Media Composer 8.3 and the 4k timeline...

I'm about to cut a short for a friend which was shot on the Sony F55 in 4k, so this will be the perfect opportunity to test out Avid's new 4k timeline with proxy display and everything. I'm looking forward to not having to spend hours and hours of time transcoding, as with this small projects I don't have to they luxury of an assistant editor.

I'll post some initial impressions once I have some rushes in my machine.

UPDATE: It went fine, 4k though they mixed 4k and 1080p for some reason. MC 8 is such a huge step forward from MC 7. 

Interesting Article on the Rise of the GPU on Redshark News

RedShark News posted an interesting article a couple of weeks ago about the rise of the GPU. It's an interesting (if basic) overview of how GPUs have become more important over the years.

It's a fairly glossed over history of events, but as we all now know, having a high-power GPU is becoming more and more necessary in the Post Production world. For instance, I recently upgraded my GPU to an AMD 7970 3GB card in my aging 2008 3Ghz 8-core Mac Pro in order to speed up real-time performance in applications like Resolve and Smoke, which is has, hugely, when compared to my old Nvidia GTX 285. As an added bonus, when using Adobe Media Encoder to render an h.264 version of the feature film I'm currently editing, my render time has gone from about realtime (1hr 45min) to about 1hr 15min. That's a half hour savings, just from changing my GPU… now imagine if I had a newer Mac Pro! It's because of this kind of compute power that Apple decided to go with dual AMD GPUs in their new Mac Pro trashcans. They're now using OpenCL to accelerate their Pro Apps and with software like the Creative Cloud suite, Scratch, Smoke and REDcine-X all moving to give stronger support of OpenCL, it makes a lot of sense for creative types such as ourselves, to get a graphics card with a lot of OpenCL muscle.

For those interested, I picked up my AMD HD7970 used on Amazon for about $130. That's a whole lot of processing muscle for not a lot of money. It's a fairly easy card to get a deal on, since it's been replaced by the Radeon R9 280x (which is essentially the same card) and since it's a popular card with bit miners, there's lots on the used market. By the way, the AMD D700 cards in the new Mac Pro are also essentially 6GB versions of the 7970 on a custom board...

Anyways, I digress… read the RedShark article here: http://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/1965-the-incredible-rise-of-the-gpu

GPUs, CUDA, OpenCL and how to leverage them for Post

So, there's a lot of confusion, misinformation and half-information on the internets about GPU acceleration in your favorite NLE, coloring or conforming app and unfortunately the companies that make the software we all know and love are not particularly helpful on explaining what makes for a good graphics card for their systems, so I decided to break down what I know on the subject.

Editing via the lowest bidder… really.

This site has me a little concerned. www.videopixie.com
They've basically made it so that you submit the project you want edited and desperate editors bid on it, then you go with "best" (read: lowest) bid. But wait there's more! If you're not happy with the edit, you don't have to pay! So some jackass, who managed to bid lower than the other jackasses on the site, doesn't even get paid because you're not happy with the edit, which is maybe because you paid for the lowest bidder, or maybe because what you shot is shit. This just sounds like a fucking nightmare. But hey, thanks for demeaning and lowering the value of the work of creative artists even more. Awesome.

B Camera

A Director once said to me "There's no real plan with B-Cam, they're just there to grab shots when they can and hopefully they give us something useable."… I almost strangled him.

B-Cam can be very important to a shoot, but if you're not going to have them do anything important, you'd might as well just save the money send them home. The unfortunate thing is that too many directors have the same attitude towards B-Cam as the one I mentioned above. Unless it's a really experienced operator, who's normally A-Cam, and is doing the show as a favor to the DP, B-Cam should never really be left to their own devices. B-Cam is usually either an operator that doesn't have enough experience for A-Cam, or is experienced, but doesn't have enough of an eye for A-Cam. In either case, their shots are going to be pretty useless unless the DP is actively framing every shot for them, and they spend some real time on blocking.

Anyways, so what happens when you leave B-Cam to their own devices? You get hours of unusable shit that you have to sift through just in case they accidentally shit a nugget or two of gold. Oh, and if you're really lucky, some of it might actually be slated. That kind of shit didn't fly on film productions, no slate, no telecine. Shoot unusable, poorly exposed shit and you'll find a day-call op parked in your spot the next morning.

Avid Log Exchange IS Discontinued. D'oh.

Apparently someone saw my query on the Avid forums and wrote a brief article HERE.

It really is disconcerting that ALE is gone, as 24p points out, it really helps when moving logs between software and when I was an AE, I was always in the habit of running ALE files from the lab through Avid Log Exchange to make sure they're "clean", which, usually at least once a week they weren't. It's also handy for converting EDLs into log files for batch capture if you're having to rebuild an old project.

Anyway, it's annoying that it's gone, I'm sure a lot of people are going to be cursing when, like me, they eventually bite the bullet and upgrade to MC8. MediaLog is gone too btw, which was a useful tool to help keep your 2nd AE busy for a few hours  if your production was too cheap to have a lab log your dailies.

I'm starting to get nostalgic for the old days of tapes and floppy disks arriving every morning...

Avid Media Composer 8

I've recently upgraded my system from MC 6.5 to MC 8, yes I know, I know, never upgrade mid-project but honestly, it's  pretty simple task to roll-back to MC6.5 if I have problems.

So far so good, it's been a few days now and it feels like snappier and more stable than 6.5. I had briefly tried MC7 last year, and had had some stability and performance issues with full screen playback, and I'm happy to report that so far, MC8 has none of those issues.

For those one MC7, there's not really any compelling reason to upgrade at this point, as they haven't really introduced any new, tangible features to the software (other than licensing options) but if you buy an annual support contract before the end of the year (for $299), you'll get free version updates with it, along with latest version of Squeeze Lite, but I wouldn't bother with it, your older Squeeze still works and is more full-featured. At NAB I was assured that, while there wasn't much in the way of new features with MC8 now, by the end of the year they will have rolled out some significant updates.

Concerns: The current installer does not include Avid Log Exchange and does not support Phrase Find or Script Sync. So if those are options you need for your workflow, then you'd best stick with MC7. Of course, if you're an MC6.5 user and purchase the Upgrade/Support license, you'll have access to the MC7 installer and can continue to use it until Avid is able to eventually negotiate a deal with the companies behind Phrase Find and Script Sync. Why Avid has dumped ALE, I have no idea. It's one of their most useful tools. I tried using an older version, and for some reason even though it worked perfectly before I upgraded to MC8, it now crashes at launch. Avid has also seriously reduced the software bundled with Media Composer, but you can get it all back, along with the Symphony upgrade, for and additional $599.

A note about the new license structure: it seems that Avid has learned from the fallout around Adobe's Creative Cloud fiasco, and whether or not you get your latest version of MC via upgrade/support contract or perpetual license, it will still continue to work after your contract has expired. If you're on month-to-month, or yearly subscription it will stop working when the contract expires if you're not auto-renewing.