Pro's Product Manager Alec Little
was next up, and despite the similarity in name with Soundtrack
that shipped with FCP 4 and 4.5HD, Soundtrack Pro is a completely
different application written from the ground up and based around
precision audio editing and sound design. The app includes over
50 effects plug-ins from Logic Pro and over 5000 sound effect
and music Apple loops.
Now since we were able to hook up to
the theater's THX sound system (thanks in no small part to Gefen),
Alec began the demo showing off a few of the included sound effects
such as explosions, crashes, and Bear Roars.
Whispers of "Oh Yeah. Sweet!" were heard often from
the audience during this demo. Yes, it's nice to have a big sound
system.
I won't go into much detail about the
Soundtrack Pro demo as you can find much of what Alec showed
over on the Soundtrack Pro web site. Instead, I'll concentrate
on the highlights and later in this article, the Q and A.
Highlights of Soundtrack Pro (STP)
A very powerful browser that includes
the ability to manage multiple libraries of sounds.
Customizable tool bar
Different Timeline View options from mini to maxi
Ability to have multiple multitrack projects opened at one time
via tabs at top of window
Multitrack and audio file projects can be opened at same time
Favorites tab to store favorite sounds across all projects
Find and Fix is a "SoundSoap" type feature that finds
and analyzes problems such as pops and clicks and background
noise and fixes the problem. Includes a history palette of your
fixes you can turn on or off
Roundtrip workflow with FCP 5 is as simple as doing a "Select
ALL" of your FCP sequence and selecting "Send to STP
Multitrack." Your FCP sequence will appear in the STP timeline
exactly as it appears in your FCP timeline
Totally Non Destructive sound editing or you can choose to make
it destructive.
Intelligent Voice Over tool:
Alec recorded three takes of VO on a "loop region"
he created on an audio track. Now, I'm not sure here but what
happens is that all three takes appear as one with "take
three" labeled on the clip. However if you click on the
clip (control click maybe?) all THREE takes appear on the pop
up menu allowing you to choose and listen to whatever take you
want. You can easily take parts of take 1 and combine with parts
of take 2 and 3.
You can use Digital Cinema Desktop with STP
Sound Design includes Paste/Mix which allows you to layer one
sound on top of another with a simple "Copy" then "Past/Mix."
You can choose what percentage of the copied sound you want to
add to the mix.
Time stretch tool works without changing the pitch.
Control Surface support with any external audio unit that supports
Mackie Control Protocol.
Applescript support
 Next up were FCP Product Designer Brian Meaney
and Paul Saconne. Paul began showing off uncompressed
HD on the 2.7 GHZ Mac with everything set at High Quality. This
included cross dissolves, Color Corrector filter, lower third
and a Title 3D text. It played back flawlessly. Of course your
milage may vary depending on the speed of your Mac, but what
we saw played back without a hiccup. And on the 37 foot screen
it was stunning.
As in the STP portion of this article
I will just highlight a few of the things new in FCP 5 to save
space for the Q and A below.
Native HDV editing
Edits and looks exactly as though you were editing DV. Same frame
rate as DV. Scrubs in real time just like DV. Edit HDV on a Powerbook
using a FW drive. You can send out HDV to your Digital Cinema
Desktop or with a Kona Card, out HD-SDI. Separate capture window
that is specifically for HDV. Will break up your clips based
on TC breaks or Start/Stop" detection. Supports the Sony
HDV camera's embedded TC when going out to tape via Print to
Video.
Dynamic RT
Incredibly powerful tool that will allow you to play back multiple
streams of video. It works by "looking ahead," adapting
on the fly and adjusting the frame rate of each series of multiple
streams" and then determines what the optimum frame rate
might be in order to play back the sequence. For the purposes
of this demo Paul and Brain played back from 1 to 16 streams
and back to 1 of DVCPro HD video. Amazing. No more do you have
to choose high quality, low quality or medium quality. FCP does
it for you and very intelligently from the looks of it.
Multicam
THE big ticket item and the number one lafcpug top ten feature
request 2 times in a row.
Grab a bunch of clips (128 angles with 16 playing back at same
time (with Dynamic RT)) and choose "Make Multicam"
and up pops a window asking you how you want to sync them. Timecode?
In/Out points? You choose.
Make Multiclip Sequence
Cut video with audio locked or audio with video locked.
Drag and drop up to 16 angles into Multicam Viewer window.
Don't like how the angles are arranged in the window? Command
click on one angle and drag it to where you want it.
Intelligent render management with "Collapsing Multiclips"
if you find yourself going past your RT budget.
