Are Red And Apple In Bed?

[Milan Nikolic]

I heard from French representative of Apple (he gave presentation of FCP recently in Belgrade, Serbia) that Apple is preparing 2K and, possibly, 4K editing in FCP 6 version to be anounced at NAB. Anyone, is there, some truth to it? :confused:

[Corrado Silveri]

The "Wow" starts now...

[Roxco]

Absolutely! But anyone under NDA can say so publicly!

Rosco

P.S. Keep an link open to ThinkSecret.com

- - http://www.thinksecret.com/

[Júlio Taubkin]

That's the rumor allright!

[Brook Willard]

Rumors are just that... and of course the RED Team won't confirm or deny anything. Such is the nature of these things - it's their business either way. :)

[Rick Darge]

I hope they do it - And I hope they don't release a final cut pro extreme version that will cost over $10K - Keep it simple, beat Avid, give us a better color correcter, a scrolling timeline and 4K editing for gods sake..

[Corrado Silveri]

give us a better color correcter

Have you tried Colorista? (from Red Giant).
Give it a try...

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/magicbulletcolorista.html

[Sanjin Jukic]

Apple and RED are in bed long ago but behind the curtain and faraway from any public eyes.
By the way RED is developing on Apple's hardware>>Publicly announced>> Gear We Use>>http://red.com/gear-we-use.htm
Paparazzi are not allowed.
Top-notch security.
Rumors are swirling around Apple's and Red's possible cooperation.
Wait for the NAB 2007.

[Mardi_Gras]

Its official! Come NAB '07, Apple Inc and Red Digital Company will unveil the next generation Digital-Cinema Workflow complete with realtime desktop 4k capturing/editing solution as a standard/base feature.

Sweeter than candy, I gotta say... if it happens.

[Jared VanLeuven]

Yep, I'm gonna be like an 8-year-old-at-Disneyland at NAB this year!

[PaulClements]

Whilst I would love to see it myself, I doubt that Apple are specifically looking at Red and thinking now there's a market for us to use. At the end of the day there are only going to be around 1500 or so RedOne users over the next twelve months and only a small percentage of those users would opt for a brand new editing system over a cheaper older offline editing solution surely?

If they retail it at $5000 and they are lucky to get 750 adopters from RedOne owners/editors it'd only be $3.75m before any costs... hardly worth getting out of bed as far as Apple are concerned.

Whilst I can accept they are looking at the future of high end movie production being 4k, unless there is any kind of public announcement from either Red or Apple that they are working together to provide a complete solution I would merely anticipate it being a natural progression of Apple's software.

From what I've seen over the past few months the guys at Red like what Apple does and like the system in general and therefore put primary emphasis on using it as the best system to compliment the camera. Until I hear someone from Red or Apple say they are "In Bed" or words to that effect I'd just stick with 4k being the natural evolution for all editing systems, and the earliest to adopt will have a few more people willing to look into their system.

I don't want to sound all doom and gloom, like I say I'd like nothing more than to see other top notch companies joining force to offer us RedOne customers better affordable solutions. I raised a topic about Cooke being involved with the Red Lenses and as feasable as it is the fact remains it's all hearsay and these are the kinds of threads that propel the RedOne project into the realms of fantasy. Dream by all means but don't post as if you know for fact they are in cahoots! :) Unless of course I've missed something and they are 100% working together and everything I've just put down is dross hahahaha!

[Policar]

Apple's definitely doing something big with its next version of FCP. Someone in the know told me six months ago that the next version is going to be even more integrated with other apps and be more "professional." The moniker he suggested wasn't "extreme" but it should be something along those lines: a higher end version--probably with a higher end price. He didn't say anything about 4k, though.

The one thing Avid has that Apple doesn't is a super high end product (Media Composer) that makes all its other products seem more professional by association. Apple has tried hard with its PR to make Final Cut Pro look like a bigger deal than it is, but the honest truth is that everyone in Hollywood and almost everyone in major broadcast uses Avid. Even if Apple doesn't sell a lot of copies of "Extreme," and even if it carries a $10,000 price tag...it's going to result in a trickle down effect. One studios are using "Final Cut Extreme" even more people will choose Final Cut Pro. It's like a flagship model of a car or something--not that profitable, but great advertising, and something that ensures brand loyalty.

