Final Cut User

Read about it here at Variety.

Lots of good insight son the SAG/AFTRA Balance

The Screen Actors Guild has released the following press release in regards to the current contract negotiations. At the current time actors are continuing to work beyond the expiration of the current SAG contract. With any luck this course will hold until an agreement is met, another large scale work stoppage this year would be devastating for many below-the-line workers across america. AFTRA is suggesting that dual card members vote down the current deal, which could potentially drag the situation out for a while. I’ll keep on eye on the situation as it develops… but for now, back to editing.

Contact:
Pamela Greenwalt, Screen Actors Guild
323-440-2892 Cell

Screen Actors Guild Continues to Negotiate
Members Continue to Work Past Contract Expiration

Los Angeles, June 30, 2008 – The Screen Actors Guild national negotiating committee has bargained with the AMPTP for the last 42 days and remains committed to negotiating a fair deal for actors as soon as possible.

The AMPTP today delivered a last-minute, 43-page offer that upon initial examination appears to be generally consistent with the AFTRA deal, particularly in its provisions relating to new media. The union is reviewing the complex package and will prepare a response to management once that analysis is complete.

The parties are scheduled to meet Wednesday, July 2, at 2:00 p.m.

“This offer does not appear to address some key issues important to actors. For example, the impact of foregoing residuals for all made-for-new-media productions is incalculable and would mean the beginning of the end of residuals,” said Screen Actors Guild National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen.

The Screen Actors Guild Codified Basic and Television Agreements covering television programs and motion pictures expire tonight at midnight. Work will continue and all SAG members should report to work and to audition for new work past the expiration date until further notice from the Guild.

Other Screen Actors Guild agreements, including the Commercials Contract, Basic Cable Live Action Agreement, Basic Cable Animation Agreement, Television Animation Agreement, Interactive Media Agreement, Internet Agreement, and Industrial Educational Contract are unaffected by the status of these negotiations, and members should continue to audition and work under them as usual.

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  It seems like this past week we lost some amazing people now George Carlin. Like him our not he was not afraid to speak up and say what was on his mind.He was really funny in alot of his roles in movies and tv. I can remember sneaking out to my living room at night to watch his HBO specials when I was younger. RIP George we will miss you . It seems like we always loose good people in 3’s .

Yay for stability …. which seems to be the base of 10.6 here is the press release and direct link.Looks like we may see the new cat at MacWorld 09 if everything is on time. Speeding up the OS and fixing bugs is great now if they would do the same thing to FCP Studio Apps we would have nothing to complain about ……

SAN FRANCISCO—June 9, 2008—Apple® today previewed Mac OS® X Snow Leopard, which builds on the incredible success of OS X Leopard and is the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system. Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime® X. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”

Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central,” making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X’s lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone™, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari® with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal® and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test on an iMac® 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with 2GB of RAM.  Press Release

There are a bunch of companies out there making some wonky things as far as storage for media goes but I came across a site that has some interesting stuff. Geekstuff4u.com does have its share of nick-knack usb trinkets and other toys but this device which allows you to basically roll your own SSD mini RAID in a RAID 0 or 5 has some interesting possibilities. DIY SSD SATA RAID lets you take CF cards and RAID them together to make a fast little CF RAID system . One thing is ya sound great about time we can if only we could do this and make our own P2 or SxS cheaper I am all for it. Alas the companies that be have there schemes of how they RAID there cards on hardware and software side of things so its not that simple. Pictured below it shows the device working with off the shelf CF cards from SanDisk but claims it will work with any CF card and transfer speeds vary. I wish there were a little more information on how the RAID is configured with this device and what control you have over the RAID scheme but this does give me some ideas  (to bad it seems only SATA 1.0 interface right now) .  

Even though the record has been set straight so many times on this LAME rumor of Apple selling off the Pro Apps to the likes of Avid,Thomson and Adobe nothing could be further from the truth.Rumors have been flying for so long the story still seems to pop up on message boards,chats and podcasts. So if you missed Richard Townhill at NAB FCP Super meet state it then here is for the final time.

Apple has moved to dismiss rumours that it plans to abandon its video products.

These rumours first emerged when the company confirmed it had no plans to exhibit at NAB. But the rumours are false, said Richard Townhill, Apple’s director of marketing for professional video applications.

“I can categorically state, on the record, that is not the case,” he told TVB Europe, adding that the company recently sold its millionth Final Cut Pro license.

The report continues to explain that Apple took 49 per cent of the US professional editing marketing (Avid took just 22 per cent) last year.

Townhill was speaking to TVB Europe to explain the recently released Final Cut Server. While this product was scheduled to ship last summer, Apple had to delay the release in order to ensure it worked correctly, the report reveals.

“The reason we took the extra time to develop it was because we wanted it to work without an IT department to support it,” Townhill explains. Who knows what or who started it maybe it was that salty old Avid editor who wanted to scare the young FCP scouts around the  campfire.(joke)Now that this is squashed yet again can we get on with that other rumor of the mega pro app code named Phenomenon.(go ahead i will wait while you hold your breath for this one)

Studiodaily has a first look video of Imagineer’s new Mogul Review system by CE Raum product designer for Imagineer Systems.I hope to get some more info on all the new changes coming from Imagineer in a upcoming post. Studiodaily look at Imagineer Mogul Review System.Here is a nice little video from Imagineer’s site as well explaining some more about Mogul. Mogul Video. 

Janurary term atFXPHD.com just ended and who would have thought it would be topped just with the announcement of the new April term.I have been a post grad at FXPHD since early 2007 and it has been the best investment I have made in a while.If you are into visual effects,post production,motion graphics or even drawing you would be missing a huge wealth of knowledge if you did not check out what FXPD has to offer.Here is a snippet of what to expect in the April Term Listings.Also be sure to check out the Quicktime tour of FXPHD here FXPHD Tour Movie.The classes are top notch led by artists themselves Animators,DOP’s,Visual Effects Directors,Editors you name it they have them teaching.You get to work on real world projects and use what you have learned and apply that to you reel or work.The forums alone are worth there weight in gold with the amount of working professionals and talented people its like having a encyclopedia of vfx in your pocket or iphone whichever analogy you like better.If you decide to sign up you can always drop my user name(filmbot) as a hint that i sent you over and enjoy what i have been for the past year now . 

About ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT Firmware UpdateThis update is for Mac Pro computers with one or more ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics cards installed, running Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later with the Leopard Graphics Update. It updates the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card firmware on all of the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics cards in the Mac Pro to improve system stability.Link is here.   Apple Support

Here’s a link to the article on the ProVideo Coalition site by Adam Wilt.

Adam makes a good point. I actually started doing the same myself after a quicktime update removed flash compatibility. Actually, more specifically - I started once there were all the issues with the Studio 2 Updates. It ends up being much easier in the long run if you can choose the specific version of an App you want to get back to - especially when there are a lot of bugs and bug fixes floating about.

For example…. When the quicktime update was causing crashing of Compressor and export issues from Final Cut along with stability issues with Motion, I was in the middle of a project with a deadline and I switched machines from my non updated stable machine to an updated unstable machine. Had I not had those installers I may have never been able to get the system working properly in time to finish the project.