Multichannel
Capture up to 24 channels of audio in a single pass. You can
group capturing say, 4 tracks or mono and 2 tracks of stereo.
24bit, 96 kHz audio native inside FCP.
Control surface support with any external audio unit supporting
Mackie Control Protocol
The "small" things
"Search folders" is a new concept whereby if you are
forced to reconnect your media you can now tell FCP what folder
or what drive to search in first, rather than the old way of
FCP looking EVERYWHERE for your media.
You can now control+Click on a clip in
the browser and select "Reveal in Finder."
Large icon view in browser now has duration
of clip. You can arrange the large icon clips various ways with
various commands
When you want to match frame to an item,
simply select the clip, hit match frame and it will match to
whatever item is selected overriding auto select.
Better scaling and rotating which, looking
at the demo, virtually eliminated "artifacts."
Cinema Tools 3 is the largest upgrade
in the History of Cinema Tools.
Text in browser and time line now can
be made LARGE, Medium or small
 Time for a break so we took 15 minutes
to digest all we learned and then came back for the Q and A.
Author and FCP Guru Lisa Brenneis
asked the world to send her their FCP 5 questions and after pouring
over the hundreds of responses. picked what she considered the
Top Ten. So let's start of with those, shall we?
Q.) Does the timeline playhead scroll
with playback?
A,) No
Q.) Can you copy and paste multiple Keyframes?
A.) No
Q.) Are Scratch Disk Preferences be saved
with individual projects
A.) No
Q.) Have you added a UNDO Action or History
palette yet?
A.) No. Its in Soundtrack Pro though.
Q.) Any improved performance for Large
projects?
A.) Yes. Long sequences will open much much faster with little
chance of "Preparing video for display" window. Zooming
and scrubbing timeline is much more responsive.
Q.) Any improvements to Time Remapping
feature?
A.) No
Q.) Any improvement with Media Manager
handling of speed modified clips?
A.) Yes. It has been solved in this version.
 Q.) Time code display in Log and capture window
during digitizing?
A.) No, but in the HDV Log and Capture window there is a display.
(Note: Cant verify the accuracy of this answer as we didn't open
the HDV L and C window and the answer to this questions was a
bit drowned out by coughs from the audience.
Q.) Does FCP 5 support multiple resolutions
in same timeline without rendering?
A.) No. Not with software only.
Q.) Does your graphics card make a difference
in RT performance
A.) Not like Motion does but yes it helps. One example is Gamma
Correction
Q.) What are the functionality differences
between FCP 5 running on 10.3.9 and 10.4.
A.) None
Q.) what is absolute minimum system I
need to edit HDV?
A.) One GHZ processor, and 1 Gig of ram and the faster the Mac
the better the performance. CPU is still of vital importance
to editing on FCP. Dynamic RT helps in keeping system requirements
down.
Q.) What other than audio can external
controls that support the Mackie Control Protocol, control?
A.) Basic navigation such as In/Out, forward/reverse. mute, solo
etc.
Q.) Is there anyway to add markers to
an individual angle in a multiclip?
A.) Yes.
It was now time to take a few questions
from the audience
Q.) Do we have Network rendering with
FCP 5?
A. No. But with Compressor and QMaster you can network Macs for
batch encoding. Also the AC3 encoder is incorporated into Compressor
so you no longer have to go out to A-pack. You must buy FC Studio
or DVD Studio Pro 4 in order to get the "distributive"
version of Compressor.
Q.) Is there OMF export from Soundtrack
Pro?
A. No.,
 Q.) Is there an audio change list function in
STP?
A.) No, but this feature is open to third parities and the data
are available to them.
Q.) Are the loops we have in Soundtrack
compatible with Soundtrack Pro?
A.) Yes. All of the loops in Soundtrack are in Soundtrack Pro
plus more.
Q.) Can you view HDV out to a an External
monitor or the cameras view finder?
A.) No. But you can play it out to Digital Cinema Desktop or
use a Kona Card
Q.) Bezier Mask?
A. No change
Q.) Is there anything in FCP that will
give us a color sync using FCP's Color bars if we are using the
Cinema Display?
A. No, but there is a calibration tool in Shake 4.
Q.) What if anything has been done to
improve match back to tape (Edit to tape) audio and video sync?
A.) There is actually been HUGE improvements in ETT so your edits
should be dead on. Workflow is same but accuracy is now there.
Q.) I'm getting this color shift (a kind
of flash) in my transitions when using DVCPro HD. Has this been
addressed?