[Holosynthetic]

P.S. Keep an link open to ThinkSecret.com

- - http://www.thinksecret.com/

Thinksecret doesn't care to much about the higher end market with FCP, etc. Just a few weeks ago Apple updated its Xserve RAID from 7TB to 10.5TB, thinksecret however didn't post the news, nor did the forums have one thread dedicated to the topic. The site is more consumer friendly more likely to find bickering over a $2 charge for 802.11n then faster servers or FCP Extreme rumors.

[Rick Darge]

http://www.richard-darge.com/bedtime.gif

[Júlio Taubkin]

LOL!

*and the rest of my 5 characters...

[SalaTar]

are Red in Apple in bed.....hmmm
Panasonic was for the 1200a
AJA was at a time with Kona...
Nattress Productions Inc. - Plugin Solutions For Final Cut Pro

http://www.hdforindies.com/uploaded_images/NABboothred-753786.jpg

You better hope at least they had a sleepover with a reacharound at one time

[Don Woods]

That is pretty funny. It would make one hell of a Love Child.

[Rick Darge]

but the honest truth is that everyone in Hollywood and almost everyone in major broadcast uses Avid. Even if Apple doesn't sell a lot of copies of "Extreme," and even if it carries a $10,000 price tag...it's going to result in a trickle down effect. One studios are using "Final Cut Extreme" even more people will choose Final Cut Pro. It's like a flagship model of a car or something--not that profitable, but great advertising, and something that ensures brand loyalty.

I beg to differ - A lot of networks are adopting Final Cut Pro, especially new networks. And a greater number of films are cut on FCP TODAY. More will turn with this new upgrade I'm guessing. Most still use Avid but I'm surprised at the amount of professional work that is cut on FCP

[Blair S. Paulsen]

First of all I think that a modest upgrade to Final Cut is overdue regardless of the RedOne or SI-2K or D-20, etc. I wonder how much the new Mac OS 10.5 and its rumored resolution independence on the display side is tied into major structural overhauls of both FCS and QuickTime, not to mention their usual GPU partners ATI and nVidia.

Nirvana for folks like us will require a fundamental re-working of all these interdependent factors. Fortunately the financial motivation comes from more than just the motion media creation community alone. Digital still photographers and medical/technical users are good sized markets that would see great benefits. Did I forget gamers, I bet Apple hasn't :rolleyes: .

IF the underlying tech for the Mac goes to quad HD (3840 by 2160) support at 12 bits per channel then FCS will likely be able to deliver an editing environment for digital cinema applications that will rock. I wonder what display interconnects will be the next wave for Apple - what kind of future does dual-link DVI have? If I have my math right 3840 by 2160 would be limited to 30fps via dual-link DVI which is way too low of a refresh rate for a computer display.

On a related note vis a vis Apple & Red:
What exactly is Redcode RGB? Is it a QuickTime file format? I get that RedCode RAW is an efficent wavelet based carrier for a data stream. Is RedCode RGB also a wavelet codec?

I assume this thread is tracking on the hope that FCS6 will have native support for RedCode RGB files up to a certain size. Thereby taking advantage of the power of a wavelet codec to mitigate storage requirements and avoid more transcoding? Am I missing something, or reading too much in?

[Greg Voevodsky]

I hear Apple witll be introducing "RED CUT - 4K PRIME"
Oh, and the optional "RIB" is extra.

Good news, Jim and Steves' Love child, YODA will be introducing it...
"Mmmm CUT 4K RED with RED CUT 4K Prime, yes you will, do not try, you will with RED Apple and a bit of the Force."

[Zack Birlew]

Well, like all rumors, we won't know for sure until we see it.

So far on the Apple-related rumors we've got:

Final Cut Specific

- 2K and 4K native support
- Higher NLE price
- Better color correction tools
- New interface

Hardware

- New displays
- Dual quad core macs (8 cores total)

Software

- New iLife version
- New compositing application a'la Shake

Anything else?