A. Yes.
Q.) It worked in FCP 4 but now in 4.5,
when using the the range selection tool, you can no longer copy
a portion of a clip and have only that portion of the clip you
copied show up when you paste. The whole clip now pastes. Has
this been addressed?
A. No. It's not been addressed.
Q.) Feature Request: Real time tool displays
such as RT meters, vectorscopes out to tape?
A. Darn good feature Request.
 Q.) I want to buy a G5 and have heard that maxing
out my Ram is not a good thing.
A.) FCP will recognize only 4 gigs but Motion will take advantage
of the entire 8 gigs. The OS will also take advantage of the
entire 8 gigs.
Q.) What is this integration between
Shake and FCP 5?
A.) Simply select your your clips and from the File Menu then
select "Send to Shake." Render.
Q.) Has there been any improvements with
merge clips and match frame?
A.) I'm not sure
Q.) Can you map your Keyboard to the
Multicam layout?
A.) Yes. Also includes a bunch of buttons in the button bar.
Q.) I have a dual G4 and I want to run
Motion but ny video card is not on the supported list. Can I
still run Motion maybe without the RT effects?
A.) No
Q.) Does Spotlight in Tiger affect performance
in any of the Apple Pro Apps?
A.) You should not see a performance hit once your drives have
been indexed. Also you can turn off Spotlight functions for certain
drives or folders. Brian broke in and stated that Capture Now
performance under QT 7 and FCP 5 has vastly been improved where
Capture Now should start almost immediately.
Q.) Have you done anything to improve
render time?
A.) We have addressed it but the bottom line is Just get the
fastest Mac you can afford and you will see improvement.
Q.) If I have an educational version
of FCP, can I upgrade to a retail version?
A.) No. You cannot upgrade a EDU version of FCP to a retail version.
You must pay full price.
Conclusion.
It was clear that Soundtrack Pro was the hit of the evening,
hitting the "sweet" spot with the crowd numerous times.
Alec Little's demo was interrupted with applause on several occasions
and it was no wonder; This app has a lot of "wow factor"
inside and out. Plus it didn't hurt to demo an audio app in a
theater designed to show audio off.
If "Find and Fix" is half as
good as it looks in the demo, and if the sound design interface
is as easy as it looks, and if the ADR and VO tools work as we
saw them work, then the price of Soundtrack Pro is below cheap.
It really does look that good. No, this is not a Pro Tools killer
and no it doesn't support 5.1 Surround Sound (yet) but watching
this app in action makes you want to run to the nearest store
and bring it home and play with it. Doesn't matter that you may
not be a gifted sound designer or audio editor, this app is sure
going to do its best to help you try.
Our favorite NLE, Final Cut Pro,
finally earned its Pro name with Cinema Tools 3. Cinema Tools
isn't sexy like Multicam or Multichannel audio support, so it
didn't get the demo time of the so called "Big Ticket"
items, but I'm sure that film editors will be very pleased with
this version. As Brian Meaney said, "About time."
Multicam was worth the wait. It is simply
brilliant in its simplicity. Hell, I don't need this for no music
video. I could of used this for that 7 character dinner scene
I struggled with last month.
I'm betting that Dynamic RT will end
up being the most useful and loved new feature of Final Cut 5.
Think about this for a moment. Apple makes software to sell hardware,
right? Well that's what we all think, right. Well here is a gift
from Apple for those of us who can't afford new hardware and
still want a bit of the RT the fast Macs are giving the rich
boys. This Dynamic RT is wickedly intelligent if the demo doesn't
lie. Yeah, yeah, it will work much better the faster the Mac,
but still - a gift? From Apple? I can wait a few more months
to buy that G5? Cool! I'll take it. Thank you.
While FCP 5 didn't include everything
we wanted, it did include (in my not so humble opinion) most
of what we need. What it still lacks is what we can tolerate,
and keep working for and working around. And it is clear to all
who were there that night. that the boys from the FCP team want
what we want too. So keep giving them your feedback, and do as
Paul Saconne asked all of us re: the Media Manager. "Kick
the tires for a awhile and then let us know SPECIFICALLY what
it is you want. So let's kick the tires for awhile.
 Special thanks again to Gefen
for their support and especially to Gefen tech support guru,
Khasha Roholahi. Honestly, without him and all the Gefen
gear, nothing would of worked. Not in this theater with this
projector.
Also, Paul K Miller of the ETC, Lisa Brenneis,
all of the tireless ticket takers, and Brian Gary who
taped the show. And huge thanks to Alec Little, Brian
Meaney and Paul Saccone for taking the time to fly
down here and show off the Apps.
Damn good show guys.
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