[MikeCurtis]

My gut understanding was that the Shake successor would be longer in the oven, that it wouldn't be visible so soon - assuming they shut down support/dev on Shake to concentrate on getting new version out, I'da thunk a preview at NAB at best with IBC-ish ship date, or IBC announce/ship.

No solid intel on that, just a guess.

Anyway, NAB is going to be very, VERY interesting this year!!!

: )

I'll DEFINITELY be there.

[Chris Kenny]

Keep in mind, Apple doesn't necessarily need to explicitly support REDCODE. All they have to do is move FCP to a more modern engine, which doesn't impose hard limits on what codecs and resolutions support real-time, etc. Motion already (mostly) works like this. Apple's long-term goal is probably to have FCP, Motion, the Shake replacement, etc. all based around the basic same GPU-based engine, with the only limitations being those imposed by the physical capabilities of your hardware.

Whether FCP will get such a major overhaul at NAB this summer, I obviously can't say, but I'd give given it a better than even chance (for the announcement; release might come later). If Apple does that, and if we really get ZFS on Leopard, wrangling Red footage on the Mac is going to be a breeze.

[Shawn Nelson]

http://www.richard-darge.com/bedtime.gif

Lol, wow, Jim's wife might be upset, oh well, he can tell her it's necessary for the future of cinema

[Poi Boy]

As much as I'd like to believe, I don't think the NAB / FCP will have 2k/4k or that Shakes replacement will be ready. however, I do expect a significant upgrade in FC studio and maybe by the end of the year we'll get all the other stuff. Great time to be an image maker !
Aloha
-A

[Jeff Kilgroe]

...Please forgive me.

http://www.mummydust.com/steveandjim.jpg

[Rick Darge]

HAHAHAHA, now that's just disturbing, but I forgive you

[Sanjin Jukic]

http://www.richard-darge.com/bedtime.gif

By the picture Steve and Jim look like PC gay couple. Look at the keyboards. But than you can say today's Mac can boot Windows anyway.

[dalen johnson]

The one thing Avid has that Apple doesn't is a super high end product (Media Composer) that makes all its other products seem more professional by association. Apple has tried hard with its PR to make Final Cut Pro look like a bigger deal than it is, but the honest truth is that everyone in Hollywood and almost everyone in major broadcast uses Avid.

I beg to differ also.
Years ago, yes years...I had cinewave and apple.
We also had 3 avid suits. My apple with cinewave did REALTIME chroma key editing DVCPRO 50...our Avids couldnt do that.

Also, hollywood...what about discreet? Lets throw out big names, high prices and a system better than avid...but to what degree, those are old arguments.

Final Cut is a great program, and it speaks for itself, its the defacto to have.
Im sure they will get 4k in the program which will get people to want to buy a 4k camera...from Red.

Peace

Dalen

[Stokestack]

Shake shouldn't have any problem with Red footage, as long as the Red codec supports its 16-bit RGB pixel format.

A team used Shake to make an Imax movie from Hubble footage at beyond 4K:
http://www.apple.com/pro/video/stsci

[Policar]

Fair point about discreet, but Apple's had a few Walter Murch films (since he's buddy buddy with Apple anyhow), one or two other Hollywood movies, and some indies edited on FCP. Everything else was either Avid or Discreet, and mostly Avid.

And while new Networks are supporting FCP, few of the major ones have more than a couple FCP machines. It seems like Apple's gaining high end marketshare, which is nice, but without a higher end product this will be tough.

[Ziggy Uszkurat]

And while new Networks are supporting FCP, few of the major ones have more than a couple FCP machines. It seems like Apple's gaining high end marketshare, which is nice, but without a higher end product this will be tough.

The BBC (in the UK) are making a HUGE investment in Final Cut Pro laptops -- I guess they qualify as a major broadcaster...

Ziggx

[Steve Gibby]

...Apple's had a few Walter Murch films (since he's buddy buddy with Apple anyhow)

Walter Murch used Final Cut Pro 3 to edit "Cold Mountain" (2003), for which he won an Oscar. He would have used FCP4, but he didn't have time to integrate it into his editing workflow in time to edit the movie.

[Thomas Mathai]

If FCP does go to the 2k/4k realm, it needs to natively support the formats currently considered standards in 2k/4k such as Cineon, DPX, SGI-RGB, TGA, TIFF, in all the various bit depths.

FCP only works with Quicktime and in the 2k/4k realm, no one works in Quicktime or would want to deal with it. Why add extra steps to workflows that's worked for well over a decade.

FCP needs to be as flexible as Shake in terms of image import and export options.

[Jeremy Torrie]

I welcome any and all innovation. Both companies do that so it makes sense for like minded folks to gravitate to each other. I've got 3 Avids but the way that company has stood still while FCP has made its gains is a real head scratcher. Avid is doing nothing to integrate 3rd party hardware but has kept on top of new codecs. But unless you want to work in 2K you need a serious and expensive system at the fraction of a brand new FCP system.

[Rick Darge]

Yea that's one thing I can't stand about Final Cut is the fact that all video must be dealt with in the Apple Quicktime pacakge - You can ingest any type of still image file or audio file but when it comes to video, everything must orient to Quicktime - take the HVX workflow for example. It would be so much easier if they just incorporated MXF into their workflow instead of having to convert..

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I agree, Apple needs to open up a bit. They don't need to change anything with their QT workflow, but it would be nice if they also supported some other formats/workflows in there. Native MXF support with metadata functions would be great for HVX or Sony XDCAM guys... I don't see proper 2K/4K support coming via QT either... Like Thomas mentioned, they need to support some of the bigger industry standard formats.

[Antoine Baumann]

Software

- New iLife version
- New compositing application a'la Shake

Anything else?

Yes, Final Touch!

And as others pointed out, I think that the next compositing package from Apple won't be presented by NAB 07.

[Antoine Baumann]

A team used Shake to make an Imax movie from Hubble footage at beyond 4K

Thanks for the link, man.... that's so beautifull!!!

http://informal-sci.stsci.edu/exhibits/largefilm/index.php

[Steve Freebairn]

One thing no one has mentioned yet is that Adobe is bringing the full Production Studio to Mac in June (according to an interview in the creativecow magazine the new version will be available for PC and Mac). Apple really needs to support 4k because Premiere does, I have a hard time believing that Apple will let Adobe best them, although they've allowed them to in the past. I'm not trying to start a FCP vs. Premiere war, I'm just saying that with the increased competition, we should be seeing some really good things from both Apple and Adobe.

[ChristopherKenworthy]

The last time I used Premiere it was quite painful, so I put it to one side, and so much time has passed that I didn't even know it supported 4K these days. I had no idea. Yes, Apple have to respond to this. I use FCP every day, but I'd switch to Premiere if it meant I could edit my Red footage at 4K. Apple must be working on a 4K solution for the next release.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Premiere used to suck bigtime - I quit using it at v5.2, I just couldn't take it any more. So I switched to Vegas and was quite happy for a while. I moved over to FCP since last year at this time, it was the best solution for my HVX I was buying (I was already a Mac and PC workflow, so jumping platforms wasn't a big deal). I also found that DVD Studio Pro was a lot better than anything I was using on the Windows side of things (Encore, Vegas, DVD Lab, etc..). Recently, I've been exposed to Premiere Pro v1.51 and v2 recenly and it has become quite a nice and reliable NLE. Adobe brining their production suite to the Mac is a great move on their part and will give Apple some serious competitoin. IMO, the weak link is Adobe Encore -- hopefully the new version is a lot better and can compete with DVDSP.

[Steve Freebairn]

apparently Adobe was able to achieve the performance in OS X that they have been hoping to achieve in XP (according to the Creative Cow interview). If the Production Studio can make as big of a leap this time as they did from 1.5 to 2.0, then Encore, Premiere, and After Effects should be really amazing. I'm really hoping that Encore is now Blu-ray and Hd-dvd capable. This should help Apple get their act together and get real support for HD formats on optical disks (none of the half baked HD DVD on DVD stuff like right now).